Page 58 of The Baron Takes a Bet
“Then let me prove that you can,” he said.
How this particular event would lead to her trusting him was beyond her comprehension as the slow, simmering heat began to roll within her. Before she knew it, his mouth was on her, inside her, his tongue tasting her deepest center as his fingers gripped her hips with bruising tightness, as if he were afraid to let her go.
She bucked at the invasion, equally mortified and ecstatic as he feasted upon her. She knew she should want to push him away, but jolts of pleasure began to spread all over her body and instinctively her hands went to his head. She hesitantly ran her fingers through his hair and the sound he made when she touched him encouraged her. She tangled her fingers into his hair and held him against her as he growled, the vibrations of his voice reverberating into her very soul.
Gavin’s hands held her tighter and Holly knew there would be black and blue spots from his fingertips, but she had never felt more willing to be marked. The edges of a storm began to brew within her. Something she had never experienced before. Her heart began racing as sparks ignited all over her skin. It felt as though a cord had been pulled tightly from her head to her toes through the center of her body and Gavin was slowlystrumming her into oblivion. She tried to fight off the rising urgency in her body, but he wouldn’t relent. One hand reached up to find the peak of her breast and rolled it between his fingers as her world began crashing into her.
A moan escaped her lips as her body convulsed beneath Gavin’s expert touch, and she felt suspended out of her body as an outrageous series of thoughts and feelings washed over her. It was cataclysmic. His hands had become firmer still, as if he were trying to hold her very spirit as he came up over her. Strong arms wrapped around her prone, shaking body and he held her against him, his own breath nearly as unsteady as hers.
Holly curled her own arms around Gavin’s back as she slowly returned to herself. For several moments, neither of them moved. The only sound was the ragged pants of their breaths and the pounding of their own hearts. Holly wanted nothing more but to hold him indefinitely as she inhaled the faint scent of his skin. How she would ever be able to look him in the eye again, she did not know, but she was desperate to stay there in his arms, on his bed, for as long as possible.
All too soon, Gavin pulled away, standing above her as his wild eyes searched hers. There was something else, she thought vaguely. Something else that could be done, though she knew not what. But just as quickly as she realized it, a shadow passed over his face. His chest rising and falling, he watched her with what she assumed was satisfaction and need. Holly stared at him, wanting to feel his arms around her again, to be pulled against him. Instead, after several moments, he held his hand out to her and she took it. He drew her up to her shaky feet and pressed his mouth to her temple. Holly didn’t understand why, but she felt as though he was going to let her go.
“Goodnight, Holly,” he said, his tone rougher than she had ever heard it.
Goodnight?
After all that, after the way he had touched her, kissed her, made her experience… well, whatever that had been called, he was sending her away? She wanted to ask him why. She wanted to tell him that she wished to stay, but apparently she had been robbed of speech because all she did was nod and move away from him when his hands dropped from hers.
What was going on? She did not wish to regret that they had done something wildly intimate, but to be so flippant or even cold afterward left her feeling rather shameful.
Holly entered her bedroom without a backward glance, locking the door behind her for her sense of peace. Why on earth had she even gone to his room? She certainly hadn’t expected that interaction, yet it was what she had wanted since that morning in the inn. To be held by him, kissed by him. Gavin’s mere presence made her warm and giddy. To be handled so gently and so expertly made her feel cherished, yet the way he had let her go made her feel somehow cheap. As if he had been capable of doing that with anyone.
Holly’s hand came up and wrapped around the edges of her robe under her neck. Had it meant anything to Gavin? Or had he simply been trying to placate her?
Confused by all the contradictions, Holly crawled into her bed, huddling beneath the covers. It was embarrassing, to say the least, and she was sure she would simply melt beneath his knowing glance tomorrow, but for now, she was in a state of mortifying bliss.
Chapter Twelve
Gavin watched asthe door shut behind Holly, the definitive noise of the latch locking him out conveying a world of words that needn’t be explained. He had surprised her, pleasured her, and discarded her in mere minutes and he knew she would likely be confused for days on end.
But it was all he could do to keep her away from him.
Leaning his forehead against the bed post, a deep groan escaped him. Why in the world had he permitted himself to do that? Surely he could have just pushed her out of his room before things went that far. Hell, he should have locked his door the moment he arrived to his bedchamber, but it had never occurred to him to lock her out. More to the point, he probably should have considered locking himselfin.
The all-consuming need to touch her, taste her, had seized him the moment she reached for his arm. She cared about him and had confessed it without any issue, which both alarmed him and made him suspicious. Never in his life had anyone admitted out loud to caring about him, and it unnerved him.
Trust me.
He had asked her, commanded her, and pleaded for her to do so all at once and she had complied without any question. He had wanted to sate the ever-growing desire between them, but it had the opposite effect. The desire to give her a release she had never known had been too powerful to ignore and when she hadthe satisfaction that had rolled through his chest, knowing that he had caused it was the most powerful thing he had ever felt.
Perhaps it was better to leave a man to starve then to give him a morsel. For now, he was aware of what he couldn’t have.
Of course, he could have her, again and again, if only their annulment situation was obliterated. Yes, they had been tricked into their marriage, but with every passing day it seemed more and more like he had actually won some sort of prize as opposed to having his choice snatched away.
Yet his feelings on the matter were moot. Regardless of how he felt, Holly would have her choice and nothing else mattered.
A part of him considered trying to convince her that their marriage was a good thing. She was a baroness now, with money and a certain amount of social power. She was as free as she could be, except that she would have to remain married to him. But did she want that?
Was he good enough?
A long-forgotten pain seized his heart at the question. How many times in his youth had he asked that very question? For years, he’d doubted himself. John hadn’t wanted him, hadn’t even supplied him with enough money for him and his aunt to survive with comfort, and Gavin had longed for things out of his reach. A family, financial independence, the genuine love of another human being instead of being viewed as something to be dealt with. He had trained himself to be a man who did not need any of those things and had thus far enjoyed his solitary life.
But the question he had fought so long to forget resounded in his mind. Was he good enough for someone like Holly?
The deepest parts of him doubted it, but then something about her made him equally confident, which only confused him more. He was strangely self-assured yet doubtful when it came to her. She made him want to beg her for things, while possessing her at the same time. It made little sense, and Gavinwasn’t as desperate now as he had once been. He was a different man than the one he had started out as, and he was simply too reluctant to trust anyone. Even Holly.
It was outrageously unfair to ask her to trust him when he didn’t even trust himself, but she had and his heart had swelled like never before. Holly’s pleasure was his to give and it had physically pained him to stop himself from taking her fully, having wanted to provide her with soul shattering releases over and over again. But they couldn’t. Not without her accepting what it would mean if they did so.
