Page 53 of A Bride By Morning
Lydia reached up and began untying the ribbon at her throat. “I’m not going to stop caring about you. I won’t be like those men at the Home Office. Let them worry over the diplomats and Members of Parliament.” The ribbon that held up her nightgown yielded. “It’s your life that occupies my mind, Gabriel St. Clair.”
“Lydia,” he said again. He said nothing else, as if torn between saying,Lydia, stop.OrLydia, continue.But then he focused on the single finger holding up her nightgown. “Drop it,” he said softly.
Lydia lowered her hand. The silk nightgown fell to the floor, revealing the bared length of her body. She watched Gabriel’s fingers curl into his palms as he looked his fill of her.
“You are fortunate that I’m too battered to do all the things I want right now.”
“Tell them to me.”
Gabriel came forward, the muscles beneath his unbuttoned overcoat flexing as he approached. When his eyes met hers, they were almost fevered. “Not yet. Tonight . . .” He dropped to his knees. “I want to taste you.”
Then he leaned forward and pressed his mouth to her quim.
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Gabriel reveled in the taste of Lydia’s wet cunny.
She bucked against him. The only thing that kept her balanced was her back against the door and Gabriel’s firm grip on her hips.
“Gabriel,” she panted. “Oh god.Please—”
He slid his tongue inside her.
Lydia’s head tipped against the door, and his name left her lips in a rough groan. That small encouragement was its own message: he could satisfy her as long as he liked. He could indulge. He could manipulate time and make this moment last. Whatever came tomorrow no longer mattered; just this once, Gabriel would let himself drown in her.
His cock strained against his trousers, but he disregarded the ache of his desire. A slight discomfort was a price he was willing to pay to make her writhe beneath his touch.
Pleasure, after all, was an ambition. It required attention and effort. When they woke the next day, and he was forced to reconstruct icy walls to shut her out, he wanted this memory to examine in the quietude of his thoughts. When Moscow overwhelmed him, Gabriel wanted to recall the sharp, salty taste of her. That in her moments of ecstasy, she gained the courage to dominate: she scraped her fingernails hard against his scalp, fisting her hands in his hair to keep him in place.
But that dominance was not one-sided. He lifted her leg and set her foot against his shoulder to improve his angle. Lydia arched her hips as Gabriel used his tongue to possess her, to mark her with the heat of his mouth.
She burned him.
She made him feel alive.
She made him yearn to exist only for this: pleasuring her. He would prostrate himself at her altar if she wished it.
The sudden constriction in her grip indicated her release was near. Her nails scrabbled over his scalp in an almost punishing hold, but the discomfort gratified Gabriel. It was proof of her need. Evidence that she was as lost to this as he.
She came with a sharp cry. Then, as his name shattered from her mouth in shaky breaths, a strange emotion went through him—and a vision of a life spent in bed with her.
Mornings with Lydia in his arms.
Afternoons where he would steal her away for a brief interlude.
Nights fucking her into the bed until she came again and again and again.
But that life wasn’t for him. No matter how much Gabriel yearned for her, one part of his mind would always be buried firmly in the past—where she could never follow.
Gabriel lowered her foot to the ground and rose to his feet. When Lydia’s eyes met his, another peculiar sensation passed through him—her expression was so genuine, so sincere. So full of trust.
She’d looked at him like that the day he left England ten years before.
Don’t,his mind thought sharply.Telling you what I did doesn’t erase it. I can’t be that man for you.
Lydia retreated a fraction. Such a small distance that almost compared to the entire length of the continent and topography of Russia. “Where are you going?” she whispered. “Moscow?”
He frowned at her words. “No. I’ve no intention of returning—”
