Page 13 of A Dark and Stormy Knight
What the bloody hell was he saying? He wasn’t even considering this… so why—
She made a wry sound. Half laugh, half gasp, as she reached up to smooth at the collar of his shirt, which had bent when he’d torn off his cravat. Something in the nervous gesture touched him. Something that had begun to unstitch him the moment she’d fallen, and now was quickly unraveling.
“My fiancé. He’s a selfish lover. I don’t think he’d ever…” She trailed away for a moment, before imparting information about a man Morley hoped to never meet, lest he murder the bastard. “I found out that he—well, he’s not faithful. And understand he doesn’t have to be—that most men of my class aren’t. ButIwill be. If I take a vow of marriage, I shan’t break it, but I’ve said no vows yet.” She tilted her head to look back up at him, a defiant little furrow appearing beneath her dramatically arched brows. “He does not own meyet.”
Tears colored her voice, though none had fallen, and something inside Morley twisted. Pain did not sit comfortably on features such as hers. She’d a visage that glowed with an inner light, even in the sinful dimness of this lusty place.
She didn’t belong here in the dark, committing sins on the ground. Hers was a face for the sun. She was a spoiled woman experiencing her first heartbreak. Learning her first terrible truth about the world of men in which she lived.
She didn’t know the first thing about pain.
And yet…the courageous way she fought her threatening emotion, tied him up in knots.
Christ, this shouldn’t be happening. That he was even entertaining such an idea was lunacy. This woman was obviously an emotional disaster he didn’t need and there was a killer to find.
And yet…she was warm and fragrant, and they were surrounded by sensual indiscretions, the sounds of which glided through this infernal glade with increasing intensity. She smelled like a delicacy waiting to be devoured and his mouth would not cease watering.
So he held her, his cock hard as a diamond, and Lord save him if her eyes were not dilated black with passion. He knew he could give her what her fiancé would not, and that knowledge ate him up inside.
Inflamed as his body was, as hungry as the demon within him seemed to be, he gave one last feeble resistance.
“Making love to me won’t make nights with him any easier,” he warned.
“I know,” she whispered, dropping the coin purse on the ground next to him so she could trace the hollows beneath his cheekbones with those soft, questing fingers, angling down toward his lips.
Morley’s terse mouth softened involuntarily as her featherlight touch sensitized the rim of his upper lip as she charted whatever curve she found there.
“I—overheard tell that there are those of you who can bring a woman to completion with—with your mouth. I find I’d—very much like to know how that feels. And then… I’d like you to…” Her lashes swept down again as she battled with her own breath for a moment. “Lady Westlawn told me that some of you could make a woman come for you more than once…”
Morley swallowed twice before he could bring himself to cede defeat.
Of all the injustices and indignities he’d encountered in his long, lonely life, the one chewing at his soul was the idea that either of them would live one more night without knowing what it felt like for her to orgasm against his tongue.
And then again against his cock.
Though he cradled her as one would an invalid or a child, his fingers curled around her limbs as the hunger tore through him, spilling hot and victorious through his veins.
Sweet Christ but he was going to devour her.
And she knew it as well as he did.
He saw it in the slight widening of her eyes, in the parting of her lips. In the way her body stiffened a little, and then slackened, settling into his arms with a sigh of submission.
That sigh was his ultimate undoing.
He lowered his head, lifting her to meet him. He didn’t so much kiss her as consumed her, his searching, burning mouth parting the pliant pillows of her lips, delving into the honeyed depths he found there.
If this was Elysium, then she was ambrosia. And with her in his arms, he felt like a god.
He broke the kiss before long to cast about for a place for them to go.
“The fountain,” she panted, sliding her hands to lock behind his neck so she could pull him back down to her mouth, her eyes homed in on his lips.
“You’ll be exposed,” he pointed out, realizing how ridiculous he sounded even as he said it. But now that he’d decided to have her, he was jealous that even the stars would have the chance to see her beauty, let alone anyone who should happen by.
“Only to you,” she whispered, sliding out of his grasp and lifting herself to perch on the wide stone ledge.
The path with the row of dim lamps ended at the far side of the Italian style stone, leaving their side of the fountain cast in shadow. He could barely make out her features, but she must have been able to see him plainly enough.
