Page 66 of Seducing a Stranger
“You forget, husband, I’ve met you already. That night in the garden.”
His eyes flared that quicksilver spark. “Thatwas not me. That was—”
“If you saya mistake, I will slap you.” She raised her hand in warning. “You were more yourself that night than I think you’d been in some time before, andcertainlysince. You were stripped of all this stalwart artifice. Bare and vulnerable. And yes, dark and angry.” Her hand landed on his cheek, but only with caressing care. “And you needed me just as much as I needed you. And I think…I think you still do.”
His chest expanded with short, rapid breaths as he held himself as straight and taut as a marble statue. His jaw, however, leaned slightly into her hand like a beast searching for comfort.
“You were so wonderful with me on my very first night,” she remembered. “So gentle.”
“Not bloody gentle enough,” he bemoaned.
“You were perfect.Wewere perfect.”
He regarded her warily. “Are we…not in the middle of a row?”
Her breath hitched with amusement. Farah was right, men were adorable idiots.
“I’m yourwife, Carlton.” She’d never called him that before. Not to his face. “For better or worse, our fates are tied together. I might not be what you envisioned, but…I’mhere.” She glided closer, until her breasts pressed against his chest, her body molding to his. “It’s permissible to need me. To want me. If we have nothing else, we havethatnight. We havethischild. And this…attraction between us. One that might, in time dare I hope, turn to affection?”
She lifted on to the tips of her toes to glide a soft kiss against his jaw.
“Prudence,” he growled.
“You’re so tired. Sotense.” She pulled his head closer, whispering her breath over his neck, allowing her suggestions to glide into his ear. “Let me ease you, husband,” she urged. “Further than that. Let mepleaseyou. After all you’ve done for me—”
His head whipped back. “I’d never expect—not as payment—”
“I know,” her fingers caressed the close-cropped down of fine hair at his nape, urging him back toward her. Aching for his kiss. “That is why I offer. I want you, husband. Through everything, that’s never changed. Given the chance, I would make a myriad of different choices over the past three months, but not that one. I cannot bring myself to regret giving myself to you…having you…does that make me unforgivably wicked in your eyes?”
“No.” She sensed the tempest within him, the battle of his dual nature, and identified the precise moment one of the factions beat back the other.
With a foul curse, he closed his hand around her wrist and pulled her after him as he veritably slammed open the door to their alcove, and another to the stairwell. He silently marched her down one flight of stairs, through two more doors in another chaotic office full of typewriters and noise, and then veered her into a long, deserted hallway.
She trotted to keep up as he swept her to the end of the hall and shouldered open an old door swollen with disuse. In an incredible dance of fluid motion, he tugged her inside, firmly shut the door, threw the lock, and pulled her into his arms to crush his mouth to hers.
All pretense of the civilized Chief Inspector melted away beneath the heat exploding between them. His hands were suddenly everywhere. His lips were no longer compressed into their tight, laconic lines. They molded to hers with a wild, wet consummation that surpassed anything she’d ever imagined.
He’d once again succumbed to the starving, carnal beast that lurked inside him. One locked away in a cavern so deep it was as if he attempted to bury it forever.
But anyone knew that a predator denied sustenance became the most dangerous of creatures. Prudence realized that she somehow possessed the key to the dungeon where he kept that beast.
And she’d hoped that once she’d let it lose, it would devour her.
True to his nature, he didn’t let her down.
Her body melted against and around him while he kissed her as if he could make up for every absent night and every empty morning. Beneath the fervency of his embrace, a heart-rending sweetness existed. A sort of awestruck marvel that moved her to the very marrow of her bones.
This was something he couldn’t express with words, she understood. Not yet.
Perhaps not ever.
Though there was no chance of him releasing her, she still clung to him, her fingers digging into the convex muscles of his back, reveling in the mounds of strength she found there.
His tongue didn’t wait for invitation, sweeping into her mouth in drugging, silken strokes. He moaned against her lips and she breathed it in, relishing the honest pleasure in the sound.
The ragged need.
He crowded her backwards, never breaking the seal of their kiss. His hands cinched her waist and lifted her onto a desk, or a table, she couldn’t be sure. Only once he’d secured her there, did he allow his restless lips to venture elsewhere. He dragged them across her cheek, rooting into the sensitive hollow of her throat, nipping at the soft lobe of her ear as he pressed her knees open to fill the space with his hips.
