Page 73 of The Lady's Last Mistake
There was no longer a single drop of air in the room. Heat stole over her as her eyes roved over the gloriously muscled figure standing proudly erect before her. He was beautiful, his brawn a revelation, and instinctively, she reached for him. Her fingers touched down on his chest, and instantly, he covered her hand with his, flattening her palm to his skin. She felt the powerful thudding of his heart.
“Next,” he said, his voice a rasp.
It took her distracted and sluggish mind a moment to understand his meaning. He wanted his next command. There was only one thing she craved, and that was to feel his bare figure against her own.
“Remove my shift?” she asked.
Grant did not move slowly this time. He bundled the shapeless linen in his hands and hauled it over her head and off the tips of her fingers. The material disappeared behind her, and his eyes wolfed in the sight of her. Cassie felt a change in him as the intensity of his stare narrowed.
“Fuck, you’re perfect,” he groaned, the coarse word signaling his disintegrating control. His flexed his hands, but he didn’t reach for her. Instead, he lifted his searing gaze to hers and growled, “Next.”
In that moment, she knew she could say anything, demand anything, and he would give it to her.
“Take me to your bed,” she whispered. “Make me yours.”
Chapter
Twenty-One
Make me yours.
Never in his life had Grant been given a command he’d so desperately and instantly wanted to fulfil. He closed the gap between them and, with a ruthless tug, crushed Cassie to him. He let out an involuntary groan at the decadent caress of her warm, naked skin against his, and at the softness of her lips as they tried to match his battering kisses. With an easy lift, her feet left the floor, and Grant did the very thing he’d been envisioning since kissing her the other night: he draped her onto his bed and covered her body with his.
Their fused mouths were in a war, each of them in a frenzy to reach deeper, as if to claim or punish or possess. He wanted all three, and as Cassie whimpered into his mouth, he gave in to the reckless turmoil of the conflicting desires.
As soon as he’d seen her standing within his room, a part of him had known that he would not allow her to leave it. He’d tried. Tried to deny her, tried to stay furious with her for pushing him even further than she already had thatevening. He’d tried to be firm and send her away. But when she’d walked for the door, attempting to maintain her pride and composure, his mind shut down. The need he’d buried for so long had taken over, obliterating the last shred of his honor. Cassie wanted him. This washerchoice. And like hell if he wouldn’t give her what she wanted.
No more games. She didn’t have to tell him what she wanted him to do; he could read her desires as she writhed beneath him, her hands exploring his back, his hips and chest, and then, more boldly, his arse.
“Grant,” she pleaded as he trailed hot kisses down her throat, and lower. His lips closed around the mound of her breast, and she arched her back with a soft yelp.
“Yes, say my name,” he murmured as he grazed her nipple with his teeth. He wanted to wring all sorts of nonsensical sounds from her throat, but he wanted his name on her tongue the most. Cassie gave him that, gasping it, and raking her fingers through his hair as he worshipped her other breast.
As if instinctively, her hand reached toward his groin, but he caught her wrist and pinned it to the bedcover. He was rock hard with the ache of desire. It would not take more than a few strokes to finish him off. But this wasn’t about him. She’d come to him with one need in mind: pleasure. Her own.
Grant eased back a little, enough to take in the divine sight of her sprawled underneath him, her lips red and puffy, her perfectly shaped breasts on full display.
“You’re so beautiful. I can’t stop looking at you,” he said as he brushed his fingers down the valley between her breasts, to the flat of her stomach, and lower, to the apex of herthighs. She squeezed them together, and Grant stopped. He waited. And then, the muscles of her thighs began to relax.
“Are you still sure?” he asked. He would never forgive himself if she’d changed her mind but had been too reluctant to tell him.
Her eyes glittered like jewels in the firelight, dusky blue and leaden with need. “I’m sure. I want this, Grant. I wantyou.”
Her declaration pummeled into him like one of the snowy gales battering the windows of his room. Rationally, he knew what she meant: she wanted him to make love to her, to pleasure her, here and now, in this bed. For this one night. Nothing beyond that. But for a few missing heartbeats, he interpreted the words differently. For a dangerous moment, he considered it as something potentially more.
Cassie writhed beneath him again, and he realized he was still gazing at her, still pinning her wrist to the bed. The tension in her thighs had melted completely, and reading the invitation, Grant drew a finger along the seam of her core. Her eyes flared, her lips parted, and he took her mouth again. His tongue plunged in deep as her hips bucked up to meet his hand.
Grant reined in his quickly collapsing control and forced himself to breathe. To move slower. She wasn’t a virgin, but that didn’t mean she was experienced. At the fleeting image of Cassie underneath Renfry, of the rogue spreading her open to him, taking his pleasure and treating her as nothing but a vessel in which to slake his lust, Grant’s mind recoiled. She wanted more than that from him tonight, and he would not disappoint her.
As he touched her, his plunging tongue mimicked hisfingers, building heat and friction and wringing the sounds from her throat that he’d so desperately wanted to hear her make. Circling her hips, Cassie’s moans vibrated through his mouth, into his chest, and when she screamed her release again and again, he swallowed the sound, rather than let it blare into the quiet of the sleeping house.
“I didn’t know… I had no idea…” she murmured, panting and mindless as she came down from her delirium.
With a small huff of laughter, he settled onto the bedcover next to her. No longer strung tight as a bow, she relaxed into his arms. The sound of her contented sigh and the rosy pink of her cheeks nearly made him forget the painful state of his arousal.
Cassie pressed her mouth to his shoulder and kissed a trail up his neck, her soft lips buzzing under his skin and adding more pressure to the granite coil of his groin. Naked as they both were, she could not overlook the sight. Her eyes took in his condition, and when she met his hooded gaze again, she bit her lower lip.
“Are you going to ask?” she said.
