Page 46 of Lady Constantine & the Sins of Lord Kilgore
The pressure inside her grew so great that she dug her nails into his back and urged him to go faster and harder. When he did, it was as if all the blood she possessed went straight to the place where their bodies connected, and when she was certain she would expire from need, the coil she’d been wound into released, and the wonderful sensation she had long recalled exploded within her, sending warm pulses through her, along with a tide of love for him.
She clung to him, feeling him tense, and she instinctively knew he must be near his own release. With several fast, long, delicious strokes, he shuddered, his arms tightening and his seed filling her. She sought out his eyes, wanting to connect with him, wanting to tell him how she felt. “Callum,” she said breathlessly. “Callum, I—”
The horror she saw in his gaze froze her confession in her throat. “Don’t,” he said raggedly as he stared at her. In that moment, myriad warring emotions flickered across his face. Self-loathing. Anger. Regret. He blinked, and when he looked at her again, she saw nothing. It was more fearful than anything else she’d seen. He had withdrawn from her with a single blink of his eyes.
“I believe I’ve fulfilled my part of the bargain for now,” he said.
Though the logical part of her mind told her he was purposely being cold, logic could not compare to the precarious state of her heart. His impersonal words touched on her greatest fear—that she would never be loved as she wanted to be. And now, naked beneath him, vulnerable in a way she had never been with another because she had only ever loved him, it was all too much. Tears flooded her eyes, and try as she might, she could not contain them.
Chapter Fifteen
Callum had greatly miscalculated his ability to resist his wife and treat her with cold indifference. He realized it the moment she’d confessed having missed him. When he touched her—that was a fatal error. He’d been lost then to his own need for her. When he’d slid his hand under her lovely, rounded buttocks, and entered her, he had not given one thought to remaining cold to protect her from him, so she would go away once she was with child. The lure of opium was nothing compared to her, and the ravages the recovery wrought on his strength seemed to disappear in her presence. She was powerfully intoxicating and made him feel as if anything were possible—forgiveness and forgetting.Ridiculous.His slip, his momentary weakness, was unforgiveable.
When he returned to his senses, he’d been shocked at how little control he had when it came to her, and he’d scrambled to put up his guards, to put the needed distance between them, to play the part of cold husband that he hoped would help convince her to go to the country to safety. He could not allow her to remain. She’d want to help him and endanger herself. His screaming, which often occurred during his nightmares, would make her question him, though after his display tonight she’d likely do so anyway. She’d dig for answers and ways to aid him. He knew her. She was too good. Too brave and not concerned enough for her own welfare. He needed her to go away from him until—and if—he could secure justice and fix what was broken within him. He would sacrifice every ounce of happiness she brought him to keep her safe. She’d never forgive him if she knew he’d found release in another woman’s hands, and he could never forgive himself, no matter that he had done it to keep her safe. And even if he wanted to admit it to her, wanted to chance it, he would not—could not—forget he was a danger to her as long as his nightmares remained. He could not forget waking to find his hands wrapped around her neck. In his nightmare, it had been the woman’s hands touching him, and then the Enforcer’s, as the man had beat him, lashed him, branded him. In sleep, his mind could not discern the difference, and that, that was the main reason he needed her to leave, until and if he knew he could fix himself.
So he’d said what he had and had intended to ask her to go to her own room, but damn himself to hell, he could not make himself do what he’d intended. Tears filled her eyes and trailed down her skin. He had injured her heart, which was the most precious thing in the world to him. He wanted to rage at the unfairness of it all.
She blinked once more, and another deluge of tears slid off her dark eyelashes. He believed it might be the final thing to make him go mad. Maybe he could have proceeded with his hasty plan if she had not cried, if her emotions were not displayed in such a raw, gut-wrenching manner. He would have to regroup later, replan, withdraw, and definitely tire himself even further in the boxing ring. And lock his bedchamber door. Why the bloody hell had he not locked his bedchamber door?
He shoved all the currently useless thoughts away and rolled himself on top of her warm, soft body, and her gaze flew to his as he lowered his face to hers to kiss her salty tears away, to give her, for this one night, the love he had hidden from her.
“I don’t want your pity,” she said, her tone tearful but mutinous, and he stopped her foolish words by covering her sweet mouth with his. She tasted of honey and he wanted to languish there, but instead, he released her lips and kissed his way over the soft pulse point in her neck where he could see the erratic beat of her heart, and down, down, to her chest where he could feel her thundering emotions against his lips. He took her nipple in his mouth, and yearning hit him like the hardest punch he’d ever withstood. She moaned and in return he offered her all the tenderness and reverence he felt for her with licks and tugs, circles, and strokes. He could do this, be the man he wanted to be for her, this one time, for it would be the last. The only. He couldn’t keep the bargain they’d made. He couldn’t keep it and maintain his distance from her. That meant—God, he didn’t even want to think it, but it meant he had to let her go possibly completely.
He shoved the thought and the desperate feelings it brought to the furthest, darkest corner of his mind, and he concentrated on soaking up the present, the time that might be his last with her. As he caressed her nipple with his tongue, he slid his hand across her silken belly, marveling at how perfectly she was formed. He moved his hands lower, searching out her pleasure point, because making her feel good brought him selfish, exquisite joy.
He brought his hands to her inner thighs, parting, seeking, and finding that swollen gem that made her throw her head back and thrash and buck so beautifully. He touched her with great care, first with his finger, pressing, rubbing, stroking, stoking an inferno within him that threatened to burn him alive. As he built her passion, his own climbed higher and higher, wound tighter and tighter, until his body strummed with a demand to be released. But not yet. Now was for her. He caressed her flesh until she was screaming, demanding relief, and then he offered yet another level of exquisite torture.
He slid his tongue over her hot flesh, tasting her, tantalizing her and himself. God, he was on the verge of coming undone in the process of undoing her. Her hands came to his back, nails biting into his skin with her need, and then her fingers threaded in his hair, pulling his head closer to her. She was near desperate, and so was he. He suckled her and loved her until she cried out, and her thighs clenched and then he rose and entered her on a long, sweet stroke, filling her, taking her in, drowning in her welcoming heat.
She tightened around him, contracting, and he had to grit his teeth to keep from pumping a furious frenzy into her. He captured her hips, his muscles tense, sweat on his brow, and he lifted her higher until he was within her all the way to the hilt. He slid in and out in slow strokes, careful to hit her sensitive spot as his blood rushed through him at an alarming speed. She brought her hand to her lips, and he realized she was biting down on her finger to muffle her cry.
Somehow, he managed to grasp her fingers and remove them from between her teeth. “Let yourself go completely,” he said.
Her eyelashes fluttered upward, and her eyes collided with his. “I’ll let go,” she rasped, “when you do.”
How was a man supposed to withstand that? He couldn’t. Callum drove into her with mindless pleasure. She answered his actions with a tightening of her core, a moan, a squeeze of his buttocks. He lost himself, thinking only of her heat surrounding him, her scent filling him, her hot, slick body against his. He wanted to fill her with his seed once more and with the love he couldn’t utter. He pumped his heart and soul into her, and then whatever thread of control was left in him snapped, jerking him up some unseen hill and then down into boneless exhaustion.
The need for sleep—real sleep, sleep without nightmares—hit him and made him want to curl around her protectively, but he was acutely aware that he was her greatest threat. So he inhaled long, deep breaths of the cool air, then turned to her, kissed her gently on the lips, and he rose.
He felt her gaze on his back as he stoked a fire and then retrieved a cloth from the washbasin to see to her needs. He expected an onslaught of questions from her, but she didn’t say a word, and when he turned to her, he found her studying him intently. It struck him then that she didn’t know what to say, and no wonder. He’d been an ass, and then he’d tried to make up for it, and she no doubt feared he would be an ass again. And he would, damn it. He’d hurt her to protect her. Just. As. Before.
But as her wary eyes clung to him while he walked toward her and then she let out a yawn, he made a decision. For the next hour, or however long she stayed awake, he wanted to pretend that they had a real future as husband and wife, that this was the first night of an endless string of blissful nights to come. With that in mind, he returned to her and knelt before her, parting her thighs and then gently cleaning her. He offered her with actions what he could not with words—his heart.
When he was finished, he pulled the coverlet over them both and tugged her back against him. For a breath, he felt her stiffen, but then she seemed to relax into him, as if she were letting down some invisible guard she’d erected. It nearly crushed him as her backside molded to his body, thinking this might be the only time he ever held her like this in his arms. He slid one hand around her waist, and the other found her breast, warm and full. He settled his palm there, a sudden feeling of drowsiness washing over him, but then her chest rose with a breath and her finger came tentatively, gently, to the deep scar on his wrist. His drowsiness disappeared in a flash, and he became instantly aware that he needed to stay alert to protect her from the man he became in his sleep.
“Callum.” The hesitancy in her voice twisted his insides with regret. “Do you often have nightmares like the one you had tonight?”
He’d known she’d ask. She was inquisitive, his wife, and caring. She wanted to help, and he could not allow that. “Yes.”
“Do you, do you wish to talk of it?”
“No.” He wished he could be truthful, to ask forgiveness, but how could he cause her pain for what he’d done to gain a chance at a future that might be out of his reach forever? How could he tell the only woman he had ever loved that as punishment for not being cooperative, for refusing to agree that he was not the Marquess of Kilgore, and even more so because Callum had foolishly spoken of his wife, vowed he would escape for her, live for her, remain honorable for her, the Enforcer had wanted to make Callum look weak to the other prisoners by showing he’d break every vow he’d made, turn his back on everything he held dear.
Her finger traced light as a feather over his scar, leaving a trail of promised healing in its wake—if only his enemy could be vanquished, if only he could fix himself, if only she could forgive him.
“Why were you chained?” she asked, turning toward him, her eyes searching his. “Was it because of the nightmares or simply because they thought you trouble?” she asked softly, yet the question shot an arrow into his heart.
He stared at the twisted red scar, remembering the darkness and desperation that had filled him in the asylum, remembering wanting to kill the Enforcer, remembering the man threatening Constantine, and remembering forcing his body to submit to the prostitute’s skilled strokes, so he would spend himself in her hands.
