Page 66 of A Bride for the Icy Duke
And all the while, he kept thrusting inside her, claiming her in a primal way that added to the fire in her core.
She loved him.
How could she not when he made her feel like this?
When his face felt like a safe haven in the rage of overwhelming pleasure roiling through her body?
He was the one who made her feel like this, and she would never stop loving him for that alone.
“Alexander…” she whispered.
He slowed, shaking his head, and cursed under his breath. “That was incredible, sweetheart. I don’t want it to end.”
She didn’t either, but she also didn’t know how long she could keep going. The sensitivity was either the most perfect she had ever experienced, or too sensitive. It was the most exquisite kind of pain—so different from the burn of the stretch before.
“You are better than I could ever have imagined.” He shook his head in disbelief, then moved back down so his chest pressed against hers, his face so much closer. As much as she had loved the sight of him towering over her, she loved this even more—the intimacy of being skin against skin, heart against heart. She released her legs, wrapping her arms around his back instead, and he pressed trembling kisses against her forehead, cheeks, nose, lips.
“I won’t last much longer…” he growled against her.
“Neither can I.”
He chuckled lowly and buried his face in her neck. His thrusts grew fractured, and she tugged at his hair, needing to see the play of pleasure across his face. Just as he had seen hers. She wantedeverything.
As though he understood, he raised his head and locked eyes with her, not looking away even as his body shuddered and a groan slipped from his lips. He fell apart in her arms just as she had in his, and although neither of them said the words, she knew they both felt it.
Love.
She was no expert, but she did not think this act would feel like that without it. There was purely carnal, and then there was tenderness—and the tenderness added something so much better to the carnality.
She teased her fingers through his hair. His weight pressed her deliciously into the mattress, and part of her hoped he would never leave. That they would spend the rest of their time together wrapped up like this.
“Tell me something,” she whispered at last.
He propped himself up enough that he could look down into her face. “Tell you what?”
“I don’t know. Something you haven’t told anyone before.” She ran her hands up and down his deliciously muscular arms. “What are these scars from?”
He laughed a little, more relaxed and open than she could ever remember him being. “Those are hardly a secret. When I was a boy, I was—adventurous, I suppose you’d call it. I continually escaped my nurses and got into trouble in the woods. Climbing trees and the like.”
“And falling out of them again, one supposes.”
His laughter rumbled through her. “Indeed, one should,” he agreed. “I drove my mother wild.”
“What happened to her?”
“She died many years ago, when I was young. Too young to have known her, really. Then it was just my father and me in this house.”
“Is that why you hate it?” she murmured.
He shifted, lying on his side and drawing her against him, his strong arm around her waist. “I don’t hate it here,” he said after a moment. “I used to, certainly. It reminded me of a place where I lost everything and everyone I loved. A representation of the title and duty I never wanted.”
She trailed her fingertips down the scars. “And now?”
“With you in the manor, it feels like a different place.” He hesitated. “You made it your own, and now instead of thinking about my mother, or of Helena, or of the way my father berated me in front of the servants or took me into his office to lecture me in private, I think about…”
“About me?” she prompted.
“I suppose that feels a little fanciful.”
