Page 60 of Stay with Me

“Taking you home.”Home.The word warmed him. Even if Father Fritz’s cottage wasn’t a permanent home, with Sybil beside him, it felt more like home than Reider Castle ever had.Had he put too much hope in a place of his own? For so many years, he’d believed that having an estate would solve his problems. Maybe it wasn’t so much about where a man lived but with whom.

“You do know I am allowing you to do this, don’t you?” she asked.

“Are you now?”

“Yes, I could fight my way free from you in two seconds if I chose to.”

“Not two seconds from me.”

“Yes, two seconds from you.”

He tightened his grip. “I should like to see you try.”

“And embarrass you in front of everyone? I’ll spare you the indignity.”

A grin worked its way up his lips. “And I shall spare you yours.”

Her fingers grazed his back, and suddenly he was attuned to every lovely part of her body, especially the way his arm brushed up against her firm backside.

He increased his pace so that he didn’t do something foolish in front of the entire village, like inch his arm higher. As he shoved open the door and ducked inside, the waft of pottage made his stomach rumble again.

He kicked the door closed behind them. And before he knew what was happening, she linked her arm around his neck in a tight vise while at the same time hooked his free arm behind his back, jerking it up painfully.

The sharpness of her maneuvers took him off guard, forcing him to loosen his hold. In the next instant, she was sliding down, turning around, and flipping him onto her back in the same move she’d made the first time he’d seen her in the dungeon.

This time, however, he was prepared. He wrapped an arm around her waist. Before she could gain momentum, hestraightened and pulled her against him, pinning both arms to her sides.

With her back flush against his chest, he could feel her stiffen and prepare to break free. Before she could disarm him some other way with one of her interesting defensive techniques, he did what he’d been wanting to do since their wedding night. He bent in and pressed his lips to her neck, tasting her skin, breathing in her freshness, and feeling the rapid beat of her pulse.

She gasped and her grip slackened.

He let his lips linger there even as a warning clanged through him that he needed to be careful to remain restrained with this exchange.

“I see what you’re doing,” she whispered huskily.

“And what is that?” He skimmed his lips to the spot below her ear.

She dragged in another short breath. “You’re trying to weaken me.”

“Is it working?” He knew it was, but he wanted to hear her own to defeat.

She tilted her head, giving him permission to continue.

He didn’t need her permission. To prove it, he laid a kiss against the hollow of her ear. “Do you concede to me?”

“If I accept defeat, what will you do to me?”

He would devour her if he could. But he cast aside that thought as quickly as it came. “I will command you.”

“How so?” Her whisper was filled with longing.

This time he dropped a kiss to the soft hollow where her shoulder and neck met. At the kiss, she snaked a hand up behind his head, gripping him hard, as though to beg him to keep going.

A sizzle of energy coursed through him at the realization that he could command her with but the faintest of kisses. He pressed his kiss into the spot more firmly and let one of his hands skimup her arm. Even with the sleeve acting as a barrier between his fingers and her skin, the feel of her awakened him every bit as fully now as it did whenever he glimpsed her in her chemise.

He had the overwhelming urge to spin her around and kiss her on her mouth. This bantering, the soft kisses on her neck, the wanting... it was all leading to another passionate exchange, wasn’t it? Surely he wouldn’t be pushing her too much by sharing a few kisses this morn before he departed.

As he brushed a kiss against her jaw and dropped his hand to her hip, intending to pivot her, a banging resounded against the door. It flew open before he could release her.

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