Chapter 23
Fire Ambers
Prim didn’t know if she had to feel relieved when the Mildenhall Estate appeared or feel even worse than she already did.
The ride from the ball to their home was a silent one.
Prim felt there was a shift in the air, and she didn’t know how to interpret such a swift change.
It was even worse than when she first came to the estate after their wedding.
On the way, she had tried to joke about the ball and talk about her sisters, but Leo remained impassive, looking out the window of the carriage at the night London streets.
She had her suspicions. She had seen Aaron approach him, and she was certain that Leo’s half-brother wouldn’t have anything good to say at all.
They reached the entrance to their house, and Leo helped her out, but then he all but ran to his room, leaving her alone in the empty hallway.
Prim decided that it was the same as when they returned from the disastrous family dinner. It was something that perhaps had to do with his family, and he was keeping her at arm’s length.
She entered her room, and her maid helped her into her nightgown.
She combed her hair, looking at the door between the two rooms now permanently unlocked, but hesitated.
Last time she tried to talk to him about his mother, he got upset and was downright aggressive.
It would be better to let him be for the moment.
Perhaps she would get her chance to talk to him during breakfast
Prim slipped under the covers but couldn’t sleep. The truth was that after that night, she audaciously went to his study, and they never spent the night in separate beds. Now she felt alone, that cold feeling she had that first month of their marriage creeping in through her cracks.
She was staring at the amber of her fire when the door between the rooms flung open, hitting the wall, making the crystal droplets of the lamp on her nightstand chime.
Leo was standing at the threshold, still in his unbuttoned shirt, breeches, and boots. Prim sat up in the bed, the covers pooling around her. She barely recognized the man invading her room as her husband. The Duke was completely gone and, in his absence, a feral being took his place.
He didn’t speak, his mouth stubbornly closed, and in the light that the fireplace provided, she could see a dark look in his eyes. Speech refused her, too, stunned by the spectacle before her to utter any question. Leo didn’t come here to talk.
He crossed the room in three long strides and stood at the foot of her bed. He pinned her with a look that was lethally focused, dark, and intense. Prim felt like prey cornered by a predator. All she could was stare and breathe.
Without taking his eyes off her, he got rid of his boots and almost tore his shirt off. The top buttons of his breeches hang open, letting her see the deep V of his muscles, the dark leading to the outline of his manhood against the fabric.
Then he descended upon her. He pulled the covers off, and he climbed on the bed.
One knee sank beside her hips, and the other between her thighs.
He loomed over her, his look searing into hers.
His hand moved up, not to cradle her face, not to frame her with tenderness.
His fingers curled around the column of her throat, her pulse fluttering like a trapped bird against his skin.
Leo asserted his control over her, slowly leaning in, his eyes demanding attention.
When he finally kissed her, it was a claiming. It was a hard, desperate, brutally thorough kiss. His lips moved over hers with a ruthless hunger that made her gasp. His tongue darted inside, tasting her, lapping her up, all while the hand at her throat held her perfectly still for conquest.
Her body lit up from the hair on the top of her head to her curled toes. She moved her hands to touch him, but he caught her wrists and pulled her closer. With one swift move, she was on her back on the soft mattress, and he was caging her, her hands trapped above her head.
“Who do you belong to, Prim?”
His voice was with a raw scrape of sound, low and guttural. Prim could only stare up at him, her lips swollen from the brutal kiss, her body humming with awareness. And yet her mind offered only a white void, stunned by this man who looked like her husband but who claimed her like a savage.
The lack of an answer urged him on. With a loud growl, he fell on her neck, paving a flaming path to her neck, leaving open-mouthed kisses, nipping at her skin, and licking to smooth it out.
“Ah,” Prim couldn’t take the attack.
He took that as an encouragement and found that spot where her shoulder met her neck. He scraped it with his teeth slowly, warning her of what was to come. Then he sealed his mouth over it and sucked, hard and deep, pulling her very flesh into the heat of his claim.
“Mm!” The moan was ripped from Prim, dazed by the thin line that separated pleasure and pain.
He released the spot with a wet sound, and he lifted his head just enough to look at his work, at the reddened patch of flesh. He admired his handiwork with wild satisfaction. That would leave a purple mark on her skin, one that spoke that his lips were on her skin, a primitive mark of possession.
Then his gaze locked back onto hers, more demanding than before, as if this branding spurred him more.
“Say it, Prim,” he roared.
She looked up into his eyes, eating her up, greedy and hungry. Like this over her, half naked, intimidating, as she had never seen him before, he looked like an animal ready to hunt her down if she decided to run.
But she had no intention of running. Prim didn’t know what birthed that side of him, and she knew deep down that it was something cruel, but Leo, like this, made her body come alive. Darkly, against all logic, she craved him even more like this.
He moved so fast that Prim got whiplash.
He released her wrists, pulled her to her knees, and turned her, her back glued to his front.
His fingers tightened around her neck lightly, and her body arched into him.
The sight of Prim completely surrendering to him seemed to strip him of the last strand of restraint he had.
His fingers released her neck and went down her collarbone.
He seized the lace of her nightgown from behind her.
With a single, violent pull, he tore it down the front.
The fine linen gave way with a soft, tearing sound, baring her to the waist.
When the cool air hit her bare skin, Prim acted on instinct. Her back arched, her thighs ground against him, and her eyes rolled back.
Leo kept his eyes on the side of her face, and she turned to meet his gaze.
His palm mapped the way on her exposed breasts, one hand firmly digging into her hip.
Then he cupped one breast, kneading it lightly before pulling her back and leaning down.
He took the ready nipple in his mouth, sucking fiercely, his tongue licking the tight bud until she cried out.
“Leo!”
“Me, only me,” he said, his hot breath cooling the skin, wet from his kisses.
He was so relentless that he took a double path on her skin.
His lips, tongue, and teeth went slowly up.
He kissed her back, between the shoulder blades, kissed her neck, nipped on the skin behind her ear.
At the same time, his hand took the path that led down, over her stomach, the mound of her center, and then between her legs, at her exposed center.
“Who do you belong to, Prim?”
His fingers teased her entrance with slow, circular motions, while his mouth hovered at her ear. Prim tried to grind against his hand, but his grip on her hip was unyielding, keeping her locked just shy of the release she craved.
“Now, Prim. Tell me who you belong to. Who has your body and your laughter?”
Her eyes focused on him. He looked at her with intensity, half-demanding, half-begging her to admit as much. To release him from a mental cage he had locked his mind in.
“Leo…” she tried.
He captured her lips in a punishing kiss, bruising and harsh. One fluid motion, and his fingers parted her folds and found her bud.
“Who does this belong to?” He bit her earlobe.
Prim moaned into the night, her body a tense bow. One adept finger entered her, and Prim sighed deeply.
“This,” he pumped slowly. “Who owns this?”
“Oh!”
“Say it, Prim.”
She was fighting to keep her sanity, her soul in her body, and her body on Earth. The sensation of his fingers inside her, of his teeth on her skin, his hands still holding her down. It was all too much, too intense.
Leo didn’t relent. He added a second finger, gently but firmly, and curved them to find that secret spot inside her. Again, deeper, stroking her.
“Leo! I can’t-”
He withdrew his fingers, and Prim cried at the emptiness. She met his gaze over her shoulder, crazed, severe, and imperious. He dipped his chin, his eyes those of a predator circling a defenseless prey. She was exposed and needed this, him, all of it.
“Say it! Don’t make me ask again.”
“I am yours,” she sighed. “I belong to you. All of me, yours.”
The smile he gave her was the most devastating thing she had ever seen, a feral flash of triumph, of dominance.
“Now,” he commanded, his voice a dark velvet promise.
His hand abandoned her hip and went once more around her neck.
His mouth claimed hers once more as his skilled fingers returned to her core, not to torture her, but to reward.
He drove them inside her again and again, his thumb teasing her bundle with each thrust. His tongue lapped her up in a sloppy, scandalous kiss.
He pushed her, relentlessly now, towards the same peak he had withheld. All she could do was lick his tongue, his taste filling her arch till all she heard was the debauched wet sounds of his finger entering her faster. And his name. All she could repeat when he allowed was moan his name.
“Mine, Prim! Mine!” He growled in her ear.
He found something inside her, something that made her whole body shudder, and the coil snapped. Pleasure rose like a wave, her mouth filled with sweetness, her body tensed. And then released, trembling.
He didn’t bother removing his breeches fully. He merely shoved them down just enough, freeing himself. Still behind her, he bent her slightly. In one sharp, claiming thrust, he buried himself to the hilt inside her still-pulsing warmth.
“Prim!”
Her name was a low rumble in her ear as he plunged in again and again. Prim couldn’t understand how her body withstood this overload of emotion. How her body could take all this intensity without bursting.
Prim looked back at him, through the haze of ecstasy.
She saw the concentration on his brow, the clench of his jaw as he was biting down, desperate.
His eyes found hers, and there was an intensity that had nothing to do with lust. It was pure, undiluted need, a raw, wild hunger to be the only man to ever make her feel this way.
He took her like this, losing all control.
He forced her to her elbows, his fingers still around her neck, while the other hand pulled her by the hips onto his engorged erection.
This new angle was devastating. He filled her so impossibly deep, a stretching feeling, a fullness that made her cry out with each plunge.
He growled and moaned as he pounded into her completely unrestrained.
It was so lustful, this way, so wanton and devoid of civility. Her world became the feel of him inside her, her juices running down her thighs, the slap of skin on skin, and the feel of the sheets she crumbled with her fists. He was like an animal in heat. This was not making love. This was mating.
He was equally feverish when he withdrew, flipped her again on her back in one fluid motion.
His hand caught her wrists again over her head, and he plowed into her at an unforgiving pace.
The way he locked his eyes in hers made her realize that he wanted her to see him, look at him as he claimed her.
It wasn’t her stomach that flipped this time.
It was her soul, her heart, something deeper in her, and something clearer.
Clarity dawned as her body met his punishing pace.
He was no longer the Duke with whom she plotted.
He was not the husband who protected her.
He was no longer the lover who lifted her to new heights.
Her hands, now free, raised to cradle his jaw, her thumbs stroked the harsh, beautiful lines of his face as he moved within her. This man over her, around her, inside her. This man, Prim, realized she loved with all the power that her heart possessed.
“Leo,” she whispered reverently.
The grasp of this simple yet profound reality came over her like the waves of her passion.
She arched her body not just in pleasure but in offering.
What he demanded she declared was true. She was his, she belonged to him.
Her body, her mind her soul was his. She had given everything she was to this man.
“Prim,” her name was like a vow on his lips.
That simple sound shuttered her. Every pulse of her release was a revelation. Silent, but equally devastating. Prim, against all odds, was in love with her husband.