Chapter 24
Clio wondered when each kiss with her husband would stop feeling so different. She hoped that the answer was never. She hoped that they always, always had this, that each kiss felt like a revelation.
This one tasted like relief and release. Like giddiness and glory. Like lust and—
She stopped that thought and instead paid attention to the way Hector’s tongue was plunging into her mouth like he owned her.
And maybe he did, in a way. Because it seemed impossible that anyone else would ever make her feel like this.
Hector pulled back enough to look at her, and there was something untethered and uncontrolled in his gaze, like he’d been holding himself on a leash for too long and it finally had snapped.
Seeing that filled Clio with a savage sort of pleasure.
“If you want me to stop,” he said, sounding like the very offer pained him, “tell me now. Or else, I’m going to show ye precisely how much I want you.”
“Show me,” she said, all her shame evaporated beneath the heat in his gaze.
They were in his study; it was not precisely a room designed for the kind of debauchery that Hector had indicated with his heated words. As he glanced around almost frantically, then laid upon the blanket draped artfully over the back of an armchair, Clio found that she didn’t care at all.
No, that wasn’t right. She did care—insofar as she was thrilled by it.
He released her only long enough to drape the blanket in front of the fire, then grabbed her again by the waist, as though he worried that she might evaporate into thin air if he left her without his touch for too long.
“You don’t deserve to be treated like this,” he growled, sounding furious with himself. “You deserve to be on a bloody bed, at the very least. I am not a fit man to be despoiling gently bred virgins. Look at me, taking ye on the floor.”
He manhandled her down onto the blanket. There was no other word for the brusque forcefulness of his motions, even though Clio wouldn’t dream of putting up any resistance, not when she was in wholehearted agreement with this plan.
She managed to get a palm to his cheek, though, despite his harried movements.
He froze at her touch, like she was a faerie who had cast a spell over him.
“It’s perfect,” she told him, her tone firm.
Hector made a sound that might have been a laugh or a snarl or a sob.
“You are perfect,” he told her.
And in that moment, Clio felt that it might even be true.
She dragged him down atop her as he launched himself upon her; it was impossible to say which of them was the more eager, for they were all grasping hands, gasping mouths, and tangled limbs.
Though it had only been moments before that Clio had been burning with rejection, the mere idea that he didn’t want her now seemed so far away that it was positively laughable.
She wasn’t going to waste her breath on laughing, though, not when she could use it to kiss and lick every part of Hector that she could reach.
It wasn’t all that much of him, actually, as he planted his knees on either side of her hips and leaned back until he was upright. She whined and grabbed for him, but he stayed where he was, his groin hovering over hers, though without any of his weight pressing down.
“Patience, princess,” he said with a devastating smirk, and Clio would have protested this, except he deftly tugged at the knot of his cravat and unwound it, revealing the strong column of his neck.
Clio watched hungrily at every newly uncovered inch.
He hadn’t been wearing a coat, so it was his vest that went next, then the buttons of his shirt.
His chest was muscled. She reached to draw that line, from his sternum down over his belly, to the low trail of hair that extended from beneath his navel down to the waist of his trousers.
He swore when she trailed her fingertips through that coarse hair.
He threw his shirt carelessly to the side, and Clio gasped at the scars he revealed, the dozens of pocks of little burns, as well as one large patch, shiny and pink like the damage to his bad ear.
“Oh, Hector,” she said, her brow creasing.
“I don’t need your pity,” he informed her severely.
On impulse, she smacked him, right in the rounded muscle of his chest. That seemed to mollify him, oddly enough.
“It’s not pity, you idiot,” she sniped, and he seemed to like that, too. She tucked that piece of information away for later. “I just don’t want you to be hurt.”
He pulled her hand from his chest and pressed a kiss to the back of her knuckles like she was something precious.
“They don’t hurt, not anymore,” he assured her. “There’s only one part of me that hurts at the moment.”
Alarm coursed through her. “What? Where?” Then he laughed, she realized what he’d meant, and she hit him again. “You blackguard. You worried me!”
He laughed again and pulled her hand down to that part of him that was aching.
“I told you, sweetheart,” he told her, his accent rolling over the endearment. “There is nothing that will stop me from making you mine any longer. I am more than man enough, more than hale enough, to prove that to you.”
She’d had more than enough talk and not nearly enough action.
“You keep making promises,” she told him archly, “but I’ve yet to see the results.”
He rolled them so fast that Clio could do no more than gasp. Then she was atop him, her skirts bunched around her waist.
“You really shouldn’t taunt me,” he told her warningly. But his actions did not support his words, because he used those incredible muscles of his to pull himself up to sit, too, so they were face to face, and then he began attacking the laces of her bodice with determination.
This was, Clio thought dizzily, a marvelous argument in favor of taunting him.
Soon enough, he had her bare to the waist. His rough fingers came up to cup her breasts, the sensitive skin prickling with the feel of his calluses. He pinched one nipple, hard.
She yelped.
“Oh, yes, that’s right,” he purred as he sucked kisses along her collarbone and his thumb began stroking the place he’d pinched, soothing the hot skin. “Let me hear you. Let me see you.”
He rolled them again—Clio never wanted to get used to that—and guided the mass of her gown down over her hips, over her legs, then threw it aside. The dress would never be the same again, and Clio didn’t give a damn.
How could she, when her husband’s eyes were upon her, when he was looking at her like she was goddamn Aphrodite herself, risen from the waves?
How could she care about anything except for his possessive hand as it traveled over her belly, her hips, then curved to cup her gently at the juncture of her thighs.
When he found her already slick and wanting, he groaned, and she gasped.
“God, how perfect are you?” he asked, his voice awestruck as he caressed her sensitive flesh. “Is there anything you cannot do? My perfect princess on the outside, and my delicious wanton on the inside. All wet and eager for me. Bloody perfect.”
He offered her the words in a guttural growl, which only added to their coarseness. And, despite what she’d been taught to expect from a gentleman all her life, Clio found that it was this very coarseness that sent a thrill through her.
Because this was Hector, her Hector. He was a gentleman, yes, but he was more than that. He was also the blacksmith at the forge. He was also a man who had carved and fought for the respect he commanded.
Any of the Society toffs who thought this made him less were wrong. They were dead wrong. He was more. And somehow, miraculously, he was all hers.
“Are you ready for me, sweetheart?” he asked, the cords in his neck standing out with the effort it took to restrain himself.
“Yes,” she gasped, her own body vibrating with barely suppressed need. “Yes, Hector, please.”
She felt a blunt pressure between her legs as he got himself into position, and then her whole body was heat and pressure and sensation.
He moved slowly, taking care with her, and she was torn between an instinctual resistance to this strange new use for her body and a shrieking desire for more, more, more.
It was the latter feeling that won out.
When Hector was fully seated within her, he paused, his piercing blue eyes mere inches from hers. His hair flopped over his brow. His gaze searched hers, checking to make sure she was well, and a pang went through her.
Oh. Oh, she was so very much in danger with this man. Not with her body—his marvelous care made that clear—but with her heart.
“Am I hurting ye, princess?” he asked. “Tell me that you aren’t hurting. I couldn’t stand it if I harmed you.”
Tears sprang to her eyes at his earnestness, but she blinked them away, lest he think them caused by discomfort.
“No, Hector,” she assured him, her hand coming to his cheek, even though she worried it was too tender, that it would give her away. “Please. Show me the rest.”
“Thank the saints,” he muttered just before he stole her mouth in a searing kiss. She opened her mouth to him, then gasped as he began to move.
Hector wrapped his rough palm around the curve of her rear—Clio gasped again—and used his grip to guide her up into the motion of his thrusts. They were slow at first, then faster, in a rhythm that stole Clio’s breath and made her pulse with pleasure at each movement.
“Yes,” Hector growled. “Yes, move with me, princess. Show me everything you have in you. Give it to me; I need it. I need you.”
Clio’s arms were around his neck, her fingertips digging into his shoulders. She felt her nails bite against his skin, and she was momentarily afraid that she’d hurt him, but he snarled a sound into the curve of her neck and bucked into her even harder.
Not that she could have clung less tightly to him if she’d tried. Everything inside her was one big ache, one that she knew could only be soothed by him.
The heat in her was concentrating now, gathering tight in her belly in a sensation that she was beginning to recognize, that she knew she would only ever associate with this man.
“Oh,” she murmured in between the sloppy kisses that she pressed wherever she could reach—his cheekbone, his temple, the scars covering his bad ear. “Oh, Hector, I’m nearly—"
She was speaking into his bad side; he wouldn’t be able to hear her, but the messages of her body were clear enough, loud enough.
“Yes, Clio,” he said, grabbing a handful of her hair and pulling her back to look at him. “Show me. Please. Clio.”
Clio felt a burst of satisfaction that she’d finally reduced him to panting the way he did to her—but it was eclipsed by the surge of sensation as her climax overtook her.
“Ah, fuck,” Hector growled, his shocking language urging another clench of pleasure from Clio. “God, Clio, you’re—God—so bloody gorgeous. I’m—"
And then his motions lost their pattern, grew frantic, erratic as he, too, shook with his crisis.
His face twisted, as though the pleasure of it might actually be killing him, and Clio’s heart raced.
She’d done that to him. She’d made him into this beautiful creature.
And he was beautiful, not despite his scars and his coarse manners, but because of them.
Because he was Hector.
And for now … At least for now, he was all hers.
They both stilled gradually, their bodies slowing in unison. Hector pressed one soft, careful kiss to her mouth, then rolled off her before he could crush her.
She missed the weight of him at once.
For a moment, the cool air that rushed in left Clio feeling anxious. Was she meant to … leave? Should she return to her bedchamber?
But then Hector reached out an arm, rounded with muscles, and pulled the edge of the blanket atop them, adjusting her so that she was tucked against his side.
“Bide for a while, princess?” he asked, an unusual vulnerability in his tone.
Clio snuggled in closer. She didn’t even object to that ridiculous pet name.
“Yes,” she said. “I’m perfectly happy right where I am.”