Chapter Thirty #4
Want, need—they were fleeting things that would burn themselves out quickly enough. They were nothing at all like the sort
of slow-building love of stories, where the gentle heroines gathered each precious moment with their intendeds like the loveliest
of bouquets. That was the sort of love that existed in a sunlit garden, innocent and exhilarating.
There was nothing innocent about the way I felt now.
This was something . . . all-consuming. Overwhelming. Senseless. A fever in which the only cure was ruin, in every sense of the word.
The inevitability I’d felt at Briarwood Palace had returned, and it frightened me—the sense that all along, something greater
was working to drive us together, even as we tried to strain apart.
This was no sunlit garden. This was two souls meeting again and again in the shadows of night and recognizing the other through darkness and disguise.
I had already taken a step toward the desk when he said quietly, “I find I require a small hand to place this next piece.”
I scarcely recognized my own husky voice as I answered, “I find I have a small hand.”
I drifted toward him, riding some shimmering wave of heightened awareness. The barest rustle of his dressing robe against
his shirt opened an aching tension in me.
He stepped back, only just, to allow me to stand between him and the desk. A frisson of awareness traversed the length of
my spine, the heat of his body invading the layers of linen and silk between us.
He had left the tweezers balanced precariously against the small porcelain dish containing the adhesive. Coffee and wood and
parchment filled my lungs with each shallow breath as I picked up the tweezers and delicately snared the next toothpick between
them.
“Like this?” I murmured, dipping the long side of it into the adhesive. I waited, my body strung tight as a bow.
Please, I begged. For what, I didn’t know. Relief. Touch. Any part of him he would give. Please . . .
It was torture, how slowly he brought his hand forward, trailing it down the back of my arm. By the time his fingers gently
closed around the sensitive hollow of my elbow, I was trembling.
“Yes,” he whispered roughly, stirring the curls that had escaped my braid. “Just like that . . . I’ll guide you.”
He eased my arm forward, holding it steady as my hand moved over the beginnings of the house’s grand entry hall. Without a
roof in place, it was easy to make out the layout of the ground floor and the toothpick’s destination: a gap at the back of
one of the columns framing one of the rooms.
I tried to focus on it, to think of how I would need to bend my wrist to slip my hand between the column and the one beside
it, but my thoughts were smearing like wet paint. Everything blurred; I gave myself over to the sensation of his steady touch,
letting him guide my hand into place, aligning it just so. I slid the toothpick in the gap, my breath shuddering.
“Let go,” he whispered in my ear.
My eyelids grew heavy at the feel of his lips skimming the curve of my earlobe. At the thought, the prayer, of where they would trail next.
I forced the tweezers open, and closed what little space there was between my back and his chest. A shock of heat flooded
that aching place between my thighs as my body met the hard ridge of his arousal.
He eased away, shuddering, but my body craved the sensation and followed his, insistent. His soft groan fed the heady throbbing
of my body. The feel of him, evidence of his desire, was intoxicating. Nothing mattered beyond it, beyond finding a way to
relieve the glimmering heat building inside me.
Sliding my hand free of the house, he urged it upward, skimming my fingers over my breasts, trailing dizzying patterns over
my collarbone, my throat—my pulse fluttered beneath my fingertips like butterflies trapped beneath my skin.
My head fell back against his shoulder, my eyes sliding shut. A small gasp escaped me as Hugh’s other hand slid around the
curve of my clothed hip, seeking. I clasped mine over it, mindlessly guiding it down, down, toward that desperate ache, the
heat that craved him.
The belt of my wrapper fell away, as if by its own accord. He rocked into me again with a murmured praise of “Perfect,” using my own trembling fingers to unknot the ribbon at the neck of my night rail. It gaped open, sending a prickling rush
of warm air over my skin. He leaned forward, engulfing me until I could no longer tell where he began and I ended.
Resting his face against my neck, his lips found a sensitive hollow just below my ear, and the last of my restraint shattered.
The winding tension in me heightened as I guided his hand down between my thighs, letting him ease them apart. Yes, that was—
I inhaled sharply, my nails digging into his muscled wrist as his clever fingers finally found that needy, aching place. I
gasped raggedly as he stroked me there, and the bolt of pleasure was so acute, my vision blurred and my legs buckled. He wouldn’t
let me fall; he held me pressed to him, his lips working maddening, senseless patterns over my neck, his tongue licking at
my pulse.
I wanted desperately to kiss him; I would have given my soul for it. My hand rose from my throat and his finally fell away
as I skimmed over the bristle of his cheeks, weaving my fingers through his thick hair. His hand slid into my night rail,
cupping my breast, his thumb gently teasing my nipple to a tight bud.
His heart beat wildly against my back, his body responding eloquently to my every move, as if sensing the way that hot pleasure was coiling in me, rising, rising . . .
His cock slid against me again, and I felt a primal spark of satisfaction at his obvious desire. Guided by instinct, chasing
the sparkling heat blossoming through my body, I stirred my hips against it, dragging a ragged sound of pleasure from him
that only excited me more.
Something was coming—something was happening—my hand tightened again around his wrist, trying to press him harder to that
fiery point of pleasure. I wanted to tear through the damp linen that separated it from the touch of his bare skin. It wasn’t
enough. This wasn’t enough.
Hugh was trembling now, too, his powerful body at my mercy as much as I was at his. The molten heat gathering between us had
turned my body soft and pliant, but his only seemed to harden, become more demanding.
My skin stung with pleasure as his rough cheek brushed mine. I turned my head toward his greedily, and he answered with a
kiss at the corner of my parted lips before pulling back, letting his mouth hover above mine until we were sharing breath.
I wanted to turn to face him, but I couldn’t bring myself to break the contact between us, not while his fingers worked to
spiral that mounting pleasure, circling, stroking, until I thought I would faint.
His hand grabbed fistfuls of my night rail, dragging the fabric up until the warm study air caressed my ankles . . . calves . . .
thighs . . .
“Hugh,” I panted, not knowing how to name what I wanted, only knowing he could give it to me. I felt feverish, I couldn’t
think—I was racing toward something, faster, faster—rising or plummeting, I could no longer tell. Fast—too fast—I needed to—to
think—
Dangerous. This was dangerous.
Mama’s pendant slid against my skin, and the feeling was enough to shock me back into awareness. “Wait—”
All at once, that heat, that touch, was gone.