Chapter Sixteen #2
“Ah, sweeting, we always come together frantically. Tonight, we will go slowly, I think.” A shiver of need went up his spine, and his heart constricted. She was truly his and always would be. Then he took her into his arms and claimed her lips with his.
The way she kissed him back, the way she rested his hands on his chest drove him wild.
Was there any wonder why he adored her? Oddly, she was his perfect match, and he suspected she would fill his life with all sorts of new experiences and feelings.
Dante grinned as need tightened his shaft.
Then, because he wished for more contact than a mere string of kisses afforded, he tumbled them both onto the bed.
He landed on his back, so he tugged her onto his lap, and encouraged her to straddle his hips.
“Why are you grinning?” she asked while looking down at him.
“I am the most fortunate man in England. It’s startling for a man like me with a black soul.”
“Even a man like you deserves love, deserves happiness.”
“Perhaps.” He pressed a line of feather-weighted kisses beneath her jaw. “Will you remain married to me because I fear I’m beginning to love you desperately?”
“For the marriage and not just to soothe your demons?” One of her eyebrows went up in challenge.
“Yes, of course.” Never had he been more certain of anything. He drew his hands up her sides to cup her breasts and grinned when she shivered. The mounds of flesh were the perfect size to fit into his palms.
“Then yes.” Her kiss-swollen lips curved into a smile. “I am quite rapidly falling in love with you as well, and I can’t wait to see where life will take us next.”
“The possibilities are… breathtaking.” For long moments, he nipped and nibbled the skin of her throat, beneath her jaw, under her ear, followed the delicate line of her throat before she stirred restlessly on his lap. When he kneaded her breasts, fondled them, a shiver racked her shoulders.
“Make me fly. Or better yet, make me scream.”
“My pleasure.” He encouraged her onto her knees so he could better suck a pebbled nipple into his mouth.
A squeal came from her as she snaked a hand to his nape to hold him to her.
“Fuck it, you’re mine. You belong to me.
” Damn, he’d never thought to feel so possessive, but he was with her, and he would protect her from everything she considered a threat.
“I don’t mind the attitude, but show me I married wisely,” she whispered as her back arched and she dug the fingertips of one hand into his shoulder while encouraging him closer with the fingers at his nape. “Oh!” A moan followed when he rolled the other tempting rosy bud. “More of that.”
He adored it when she begged. “We are going to make you beg for so much more during this holiday season.”
“I can’t wait.” When she wriggled on his lap, his shaft tightened to the point of pain.
“You amaze me and inspire me.” Then he spent the next several minutes taunting and teasing Anne’s breasts, reacquainting himself with the feel of those pebbled tips against his tongue, the scent of her, the satin of her skin.
There was so much he didn’t know about her, but a lifetime ahead to discover.
When her breathing hitched and she pressed kisses to the side of his neck, he took back control, found her lips with his, and set out to kiss her senseless.
There was nothing he enjoyed more than having her in his arms.
The warmth of her in his hands, on his lap, the faint sounds of pleasure she made, the way her fingers curled into the hair at his nape, the elusive floral scent of her all worked to hurtle him close to the edge.
This one woman had managed to turn his world upside down and make him into a man he could be proud of someday soon in the future.
“Mmm.” She pressed a line of tiny kisses to the underside of his jaw, and every time she moved, his engorged shaft grew and pulsed.
“I want you.” She pressed her lips to the hollow of his throat.
“Love me. It’s all I have ever wanted from anyone in my life.
” Tears filled her eyes. “And I’ve only just realized that too. ”
The urgency in her whisper and the truth therein stoked the fires already burning through his blood.
“I will endeavor to do that every damned day. I might fail, but I’ll keep trying until it’s second nature.
” He spent the next several seconds kissing and licking her neck, the slope of her shoulder, exploring the curves of her breasts until she quivered with need.
“I’m so glad.” When Anne put her hands on his skin, he hissed from the contrast of feelings coursing over him. “I want to taste you, learn your secrets, want to do so many things with you, to you so that we come together without fear or worry between us.”
“We have the whole of our lives to explore and discover.” Christ, he was moments away from exploding, but he wanted to prolong the foreplay, to feel her satiny skin against his.
For a distraction, he burrowed a hand between her thighs, slipped his fingers into the curls hiding the swollen bud at her center.
“Oh, touch me there…” Her eyes briefly closed, and she moistened her lips, apparently not caring to finish the statement.
With a groan, Dante once more claimed her lips for the sheer joy of kissing her.
With his free hand, he plucked a few pins from her hair and sighed as the mass tumbled down about her shoulders and back.
Once he parted her flesh, he strummed his fingers over that tiny button, and as she gyrated her hips against his hand, he continued to kiss her, taking every sound of pleasure into himself because he was selfish and wanted all of her.
In her, he’d finally found a safe place to rest so that he could explore what would bring him peace.
“I want to see you go over that edge,” he whispered against the delicate shell of her ear. “Show me that I am the man you need.”
“Oh!” When Anne hit release, it was the most gorgeous thing he’d ever seen.
She threw back her head and arched her spine while grinding her hips into his.
While she was still lost to bliss, he played with her nipples until he’d brought her to the brink once more.
“Broderick!” He didn’t care that the shout was quite loud, for she was more than aroused; his fingers glided through that slickness between her thighs, and she was gorgeous.
Damn but I want to taste her.
He nibbled the side of her neck. “I want you laid out on this bed so I can kiss every centimeter of your luscious body, devour your pussy until you come as many times as your body will allow.” Hell, he might tie her wrists to his headboard and see if she’d enjoy that.
“Well, we are still in our honeymoon period,” she countered, her dulcet tones breathless. “I adore coupling just after I wake in the morning.”
“Then that is our next thing to do.” When he withdrew his hand from between her thighs, she protested.
“No! Finish me, Udolpho. This longing will kill me.” The petulant annoyance in her voice tugged a grin from him.
“I adore your enthusiasm for bed sport.” It made him feel years younger and more virile.
Her eyes winked with wicked promise. “Make me scream, especially since many of the servants are absent.”
Oh, God. Dante groaned. “Haven’t I already?” There was every possibility he wouldn’t survive his first year of marriage if they continued with this pace. But it was infinitely better than dying by knife blade or a ball from a pistol while on a clandestine mission for the Crown.
“I’m selfish. Must be the company I’m keeping.” She nipped at his chin, pressed tiny kisses to his cheeks, his forehead, the side of his neck then finally claimed his lips, he was lost.
It was amazing how rapidly he’d fallen down that slippery slope and still did, continually going tip over tail in a relationship that had caught him by surprise.
“I love you.” Truly, there was nothing more to say, and it left him with a lump in his throat, for he knew it was true.
Encouraging her to rise onto her knees, he guided the head of his member to her opening.
As she slowly, so damned slowly, impaled herself on his length, a shuddering sigh left his throat.
“Thank goodness you tried to kill me that evening days ago.”
“Ha! At the time, I though you deserved it, but I was wrong.” Up and down, she moved her body, sliding with exquisite perfection along his shaft, over and over and over with her gaze holding his with each pass while he guided her with his hands on her hips.
Her breath came in small pants. “I need to feel you more deeply.” Desire mixed with love in the blue depths of her eyes. “Please.”
“Always.” He kissed her, claimed her mouth with urgent passion.
“If you wondered, I have no regrets. Only gratitude and hope.” As if she were made of the finest china, he urged her off his lap and helped her to lie on her back in the middle of his bed.
He was primed and ready to explode, and damn if this coupling wouldn’t end in embarrassment.
The flush over her chest and cheeks was darling, her spread legs as he followed her down were divine.
The way she brushed a fingertip over a turgid nipple was so damned erotic he nearly lost his control.
She lifted her arms and pulled him close, and there was the sudden feeling of homecoming he hadn’t expected. That was all he’d ever wanted for years.
Damn.
Dante settled between her splayed knees, planted his elbows on either side of her to encompass her body within the cage of his arms while holding her head in his palms. “Is this what you need?” With a powerful thrust of his hips, he speared into her, burying himself in her tight honeyed heat so deep he didn’t want to find his way out.
“Yes!” A sigh escaped her as she wrapped her arms about his shoulders and held his hips between her knees. “God, yes.”
There was no more need for words. Dante worshipped her body with his, to show her how much he adored her, and that he couldn’t wait to tell the world that he was thrilled with what their marriage had become.
Again and again, he stroked into her, losing himself in the wonder of his wife. She held him close and that trust shook him to his core. With the subtle tightening of her fingers and legs, she told him where she needed him to be. And still he stroked into her, couldn’t have enough.
As he stared into her eyes and she gazed back with all the adoration in the world, a piece of his soul flew into her keeping, and with a gasp he realized he had received that same thing from her.
That tiny piece of darkness was scrubbed clean, and it gave him more hope that more of him could find that cleaning.
Emotions clogged his throat. Dante pressed his forehead to hers, cradled her to him as best he could while he continued to claim her body.
When a moan escaped her, that sound broke the hold on his control.
Need tingled through his stones; his shaft pulsed with urgency.
He changed his rhythm, quickened his movements, and after delving a finger between them, played at her nubbin with varying degrees of friction until she bucked beneath him.
He thrust into her harder, faster, deeper, almost demanding that she go over that edge ahead of him.
This was the woman who had shown him that life was bigger, larger, broader than what he’d known before.
“Broderick!” Seconds later, Anne slipped into bliss with a scream of pleasure that echoed in the space.
“Amazing.” He kissed her, selfishly took her sounds of release into himself, and with another deep, powerful thrust, he joined her in that void. The swirling vortex sucked him under, and for the next few seconds, he was lost with her.
After minutes, hours, perhaps another lifetime, he came back to himself. She clung tightly to him, and slowly he untangled their limbs, but he only reeled her into his arms and held her close.
“That was wonderful,” she said in a breathless voice.
“It was.” Gently, he cupped her cheek and kissed her mouth.
“So romantic.”
“Perish the thought. I’m still a man with a morally gray character.” Yet it was perhaps a lighter gray than it had been before. The long-case clock on the floor below announced the midnight hour. “Happy Christmas, Anne.”
“Happy Christmas, Broderick.” She kissed his chin.
“In the spring, perhaps we’ll go away on a delayed wedding trip.” His heart trembled as she giggled.
“I would enjoy that indeed, but truly, wherever you are is perfectly wonderful.” The tears on her cheeks wet his neck where she burrowed into the crook of his shoulder. “But I wouldn’t say no to going up to the Lake District. I’ve heard it’s lovely.”
“Splendid idea, and I believe one of my club mates has a hunting box in the area we could stay at.”
“Good.” When she sighed, it was as if she’d given herself permission to finally relax with him. He felt that deep in his soul as well.
When a man’s life changed, it might lead him to the unexpected, but that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, it was just…
different. But once on that new path he might find that it led to things he’d secretly wanted all along.
Dante grinned and closed his eyes. He might still be broken and might still despise what he’d done in his past, but now he didn’t need to battle either alone.
And that made it all so much easier to carry until he was ready to set it down.