A moan escaped her. She wanted it to be a furious protest, but it emerged as a mew of pleasure. To stop herself reaching for him, she fisted her hands into the rumpled sheet beneath her.
“Open your eyes, Verity.” His low voice teased across nerves raw with sensual excitement. “Open your eyes.”
“No,” she said stubbornly, knowing any surrender, however small, would lead to ultimate defeat. She turned her head away to deny the almost overwhelming temptation to obey him.
“Open your eyes.” When that had no effect, he continued almost dreamily, “I can keep going all night, you know.”
She whipped her head around and met his gaze. It was dark and intent and steady. She couldn’t doubt he meant what he said.
Her lips parted on a wordless sob. She couldn’t keep fighting him. As if to underline that thought, her inner muscles clenched to draw him deeper.
This time, he was the one to close his eyes, and his sigh was a long aah of appreciation. He dropped down against her and rubbed his beard-roughened cheek upon hers in a gesture almost more intimate than the sex itself.
Against her will, she arched into him, her breasts brushing the hair on his chest. He reached down to stroke between her legs. No deceiving herself this time that her cry conveyed anything but pleasure.
With a broken exhalation of defeat, she began to move with him in the heady dance of passion. As she rose to meet his next thrust, she heard him give a low growl of triumph.
And why not? What price her defiance and hatred now?
But the thought was distant, unrelated to the climbing spiral of tension inside her, tension that built higher with every thrust of his powerful body into hers. She twined trembling arms around him and threw her head back as the storm within her gathered.
By now, Kylemore’s inhuman control faltered. His slow, powerful pace changed, became faster, more relentless. She hardly noticed. Her own response rose, tightening her muscles, compelling her to cling to him even as he drove into her for the last time.
She broke in his arms on a peak
higher, purer, more distressing than anything she’d ever known before. Kylemore’s groan of release underscored the shockingly exquisite turbulence. Her body leaped greedily to devour every second of rapture, every ravishing sensation.
He flung her up to fly free among the stars. While her heart lingered behind to grieve.
When some shred of control returned, tears dried on Verity’s cheeks. She clasped Kylemore as if she’d die before she let him go. His rough breathing warmed her ear.
She had no idea what that fiery encounter had meant to him apart from providing yet more evidence that physically, she had no defenses against him.
Their lovemaking had turned her every hope to ashes.
In spite of her bravery and determination, he’d required a mere two days to have her panting and begging in his arms.
Two days.
How he must laugh. How he must gloat over his quick victory. Soraya had held her own against him for a year. But Verity, with so many more reasons to deny him, had crumbled before half a week was out.
Although she knew it was too late for any pretense of distaste or reluctance, she unwound her arms from his back.
He raised himself so he could see her.
She searched his face for triumph, but he looked as shaken as she felt. Or perhaps her own reaction was so overwhelming that she imagined she saw its reflection in him. Her body quaked with after-tremors, and the memory of mind-shattering bliss ran sluggishly in her veins.
“I hate you,” she said clearly.
Something flickered in his eyes, but she was too tired and heartsick to try and read it. He lifted himself off her, then, surprisingly, left the bed.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said flatly, bending to pick up his scattered clothes.
He was right. It didn’t. He’d already demonstrated that by proving she was as vulnerable to him as she’d ever been.
More.
She stared up at the heavy beams that crossed the whitewashed ceiling and told herself she wouldn’t cry. Although more tears couldn’t worsen her humiliation.