She needed no more prompting. Already she felt close to exploding into a shower of passionate flames.
“Yes!”
There was mistaking the fact that her ardor clearly matched his for within seconds, it seemed, Silverton was as naked as she was, and she was beneath him on that big, comfortable bed, as he touched his lips to her eyes, her nose, blazing a trail of kisses down her neck, suckling her nipples.
She arched her body to meet him, passion bubbling in her veins, burning its way through her entire body. She was wet and ready for him, every nerve ending already heightened and ready to snap when his fingers found the slick nub at her core.
“Come inside me,” she begged, wrapping her legs around his waist, pulling him down to her, aware their time was limited. “Please.”
“Oh, Kitty, I love you, I adore you,” he whispered as he reached down to position himself at her entrance. His expression was full of heartfelt sincerity. “I will be true to you, I swear it, until the day you die; and you will never have cause to regret...becoming my...”
“Mistress,” she supplied.
“But I will love you as if you were my wife,” he promised as, with a soft groan, he slid into her; and Kitty believed this as he was caught up in the excitement of becoming one. An excitement she surely felt as keenly and deeply as he, the raw primal pleasure sweeping away any residual disappointment she might have harbored at the fact she’d not achieved what Nash had so briefly seemed to offer.
But what was a glittering wedding ring when Silverton’s love was pure and true?
And his desire to pleasure her was clear as he stroked her between her legs while he moved within her, and kissed her eyes, her lips, her breasts.
With a gasp, Kitty reached the pinnacle just before he did, shattering with a cry of joy which signaled his own climax.
Collapsing, truly satisfied, she basked in the tenderness of his embrace, soaking up the warmth and love he was offering her now and forever.
She’d always loved Silverton, she realized this; knew she always had. Life was a journey of compromises, and she could be happy with the one she’d made she felt, as she gazed into his adoring expression.
“Did I tell you I love you, Miss Kitty La Bi
jou?” he asked, resting on one elbow to gaze down at her, tracing the outline of her mouth with his fingertip.
She nodded.
“And did I tell you I loved you from about the time you decided the spelling pig at the Tower of London couldn’t really spell?”
She nodded again. “That was about when I fell in love with you. Except I didn’t know it at the time.” Her heart hitched. She loved these bantering sessions with Silverton.
“And did you know that you wield such power over me that I could refuse you nothing?”
“You make me laugh, Lord Silverton.”
“You make me happy, Kitty La Bijou.”
She became serious. “You make me happy, Lord Silverton. You always have.”
“I want to make you happy, Kitty.”
She was about to curl herself against him and suggest they do it all over again, as another surge of love and desire flooded through her, when there was a rap at the door.
Silverton, she noticed, looked outraged. “I thought the arrangement we had was understood,” he called.
When Kitty looked stricken, he whispered hastily, but reassuringly, “There was a little matter over your necklace. In order to placate Mrs. Montgomery and put an end to the matter, I’ve paid her a great deal more than it’s worth...while you and I shall go shopping for a more than adequate replacement. However,” he added in clipped tones, “I said we would emerge from here when we were ready.”
The rapping sounded again, and this time Nash’s voice issued through the keyhole, loud and desperate. “Kitty, I need to explain! Please, listen to me! Are you in there?”
Silverton shook his head, disbelievingly, while Kitty sat up, shocked, covering herself with the coverlet as if Nash might bust in at any moment.
“There’s nothing you can say, Lord Nash,” she said with as much dignity as she could muster. “You have betrayed me.”
“Kitty, I beg you, listen to me! You ran off before I had a chance to say anything.”