Pleasured to her toes, as his fingers found hers and tangled, and he rode her, unrelentingly slow and deep, to completion, she sensed in her bones that he was giving her more—not just in the physical sense, but more of him. Sharing more of him, aspects of himself he usually kept hidden.
Her cheek pressed to the pillow, she felt her lips curve. Welcomed the escalation as he thrust harder, deeper, nudging her up the bed even though he held her beneath him. The fluctuating pressure of his groin against her bottom, never quite leaving her, a continuous tactile impression mirroring his deeper possession, struck her as frankly erotic.
She’d always loved the sensation of being skin-to-skin with him. Of being naked, no barriers of any sort, with him.
Feeling the telltale rising tension invest and harden his limbs, tighten the steely muscles holding her down even more, her smile deepened and she let her senses expand—to her surprise felt her own body stir, respond, rise again to his beat.
He thrust still harder, once, twice, then a long groan ripped from his chest as his hips slammed hard against her bottom. Pressed in as he pumped into her, his release washing through him—triggering hers.
Amazed—she hadn’t thought it possible—she felt the golden tide rise and sweep through her once again, this time gentler, yet longer and more pervasive, an extended moment of exquisite pleasure that had her gasping, struggling for breath. Deep within, she felt her womb contract, felt her body clutch and hold him.
Satiation came in hard and swift, rolling over her, claiming what was left of her mind, disconnecting her senses and setting them free. In the instant before she surrendered to the glorious drugging bliss, she wondered if her body knew more than she.
Tie her up fast.
Lying slumped over Letitia, his head cradled on her breast, her fingers moving slowly, caressingly through his hair, Christian recalled his aunt’s words. Hoped he’d managed, over the past hours, to fashion a loop or two with which to reel his elusive lady in.
He’d eventually summoned enough strength to disengage and lift off her. He’d rolled her over and settled them more conventionally in the bed, but had yet to pull the covers over their cooling bodies.
He liked lying on her, their limbs damp and tangled in aftermath, and she didn’t seem to mind in the least.
Her fingers slowed. From above him, her voice drifted through the darkness. “What are you doing here, in my bed, in my arms?”
An easy enough question to turn aside with some jocular remark, yet…“I’m waiting for you to open your eyes and see me. Here. In your bed, in your arms.”
She snorted softly. “I know you’re here.” She shifted beneath him. “That’s no news.”
“No.” He lifted his head and looked up at her face. “But what you need to see is that I’m not leaving. Not this time.”
A long moment passed while she looked into his eyes. Her expression was serene, madonnalike, unreadable, then, her eyes still locked with his, she raised her brows. “Is that so?” Her tone cast the questi
on as rhetorical. After another moment of considering him—studying what she could see—she quietly said, “You don’t own me, Christian.”
“No.” If he’d failed to grasp that before, he knew it now. “I never did.”
But as he in turn looked into her green-gold eyes, he had to wonder if, perhaps, he had owned a part of her all along, and simply hadn’t understood.
She wasn’t sure of his current tack—of him; her uncertainty showed in her eyes. “So…what do you want from me?”
The easiest question of all. “The same thing I’ve wanted from you from the first. You, as my wife.”
“Your wife?” She let another moment tick past, then asked, her tone cooler, “And what of your revenge, your strategy to pay me back for not waiting for you and marrying Randall instead?”
“You didn’t have a choice. I know that now.”
He kept his gaze locked with hers. She searched his eyes, his expression, considered what she saw. Then she quietly said, “Your head knows that. But does your heart?”
The question hung between them.
She did, indeed, know him very well.
He looked inward, found, sensed, the lingering threads of his years-old anger—yet as he looked deeper, as he searched for the truth with which to answer her, he felt those threads wither and crumble. Blow away.
What he saw, what he found…
Between them now only the truth would do.
He felt his lips curve in self-deprecating cynicism; he’d been a fool to imagine his heart had ever been, or could ever be, otherwise.