The Undoing of a Libertine (Somerset Historicals 2)

He heard her expel a breath and felt her body ease a bit. God, he wanted to make this good for her—to bury the memories haunting her, to show her instead how he intended to cherish her.

“I promise you,” he murmured through another kiss to her lips.

More kisses. Eons of kissing. Long, slow tangles of lips and tongues filled the minutes as he learned her. Soft featherings of breath along her sculpted collarbones, behind her dainty ears and up her slender throat before firmer presses paused him at the swell of a breast.

He pushed up from underneath and found one finally with his hand. He palmed the weight, learning the feel through the thin fabric of her gown. Passing over the hard bud of her nipple, he heard her breath come faster.

Suddenly she arched, thrusting her chest out. He didn’t know if from fear or pleasure, and didn’t really want to know. Not anymore. He was too far gone to think rationally.

He used her movement to pull the fabric down further, finally baring those magnificent mounds of sweet beauty to his hungry eyes. Suddenly the feast of gorgeous flesh was before him. And he was so starved. Creamy skin tipped with dusky rose centers called to him. He reached for one and thrilled in the sensation of incredible softness under his palm.

“Beautiful.” He studied them in the lamplight.

She stayed very still.

“I have to—” he whispered before covering her nipple with his mouth. He swirled over it, feeling the bud harden into an even tighter peak under his laving tongue. It was pure glory.

Cupping both breasts, one for each hand, he held them secure, worshipping their soft fullness with his mouth. He moved between them, giving equal attention to both. He made love bites on the undersides, fully intending to look at his markings later and remember how it felt putting his sign on her. Oh yes, his.

She submitted to everything he did, and he was glad. This was a claim in every primal sense of the word. She was his woman. He had found her, wanted her, and won her. And now he was finally having her, claiming her. My wife. Mine, mine, mine, mine, mine.

And then Jeremy forgot about everything he’d told himself he wouldn’t do.

The brush of her body was too tempting, the scent of her too delectable. He simply forgot himself, lost in the elixir of the senses swirling together, inciting him to reach out and take.

“Ginaaaa… You feel so good,” he moaned. He was drunk. Drunk on her. Swimming in the river of sensations that washed over him, he drowned himself in the taste of her skin melting under his mouth. Jeremy was good and downright intoxicated to the point of no return, and quite pleased to be so.

The focus he’d held on her ability to tolerate his attentions fell away, quickly replaced by carnal appetites long subdued and the glory of indulging them.

“I—I need you!” His hands were everywhere all at once. Up under her gown, pressing on her belly, between her legs, squeezing that gorgeous bum of hers. Like he couldn’t take his time to learn her, but needed to know everything all in an instant.

Ravenous. Propelled. Desperate. Jeremy was out of his blessed mind with desire and the urge to fuck.

Her rigid arms and legs weren’t perceived at first. Neither the fisted hands, nor the stiff neck either. He didn’t hear her whimpers or feel her shaking. He had one goal. And that was to get inside her and come.

When Jeremy rolled on top of her, the thrashing started in earnest, along with what his supremely aroused and very limited coherence finally understood as panic. Georgina bucked to get him off. She struggled to move out from underneath him.

Jeremy felt and heard her now.

Georgina’s cries pierced though his fervor, the sound of her as loud as a cock crowing at dawn when it annoyingly interrupted right at the point of deepest slumber.

Everything illuminated all in an instant. His clouded awareness became as clear as fine crystal.

Shit!

r /> Chapter Sixteen

The best in this kind are but shadows, and the

worst are no worse, if imagination amend them.

—William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1595)

Georgina couldn’t breathe. Her impulse was a primitive one, directed wholly by instincts. Her thoughts revisited another time and remembered other words… Keep fighting me. That’s it, wildcat. Fight me while I fuck you…

She had little conscious control over her response. The urge to flee was all she knew.

“Stop! Please, just stop!” Did she cry the words out loud or not? She had no idea.