Claiming the Courtesan

He kissed the place he’d just touched and she experienced another of those unwelcome inner tugs. Surely he couldn’t seduce her with a mere kiss on the hand, could he?

“Actually, I don’t think we ever discussed your background. An oversight I intend to correct very soon. I take it from your brother’s execrable accent that you’re originally from the north of England.”

She frowned up at him, so annoyed that she didn’t even try to draw away as he lowered himself between her legs. “I don’t exist purely for your entertainment, Your Grace.”

He braced himself on his arms and stared down at her with a breathtaking mixture of amusement and hunger. “Entertainment is a flimsy word for what we share, don’t you think?”

He moved back slightly to clasp her hips and angle them up toward him. But still he didn’t take her. She hated to admit the pause tantalized her. It must just be that she wanted the long torture over.

Why did he take the trouble to linger over her like this? Her availability to him couldn’t be clearer.

She struggled to adopt Soraya’s cool tone. Not surprisingly, given her trembling awareness of the massively aroused male poised above her, she failed. “A mistress is only a rich man’s plaything.”

“This particular mistress seems a considerably graver matter than that,” he said gently.

He tensed and finally—finally—slid into her. Her gasp mingled with his deep groan of pleasure.

For a long moment, he was still. Then he began to thrust into her, deeply, fully and with a relentless drive she couldn’t help but recognize. His skin against hers burned hot, belying the teasing edge to his words. As did the implacable fierceness of his possession.

Her body had only just adjusted to his size and heat when he gave another groan and lost himself inside her.

Verity lay panting beneath his weight. They were still joined. She felt uncomfortable and sticky.

And that couldn’t be frustration skulking in her heart, could it? After such extended preliminaries, she’d imagined he’d make more of an effort to bring her to completion.

Hadn’t he mentioned sending her mad with lust? Her obdurate soul had looked forward to denying him.

Although perhaps this businesslike coupling had been an inadvertent rescue. For a few moments before he’d taken her, her soul had been about as obdurate as blancmange.

She raised her hands from where they lay at her sides and gave him a push. His bare skin felt like warm rock under her palms. It was the first time she’d touched him of her own free will all night. “Get off me, Kylemore!”

He lifted himself on both elbows, although he didn’t break the connection between their bodies. “Oh, we’re not finished yet,” he said softly.

He moved his hips suggestively, and she felt him swell inside her again.

“Oh, yes, we are,” she insisted, squirming in protest.

“That was nice. Do it again.” A wolfish smile, familiar from London days, creased his face. That particular expression had always warned her he meant to launch some inventive piece of love play.

And she’d always gone along with him. But not tonight.

She was very near the end of her resistance. She knew it. He knew it. A glance into his intense indigo eyes told her he considered victory already his.

Verity made herself remember everything she had at stake. Her self-respect. Her future. Ben and Maria’s future.

She deliberately sought the cold obsidian center of herself. The obsidian center that had helped her survive as a demimondaine. The center where no one reached her. The center that was utterly Verity and which Soraya had never touched.

Closing her eyes, she waited, secure in the knowledge that her true self was safe from him.

There was a silence. Kylemore must have noted and understood how firmly she was now locked away from him. He might possess her body, but the real Verity was as inaccessible as the moons of Jupiter.

She heard him sigh. Then he began to move within her, slow strokes as powerful and endless as the tide. After a few seconds, he reached out and raised her knees so his penetration went deeper, surer.

She could have told him it didn’t matter. She was isolated in her inviolable sanctum.

Except her cold black center was neither as cold nor as black as she longed for it to be. She was too aware of his scent and the evocative sounds of his body moving in hers. She closed her eyes more tightly and clutched her inner bastion.

Kylemore’s heat beckoned to her. It took all her willpower to keep herself from sliding against him, answering that rhythmic rocking of his body with her own warmth.