Mastered by Love (Bastion Club 8)

He raised both brows. “Manipulate you into marriage because I took your virginity?” He shook his head. “I can assure you—I’ll even promise on my honor—that I won’t do that.”

Eyes locked with his, she hesitated, almost as if she could detect the prevarication in his words. He steadily returned her regard. Eventually she uttered a soft “humph,” and swung away. “Good.”

She pulled out of his arms, and started wrestling her way free of the covers.

He reached out and lightly clasped her wrist. “Where are you going?”

She glanced at him. “To my room, of course.”

His fingers locked. “Why?”

She blinked at him. “Isn’t that what I’m supposed to do?”

“No.” His eyes on hers, he drew the hand he held back beneath the covers—down to where his erection stood at full attention. Curling her fingers about his rigid flesh, he watched her expression change to one of fascination. “This,” he ground out, “is what you’re supposed to do. What you’re supposed to attend to.”

Her gaze refocused on his face. She studied his eyes, then nodded. “All right.” Swinging back to him, she switched her right hand for her left, smoothing her palm up his length before, as she leaned into him, closing her fingers. “If you insist.”

He managed a grating “I do.” Reaching up, he slid one hand behind her nape and pulled her lips down to his. “I insist you learn all you want to know.”

She took him at his word, hands touching, caressing, squeezing, gliding, tracing as she would. The unconscious, unguarded sensuality in her face as, eyes closing as if to imprint the heft and weight, length and shape of him on her mind, she explored as she would, tried his control to its limit and beyond. To a chest-shuddering, muscle-quivering extent he’d never before had to endure.

He clung to his sanity by planning what came next. He favored sitting her astride him, impaling her, then teaching her to ride him, but discovered he lacked the strength to counter the urges her bold, innocently brazen caresses called forth. Then incited and ignited.

She connected with his more primitive side far more than any other woman ever had.

Reduced to the point where control was a thin and rapidly shredding veil, he brushed her hands aside, rolled her over, pinning her beneath him, spreading her thighs wide and cupping her, touching her, to find her wet once more. Hauling in a huge breath, he wedged his hips between her thighs and entered her—slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly—steady and inexorable so her breath strangled in her chest and she arched beneath him, a cry fracturing on her lips as with a final short thrust he sheathed himself fully within her.

Letting himself down on her, he anchored her hip with one hand, found her face with the other and, lowering his head, covered her lips with his, filled her mouth, and plundered to the same rhythm with which he settled to plunder her body.

A bare heartbeat passed, and then she was with him, her hands reaching around to spread on his back, holding him, clinging, her body undulating, caressing, her hips lifting to match his heavy driving rhythm. Releasing her hip, he reached down, found her knee, and lifted it over his hip.

Without further direction, she hooked that knee higher, then did the same with her other leg, opening herself to him so he could sink deeper into her, could without restraint drive them both even harder, even faster, to oblivion.

He did; when she shattered beneath him he intended to hold back, to extend the engagement and take more of her, but the temptation to fly with her was too great—he let go and followed close on her heels, into the senses-shattering glory of climax and on into the void.

Wrapped in her arms, with her wrapped in his, their hearts thundering, breaths sawing, then slowing, they gradually drifted back to reality.

As, all tension spent, she relaxed, boneless, beneath him, he saw a small, subtle smile curve her kiss-swollen lips. The sight warmed him, curiously touched him.

He watched until it faded as she slid into sated sleep.

Thirteen

He woke her sometime before dawn, time enough to indulge his senses and hers in one last, brief, intense engagement, then let her recover enough to don her gown and walk back to her room.

He rose and helped her dress, then saw her out of his sitting room door. He would have preferred to escort her to her room, but if any others were drifting back to their beds and saw her, it was better they didn’t see her with him.

She was the castle’s chatelaine; there were any number of reasons she might be about early.

After listening to her footsteps fade, he returned to the bedroom, and his bed. Settling beneath the covers, sensing her warmth lingering beside him, conscious of her subtle perfume wreathing all about him, he folded his arms behind his head and fixed his gaze on the window across the room.

So what now? He’d made progress, real and definite progress, but then she’d stymied him in a way he hadn’t been quick enough to foresee. While henceforth he could, and would, have her in his bed, he could no longer simply ask her to be his bride. There was no argument that stood any chance of convincing her he’d wanted to marry her before he’d taken her virginity. That he hadn’t known she was a virgin meant nothing, and no matter how long he waited, she would still view his proposal as the insult she’d warned him not to offer her.

And she’d refuse. Adamantly. And she’d only grow more stubborn the harder he pressed.

Admittedly he had, for one foolish moment, considered using

the age-old argument based on virginity and honor as a possible supporting reason for their wedding. He should have guessed how she would react.