She found the front placket of his trousers and plucked at the buttons on the fall, and then his smallclothes too. He sprang free, thick and rigid, hot and smooth in her hand. She caressed him, and his hips bucked forward, pressing him more firmly into her touch.
He groaned. “Em.”
His lack of control delighted her. Her fingers tightened around his length. Was this what a mistress would do? Did she want to be a mistress? She did not know. All Emma did know was that this man was hers. He possessed her heart as surely as he had claimed her body the night before.
“I need you,” she told him.
It was the truth. She did need him. She had not known what was missing in her life until he had found her, but now that she had experienced passion in his arms, there was no going back. Lady Emma Morgan, refined, perfect diamond of the first water, most adored debutante, was no more. She was not the girl she had once been. But she did not regret the loss, the change. Perhaps she could have been content as a lord’s wife, presiding over ballrooms and musicales and suppers, but she understood the vast difference between living each day as polite society dictated and living as she wanted. As she wished. Unfettered by rules and strictures.
With a growl, he kissed her again, his lips firm and hot and so very skilled as they moved over hers. She melted into him, intense longing mingling with her feelings for him, making a fierce ache rise within her. How bold and powerful she felt as she stroked his hardness. Never had she imagined being so bold with a gentleman. The foolish kisses that had robbed her of her reputation had not possessed a fraction of a hint of the sensual abandon she felt with Hart. It was the difference between a lone raindrop and a violent deluge. As she stroked him, pleased by his thickening cock and the low sound of need in his throat, a throbbing began deep inside her that she knew could only be quelled by him.
Now, she understood what desire was. She knew what she had been missing in her quiet, sheltered, prim existence. He had paid for her innocence, but he had given her far more than she had so willingly surrendered. He had shown her the secrets hidden in her body, the desire waiting to be brought to life, the flames ready to stoke into a raging conflagration. Emma kissed him, telling him with her lips what she could not manage with her tongue. Giving him all the emotion she could not voice.
I love him desperately, she thought as she closed her eyes and kissed him with furious abandon. God, how I love this man.
Abruptly, he ended the kiss again, and then tore his shirt over his head. He toed off his shoes next—no stubborn boots tonight—before shucking his trousers and smalls. The last of the barriers between them was removed. Hart kissed her again and guided her onto the bed so she lay on her back, legs falling apart to admit his stronger, larger body atop hers. How perfectly they fit together, his tall, lean frame covering her smaller one even as he was careful to keep his wounded side from coming into contact with her.
“Damn, Em, look at how lovely you are,” he said. “So bleeding beautiful, all creamy and pink and mine.”
His.
How right it felt, that possession. Emma knew it. Her body knew it. The fluttering pulse of desire in her core echoed the knowledge.
“Yes,” she told Hart, his body a revelation she examined with her fingertips and lips, touching and kissing him everywhere she could—chest, shoulders, back, throat. She could not get enough. She would never get enough.
He lowered his head and sucked on her nipple. An answering tug of desire bloomed low in her belly. When his fingers slid between them, dipping into her to tease her pearl, she could not contain a new moan.
“Whose cunny is this?” he growled, cupping her then with his large, hot hand, his possessive touch thrilling her in an elemental sense.
“Yours.” The word was easy. “Every part of me is yours.”
Including my heart.
She writhed, seeking more, lost in the mindless abandon of love and lust and him.
“Promise me you’ll remember this, love.” He stroked her then, his fingers parting her slick flesh, finding her swollen nub once more. “I’ll always be the man who showed you passion, who taught you desire. Don’t forget.”
How could she? Part of her recognized the underlying suggestion in his words. He still had not relented in his insistence she did not belong here, that she did not belong in his world or with him. He intended to send her away. But she was stubborn too. There was no life for her as Lady Emma Morgan; her old life had been torn asunder before she had ascended the dais that day at The Garden of Flora. Before he had made her his.
“I promise,” she said, knowing it was unnecessary. There was no chance of forgetting this man. He owned her heart, and she was going to fight for him.
This she vowed silently as she traced the strong contours of his arms, her fingernails lightly raking over his flesh.
He kissed the inner curve of her breast, glancing up at her from beneath lowered lashes. “You’re so wet.”
The approval in his voice made her feel deliciously wicked. His fingers glanced over the sensitive knot, teasing her with slow, gentle pressure. She wanted to answer him, but the only sound she could muster was a moan. His tender teasing was not enough. She wanted more, she wanted harder, faster, wilder, and yet she never wanted him to stop.
“I’m no bleeding good for you, Em,” he said, his touch slicking between her folds, one finger dipping against her entrance. “But I want to be inside you so badly, I’d sell my soul to the devil right now for a damned halfpenny.”
She knew the feeling. Emma bit her lip against another shameless sound as he tested her readiness, his finger gliding inside her cunny. He moved in and out, working her pearl with his thumb simultaneously. He sucked her other nipple, dragging his teeth across the pebbled tip.
“You feel so damned good. Hot and slick.” He kissed along her breast to her collarbone, leaving fire in his wake. He pumped his finger deeper, adding a second. “Do you want my cock inside you? Do you want me to fuck you, fill you? Tell me, love. I want to hear your pretty lips say filthy, bawdy things.”
“Yes.” She tipped her hips upward, chasing his fingers, his use of the vulgar words proving a stimulation all its own. “I want you to fuck me, Hart. Fuck me and fill me. Please.”
“Christ, yes. That’s what I want to hear. Come for me, Em. Come on me. I want to feel your sweet cunt tightening around me the way it will on my cock.”
He rewarded her by thrusting deep and then crooking his fingers, finding a place inside her so sensitive and miraculous, she lost control. The simultaneous pressure of his thumb working her pearl and his fingers filling her made bliss quake through her as she reached her pinnacle.
She cried out, twisting, her body bowing from the bed to meet him. He suckled her breast as the pleasure wracked through her, deliberately prolonging her release with more knowing thrusts and wicked rotations of his thumb. A rush of wetness dripped from her, running down his fingers as he continued pleasuring her, the slick sounds joining their ragged breaths in the stillness of the room.
He withdrew suddenly, gripping his rigid shaft and aligning himself with her entrance. “I have to be inside you now.”
He would meet with no objection from her.