Page 41 of Curves and Counterfeit
“So do I. Keats… I love you. I have been more than a little terrified to say it, but I cannot keep the words locked up any longer. You are my passion and my comfort, my joy and my love, and I… and I am more myself with you than with anyone else.” The words he’d given her. Finally, she could give them back to him.
For a moment shock rippled through his face, but then he clutched her to him and hid his face in her neck, his body shaking. When she nudged his head upward, his eyes swam, and his wide mouth grinned, and she kissed him soft and slow but only for a moment. Then she pulled him to his feet, pulled him up the stairs, shut him in her bedchamber.
And he was rogue enough to let her.
He was also rogue enough to untie her tapes when she turned her back to him, and rogue enough to strip her bare, his fingertips making hot trails across her skin just before he set his lips there to set her aflame.
Lucy bold enough, too, to unwrap his cravat and unbutton his waistcoat, to strip him as he had her until every hard inch of him, bullet wound and all, was open to her hungry gaze.
Once unclothed of everything that hid who they truly were, they moved at the same time, surging together in a hot kiss. Slow, too. Because they had time. Time to love and time to learn and time to help others find the love between them that leapt higher with each meeting of their lips, each stroke of palm over belly, each tangle of fingers in hair. Each offering that showed they were more than their names, their pasts, and that better than anyone else, they understood each other.
Each grasp and caress proved it. He knew how to touch to make her purr, and she knew how to squeeze to make him moan. And when he picked her up and laid her gently on the bed, it was only seconds after she’d thought,I cannot stand a moment longer.
He climbed onto the mattress, and she grasped his hips and tugged him tight against her, rolling her own hips against his thick shaft. He kissed her earlobe, her chin, the peaked point of her nipple. “Glorious,” he moaned. “You’re bloody glorious.”
He was glorious, too. She wrapped her hand around his thick length—she’d done this to him. Fair enough. He’d done so very much to her—burned away lies and masks, revealed truth. She wanted to belong somewhere, to someone, and she wanted to help others find where they belonged. All clear in an instant. And in that clarity—Keats. With his crooked smile and sweet, grinning mouth, with his wicked tongue and steel desire to protect.
She loved him.
He slipped a hand between her legs, inside her. “You’re ready.”
“For weeks now, Keats.” She moaned into his neck as his thumb began the lazy circling around her most sensitive spot. One hand on his chest, resting just above his heart—its beat the rhythm she rolled her hips to—she grasped his shaft with the other, squeezed, and explored its length. Satin, warm, hard. The world reduced to sensation, his name a breath between her lips, lingering in the air around them.
He entered her—tight, hot, sweet. Not even the ghost of the pain she’d felt before. Nothing but pleasure as he stroked in and out of her, his mouth at her breasts, his hands exploring every curve of her body, including that hot space where their bodies rolled together. Fingers searching, finding, circling, pressing.
“I’m yours, angel,” he moaned. “I love you.” A kiss to her neck. “I love you.” A kiss to her shoulder. “I love you.” A kiss settling on her lips as he pulled her bottom lip between his teeth.
And she fell off the cliff of pleasure into the warm sea of his arms. She drifted, able still to move enough to clutch at the muscles of his shoulders and the silk of his hair as he rockedharder against her then shuttered with the power of his own climax.
As he always did when she asked for what she wanted, he gave her everything he could.
He rolled to the mattress and gathered her limp body in his arms. He petted and stroked her everywhere, and these touches vibrated not urgent need but lazy pleasure throughout her.
“I could hold you all day long,” he said. “I will one day.”
“Mm. Hold me all day now. That is what I want.”
“I would.” He kissed her neck beneath her ear, and she shivered, snuggled deeper into his embrace. “But I do believe I hear your grandfather’s voice downstairs.”
She froze; she listened. She leapt from the bed, dragging Keats along with her. They dressed more quickly than they’d undressed, and she shoved him toward the door.
“Not there, countess.” He ducked toward the window. “Take it from a former rogue, windows are best for escapes of this kind.”
She kissed him as he slung a leg over the ledge. “As long as mine is the only window you make use of.”
“Darling”—he fisted a hand in the hair at her nape and rested their foreheads together—“yours is the only window in existence.” He grinned, the flippant, careless little one she loved so well, and disappeared down a narrow, bending tree and across the street. Whistling all the while.
Her heart whistled, too, as she pulled a deep navy greatcoat from her wardrobe and ran her fingers down the row of opal buttons at its front, down the soft delphinium blue of its silk lining. The perfect wedding gift for the man she loved.