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Hadn’t he done just that when he’d brought his fingers to his mouth?

He couldn’t mean what she thought he might mean…

could he? She nodded and he grabbed her hips and set her off of him.

Then he moved to his knees on the floor of the carriage, much like she had been moments earlier.

Turning to face her, he took hold of her hips. “Like this.”

He guided her to sit on the edge of the padded seat. His eyes met hers as he raised her knees, spreading her legs apart. She still wore her stockings, boots, and drawers, but she felt terribly exposed and she liked it. She liked being this way for him .

He took one of her hands and showed her how to hold herself open for him.

She did as he wanted as he worked to move her skirts out of the way.

She couldn’t see between them with the fabric of her dress piled over her knees, but she could feel.

She could see the hot lick of his gaze as he took her in.

His hands went to the back of her thighs and pushed them farther apart.

His face seemed hungry and focused when he looked down at her sex.

The skin was pulled tight across his jaw, and his eyes were hot, liquid fire.

He took hold of her drawers right where they parted and gave a hard yank.

The fabric ripped apart; she imagined it split right up to her belly.

He glanced at her as if to say sorry , but he didn’t speak.

She didn’t care. She would walk naked to her carriage if it meant that she got to experience this.

Then his eyes fastened on her sex, naked and exposed to him, as he shrugged out of his coat and tossed it to lie with her own discarded clothes.

His shirt was stretched tight across his shoulders, his black waistcoat emphasizing the narrowness of his waist. What she would give to see him nude, to do this with him in a proper bed with all the time in the world.

Taking hold of her hips, he angled her a little more, pulling them just off the edge of the seat, before he bent down and kissed her there.

She wasn’t prepared for how strange and decadent his mouth would feel on her there.

She barely got her mind around it before he stroked her with his tongue, tasting her.

She bit her lip to keep from crying out again, but it felt so good a keening sound escaped from deep in her chest. He lapped at her like that for several minutes until her hips were moving again of their own accord, only for him to tighten his grip and keep her still.

He made a rough humming sound in his throat and moved to her clitoris, settling there with his tongue swirling around the swollen bud as he alternated between licking and sucking her.

It was all she could do to hold on to the edge of the seat.

“Simon, please.” She could feel that same wave of need rising inside her again, but there was nowhere for it to go.

There was nothing driving it tight. She rocked against him, but there was nothing to fill her up, nothing that her body could clench around, and apparently that was very important.

At the moment, it was more important than her next breath.

She didn’t realize that she was saying his name over and over, a litany of a prayer, until he rose over her. “Eliza,” he groaned, breaking the spell.

“Please, Simon.” She looked at him through a haze of need. “I want you inside me.”

He stared at her, silently debating, she was certain of it.

A thousand emotions played over his face.

To push him over the edge, she let go of the seat and reached for him blindly.

Her fingers stroked the front of his trousers and he jerked, but he didn’t pull away.

Instead, another groan tore from deep in his chest as he pressed into her touch.

She cupped him, the length of him burning her through the fabric.

He was harder than she imagined he could be and probably throbbing as much as she was.

She used strength she didn’t know she had to press herself up and kiss him. “Now. I need you.”

He made another sound, half pleasure and half pain, his hips pushing against her touch, grinding himself against her palm. “Have ye ever had a man inside ye?”

“I’m not certain.”

He laughed, a strangled sound that tumbled pleasantly down her spine. “Ye don’t know?”

She shook her head. “There was a man—a boy, once. We were sixteen. He did things, but it didn’t feel like what you do to me. He might have, but I was never certain.”

“Was there pain?” he asked.

“A little, for a second, and then nothing because he’d finished.” He’d rolled to the side, a dead weight, and she had wondered how anyone could risk so much for something that had amounted to nothing.

Simon was serious again and shook his head. “I don’t have a condom. I won’t put a baby in ye.”

Somewhere in the deep recesses of her logical mind, she knew he was right.

But just then, with his need so obvious and her body alive and trembling with need for him, the price of carrying his baby didn’t seem so very high.

His fingers caressed her as he spoke, which did nothing to lessen her desire and everything to heighten it.

“You can withdraw,” she offered.

The crevice between his eyes deepened. “What do y—”

“My mother and sisters told me about such things. Simon, please.” As if on cue, the carriage turned a corner and she had no idea where they were, but it was a stark reminder that their time was precious because they were running out of it.

He looked down at her sex again and touched her gently, reverently.

She took on the fastening of the front of his pants, afraid that he might deny her.

She couldn’t see what she was doing, so she fumbled until his fingers joined her.

Together they got them open and his erection filled her hand.

She squeezed, drawing a gasp from him as he leaned over her.

“Or I’ll go off in yer hand,” he whispered.

She let him go at the threat. Her hands moved back to grasp the edge of the seat and brace herself. She didn’t quite know what to expect.

“Eliza, Angel.” She could barely hear her name over the blood that rushed through her ears. Simon was about to be inside her. She was about to become one with Simon. Her heart pounded.

She felt his fingers fumbling between them and then the blunt end of his erection brushed against her.

Her hips jumped at the sensation. He held her still with one hand and guided himself with the other, his eyes on the place where he would join her.

In one slow glide, he pushed the tip of himself inside her.

He was solid, his erection more rigid than his fingers. He pulled back and then pushed forward, stretching her as he worked his way into her inch by inch. She could feel herself clamping on to him, greedy for all of him. She couldn’t keep still.

He looked up at her, meeting her gaze over the pile of her skirts between them as he took hold of both her hips to hold her steady.

“You’re so bloody beautiful.” His voice was hoarse with longing.

As he spoke, he pushed forward until he was seated all the way inside her.

There was no pain like before, only minor discomfort as her passage was forced to expand and accommodate his girth.

His knees were splayed wide on the floor, and she sat in the cradle of hips.

“Good?” he whispered, leaning forward to kiss her lips. She could taste herself on him.

“Yes.” Her voice trembled. She didn’t even recognize it.

He rested for a moment, giving her time they didn’t have to adjust to him.

His eyes were deep pools of affection that held hers.

Finally, he moved. At first it was a slow pump of his hips as he tested her.

She bit her lip at the pleasure that rolled through her.

He pumped upward again, hard and deep, impaling her on his length.

This time she couldn’t keep her cries in.

He watched her face as he did it again and again in a rhythm that started slow and built to something stronger and deeper.

With each lunge upward, his pelvis created friction against her clitoris, driving her higher.

Eventually, she relinquished her hold on her knees and trusted him to hold her while she clawed at his shoulders as he panted over her.

He kissed her, his tongue doing to her mouth what his cock did to her sex.

His hands gripped her hips so tight to hold her for him that it might have been painful had she not enjoyed it so much.

Her body gripped him tight, reaching for more. “Come, Angel.” His voice was harsh and commanding and she loved it. She wanted to come apart.

The threads of her very being were unraveling. She no longer knew that they were in a carriage, that they were in the middle of London, that she’d have to leave him in minutes. He was her world. His body in hers, his breath in her lungs, and his taste on her tongue. He was everything.

Then his hand worked its way between them and the rough pad of his thumb stroked her swollen clitoris and she went flying.

He let her go and his arm tightened behind her hips, holding her still so he could ram into her hard and deep.

He pulled out at the last possible second, she looked down in time to see him fall back, and then felt the warmth of his release against her inner thigh.

After he was finished, he held her, his face pressed to her breasts and his breath coming hard and heavy. Her muscles felt like jelly and she was too weak to do anything but lie against the seat and attempt to find her own breath.