Page 138 of How to Love a Duke in Ten Days

Big,she worried. Breathtakingly big. And yet, so unlike the weapon she’d expected to find.

How could such a blunt, silken appendage cause the sharp, tearing pain she’d experienced before?

It couldn’t, she decided. Wouldn’t. Not this time.

Piers would never hurt her.

She knew by the reverent way he whispered her name. By the careful grip he kept on her thighs. By the power over this act he’d placed entirely in her hands.

By the way he closed his eyes, attempting to hide the vulgarity of his primal desire for her.

He didn’t have to, she wanted to tell him.

She burned just as hot, somehow. He’d brought her to such a place, had found such a needful, shameless, brazen part of her that an obsessive desire for his body overwhelmed the lingering fears and doubts she might have.

Maybe it would be different if he were above her. Or behind her. If he restrained her and pulled her hair.

But like this… with his tremendous body stretched beneath her, his lust contained by iron chains held in a tremulous grip.

All she wanted was to come apart over and around him. To slake his need and fulfill his desires.

She ran an inquisitive finger over the sensitive bulb at the top of his sex, finding a curious, silken moisture of his own making.

He turned his head to the side, his chest heaving with labored breaths, his muscles locked with the herculean effort of his restraint.

It was time. Time to release them both from their chains.

She lifted herself, placing him against her opening, spreading dewy heat on the crown of his sex.

As she lowered slightly, breaching her body, neither of them breathed.

She froze. For an eternity she trembled above him, paralyzed, unable to go forward, unable to turn back. It felt… It felt…

She didn’t know how it felt. It didn’t hurt. But neither did it feel good. Or right. Not like this, with her body exposed and his face turned away.

He thought to give her autonomy. To save her from his gripping hands and his powerful lust, and astounding strength. And she’d thought she could do it herself.

They’d both been wrong.

She retreated, letting his sex fall against her thigh.

“Piers,” she gasped, hating the desperate note in her voice. “I—I need you.” Needed the comfort of his arms around her. The protection of his body against her, even if that protection was merely from her own mind. Her own memories.

He was there the moment the words left her. Right there, twining his arms around her, his forehead pressed to hers, his breath feeding her tight, struggling lungs.

“I—I need you to do it,” she confessed in a small voice.

He stilled, a mantle of veneration settling around them as he reached between their bodies and guided himself back toward her swollen, damp flesh. He prodded at her entrance, settling there before he released his organ, both his arms burrowing beneath hers to anchor at her shoulders.

“What do I do?” she pleaded.

“Hold on to me, Alexandra,” he whispered, folding her against him. “Just be here. Just be mine.” He cupped her head to his shoulder, his own face burrowing into her hair as he urged her trembling thighs to relent.

And finally, they did.

It wasn’t as though he impaled her. Not exactly. It was more like her feminine flesh molded over the turgid length of him as she melted down and around him. But only to a point. After he’d made it so far, her inner muscles seized, locking them in a sexual battle he dared not fight.

“Holy God, woman.” He wheezed as though in pain. “You’re so… tight.”