Page 12 of Lie Down With a Lyon (The Lyon’s Den)
“D on’t go!” She grabbed his cravat.
“I must.” His mien was of a man tortured. “If I don’t go now, this will not end well.”
She lured him with a smile. “Or better than you predict.”
He hung his head and tried to pry her fingers from his clothing. “I must not stay.”
“You must not go. I want you, Dáire. I do.”
He shook his head. “You don’t mean it. What you feel is fellowship, friendship, desire, lust. It cannot be for us.”
She nestled closer to him. Her thin muslin gown was no armor to save him from the spike of his cock to her belly.
“You want me,” she whispered, her lips against the corner of his mouth. “Admit it.”
“Want you?” He pulled back far enough to sear her with blue eyes alight with love. “You cannot imagine how much, how long, how often I have wanted you.” He spread his fingers and grabbed down the bodice of her gown. Pushing down her hated corset, he kissed and laved her pointed, hungry nipples.
She squirmed in his embrace. More of this, and she would have him. Him and his damned logic was what he needed from her. “I know at last who you are. What you have done for people. For many. Now for me.” She yanked on his cravat. “Look at me, please, Dáire.”
“I did this, this abduction, to save you. But I did not save you for me.”
“What if you are the only man I want?”
“That cannot be.”
“Only you say no.”
“I know it to be true. I am not…respectable.”
“Yet respected.”
“I am not noble.”
“Yet honorable.”
“Oh, Blanche,” he pleaded as if he were a dying man, “let me go.” He lifted her fingers tight around his cravat and brought her knuckles to his lips.
“Never.”
“Blanche.” He weakened.
She heard the break. “I want you here tonight now as we should be, together.”
“My darling, I cannot take you and ruin you for another man.”
“For me, there will never be any other man.”
“I will not dishonor you!”
“Then marry me.” It was what she wanted. Him forever.
He stared at her, horrified. “That’s impossible.”
“You have no wife. No mistress. No lady bird.” She cupped his cheek and tipped her head like a coy girl. “I am who you want. Make me yours. Please, my love, won’t you marry me?”
Shock ran through his veins like lightning. His fingers dug into her arms so badly that he feared he’d bruised her.
He let her go and stepped back.
She followed.
He put up his hands to warn her off. “To marry you would be the blessing of my life. But you know we cannot do it.”
She gave him a lift of her chin in stern defiance. “I only know that we are meant to be together. That you care for me. That I love you.”
He ground his teeth. “You know nothing of who I am. What I come from.”
“Oh?” She had the gumption to arch a brow at him. “Then tell me quickly—and we will have done.”
“The son of a thief sentenced to a convict ship! A poor Irish boy who scrabbled to please the earl whose house he lived in. A lad of fourteen who took his two young sisters and sailed for London and tried”—he groaned and ran his fingers through his hair—“tried to build a life, a reputation no one could destroy!”
She took a step forward, an airy move that charmed his sore heart. “I admire that boy. So too that man. Hardworking, dedicated, and kind, he is. I want him as my own. All others pale bedside him. No one else fills my heart. So tell me, Dáire O’Neill, do you love me?”
“Ah, lovely woman. You tear me from my purpose.”
“Is your purpose to live alone? Unloved and unloving?” She put both hands to the flat of his chest and whispered, “I doubt it, sir.”
A blaze of joy blinded him. He wound his arms around her and lifted her. His lips on hers, his life hers, he’d have her to wife. He would, by God, have her for life.
He marched to her bed and sat her on the edge. One knee to the floor, he knelt before her. “I’ll never make you ashamed of me.”
She combed his hair back and gave a slow and ardent smile. “I know.”
“And you will not want for anything.”
She wound her arms around his shoulders and sighed. “Nor you, my sweet man.”
“We will make peace with your father.”
She brushed her mouth on his. “Necessary.”
“And you’ll marry me tomorrow.”
“Because you love me.”
He bore her down to the bedding. “Aye, my lady. Because I love you.”
“Show me.” Her gray eyes twinkled with mischief.
He tickled her ribs and she squirmed, but drew him up over her. “I long for you.”
“Ah, sweetheart, you do me an honor, but now I must rally all my skills to keep you.”
“No skills. Just you.” She rolled away from him and stood on the other side of the bed. Then, with dexterous swipes, she removed her gown, her petticoat, and wiggled, toeing off her slippers. “You’ll have to come help me do away with this new corset.” She tugged at it. “I hate it anyway.”
He went still, hard as stone, at the prospect that all of her would be his. “Perhaps if I’m really good at that,” he crooned as he rose and strolled to the other side of the bed, “you can give up wearing it for long days and longer nights.”
“Oh.” She wiggled up against him, kissing his cheek and his jaw as he struggled to get the damn thing off. “Let’s make that happen.”
In the second her corset fell and her shift disappeared over her head—in fact, quick as he’d had her in the St. Pancras churchyard—he grabbed up her naked body and put her to the sheets.
She drew him close and rubbed her breasts across his waistcoat. “I love the feel of the wool, but you really are too formally dressed for this, sir.”
“You tempt a man, then complain.”
She tsked. “Get to business or I’m leaving.”
He pushed up to his feet, tearing at everything he wore, even his damn boots. But then he was upon her, rubbing his long, sculpted body on her pretty nipples and her belly, her hips—and her hot, wet core. He groaned, head to her cleavage, his cock alert, ready for action, and he knew he could not take her like a rogue.
But she was undulating, smiling, the minx. Her eyes dreamy, her hands wandering down his torso, she explored and found him.
“Oh, this is lovely,” she whispered as she stroked the iron length of him. “Let me look.”
Of course, she’d never seen a man. Thrilled, eager to plunge into her, he gulped back a laugh. But he’d further her education like the eager boy he was. He led her fingers to circle him, and she moved aside to watch what she did to him. “I’m not beautiful like you.”
“Whoever said that,” she cooed as she rubbed her thumb over his tip, “was wrong. You’re soft as silk, and beneath so hard. I think you could drive nails.”
He burst into laughter and cupped the curve of her mons. With his mind set, his mouth on one luscious, hard nipple, he slowly spread her creamy flesh and drove inside her one finger, then another and another.
She arched, her eyes clamped shut. “That’s wonderful. Don’t stop. Don’t—Oh!”
He grinned that his eager fingers had found that special little part of her that could thrill her. He could bring her to heaven and let her throb and feel and want. But he was too greedy, wanting her first orgasm to be with him inside her, loving her, proving to her she was his forevermore. Checking his drive to claim her, he gave her a small sample of his girth.
“Oh,” was her response.
Another inch or two—and the world tilted for him.
“More,” she said to that.
Undone, he sank inside her until there was no him or her, just them.
“You’re big.”
“You’re sweet.” He slid away once, and she gasped. “Here I am again,” he whispered against her lips. “And again.” And more and more until all of him was spent and she lay, gasping, her walls still gripping him and giving him the surrender he’d never imagined could be his.
Hours later, he kissed her shoulder and padded away to clear and clean their supper dishes. He was dousing the candles when she appeared in the great room. Naked, before the red embers of their fire, she was a gorgeous figure of a woman. Struck, he stood, a candle snuffer dangling in his hand, savoring her heavy breasts and rounded hips, her long thighs and the shadow of what lay between them.
“Leave all that,” she said as she went to him and put the snuffer to the nearby table. “I am cold and lonely and pining for your touch.”
He did as he was told. Why not? She would soon be his wife, and he’d obey her day and night until he died. He led her back to bed and made love to her twice more during the dark hours. Once at dawn. Later, after he lifted her from the warm water he’d poured into the hip bath, he fucked her properly, driven by her naughty words of abandon.
When she awakened once more, she strolled to him. His watch told him it was past three, he showed it to her, and she said, “We won’t marry today. Too late to find a vicar, I’d say. But maybe”—she sat in his lap and played with him to make him crazed to have her—“tomorrow. We can’t go anywhere until I am thoroughly convinced you love me only.”
So, of course, he did what any red-blooded man would do—he had her once more. This time he treated her to fine foreplay with his tongue upon her silky, swollen flesh. After all, a gentleman had to show his wife all the benefits of marriage, didn’t he, if he wished to be cherished for the rest of his life?