Page 76 of The Devil in Her Bed

“But you were…” He froze. “You want…? But I… how is it… bloody possible… Everyone thinks…”

Francesca hid a smile against his shoulder. It wasn’t very often that a man such as he was so completely gobsmacked that he couldn’t finish a sentence. “Later,” she said. “More. Now.”

Apparently lust turned her into a rather monosyllabic creature.

She reached between them, sliding her hands down his impossibly tight abdomen to the impressive member below, delighted to find it still hard.

Hard, and wet. Wet with her own release.

His breath seized when she wrapped her fingers around him. “Don’t make me beg,” she said huskily.

“Fucking hell, Francesca.”

“I know.” Drawing back, she pressed her forehead to his, nudging at him with her nose. “I want you. I’ve always wanted you. Ever since I was a girl, I knew that you were it for me. That you were the man I would have, or none at all. And I mean to have you, make no mistake of that.”

A mirthless laugh gasped out of him, choking at the end as she moved her hand in a slight caress. His hips responded, thrusting deeper into her grip before he pulled away.

“Not like this,” he wheezed out.

“Then how?”

“The bed.” He lifted her off the desk and carried her to the bed, this time with an arm hooked at her shoulders and her knees. She felt small when he held her like this. Small and soft and delicate.

She wouldn’t admit she liked it… but she didn’t hate it.

He placed her gingerly on the bed, and she sank intoher favorite covers that smelled of vanilla and orange blossoms. She stretched, testing her muscles for pain and finding none as he towered over her like a giant tempestuous storm cloud.

“Christ, you’re going to ruin me,” he whispered.

“Am I?” She opened her arms to him, suddenly chilly and beginning to feel a strange and maidenly apprehension. She needed him against her; then she could do anything.

He joined her, covering her in heat and muscle and masculine need. “Yes. You’ll ruin me, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.”

This time, he rose above her and stared into her eyes, his gaze searching hers intently as he nudged at her entrance, and then sank into her in one long, slow, endless slide.

This time, the pain was little more than a whisper, followed by something else. An ache, restless and consuming, the ghost of the frenzy she’d felt before.

She took him slowly, feeling as though she’d been shaped for him, by him, and not at all surprised by it.

She belonged to this man.

She always had.

A detached part of her admired his masculine beauty. The slope of his shoulders, the breadth and depth of his chest. The network of veins visible in his powerful arms. It distracted her from any vestiges of pain she would have felt.

“Francesca. Francesca, look at me.” A hollow note in his voice drew her eyes, and what she saw in his gaze broke her heart.

She shaped her palm to his jaw, first one, then theother. And she kissed him, tasting her nectar on his lips.

It was all he needed.

He rode her in long, slow strokes. Each time he filled her, erotic pulses of pleasure unfolded within her like the tendrils of spring ivy.

Awe and astonishment lay like strangers on his features, turning them from savage to utterly seductive.

They said nothing. Barely made any sound but that of their flesh and friction. They communicated in sighs and breaths and the flutter of eyelids.

Francesca focused on the heat of him inside of her, and the warmth of him around her. She felt an intense possession well within, one not unfamiliar. She clutched at it with the same desperation as she clung to him.