Page 19

TEN

Lilah

“You don’t have to say anything, William.” Did my words sound as stupid to him as they did to me? My breath caught in my throat. “You don’t have to—putting a label on this, I don’t want you to feel?—”

“I care about you. I can’t not say anything, Lilah,” William said, his voice cracked with longing. “I can’t pretend anymore. I have feelings for you—feelings from before, but new ones, too. Feelings I can no longer ignore. Desires that…that need to be satisfied.”

Satisfied?

Oh, this was too much. I hadn’t thought this would happen. I certainly hadn’t planned it. Who would have planned for a great declaration of…of something, on the deck of a ship in the middle of nowhere?

A warm autumn breeze brushed past us, tugging at my curls, and I swallowed as I stared up at William.

His kiss was still searing on my lips, the memory of his hands on my hips flickering in and out of my mind.

William had always known how to please me. How to pleasure me.

It had been the greatest delight of our relationship, to discover I didn’t need to continuously give instructions, like all the other men I’d been with before. William knew me, knew how I worked.

Knew what I needed to get me?—

I tried to stake a step back, away from the scandalously hot thoughts my mind was supplying me with—but I couldn’t. My back was against the mast, and there was nowhere else to go.

Especially not with William standing there, blocking out all routes of escape.

Escape?

My mind rebelled against the notion. Did I really want to escape William? Or in fact did I want to escape something entirely different…

Escape the fear we would not work again. Escape the panic I felt at the thought of losing him from my life, forever. Escape the agony I would feel if this did not work.

It wasn’t going to work, was it?

“Lilah,” William breathed, brushing his fingers against my cheek.

Despite myself, I leaned into his touch. I needed him. Needed him more than I had ever realized.

There was a part of me missing when I wasn’t with him, a part of me I had tried to live without, but couldn’t. And his betrayal had only mattered because I truly loved him. Because the thought of living life without him…it hadn’t seemed possible.

“You hurt me,” I breathed, looking deep into his eyes.

There was a flicker of something there—confusion, anger, I don’t know.

“You hurt me,” he said quietly. “By leaving. Disappearing, before we had a chance to talk.”

I closed my eyes, just for a moment. “I didn’t think there was any point.”

How could there be, when it had been so obvious he’d been betraying me with another woman? Receipts for jewelry I was never gifted, payments for dinners I’d never eaten, letters about trips I’d never taken…

I would have been a fool to stay with him. I was a fool to love him in the first place.

“When you started that affair with another woman, I?—”

“An affair with—Lilah, what the hell?” William said suddenly, his voice dark. “I have never had an affair with another woman!”

It was precisely what I wanted to hear, but I couldn’t allow him to lie like that, wipe away the past as though it had never happened.

“You probably didn’t feel like it was an affair,” I said softly. “But I knew, William.”

William’s face was a picture of confusion. “I don’t know how, I would never do that to you! To anyone!”

“I found the receipts,” I said dully. “The jewelry, the dinners?—”

“You mean the dinners for my friends and the jewelry I was going to give you for Christmas?” William said, face pained. “God, Lilah, you didn’t run out of my life, out of my arms, out into heartbreak because of a few receipts, did you?”

When he said it like that…

It had seemed so obvious at the time. So clear. Of course William was betraying me with another woman. He was too kind, too charming, too warm. Too incredible in bed. Men like that, they simply didn’t exist .

“You…” I swallowed. “You weren’t bedding another woman?”

William shook his head slowly, keeping a fierce eye contact. “I would never do that. Hell, I loved you, Lilah. I loved you.”

And I was a fool for even considering?—

“I don’t think I can stay away from you, Lilah, Dowager Duchess of Rotherwick,” William said, shifting forward so I was now pinned between his hard chest and the mast behind me.

I swallowed.

At least, I tried to swallow. It was a challenge, being so close to him, feeling him now, the warmth of William, the subtle thud, thud, thud of his heart.

It was racing. Or was that my own pulse, quickening as my longing quickened?

I wanted to taste him again, feel his lips against mine, lose myself to our desires.

“It shouldn’t have to be this complicated,” I found myself murmuring.

William chuckled, leaning to graze a kiss against my neck. “I suppose not.”

I shivered, unable to help myself. Oh God, I wasn’t going to fall into this trap again…was I?

The oldest trick in the book. Seduction.

It may have been the habit of women in the past, but there was no one like William Parry for getting under my defenses. No one like William to know precisely what I wanted, how I wanted to be loved.

No one like William for getting me to scream?—

My cheeks flushed. “We’re not alone here! The servants, they are?—”

“Downstairs, far from us through feet of wood, enjoying their luncheon,” said William, nuzzling my neck.

Sparks of pleasurable warmth were cascading through my body wherever William’s lips touched me, and I found that my hands grasped the mast in an effort to stand. How was he doing this? How could he slip right back into touching me, kissing me, loving me, as though no time had passed?

And why was I letting him?

“Interesting, though.”

I blinked, trying to see clearly, trying not to notice the incredible sensations that William was awakening in me. “Wh-What?”

I hated that my voice quavered, but I was impressed that I could talk at all.

“Interesting,” William said softly, lifting his head to meet my gaze. “That you’re not saying no. You’re saying the circumstances aren’t right. You want me, Lilah.”

It wasn’t a question. It didn’t need to be.

The truth was obvious, to both of us. We craved each other: part of it was unfinished business of the past, but another part, perhaps a greater part, was a new desire formed through working together the last few weeks.

I had always known that William was good at what he did. He was good at everything he did…

Focus, I told myself firmly as his fingers slowly caressed my arms.

But I hadn’t realized he was so…so good. Such a good man.

Somehow that had always passed me by, in our shared past. But now I knew, and I couldn’t stop looking at him that way. Like…like I wanted him .

I did want him.

“You’re asking me to make love to you,” I breathed, trying to keep my voice level. “On the deck of a ship, where anyone could?—”

“No one is going to see us,” William countered with a crooked smile. “We’re invisible to the shoreline, and the servants won’t come up. And I'm not asking you to make love to me.”

I raised an eyebrow, heart pounding. “You…you’re not?”

I should have known.

“No,” William said simply. “I'm asking if I can make love to you.”

His lips had crushed on mine once again, before I could stop him, before I could think.

Not that I was going to stop him?

Why would I? When his mouth was sparking such delicious pleasure, when his fingers were on my hips, pressing into me, clinging onto me, touching?—

“William!” I gasped in his mouth.

When he pulled back to meet my eye, he was grinning. “What, you don’t want this?”

I hesitated, heart fluttering.

Because I did. The instant his right hand had moved to clasp over my secret place, his middle finger dipping down to press against my slit, I knew what he wanted.

His fingers, teasing me to ecstasy.

And I wanted it. But I couldn’t let him do that on the deck of the ship, could I?

William’s eyes were dark with promised pleasure. “What does your heart want?”

I tried to smile, my voice breathless. “I don’t think I'm thinking with my heart here. ”

His chuckle was paired with his hand moving again. Lifting up the long emerald green skirt of my gown. “You’re the queen of this boat, Lilah.”

“Ship,” I corrected, hardly knowing how I could stand.

“Whatever,” William said quietly, pressing a kiss against my neck. “Let me pleasure you, woman. I wagered you that I could. You accepted that wager. Don’t you want to prove me wrong?”

Oh, God, I wouldn’t win this wager. The moment he touched?—

“Kiss me,” I breathed, my hands tight around his chest. “And finger me.”

“What, I didn’t hear?—”

“You heard fine, you brute,” I said, the aching in my voice painfully audible. “Finger me.”

William

It took everything in me not to slip my fingers straight into her and then slip my manhood in—take my pleasure now, as everything Lilah said drove me wild.

But she deserved better than that. She always had.

Crushing my lips against hers to keep her quiet, I slowly slipped a finger along her slit.

Her warm, slightly damp slit.

Oh God, she wanted me. And she wasn’t wearing any undergarments, the absolute hellcat. How could she do this to me?

Lilah’s mouth welcomed in my tongue just as I slid a finger into her secret place. Her startled cry made me moan, every inch of me on fire for her.

I wanted this so badly, it was a relief to finally touch her. Touch her as she deserved.

Slowly, knowing that every moment of anticipation would only make it better for her, I started to stroke a soft rhythm inside her folds. Slowly, slowly, I worked up to her clit.

Her nub was throbbing and wet, and as I grazed it with my fingertip, Lilah shuddered in my arms.

“More,” she whimpered.

“You’ll get it when I say you’ll get it,” I growled back.

But Lilah wasn’t in the mood to be played with. Fixing me with a stern look, she said, “You said once that I was in charge, that I could order you about. I'm doing it—I'm ordering you to pleasure me.”

My whole body rocked with the dominance of her voice.

“Yes, my queen,” I muttered darkly.