Page 37 of The Hellion is Tamed
His chest hitched, his lids fluttering to cover the heat flaring in his eyes. Then, with a sigh of defeat, making his own decision, he trailed his crooked knuckle up the sole of her foot and over the arch of each toe. “You shouldn’t be here. Should have left the second we arrived, and you steered me to this bed. But we both know that, don’t we? So no use, really, belaboring the point.”
Emma anchored her hand against the mattress, her body lighting from within. An absolute blaze. Goosebumps raced down her arms as a fierce beat started tripping between her thighs. Head swimming, alive with sensation, arousal torching any effort she might make to leave. “Is this your bedchamber? Did I get the right one?”
“You got the right one,” he said as he sketched each bone in her ankle.
“Are we…alone? No haunts?”
Teasing the newfound, sensitive arch of her foot, he blew a taunting breath across it. “We’re alone.”
“This is where Mackey says you bring—”
“No, Emma.” He halted his seduction, his hand stilling. “This is my private chamber. It used to be Finn’s years ago before he got married. Not a place I bring anyone.Ever.” He chucked his hair from his eyes with a self-deprecating snort and toss of his head. “Look around you. This room is filled with pieces of me I don’t share with the world. My flaws line the walls.”
While he skimmed his thumb over the ball of her foot in a purposeful rhythm, she did as he’d suggested and examined the space. Books with cracked leather spines in a spill on the floor; a scuffed desk shoved in a dark corner, surface littered with all manner of writing utensils and sheets held in place beneath a paperweight shaped like a ship. Shelves lining the walls, teeming with scraps of life he’d stolen from another’s and brought to his. Cufflinks, earbobs, coins, cigarette cases, hair clips.
“Quite the collection,” she murmured, with his touch, her mind only half on his treasures.
“It’s a problem. At least, I realize that.” Then he destroyed her by pressing his lips to the hollow below her ankle. “I sell the items after a time, give the funds to Josie for her efforts.”
Closing her eyes, she hummed, caught between the desire to demand he stop and the desire tobeghim to continue.
As if he’d heard the latter plea, his teeth caught her skin in a gentle nip, his tongue laving the spot just after. Her body erupted, heat rolling through her.
Her gasp was uncontrolled and shattered the silence.
“Stop me now,” he commanded in a rusty voice. “Because my resistance is leaking away like tea from a cracked cup. When you and I should be figuring out what to do about this mess with your time tracker, not rolling around in my bed. But I’m helpless when it comes to you.”
The mattress shifted, and when she opened her eyes, he was there, on his knees, before her. Through the open curtains, a dreamy band of sunlight washed over him, highlighting the raw vulnerability on his face, an emotion she knew he’d rather hide should he know she’d seen it.
Lifting his arm, he trailed his fingers along her jaw and into her hair. A searching yet resolute touch. “But you’re not going to stop me, are you?”
She mouthed the word—no—caught his neck and brought his lips to hers, sealing their destiny.
Chapter 12
Simon had sampled his fair share of women.
Often, in what felt like a gamble against himself, against life. A dare. To see how much and howlittlehe could feel at the same time. See how fucking lonely sharing his body with another person could be without love added to the mix.
But this…
Enchantment, obsession,greed.
Emma. Her soft, sweet lips opening beneath his. Her fingertips marking his cheek, guiding him to her when he needed no guide. Her hair a lemon-scented enticement, a velvet shroud flowing about them, the silky ends dancing across his collarbone, his shoulders. A few paltry layers—silk, buckskin, cotton, linen—standing between them.
Between glory and doom.
Between what he desired more than all was holy and what he feared straight to his core.
In a place, in a way, he’d never let himself be seen.
“Show me,” she whispered against the side of his mouth, drawing him into a deeper kiss, “show me.”
With that simple appeal, he was lost.
Bending, he looped his arm around her waist and brought her, kneeling, against him, his cock hard, throbbing beneath his trouser close, a fact he could no longer hide from her.
Surrendering, he shifted his hips until his rigid length met her warm essence, a tattered groan rolling out of his mouth and into hers. Letting her know, perhaps, what she was getting into. Life on the streets didn’t afford impoverished women ignorance of the ways of the world, not as it did for society misses, but he imagined, from the shy way she’d touched him, that Emma didn’t haveactualexperience.