Page 40 of The Hellion is Tamed
With a furious grunt, Emma rolled him to his back and, their joining unbroken, began to move, legs astride his hips, his cock buried deep inside her, as she’d imagined in her fantasies.
His gaze met hers, his lips falling open. “You’re trying to kill me, woman.”
She dragged his hand to her waist, linking fingers, begging for guidance. “Only in the best way.”
Then time, because she willed it to do so, stood still.
It could have been 1802 or 1882. 1750. 1935. Alone, in an ever-darkening bedchamber, she and Simon were ageless. An eternal symphony of passion and love. Seconds to minutes to hours as they possessed each other in ways neither had thought to possess, never hoped to. A kiss gone damp and careless in its zeal. Tender becoming eager, effortless becoming strenuous. The experience answered questions, acquainting her with Simon in a way far beyond language, beyond touch. Beyond oxygen, beyond light.
Kismet, destiny, fate, and in that fervent hush, she heard the reverberation of his soul.
The spasm, a fierce, desperate clench in her thighs, swept her away, her cry of delight echoing through the chamber, his sharp inhalation following. Simon didn’t relent, didn’t give her time to catch her breath, instead skated his hand over her belly, to her core, his thumb finding her nub and caressing, sending her into a dizzying universe of pleasure and sensation.
She collapsed atop his chest, her ear pressed to his pounding heart, her mind howling. Laughing softly, he took her lips, kissing her fervently while he moved inside her, prolonged strokes heating to fiery ones that rocked the headboard against the wall with spirited thumps. She groaned into his skin, her body a quivering muddle. When he shouted his release, his arms trembling, moist skin fusing them, she could only think there could be nothing like this anywhere else, in any time, with any man. What she’d known from the rookery, what she’d seen in murky alleyways and the corners of grimy public houses, had not beenthis.
This was love and illumination and forgiveness.
“I may not survive.” Simon ironed his hand down her back to her buttocks, where he tucked her in tighter against him. “Holy hell, I feel dizzy all of a sudden.”
She tilted her head until his face came into view. His eyes were closed, gold-tipped lashes brushing his flushed skin, a bead of sweat rolling down his jaw toward his collarbone. Lips bruised, cheeks bright, he looked overwhelmed and beaten.
While she feltpowerfulto have brought him to such a place.
“Quit gloating,” he mumbled in a roughened voice. “You rolled me to my back and kept me inside you. Quite the trick, humbling a man known for them. One I’ll never in this lifetime forget.”
Emma hummed and traced her pinkie down the dark patch of hair trailing the center of his chest. It tickled her fingertips and invited a kiss she couldn’t hold back. So, even with the leagues of women who’d shared his bed, she’d been able to do something helikedwithout knowing what she was doing, only blindly following instinct. She wondered when she would get a good look at his taut bottom, and the birthmark she remembered was on his left cheek. If that wicked countess had gotten to see it, Emma certainly feltsheshould be able to. “Beginner’s luck,” she finally replied, a blush of recognition sweeping not only her face but her entire body when she realized she ardently hoped they’d do this again.
Soon.
He grunted a non-answer, his weak kiss dusting the top of her head. “I could argue about natural talent, but I won’t. Those with incredible skill usually don’t want to hear about it.”
She drew a circle around his nipple and watched it harden. “I have other ideas.” Then, blowing lightly across his skin, she held back a grin as he groaned. “If you’d like to hear them.”
Simon rolled her to her side until they faced each other. “Do you have any notion what year it is? For a moment there, I thought we were headed into the past. I heard an engine, a noise in the sky, a sound I’ve never heard before.” He brushed aside her hair, pressed his lips to a wildly vulnerable area beneath her ear. “If we’re going to fuck our way through time, I’d like to know which time it is.”
“I’ll tell you about them someday. Flying machines. Airplanes.” She returned his caress, smoothing a kiss over the pulse beating in his neck. Feeling mischievous, she let her hand wander, heading to a part of him that was reawakening, hard and ready, against her thigh. “Does it truly matter where we are if we’re together?”
He arched into her touch, his voice fraying. “Depending upon the specificity of your suggestions, I don’t suppose it does. Although I’d like to hear about these flying machines someday.”
Emma tilted his head, seeking his kiss. “I can be very specific. Girls from Tower Hamlets are known for beingmeticulous.” A new word, that one, straight from the duchess’s mouth to hers.
“Meticulous. That’s my girl,” he whispered and pulled her atop him.
And with his persuasive talent, he made time disappear.
Chapter 13
Not my girl, London’s girl,Simon thought caustically, throwing an irate glance down the Duke of Ashcroft’s central hallway as he stalked along it three days later. There’d been a mound of calling cards scattered across the console table securing the main entrance. So large a pile that some had fallen like discarded flower petals to the marble floor. He’d flipped through six or seven, his temper flaring—earl, baron, second son of a duke, solicitor—before shoving them in his waistcoat pocket. A theft he’d be damned if he’d feel guilty over.
Not when these men were salivating over something that washis.
With a grimace, he sneezed into his fist. And the flowers. Crowded across every vacant surface until the gallery resembled a bleeding nursery. Like the one on Albemarle Street that Finn frequented when he’d made a masculine, husbandly error in judgment.
Simon rotated the dented gold button, also pilfered from the console table, between the fingers of the hand not holding Emma’s gift, eyeing the bounty spilling from a dozen vases.Roses. Yellow, red, white. Who, but a man whodidn’tknow Emmaline Breslin in the slightest, would send roses?
Emma was not a rose girl, he could tell the lot of them. Asinine society lads. Simon’s hand clenched around the violin case, housing a splendid instrument the Duke of Ashcroft had personally helped him select. He hoped he’d gotten it right, picked something that would please her. Simon wasn’t sure it would, a musical instrument she’d mentioned once in passing, but with a dreamy expression he’d been unable to ignore.
Anyway, it seemed a better bet than fuckingroses.