Page 43 of The Hellion is Tamed
Why would a woman such as this—formidable, clever and so breathtakingly beautiful—want him?
A quiver started in the pit of his stomach and rose, settling in his chest. Then, a whisper of sound, her husky sigh, acquiescence or perhaps surrender, shot from her as she took a faltering step forward, his name leaving her lips to settle over him like freshly fallen snow.
A tender sanction, a soothing plea.
Neither he could ignore.
They met in the middle of the deserted space, the kiss nearly knocking him off his feet, the earl’s cufflink hitting the stone slab. His fingers in her hair, yanking pins free to scatter like petals. Her hands cradling his jaw and bringing him down until the fit was seamless. The kiss was past due, payment for misdeeds and misunderstandings. Jealousy. Possession. A vicious edge, crimson bleeding into his vision. His skin aflame.
He backed her up with a rough step, into a wobbly bench, and then the wall. And there he held her, imprisoned between medieval stone and his body. Took her hands and pinned them by her side so he could look,thinkwithout her touching him.
She wasn’t the only one who’d waited years for this.
Emma gasped and wrenched high on her toes but not free, her passion turned to rebellion. He could feel it in the stiffening of her spine, her angled hip beneath the curve of his knuckles. Bumping against the firm ridge of his cock, a blatant presence beneath buckskin he couldn’t hide, she rubbed against him like a cat, purring, that little mewling sound that had unmanned him before. And she knew, from the wicked sparkle in her eyes, exactly what she was doing.
Entrapment of another kind.Herkind. A feminine, fearsome snare he wished desperately to be entangled in.
When he let her go, instead of shoving him away as she should, she slid her hand between them, setting her palm over his rigid length. Curled her fingers, conforming her grip to his shape. Stroking until he felt his heart kick, once, twice, in his chest.
“I’m afraid of what I feel for you,” she whispered and squeezed his cock, almost bringing him to his knees. “But I want toknowmore than I want to be afraid. Those things I saw in dark, drunken corners and alleyways, the hunger, the desperation. I understood the act and what bodies looked like doing it, but I didn’t understand anything until you touched me. It’s humbling to imagine that what my mind and body have been telling me about you all this time is true. I know myself…and it seems I know you. I knowus.”
She pressed her lips to his, her tongue tracing his bottom lip and nibbling until he released a ragged groan, without plan pressing her harder against the wall. “And I will, no matter what happens to us, have you. Havethis. I’ve earned it, you see. I didn’t travel those eighty years for nothing.”
It seemed this was a promise she intended to keep. To herself, if no one else.
“How much time?” he asked, his voice whisper-thin against her jaw, her neck, tilting her head until he was swimming in the blue of her eyes. “Before Delaney comes to retrieve you?”
Her mouth fell open in invitation, one step toward fulfillment of her promise. “She’ll have to check on the children, which turns into spilled milk, requests for more cookies or the reading of a fairytale. Someone hiding, someone crying. A half-hour, maybe a little more. But we mustn’t tear my clothing. No time to disrobe. But I’ve seen it done such. A swift…joining.” Her smile grew, her hot gaze sweeping his body.
She liked his physique, he could tell. From the aroused beat of the pulse in her neck to the way she sighed out a prolonged breath he guaranteed she hadn’t known she’d held. Her studious attention made him swell, his posture, his cockandhis heart.
She made him feel greater than he was, stronger, smarter.
Made him feel the future was bursting with hope if he could forget the past.
It was more than love to be elevated like this. And though his heart stayed in the shadows, his body leaped forward.
Taking Emma’s hand, Simon dragged her down the center aisle toward a utility room he remembered stood at the back of the conservatory. Jostling her inside, he turned back, and with a hoarse grunt, shoved a marble plant stand before the door. Not enough of an impediment should one of the duke’s burly footmen come calling, but it was certainly enough to keep a curious duchess out.
He didn’t let her speak, stepping in and seizing her lips before she could say something else to ruin him. Utter avowals he wasn’t prepared to answer, offer declarations he couldn’t yet return. Her hands fisted in his shirt and brought him closer, her tongue an assault inside his mouth, seeking to intensify a connection already too intense. A bruising onslaught, his arms full of her, his mind rupturing with sensation. He closed his eyes to it, to her, let the sound of the wind scuttering through a split in the wood, and her muffled moans drive him a little mad, right there in the duke’s vacant utility room.
It seemed an ideal place to change course, for better or worse.
The bench behind them was an appropriate height. Perfect, tagging him right at the hip. And sturdy enough, he determined, when he kicked it. Lifting Emma to it, Simon hitched her skirt high, spread her thighs and moved inside her warm, welcoming circle.
She was his obsession, his ambition, his avarice.
And in that untamed moment, he both loved and hated her. Required and feared her like the blood racing through his veins, the oxygen spilling into his lungs.
Despite the fear, he plunged in with everything he had.
Chapter 14
Sometimes a kiss becomes more.
From the pale glow of a fresh flame to the white-blue of a raging fire in one second. An inferno. Blistering heat.
Emma was both present and not as he tormented her.