Page 45 of The Hellion is Tamed
Emma had erotic weapons at her disposal; she’d recorded quite a few thingsheenjoyed as well.
Her touch was bruising, as he liked, nails scratching, fingertips pressed hard against his skin. A frantic kiss, her teeth taking his bottom lip and sucking, until his arms shuddered around her, her stance shifting with his shaking knees. Choking on each other’s moans. She swallowed the taste of their joining until it flowed through her like an enchanted essence.
When the fever hit him, he braced his hand on the door by her head and urged his hips against hers until she was pressed between scuffed oak and a long, damply glistening body.
“Yes?” he asked frantically. “I can’t…not another minute.”
“Yes.” She groaned into his neck, closed her eyes to the extreme beauty of their intertwined bodies. Then she let pleasure catch her. Skin lighting as she twisted to capture every frantic vibration, like grabbing snowflakes in the wind. Her world tilted, years and minutes,ages, filtering through her like smoke. She held on to him,onlyhim, letting time whisper past, race forward, slide back.
With a hoarse cry, he lowered Emma to her feet in an exhausted slide down the door. Gave her a lingering kiss, dusting her cheek and chin, his knuckles brushing her jaw. Then he went to his knee, crouching, hung his head and gasped for breath, his wounded exclamation echoing off the walls. She watched his fingers spread wide on the stone floor and marveled, amazed, at how attracted she was, still. With every beat of her heart, every throb of blood through her veins, she wanted him. Even after the most explosive orgasm of her life.
Now, this moment, wanted him, if he’d have her.
To hell with who should find them, she cared little.
And she knew, no matter how wrinkled and gray he’d become, that this wanting would never change.
With a sigh of defeat, she let the door guide her to the floor, her own collapse, knees coming high, chin resting on them. Her legs had announced, quite abruptly, that they would no longer support her.
How beautifully remote he looked, kneeling before her in the duke’s dusty spare room, weak from taking his pleasure, from giving her the most explosive of her life. Skin moist from their exertions, the scent of their joining filling the small space. His back rising and falling with his inhalations, a herculean effort to reclaim himself when she’d given up on reclaiming anything. At least, she’d stolen a piece of him this time, as he’d stolen a piece of her the last. Consummate thieves, both of them.
Only, he was the better thief, there was no disputing.
But the question laid out before them, a precarious gamble, was if Simon Alexander was going to allow this burglary or not. Looking at him, it didn’t seem like he wanted to.
As if he’d heard the question, he swiped his hair from his brow and gazed up at her. Dark eyes glittering, his lips, rosy and plump from their assault, flattening as he debated.
“Is it always like that?” she asked in a voice that betrayed every blasted thing she wished, upon seeing his sullen expression, to hide.
It was like watching a gas flame, a particular hobby of hers at the moment, flutter and die. Emotion flaring, then burning out. Until, before her sat a pillar of stone, his protective cloak cinched around him. “Sure, Emma. I fall to my knees, weak as a babe, every time I fuck someone.”
Emma picked at a notch in the stone slab she rested upon, erosion from centuries of living, maybe even loving of the kind they’d shared. Simple to see, Simon was pushing her away. Begging her to get exasperated enough to flounce back to the duke’s bloody mansion without a discussion they needed to have occurring.Fool, she thought,jackass.
What a life they could have together if they’d only chose tohavea life together.
They understood each other, recognized the low-rent parts of the other, the rookery allure that clung like a curiously attractive scent. She knew him, whether he liked this fact or not. And he knew her. They were damaged, mystical souls, quite ideal for the other.
But that didn’t mean—
“Have you forgiven me?” she said, partly into the fist she’d brought to her lips. “For not coming back?”
His head came up from his inspection of his trouser close. “Have you forgiven me? For not waiting?”
Emma kicked her leg out with a curse, sending his knife spinning across the stone floor toward him. Her combination now housed a ruinous tear thanks to it—a tear letting in air that was, admittedly, cooling her fevered skin. “I trust you. That’sbetterthan forgiveness where I come from. And years may separate our births, but you came from whereIcame from. We’re kin in this way. Nothing like these posh toffs you surround yourself with. That I’m surrounding myself with tosurvive.”
The sound of children’s laughter again sounded from the lawn, closer than before. Emma drew a breath scented with the fragrance of cut grass and the river, obliterating their magical mixture tinting the air. She blinked into the bright sunlight piercing the dim space, the life outside peeking in.
She dusted her hand down her bodice. “How do I look if they stumble upon us?”
He paused, assessing, his eyes going hot as he studied her. “You look like you’ve been abused in the duke’s conservatory. I’d take the servant’s stairs on the way back if I were you.”
Irritation flared, but she kept it contained. This learning to be a lady business assisting on multiple levels, she was coming to find. “Good. I’m glad fer it,” she said, letting her old accent flow through her words. If he thought he’d change her until she was unrecognizable, he had another think coming.
Dipping his head, Simon buried a caustic reply in the sleeve of his coat.
“You made me into this, and now you don’t like it?” Emma wrenched to her feet with a blaspheme she’d not uttered since leaving the slums.
Scrambling to grab his knife, he snapped it closed and jammed it in his waistcoat pocket, rising to his feet seconds after her. “I’m not trying to make you into anything. I’m trying to save your damned life! Hargrave—”