Page 9 of The Runaway Heiress (The Gilded West)

“You’re so beautiful, Gray.” If there was ever a finer specimen of a man’s chest, she had not seen it.

Not in any of the books on Grecian art she had studied or even on the occasional shirtless man she had seen at the stables.

Or maybe it was only that this was Gray’s chest and, somehow over the past months, he had become the standard by which all men were measured.

Her palms moved down over the hard ridges of his stomach, fascinated by how he was so different from her. Hard where she was soft. They came to a stop at the waistband of his pants and she felt him draw in a deep breath.

“Can I?” Her tentative blue eyes met his hot gray ones.

“You have to know I’m at your mercy.” His intense gaze pierced hers.

She smiled and slowly pulled at the fastening. Her breath hitched when she saw the first sprinkling of dark hair. She pushed down but the pants caught. His hands came up to work them past his erection and then it sprang free, perfectly upright and reaching for his navel.

Sophie slowly reached for him, surprised and faintly apprehensive about his size.

He was hot in her palm and jerked slightly when she held him.

Steel encased with satin. A tiny bead of moisture gathered at the tip and she couldn’t resist rubbing it with her thumb. She looked up to gauge his reaction.

“Lie back.” His eyes had gone hooded and his voice brooked no argument, but she was more than willing to comply. Her insides felt like they had turned molten and she ached between her legs where before she had only felt tingles of awareness.

She should have been far past blushing but she felt herself do just that when Gray’s fiery gaze devoured her before bracing a knee on the mattress and gripping her drawers. But he paused as her gaze met his.

“You knew I was watching you undress?” he asked.

She had the grace to smile sheepishly as she confessed, “I knew.”

He smiled, too, a wicked, sinful thing, and tugged. She lifted her hips to help and her drawers quickly joined the growing pile of clothes on the chair.

“Gray.” She squirmed now, wanting him in a way she couldn’t name.

His face gave nothing away as his gaze raked her body before he slowly leaned down.

His lips brushed her thighs and then placed a tender kiss on the golden curls at their apex.

His fingers pushed up the cotton chemise so he could kiss her belly, tongue dipping into her navel, before placing an open-mouthed kiss of possession on each nipple and finally making his way to her mouth.

She felt his urgency when his knee worked its way between her unresisting, but suddenly hesitant, thighs and he settled himself between them.

That part of him seemed to have a life of its own and brushed against her.

“Look at me, Sophie.” His words brought her gaze to his, only inches above her.

He didn’t smile, but his eyes were tender as his hand moved between them.

Her eyes widened as she felt his fingers touch her where she ached and she would have closed her thighs except his body was between them.

She gasped aloud when he suddenly sheathed a finger inside her.

It intensified the aching there. She tried to move with his finger but his weight pressed her down so she only managed to grind herself against him. But, oh, the friction felt so good.

“You’re so wet. So ready.” He whispered in her ear just before taking the sensitive lobe between his teeth, causing her intimate muscles to tighten deliciously.

She was ready, more than ready. Sophie felt wanton as she bent her knees to put her feet flat on the bed so she could open her legs wider.

His finger left her and then she felt that foreign part of him touching her.

He flexed forward and pushed the head inside, just past the tight opening.

The delicious heaviness of him there, hot and throbbing, parting her, made her arch to take him in farther.

But he moved slowly, priming her with a few easy, shallow thrusts that stoked the tension inside her and made her moan to be filled.

Gray held back. And instead of taking her like she wanted, he raised himself on an elbow above her and moved his hand back to where they were barely joined and stroked her there.

The pad of his thumb moved over the tender, distended flesh in a steady rhythm that slowly increased with her arousal.

Sophie panted as her universe narrowed to that touch occasionally emphasized by the inadvertent jerk of his hips.

She watched as a telling bead of sweat formed on his brow and lazily trickled down to his cheekbone, and wanted to lick it from his skin, before her eyes closed, too far gone in her own pleasure to think of anything except his touch.

Then the tremors began. Starting slowly at the precious spot where his thumb worked and moving their way out through her whole body.

She groaned when the first wave crested and held on tight as others came and washed over her.

Unable to hold back anymore, Gray sheathed himself completely inside her in a deep thrust, forcing the delicate tissue of her channel apart to accept his size.

Sophie stiffened and made a noise low in her throat, her nails biting into his shoulders to stay him.

He tried to hold back, to allow her untried body to get used to the feel of him, his whole body shaking with the effort, but he failed miserably.

His fingertips bit into the soft flesh of her buttocks to hold her still for him as his hips grinded against her, unwilling to obey the commands of his mind.

She was so tight and hot wrapped around him, he only wanted to pound into her in a mindless fervor of abandon.

And then she moved. A simple shift of position, probably, but his body took it as submission and before he could get a grip on his passion, he pulled back and pushed into her.

A single, deep, mind-numbing in its intensity thrust that was in no way gentle and in all ways the raw hunger he was afraid to unleash on her.

“Shit, Sophie.” He started to pull away from her. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

“Gray.” From beneath him, her voice penetrated his consciousness and summoned his gaze to hers. “Don’t leave!” She grabbed him desperately. “Please.”

He didn’t breathe as he looked down at her, hardly able to believe that he was hearing her correctly. That despite the pain he had caused her, she still wanted him. There was no fear on her face. She wanted him. To prove it she grabbed his hips and pulled him back into her.

“More.”

And then her hips were arching up to him, attempting to set a rhythm and he was lost. He fell over her then, resting on his forearms, aware of her slim, delicate body beneath him.

His hands were trembling as he fisted them in the sheet on either side of her.

Slowly and with infinite gentleness, he pushed into her again, his gaze locked on her face until he was fully seated within her.

Her passage was so incredibly tight he was sure he’d hurt her, but her eyes were heavy-lidded and glazed with passion when they met his.

He pulled out of her almost completely, and smiled when her fingernails bit into his hips to pull him back.

He obliged and tenderly thrust into her again.

“Please, Gray.” Her hips rose, asking for more friction.

It was all the encouragement he needed. He drove into her then without restraint, giving into the madness of their passion, watching in awe as her face changed with each stroke.

Finally her hoarse cry filled the room and he watched her come apart, felt her come apart, as she contracted around his shaft.

Only then did he bury his face in her neck and hold her tight until his own groan of pleasure tore itself from his lips.

He barely managed to pull out of her before spilling his seed.

He fell onto her then, limp and sated, and sure that she had taken some part of his soul.

Long moments passed in silence as their breathing returned to normal.

Sophie relished the way his body felt, completely relaxed and calm, on top of her.

But he stirred then and shifted so the bulk of him lay beside her, a heavy thigh still positioned between hers and his shoulder still covering most of her torso.

The air in the room was so warm their skin glistened in the meager lamp light, but it didn’t matter.

She savored him and the slick feel of his skin on hers.

“Are you okay?”

Sophie opened her eyes to see him raised slightly, gaze roving her face in search of damage. As if any damage he’d caused would be visible on her face, she mused. “Wonderful, mon coeur . ” Her fingertips caressed his cheek and he reflexively turned to press a kiss to the center of her palm.

Her other hand came up to stroke his shoulder and then down to trace lightly over the tattoo, overwhelmed by her need to touch him, to somehow be closer to him even though they had just completed an act that brought them as close as two people could physically be.

“Is it always this way?” she whispered, hoping he didn’t need clarification because she wasn’t quite sure how to express the complex feelings of longing and completeness she felt.

When his gaze met hers again the solemnity was back but there was something else.

And when he whispered “never” Sophie’s breath caught in her throat.

She realized, more than anything else, she wanted to see him look at her like that every day for the rest of her life.

But there were so many things in the way.

“I’m sorry if I made you do something you didn’t want to,” she blurted out.

He laughed. A soft exhalation of air that caused prickles of pleasure to dance across her skin where it touched as he bent and placed a kiss on her shoulder, her chest, her neck, just before his lips brushed across hers. “Did it feel like you had an unwilling man between your thighs?”

Her cheeks pinkened. “No. I meant…” Her voice faded. It didn’t seem right to mention her uncle, Anton, and Gray’s profession. Those things had no place in the room with them anymore.

But he knew.

“We have tonight, Sophie.” And he kissed her again. A slow, deep, wet kiss that made that part of her start to ache again. When he pulled back there was a devious glint in his eyes that promised to make good use of the hours ahead.