Page 38 of To Steal a Lyon’s Heart (The Lyon’s Den Connected World #85)

Daisy nodded, her heart, her body throbbing. “If it’s the only decision I will ever make for my own, then this is it. I want to be yours. Tonight. I want that certainty. My heart already belongs to you, Sam.”

His throat moved up and down, his eyes blazed with blue flame. “But you’re still asking for this out of fear. That is where I stumble, Daisy.”

“I want you, Sam. I will do anything to have you. To keep you. To make you mine. Giving you my body is the way I ensure that it only belongs to you. If it is the only power I have, then I will use it.”

He covered his eyes with his hand. Daisy wilted, shifting her legs to sit on her hip and tuck her cold feet under the skirt.

“Ask me again,” he said.

“What?” Daisy refocused on him.

“Ask me again to make love to you.”

Daisy shifted back onto her knees. He watched her, his face tortured.

Daisy tugged the shoulders of her dress down, pulling her arms free of the long sleeves.

The bodice gathered around her waist, and she went to work on the ribbon on her shift, grateful she hadn’t worn difficult to manage stays.

It whispered free and it too fell to collect with her bodice.

Her breasts were exposed, her nipples tingling and the cold touch of the air turning them to tight buds.

His wandering eyes set fire to her skin.

“I want to be yours, Sam.”

She pushed her dress down over her hips, her heart skipping, her nerves dancing between elation and panic. His gaze consumed her body as she crawled out of the pool of her clothing to close the distance between them.

“I want to make love with you. I can’t go another day without loving you completely. Make me yours.”

He sucked in a rattling breath as his arms rose to pull her to him. Were his hands shaking? He gathered her close, nuzzling the warm skin of her neck, his hands sliding possessively over her back, down her bottom and between her thighs where he teased the wetness there.

“I will never deny you again,” he said. “If it is me that you want, you have me. You have my heart.”

“And now I’ll take your body.”

He softly groaned. “Now I’ll take your body, and we will be wedded in the most primal of ways. Skin to skin. Your taste, your touch, your cries of ecstasy belonging only to me.”

“For the rest of my life.”

They briefly kissed. “For every day going forward until my last breath,” he promised.

He took her mouth again, one hand spearing into her hair while the other teased the fevered slick skin between her thighs.

He bent her back, lowering her to the coverlet and following her down.

Daisy straightened her legs and parted them to cradle the hard line of his body, his cock pressing against her core through his breeches.

She bucked her hips slowly as he thrust his tongue into her mouth in languid measured strokes.

Daisy pushed at his jacket. Sam pushed up to his knees and wiggled out of it, tearing at his cravat and waistcoat until they were tossed behind him.

Daisy tugged his shirt free of his breeches and slipped her hands underneath.

He slowly lowered back down, covering her body with his and pressed two fingers into her.

She was wet and needy, her body still flushed from the moment in the drawing room.

But he had not taken his pleasure, and she could feel his urgency in the hard ridge of his cock.

He had intended to leave her tonight, with no satisfaction for himself.

He broke the kiss and dipped his head to take her breast in his mouth. “Mine,” he said into her skin.

“Yours,” Daisy moaned. She pushed his shirt up, and he broke away so he could yank it over his head, freeing all that sculpted skin and muscle she couldn’t wait to get her hands on.

His hunting mouth returned to her breast, licking up the valley between them before taking her mouth again.

Daisy dragged her nails down his sides and felt him shiver.

The pads of her fingers grazed the puffy scar that stretched from his lower rib to his hip.

At his waist she teased the edge of his breeches, her courage faltering.

She’d never undressed a man. She was brazen enough to beg him to bed her, but it was here, at this last obstacle, that she wavered.

His kiss slowed, the starving thrust of his tongue turning to languid tastes of her mouth and he lifted his weight from her with a hand on either side of her head. Did he feel her hesitation?

Daisy cursed herself. “Sam,” she whispered. “Please don’t stop.”

“You stopped first.”

She held his gaze, then dropped her attention to the place where her body cradled his, no longer touching. She could see the harsh outline of his cock and her lower belly fluttered with need. How did her body know exactly what she wanted?

Daisy inhaled, his scent surrounding her, reigniting the wildfire in her blood.

She danced her fingers to his navel and his abdomen tensed.

Her knuckles brushed the fine trail of gold hair that cascaded down to disappear beneath the waistband.

Daisy bit her lip, finding the first button and slipping it free.

“That’s enough of that torture.” He slid off the bed to his feet, stumbling as he kicked off his boots and ripped open his breeches, jerking them down his legs and peeling his stockings and breeches over his feet.

Daisy came up on her elbows and bit her bottom lip. He was making quite the racket.

“Shhh, Sam.”

He smirked. “No one can hear us on this floor.”

“Oh,” Now fully naked, she couldn’t tear her eyes off his beautiful body.

She slaked her curiosity and stared at his cock.

She could never imagine this man ever being weak and frail.

Not when powerful, lean muscle shaped his long legs, the grid of his abdomen, and the broad expanse of his chest and shoulders.

The corded muscles of his arms flexed as he prowled over the bed, her heart freezing in paralyzed excitement as he stretched over her with feline grace.

“Tell me you love me,” he said, his gaze searching hers with a flash of vulnerability.

Daisy swallowed down the tightness in her throat.

“I love you. With all my heart. With everything that I am,” she said.

He came down on one elbow, his other hand sliding down the side of her body, over her hip until he reached her knee and pulled her leg up.

“I love you, Daisy. My love for you consumes me in a way that is frightening. You are all the light in my life. My horizon. My sun, my moon, my stars, the glow from my candle at my bedside. You are the dawn that brings hope and warmth to the world after a long bleak night. I lived only because I was meant to love you.”

A sob caught in her throat. “How can you say such things?” His words overwhelmed her. She couldn’t string two pretty words together in return. Her tongue was a useless lead weight in her mouth. “How do I reply to something so lovely?”

He brushed a kiss over her lips. “You don’t have to say anything back. You said you’d be my wife, you begged to give yourself to me, and you lay beneath me, naked. You swore to give me every part of you, and that is so much more than I deserve.”

He flexed his spine, and the blunt crown of his cock probed the entrance to her body, which was slick and aching for him. Daisy spread her legs wider and tilted her hips to his in invitation. Because she belonged to him, his to worship and honor, his to claim and devour.

“Take me.” She threaded her hands into his hair and brought his mouth to hers. Their tongues wove together, their hearts beating at their chests as if they too needed to embrace.

Sam drove inside her in one smooth thrust, and a cry slipped from her throat.

He was inside her. Her mind couldn’t comprehend that he was inside her, and he felt so deep.

Pleasure and pain mixed, her heart pounding and her flesh screaming despite the wet hot clutch of her body around his that still felt so right despite the discomfort.

It ebbed as he lifted his mouth from hers.

“I’m sorry. There was no getting around it,” he said, his voice tight as if he had hung himself in suspense waiting for her reaction.

Daisy’s eyes stung, and tears gathered at the corners.

But not from pain. Instead, the words taken and claimed had new meaning.

Of course there would be a flash of pain.

Something so pivotal could never pass without a significant change.

She was altered. This part of her would always be his kingdom.

The sting was nothing, not when it declared her as his.

“I feel only love, Sam. My love and your love. It hums beneath my skin like music. I never want it to end.”

He slowly withdrew and slid home again. “You said you didn’t know what to say. You just needed a little more inspiration.”

The sting of being stretched fuller than ever before flared with his movement, but then he rolled his hips into her with his next thrust, and a new, pleasurable burn stole her focus.

The sweet rush of sensation between them eased her discomfort until it was nearly gone, and his movements became easier and more fluid.

“God, Daisy. You feel like heaven.” His brow touched hers.

Her knees hitched higher, a gasp escaping her as the friction of his pelvis, combined with the slick plundering of her body turned her world into a storm of need and rapture.

“Sam, my God,” Daisy said.

He smiled and pressed a kiss to her ear. “I like the sound of that. I’m your god, and you are my willing sacrifice, here to offer your body.”

Daisy arched into him, her wicked lover, her soon to be husband. “Blasphemy,” she said and then her breath caught. Sam sucked her earlobe into his mouth.

“No, you’re right. You’re my goddess, and I will spend the rest of my days worshiping your body as my temple.”

“Sam, please!” Daisy cried, because this twisting yearning inside her made thoughts and words almost impossible to comprehend.

“Yes, my love. I have what you need.”

He lifted himself up, snapping his hips into her and Daisy cried out, each thrust had stars bursting behind her eyelids, but she fought to keep her eyes open because the image of Sam, leaning over her, his body connected to hers so intimately and the savage desire on his face was something she never wanted to forget.

The vision seared into her mind and heart, and it sent her into the tumbling falls of her release, her body relishing the pounding of his hips as wave after wave of bliss washed through her.

“God, you’re so beautiful. Daisy, I can’t—” He shuddered, throwing his head back as his own release wrenched through him, his deep groan vibrating through her hips, and Daisy had just enough focus to keep her eyes fixed on him and not miss a single moment of her gloriously wicked angel shaking the walls of heaven with his pleasure.

He slipped from her body spent himself on her stomach.

Daisy luxuriated in the primal intimacy of the moment.

She could not imagine another man making her feel this way.

She would never have this—this kind of exposed desire, trust, and vulnerable hunger that she would never have to hide from Sam.

Sam unchained the woman inside her who’d been starving for affection, understanding, and this. This wild passion only he inspired.

He slowly lowered himself to her and Daisy wrapped her arms around him. His labored breathing hitched.

“Your rib!” she cried in concern, loosening her hold. He rolled to the side and smiled at her.

“I’d forgotten until this moment.”

“How could you forget?

“I had more pressing urges than pain holding my attention.”

Daisy rolled to face him as their bodies untangled. He reached for her breast, pinching her nipple. Daisy arched into the sharp, tingling pleasure and pain. She wanted to explore all these new sensations in her body with him.

He tucked her hair behind her ear. “I wish I could stay and wake up with you.”

She felt a pang of want in her heart. “I wish you could too.”

“It might physically pain me to leave this bed, with you sprawled naked in it.”

“You don’t have to leave yet.”

“You need rest.”

“We both need rest.”

He smiled and hesitantly pushed himself up. Daisy frowned. “Where are you going?”

Sam slid from the bed, his taut rear a fascinating distraction as he strolled away from her.

“We need to clean you up before you fall asleep.”

Her lethargy from earlier was swiftly returning.

She glanced at the clock, and it was a quarter past midnight.

Time had disappeared when she was in his arms. He dipped a towel in the wash basin and returned to her.

Daisy bit her lip and blushed as he wiped between her legs and there was a little blood, but not the gruesome amount she expected.

He wiped her belly and then his, and then last, his cock, still hard.

The sight of him running the cloth up and down his length made her body twinge with need again, but it was a small twinge.

She could still feel the stretch and fullness of him filling her like a phantom pain. A gentle throb now.

“If you keep watching me like that, I won’t be able to leave this room.”

Daisy smiled wickedly. All thoughts of propriety and a proper wedding were quickly losing their shine at the thought of him leaving her, sleeping apart from her.

Who knew when they’d have this much alone time again?

There wouldn’t be much after her parents returned and she had to go back to her own home.

Daisy yawned. Sam brought her a nightgown and helped her dress, then he put on his clothing. He had no compunction about being naked in front of her and Daisy had no reservations about greedily ogling his body.

He pulled back the coverlet.

“Stay a little while?” Daisy begged.

“Until you’re asleep,” he promised.

He slipped into bed beside her, and she nestled into his side, his wounded side. “Is this all right?”

“It’s perfect, Daisy.”