Unbelievably calmed. When Fletcher felt more turned around than ever.
She took a stance in the middle of the room, looking rather as if she were about to begin a lesson on deportment at the school she assisted. Her fingers laced together, palms resting open and up. She blew out a deep breath before pinning him with a gaze meant to quell him.
He didn’t feel particularly amenable at the moment. He felt like a mess. An angry, rollicking mess. The young boy inside him, who had pulled girls’ hair when they refused to pay him attention, felt it wasn’t right that she be so cool when he wasn’t.
“I realize you must be under a lot of stress at the moment,” she began, and it was obvious that sometime between the ballroom and here she’d prepared a speech.
Prepared a bloody speech. As if he needed to be
handled
.
He stalked near enough that her scent—lilies, he’d learned—filled him and firmed his cock to the point that his trousers became uncomfortable. “I’m sure I have no idea what gave you that impression.”
Her eyes flashed. “Perhaps it was when you referenced whoring in mixed company.” The words were sharp-edged, but her voice was still honey smooth.
Christ, what would it take to shake her? To tumble her upside down the way he was?
“I never pretended to be anything I wasn’t, Seraphina.”
Her lips parted on a silent gasp. “And I did?”
A bittersweet sadness washed through him. “No. You never did. I’m beginning to believe I convinced myself of something that wasn’t there.”
Then, because he couldn’t stand to see her disappointment, he kissed her. He framed her face, angular with withheld fury, in his hands and tilted her mouth for his full-frontal assault. He swept his tongue in with little warm-up.
He expected her to push him away. She had before, when he’d come at her with gentle kisses in daytime hours or near-public places such as their carriage.
Apparently he should have given up the siege and moved into full-out warfare a long time ago.
Her hands curled into his jacket and held.
Triumph ricocheted through him, filling him with a rush of power and, worst of all, hope.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Sera knew she shouldn’t be doing this. Instead of dealing with their problems, she and Fletcher had tumbled headlong into an agreed ignorance.
Worse than that, she was kissing him in the east morning room of the Duchess of Faircroft’s manor. Not some little-respected hostess, but a duchess. She’d alienate Victoria’s family forever if she were discovered. She wasn’t some young, ignorant debutante being led astray; she indulged fully in the carnal appetites that were driving her mad.
Fletcher was driving her mad.
His very existence seemed a goad to her sensibilities.
His mouth played recklessly over hers, stroking and promising and wedging deep in her soul. He traced the tender inside of her lip. Took it into his mouth on a suck before he sent an aching want rocking through her with a single nibble.
Her hands slid up from his lapels, pushed over his thick shoulders. The lace gloves she wore deadened the sensation, but apparently not for Fletcher. When she laced her fingers over the back of his neck, he shuddered.
Such power he gave her, so willingly.
He threw himself open to her and to her every inspection. To her every desire.
He tried to palm her hips, but the ruffles and swags of her skirt and bustle got in the way. He tore his mouth from her and cursed wildly.
She didn’t care. She felt as wild as he.
She wanted his hands on her. She wanted his mouth on her. She wanted him inside her.
Stepping back, she scooped her skirts in heavy, overflowing handfuls. Cool air blew over her bare limbs. Her eyelids felt too heavy to raise.
She hadn’t the courage to lift any further, but it didn’t matter. Fletcher advanced on her as she backed toward the wall.
“Do you see this? Between us?” she whispered. “It can’t be healthy.”
He shook his head. “You’re wrong. This is everything.”
She kept backing up until her shoulders hit the wall. Until she had nowhere else to run. “What lives between us isn’t right. It isn’t normal.”
He stalked her like prey. Yet she didn’t feel weak. She couldn’t when his eyes were so haunted and she knew she’d done that. Turned him into a fiery copy of himself. His hands flattened on the wall, on each side of her head, but she wasn’t trapped.
“Do you really want normal when it means throwing away this?”
“More than anything,” she said, but she lifted her mouth to his anyway. She kissed him, rubbed across his lips with her tongue.
She’d made a desperate mistake when agreeing to marry him. No church vows could tame the hunger they had for each other. Some might descend willingly into it, but she couldn’t. She wouldn’t. She’d always striven to be better than herself, not to give into being her mother.
What they created together was a living, slavering monster. His kisses couldn’t tame it, nor could her fingers wrenching deep in his silken hair. She’d like to strip her gloves off, feel the rough silk directly, but that would mean letting go. She couldn’t make herself do that.
She poured herself into their kiss. Tried to push away all her frustration and confusion.
And he took it as he took her.
His hands swept roughly over her. He stroked her thighs beneath her bloomers, then jumped up to her torso. One hand palmed her breast, but through the thick layers of silk and corset and chemise it wasn’t enough. She whimpered into his mouth.
He read her mind as he always did. He glanced over the too-sensitive blades of her collarbones, dabbled in the hollows of her shoulders. His fingers dipped beneath her bodice to trace fire over the tops of her breasts.
She jerked and strained against him. One leg hitched high on his hip to wrap around the back of his thighs. Her quim felt so wet and swollen, but when he fitted his hips to hers and pushed, it wasn’t enough.
It would never be enough.
He fumbled between them, haste making his fingers miss their goal.
Then she felt the thick, full pressure of his staff. He slid easily through her seam, pushing deliberately against her charged nerves.
He pulled his mouth away from hers, and she mourned the loss. So much easier not to think when he was kissing her.
The skin over his cheekbones was taut with strain. His full mouth had stretched wide and his teeth glinted white. “This?” he asked. His voice was rough and low. Tantalizing as it rumbled from his chest to hers. Her nipples tightened further, becoming burning centers of her need to go along with what curled deep in her belly. “Is this what you want from me?”
She hitched her leg higher on his hip as she went up on the toes of the foot that supported her. Anything to get closer. She drew in a long, shuddering breath when she felt his cock graze against her.
“Yes,” she hissed. She shoved under the collar of his tailcoat, felt the heat rolling through his thin shirt. “Always. Do you understand me? I always want you. Always.”
“You hide it well enough,” he bit out, but his mouth came back to claim hers anyway.
A harsh clash of lips and teeth. Not quite kiss, not quite claiming.
Sera pushed between them, ensnared his staff in her hand.
His whole body jerked against her. She’d never been so bold before, never taken the lead. It hadn’t been that she’d been content to be passive, but that she had feared what she’d unleash if she did so.
She could tell it was long and thick, but those blasted gloves got in her way. She stripped them off with her teeth, not caring when a pearl button flew wild.
She reached between them again. He was so hot. Silken. Wet with her juices. She couldn’t quite loop her fingers around his width. At the tip was a fold of skin before he flared into a thicker head. A drop of moisture slid under her fingertips.
He groaned and tucked his face into her shoulder. His breath feathered over her bare skin, sending enthralling tingles to her belly.
“No more,” he rasped. He pulled his hips back, out of her grasp.
That was their problem altogether. There wasn’t ever a point where they really meant no more. Just no more of that specific thing, before they shifted into other torments. Other teases.
He slid inside her in one long, jarring push. Filled her. Obliterated her fears. Her head ground against the wall, and she pressed her temple flat against the wallpaper, which was cool to her overheated skin.
His strokes in her were jerky. Angry. Taking and giving with a harsh edge.
It didn’t matter. It weakened her knees until only the weight of him pushing her against the wall was what held her up. She clenched her arms around his neck.
Her hips moved on his length. She needed more. Harder. Despite her new freedom, she couldn’t make herself ask for more. Her fingers digging into the thick roll of muscles across his shoulders had to be enough.
And it was. He came into her harder. More forcefully. As if he were trying to make her understand something.
Whatever it was slipped away on the throes of pleasure. This was no rolling wave. It was spikes and stabs of white-hot joy.
Then he slowed. Stopped. Drew almost all of the way from her, until her sheath barely clung to his tip.
She had to tilt her head to see him. “What? Why?” She couldn’t swim through the choking want that clouded her long enough to come up with a whole sentence.
He stared into her eyes with an intensity that bordered on frightening. His eyes weren’t only pale, they were gaslight ghosts of themselves. Haunted and empty at the same time.
She slicked her tongue across her lips and subtly angled, seeking him out. His palms squeezed her hips, a silent warning. His chest levered into hers, crushing her breasts in gentle roughness.
Did he want words? Was it not enough that she’d dared to take him in hand? “Please,” she whispered. She swallowed. “Please. I need you.”
He stroked into her once. Stretched her. She clung to him on his slow withdrawal. “Do you?” he whispered.
She nodded. At this moment, she needed him more than she needed to breathe. More than she needed the blood flowing through her veins. It all belonged to him anyhow.
He lowered his head near. She stared out at the room beyond his wide shoulder. Chairs, a few tables. Everything draped in soft cloths to conceal the awkward limbs of the furniture. She’d had tea in this room, sat with Victoria and Lottie as they laughed and played at embroidery.
Now she was getting rogered against the wall.
He pushed into her again, as if to remind her of the fact. “I doubt you, Sera. I doubt you need me for anything at all.”
She had nothing to say to that. The truth was clenching around him, trying to absorb his solidity into her very being. The hot length of him. His wide shoulders. His fierce determination to be more than they’d grown up with. If he couldn’t see it, that wasn’t her fault, was it?
He kept whispering in her ear. “The hell of it is, I need you more than I’ve needed anything in my life. More than I needed hope.”
He drew back to look her in the face. She was frozen, held still for his occasional slow-dragging thrusts.
Ferocity had become a mask over his rough-cut features. “Do you want to know why?”
No. Unequivocally no. They hovered over a point of no return. The end of the line, and she was absolutely not ready to accept a change of train. She said nothing. She could say nothing. Her mouth was dry and her bones liquid.
“Because I love you, Seraphina Thomas. I love your perfection. I love the way you melt under my hands. I love you.”
She shook her head. Denied everything. Denied his words.
It wasn’t possible. So huge a risk he took. She was weakness personified. She couldn’t handle the world that he handed her. His heart, laid out on a silver salver.
She’d drop it. Crush it.
She shook her head again. Tears burned her eyes, and she blinked them away.
“I do,” he insisted. His head bent low over hers. Breath fluttered over her ear. The breath of life and love. “I love you.” He punctuated the declaration with a hard thrust. As if he could take her by siege. Those awful words slipped from him like a beast loosened from its chain. Every one was matched with fierce thrusts. He wanted to shove his love into her heart.
She broke under the assault. Pleasure and joy wove over her skin, throughout her body. Her fingers tingled with the need to take hold of what he offered. She strained back against him.
The wall behind her held her pinned no more than his hard pounding or his soft words.
Every reiteration in her ear was a torment. He loved her.
Her. Orphaned, bastard girl that she was.
She broke open on a surge of feeling and pleasure. Wanton. He’d take it. Her crisis was everything beautiful and terrible, white bursting across her squeezed-shut eyes. He thrust, his motions jerky as he spilled inside her.
If he’d pulled away to look at her, he’d see her heart written upon her. Take it, since it was his to claim. Her legs trembled with after effects, and her skin felt like sun-warmed gold wrapped around her. He kept his face tucked in the crook of her neck.