In Bed with the Earl (Lost Lords of London #1) - Christi Caldwell Page 0,124
flicked his tongue back and forth, until Verity’s hips began to move and desperate cries pulled from her lips.
And he moved with her. Slowly. Accustoming her body to the feel of him.
Then they were moving. Their bodies in perfect concert as he thrust, and she lifted up into each glide of him inside her.
“Malcom-Malcom. Malllcooom.” She wept. Just one word. His name. Over and over, a mantra that lent a desperation to every thrust of his hips. He was close.
“Come for me,” he begged, when he’d never pleaded with a soul in the whole of his life. But Verity Lovelace was also unlike anyone he’d ever known in the whole of his existence. She was light and mirth and all clever wit and courage.
Her body stiffened, and then she screamed her release. Cursing and pleading, until she went limp. And her surrender threw him over that edge where pleasure and pain melded in an exquisite torture.
He withdrew and emptied himself in an arc on her belly, groaning and shuddering until his body ceased to shake, and then collapsed atop her. Catching himself at the elbows to keep from crushing her. Their bodies continued to tremble until a calm crept in.
And as he lay there, Malcom had the terrifying sense that the arrangement with Verity would never be enough.
When Verity was a girl in Epsom, the villagers had been less than discreet in their whispered slurs: she was a whore’s daughter, and a whore’s fate awaited her.
Verity, however, had never been one to self-flagellate for the sins of another. Or as the case had been, the decisions of another. Her mother had taken a lover, and thrown away any possibility of an honorable, respectable match with a man who’d been willing to make her his wife. That decision, however, had belonged to Lydia Lovelace. It hadn’t been Verity’s. As such, even as the insults had stung, she’d still held her head high because she wasn’t her mother. She’d prided herself on the fact that she would never give herself to any man, in any way, outside of marriage.
Of course, having worked since twelve, there’d been even less thought of marriage than of surrendering her virtue.
Until she’d at last understood.
Lying precisely as she’d been since Malcom had gently cleaned the remnants of his seed from her person, atop his chest, with her legs twined through his, it all made sense to her.
This moment had been the one to bring it all ’round to clarity: She understood her mother. She understood what it was to want and need a man so desperately that in a moment of passion, there’d not been a fraction of a thought spared for principles such as honor or respectability or virtue.
She’d known only that she needed to know Malcom in this way. That were she to part from him, and never have lain in his arms, it would be a regret far greater than any she’d ever carry over words like “respectability” and “honor.”
Smoothing her palms over the curls matting his chest, she threaded her fingers through that light tuft.
She loved him.
And mayhap she was her mother’s daughter after all, because there was none of the deserved panic that realization should elicit. There was just a contented peace. An absolute sense of rightness in them. For however long that was.
And this time, a pang of regret did strike . . . for that reason alone.
Thrusting back those bleak musings, refusing to relinquish the time she did have to regret, Verity propped her chin up on his chest. “Are you sleeping?” she whispered.
“Am I even alive?” he asked, his voice still hoarse and weak, and she found herself smiling.
She pinched his side, and his eyes flew open. “Bloody hell. What in blazes—”
“Alive.” She beamed. “I was just confirming for you.”
Muttering, he rolled her lightly under him. “Minx,” he breathed against her lips, and then mindful of her bruise, he drew back and lightly probed the tender area around her lump.
She anticipated the question that had formed on his lips. “I’m fine.”
“I shouldn’t have made love to you.” Where there had been desire before, and then sleepiness after, now there was remorse. And she’d have none of that.
Verity jammed a finger into his chest, earning a grunt. “First, I made love to you, Malcom. Second, I assure you, I’m fine. Just a little ache,” she promised.
He smoothed a palm over one of her thighs in soft circles that elicited a moan.