her at last, keeping himself from responding through sheer force of will. She would be even more tired when he was through with her, but he did not say so aloud. Instead, he admired her as she turned to face him once more.
She was beautiful, this spitfire he had married. And he wanted her so much, he could scarcely breathe.
“Come,” Sin told her, tangling their fingers together.
Sensation skittered up his arm—a spark, a heightened sense of awareness. Each time he touched her, it was the same. There was something about holding a woman’s hand that was personal and intimate. It occurred to him that he had not done so since Tilly. Taking Calliope’s hand in his had seemed natural. Instinctive.
Bloody hell. No more delaying. He had to consummate their marriage before he lost his damned mind.
He tugged her through the door joining their chambers. He did not stop until they reached his bed. He had never taken another woman here. When he had been married to Celeste, he had always visited her in the countess’s apartments. But this was a new marriage. A new beginning, mayhap.
With a woman who had tried to destroy him.
He must not forget that.
He released her hand as if it were made of flame.
“On the bed,” he told her, rougher than he had intended.
She moved toward it, still wearing the dressing gown.
He caught a fistful of the silk, staying her. “Not this. Remove it.”
She hesitated before opening the buttons and shrugging it from her shoulders. It pooled on the floor in a whisper of sound. Her hair cascaded down her back, dry enough that it had already begun to curl. He could not take his eyes off her.
His bed was high, and Calliope was petite. She paused at the edge of it, which was above her waist, and cast him a look over her shoulder. “Do you have a step?”
“No step.” He did not need one. Shaking himself from the trance that had come over him the moment she had removed the robe once more, he stalked toward her. “Allow me.”
He grasped her waist in his hands and lifted her effortlessly onto the edge of the bed, spinning her to face him as he did so. Before she could retreat, he stepped to the bed, settling between her thighs. When she would have scooted away, his hands dropped to her smooth thighs, pinning her to the spot. He had a mouthwatering glimpse of the pink, beckoning flesh of her cunny. The urge to taste her there would not be denied.
And he would.
But first, he wanted her mouth again.
“My lord,” she murmured.
“Sin,” he reminded her, nettled by her return to formality. “We are about to be as close as two people can be. I will be damned if you are my lording me when I am inside you.”
She chewed on her lip again, something he was coming to realize she did when she was anxious. “Why do you care what I call you?”
Keeping one hand firmly on her thigh, he lifted the other to cup her cheek. “You are my wife. Should I not care?”
“You hate me,” she said.
He had persuaded himself he hated her. But that had been before. And now? Now, he was no longer certain he did. He did not trust her, to be sure.
“I will not be able to fulfill my husbandly duty if you do not call me by my name,” he lied.
In truth, nothing—not even an army—could stop him from bedding her tonight. He was ready. Now. He did not recall a time when he had ever been this desperate to fuck a woman. He had not even felt this all-consuming passion with Tilly.
She chewed on her lip some more, watching him from beneath lowered lashes, silent. On a groan, he lowered his head and took her lips. He sucked her abused lip into his mouth, flicking over it with his tongue. And then he bit it too, before deepening the kiss. He slanted his lips over hers. She tasted so sweet. Her kiss was like an elixir and a poison all at once. He wanted to feast on her mouth forever, but he also knew she was no better for him than his last countess had been.
One had pretended to love him and dealt him the cruelest of betrayals.
The other had ruined him and then married him.
He was going to make his new wife say his name again. Hell, he was going to make her moan it. Sin dragged his