fingers caressed the close-cropped down of fine hair at his nape, urging him back toward her. Aching for his kiss. “That is why I offer. I want you, husband. Through everything, that’s never changed. Given the chance, I would make a myriad of different choices over the past three months, but not that one. I cannot bring myself to regret giving myself to you…having you…does that make me unforgivably wicked in your eyes?”
“No.” She sensed the tempest within him, the battle of his dual nature, and identified the precise moment one of the factions beat back the other.
With a foul curse, he closed his hand around her wrist and pulled her after him as he veritably slammed open the door to their alcove, and another to the stairwell. He silently marched her down one flight of stairs, through two more doors in another chaotic office full of typewriters and noise, and then veered her into a long, deserted hallway.
She trotted to keep up as he swept her to the end of the hall and shouldered open an old door swollen with disuse. In an incredible dance of fluid motion, he tugged her inside, firmly shut the door, threw the lock, and pulled her into his arms to crush his mouth to hers.
All pretense of the civilized Chief Inspector melted away beneath the heat exploding between them. His hands were suddenly everywhere. His lips were no longer compressed into their tight, laconic lines. They molded to hers with a wild, wet consummation that surpassed anything she’d ever imagined.
He’d once again succumbed to the starving, carnal beast that lurked inside him. One locked away in a cavern so deep it was as if he attempted to bury it forever.
But anyone knew that a predator denied sustenance became the most dangerous of creatures. Prudence realized that she somehow possessed the key to the dungeon where he kept that beast.
And she’d hoped that once she’d let it lose, it would devour her.
True to his nature, he didn’t let her down.
Her body melted against and around him while he kissed her as if he could make up for every absent night and every empty morning. Beneath the fervency of his embrace, a heart-rending sweetness existed. A sort of awestruck marvel that moved her to the very marrow of her bones.
This was something he couldn’t express with words, she understood. Not yet.
Perhaps not ever.
Though there was no chance of him releasing her, she still clung to him, her fingers digging into the convex muscles of his back, reveling in the mounds of strength she found there.
His tongue didn’t wait for invitation, sweeping into her mouth in drugging, silken strokes. He moaned against her lips and she breathed it in, relishing the honest pleasure in the sound.
The ragged need.
He crowded her backwards, never breaking the seal of their kiss. His hands cinched her waist and lifted her onto a desk, or a table, she couldn’t be sure. Only once he’d secured her there, did he allow his restless lips to venture elsewhere. He dragged them across her cheek, rooting into the sensitive hollow of her throat, nipping at the soft lobe of her ear as he pressed her knees open to fill the space with his hips.
This was how he would have her next, she realized. Here. Now.
He was going to take her again. To consummate their marriage.
In the scant moment she was allowed to absorb her dim surroundings, she identified the skeletons of shelves and boxes as some sort of ill-used storage room lit only by a grimy window.
Something about the illicitness of their setting sent excitement and anticipation surging through her. The only sound in the room was the rasp of her dress as he gathered it up in desperate fistfuls, and the tiny explosions of their rapid breaths.
She was frustrated by the layers of his clothing, as well. Whatever clay composed him, the very essence of him called to her. Arrested her every sense. She wanted to see him. To score his skin. To smell and touch and taste.
His rough hands snagged on her stockings as he pressed forward, urging her legs further apart to accommodate him. His fingers were both strong and gentle as they charted her inner thigh. Breathing seemed to become more of a struggle for him as he found the edges of her stockings and her garters.
When he tugged at the ribbon on her drawers, the curse he emitted drew fire from her blood and a flood from her loins.