nude. So much of his business had been done in crude places and alleys where ladies exposed themselves for money, or serviced a man outside with only the shadows to conceal them.
It was good, he supposed, not for the sake of comparison, but because if he’d not had at least a general idea of what existed beneath a woman’s dress, the sight of her bare ass when he’d walked into the room might have killed him.
Let alone the rest of her. The alabaster perfection of her peach-tipped breasts. The flush of her smooth skin…
Her sex. Pink, pretty flesh nestled in a feather dusting of dark gold curls.
If he did nothing in his life to be proud of, her pleasure was enough to make him feel like a god. The arch of her sinuous body, the lithe movements of her hips as she rode the waves of her climax.
A climax he’d provided.
He’d meant to keep the evidence of his desire away from her, but his body betrayed him, seeking the warmth only she could provide.
Their gazes clashed when the barrel of his cock settled against the heat of her core. He could still feel the little pulses of her pleasure throbbing in time to the increasing heartbeat surging through his shaft.
Not daring to move, he schooled the need out of his features. He could think of nothing other than drilling into her like the base and perverse animal he was, but the need was tempered by his regard for her.
His love.
Her eyes had gone heavy and sleepy after she’d come, and her need for his closeness broke his heart into tender shards.
If this was all they did tonight, he was satisfied.
Well… satisfied was too strong a word. But he recognized with unquestionable thoroughness just how bloody fortunate he was to have done what they did.
It would never be enough.
Felicity slid her hands around to his back and scorched little paths of fire over the thick bands of muscle. Muscle he was glad he possessed if only to use it in service of her. To keep and protect her. To perform the labor she physically could not, and have the strength and stamina to provide her pleasure.
To keep from crushing her now as her hips pressed gently upward, pressing his cock against that marvelous, pliant skin unique to her sex. Coating him in the slick leavings of her desire. The moisture he’d need to make his way inside of her.
He gazed down at her angelic face, suffused with sheer, incredible wonder.
How did a woman like this exist? How was it possible that he’d not only found her but somehow events had unfolded in such a way, that she was now beneath him, legs spreading wider in unmistakable invitation.
Lowering onto his elbows, he framed her head with his forearms, plunging his fingers into her hair and cradling her scalp from the hard floor beneath the coverlet.
Arching his hips back slightly, it didn’t surprise him that the crown of his cock found the entrance to her body without aid, nudging against the moist kiss of taut skin there.
He watched every twitch, every tiny change or tightening in her lovely features. Examined her for fear or pity or any long-suffering.
Not trusting what he found.
The pillows of her lips were plush and red, swollen from his kisses. Her eyes were dark and gleamed with a passion that went beyond permission and into the realm of demand. The color in her cheeks was high and the barest sheen of moisture glinted at her hairline.
I love you.
He wanted to say it as he entered her.
But men in bed were often men in love, and he worried the sincerity would be lost.
It would be cruel to tell her if he was still expected to leave her. If she still needed to marry another in order to fulfil her responsibilities.
That didn’t change the truth, however, so he allowed the words to flood him as he pressed forward, breaching her body in slow, excruciating increments.
Encountering a barrier almost immediately, her gasp paralyzed him, as did the shadow of pain pinching her features.
When he would have withdrawn, she seized him, wrapping her arms around his torso and visibly bracing herself. “No. No. Just… ignore my pain.”
“I could never ignore your pain,” he contended. “We don’t have to—”
She stopped him with a kiss so tender and certain, he forgot any doubt, until the connection of their bodies was the only sensation he could feel.
“I was made for this,” she reminded him, adjusting the