Dancing With Danger (Goode Girls #3) - Kerrigan Byrne Page 0,38
perfect. Too large and vital for one woman.
He’d warned her.
True to form, she’d refused to listen.
And, as usual, she would have to reap the consequences.
One of which might be her very first broken heart.
Chapter 10
Raphael never sampled the substances his father—and now he—sold. Because he’d seen time and again what physical attachment did to a person.
How ruinous it became.
But as Mercy rose from the cobalt velvet swirls of her bed covers, like Calypso from the sea, he knew he was lost.
She might have been stripped to the skin, but she’d left him exposed and raw, down to the very essence of what made him a mortal.
A man.
Her flavor was ambrosia.
Her body an altar to the bacchanalian gods.
Her skin pale and soft or—in some places—peach and succulent.
That flesh called for him to reach for her now, but something in her eyes caused him to hesitate. A new expression she wore, both marvel and melancholy.
Withstanding her perusal was an exquisite torture.
But he’d been tortured before.
He’d survive it.
Better that she become used to the sight of him first, to the idea of his body, before he fell upon her like the lustful beast tearing through his veins.
Though she seemed uncertain, she was the one to rise to her knees and reach out.
To close the gap between them.
Her questing hands branded fingertip-sized trails of fire over his shoulders, down his pectorals and across the ticklish spokes of his ribs.
He didn’t dare move. Her innocent exploration of him was a most elegant agony, one he wasn’t certain he ever wanted to escape.
She didn’t take much time, impatient minx that she was. Didn’t linger over his tattoos or his muscles, or the parts of him that were not foreign to her.
They both had arms, nipples, a stomach.
There was certainly a difference in shape between them, but not one that seemed to unduly concern her.
She looked him right in the eyes as slim, cool fingers wrapped around the girth of his throbbing sex, forcing a tight gasp from his constricting throat.
Heat collected behind his spine and pulled the pendulous weight beneath his cock tight into his body with the gathering spasms of release.
Groaning, he seized her hand.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, eyes wide with concern. “Did I hurt you?”
He brought her knuckles to his mouth and kissed each precious one. “Quite the opposite. Your touch threatens to end this moment too quickly.”
“I don’t mind,” she cajoled.
“I do.” Affronted, he pulled her close for a searching kiss.
Didn’t she understand that he needed this night to last forever?
Not only because he didn’t have many nights left, but because even though he was a man who always claimed what he went after, he rarely went after what he truly wanted.
Somehow, this young, untried woman seemed to know what it was that he needed. Intrinsically answering questions he hadn’t yet thought to ask.
Her fingers slid into his hair, both soothing him and setting the nerves there alight with sensation. He’d needed her touch, craved it, and yet a sense of guilt kept him from seeking it.
Tonight was his to give. To teach. To soothe and comfort. A woman’s first time took patience and skill and reserve that only a knave would abandon.
His ferocious and terrible instinct would have him pin her to the bed while he remained standing so he could press her knees by her head and watch himself fuck and fuck and fuck her until they collapsed with thirst and exhaustion.
He wanted to feed her from his hand and bathe her so he could bend her over and do it again. He wanted her to tie him up and ride his mouth. His cock.
He wanted her in every depraved way a man could take a woman.
And the simple ones too...
Mercy Goode was inherently a carnal woman, given to impish mischief and endless curiosity. She wouldn’t be content with basic, gentle lovemaking for long.
She’d want more.
And he’d be gone before long.
Holy Christ, she’d find someone else.
Possessive instinct surged, and suddenly she was in the circle of his arms, her lithe body clenched against his with such strength, he lifted her knees from the bed.
A turbulent rage rose beneath his lust, churning opaque emotions from where he’d forced them to lie dormant like the bed of sludge beneath a lake of ice.
Why now?
When decisions had been made, and his fate sealed. When he’d vowed to atone for all the wrong he’d never wanted to do...
The right woman barged into his life and turned his entire world upside down.
Made him question everything he