he could not get any deeper. But he angled her hips, thrust harder, and he would. He reached a part of her that sent blinding white light rushing before her eyes. He swallowed her cries with his kisses as he rode out the waves of her second climax.
She felt him tensing beneath her, his thrusts growing shallower, harder. Her legs wrapped back around his waist of their own accord, and she ground herself against him shamelessly, awash in bliss, greedily seeking yet another splintering of herself into a thousand glittering shards.
“Hyacinth,” he rasped, burying his face in her throat as he pushed into her again and again. “I am going to spend.”
His words made her wilder. More feverish. She pumped beneath him with abandon, wanting him as deep as he could be when he lost himself. Wanting him to flood her with his release as he had done before.
“Yes,” she whispered, “fill me.”
He groaned, his hips continuing to work up and down, rocking into her again and again. “I need to withdraw. I was careless last time. We dare not risk a child.”
“I am barren,” she confessed, and for once the acknowledgment of her inability to bear children did not fill her with dread and despair and sadness.
Instead, she was glad for it. Because it meant she could have this wonderful man exactly the way she wanted him.
“You are sure?” he asked, his voice suggesting he was barely holding on to the fraying threads of his restraint.
“Utterly.” Her husband had hated her for what he had deemed her failure as his wife. But she knew no shame now. She felt, in these fleeting, decadent moments with Tom, as if she were restoring the pride in her femininity that Southwick had stolen from her with his cruel words and his bitter resentment.
She did not need to bear this man’s children.
All they owed each other was pleasure.
A fortnight of it.
And she meant to collect her due.
“Spend inside me,” she urged him, clawing at his back. “Please. I want to feel you lose yourself.”
On another groan, he slammed his mouth to hers, kissing her as his entire body stiffened and the warmth of his seed flooded her. They remained as they were for an indeterminate span of time, locked together, hearts pounding in time, kissing quite desperately. As if they had but this one night. As if they had just found each other after a lifetime spent apart.
And in a way, they had.
At long last, the ferocity of Tom’s kisses gentled. He withdrew and rolled to his back at her side.
She expected him to draw the bedclothes over them and to fall asleep. Or mayhap for him to go, as Southwick had always done following the claiming of his conjugal rights. But instead, Tom slung an arm around her waist and kissed her crown.
“You are magnificent,” he breathed.
She bit her lip against the flood of new tears. “So are you.”
Oh, how she meant those words.
Far more than he could possibly know.
Because the golden Goliath next door had changed her forever. He had done more than that, in fact. He had given her wings. And now, she knew how to fly.
Chapter Nine
“I declare another victory,” Brandon said lazily, eying Tom over the billiards table as he fiddled with his cue. “You are distracted today, old chap. I have never bested you three games in a row.”
His friend was right. Tom had been inattentive. Ordinarily, an afternoon game—or three—of billiards with his friend was just the thing. But he hardly had a care for aiming his cue or scoring points. All he could think about was how many hours in the day remained until he could see Hyacinth again.
He returned his cue. “I thought I should allow you to win for a change. When I do nothing but trounce you, you pout like a girl who’s had her prized doll taken from her.”
Brandon grinned. “And now which one of us is pouting like a girl after receiving a sound drubbing at billiards? Admit it. You were no match for my superior skill.”
While Tom usually took great joy in some friendly rivalry, he could not deny that he had no wish to do anything other than return to Brandon’s love nest and shag Hyacinth silly. Had it been mere hours since he had woken at dawn with her curled trustingly against him? Their kisses had been lingering and sweet. In truth, he had not wanted to part from her. But he had reluctantly dressed to return