grazed against her pearl, and his balls pulsed at her clenching response. He plowed her harder, burying himself in her tight pussy, the reality of Fancy better than his hottest fantasy. She held him, her hips pillowing his hard thrusts, her hands weaving through his hair. Then she began to spend again, her convulsions massaging his plunging prick.
The climax surged over him, so potent that he almost didn’t pull out in time. He wrenched himself free and fisted his turgid flesh. He jerked himself once, twice, shuddering as he shot his seed onto her thighs.
Panting, he hung over her, his mind hazy with pleasure. He couldn’t gather his breath, let alone his senses. She smiled at him and laced her fingers around his neck. Suddenly, she surged upward, her lips aimed at his, and panic flooded him.
He backed away from her. “I cannot.”
She blinked, looking confused. “What…what do you mean?”
“I cannot kiss you,” he said hoarsely.
She sat up fully. “Why not?”
“Because I…” He trailed off as voices filtered into the hollow.
“Fancy! Where be you?”
Her eyes widened. “It’s my family,” she said in an urgent hush.
She tried to extricate herself from him and put herself to rights, but Severin knew it was too late. Seconds later, her brother Godfrey stuck his head through the tree’s opening.
“Fancy, thank God! We be looking…Knighton?” In a blink, Godfrey’s disbelief morphed into rage, and he bellowed, “What the bleeding ’ell are you doing with me sister?”
Later that morning, Severin found himself seated across the table from Milton Sheridan. They were in the main room of the tinker’s caravan, the décor conveying the multiple uses of the space. A small iron stove occupied one corner, surrounded by various cooking utensils suspended from pegs. Stacked against another wall were baskets of assorted goods. On the wall directly behind the tinker hung the tools of his trade.
Severin didn’t think it was a coincidence that he found himself facing not only the father of the woman he’d compromised but a wall of dangerous instruments as well. A saw with glinting teeth swayed with subtle menace next to a pickaxe and hammer. A collection of knives was lined up on the narrow worktable beneath.
He clenched his jaw, balling his hands beneath the table. He accepted full responsibility for what he’d done and, consequently, for what he now had to do. Anger at himself roiled in his belly.
What the bloody hell was I thinking?
He hadn’t been using his head…not the one above his shoulders at any rate. The beast in him had taken over. Hence, the present unthinkable situation. He was going to have to marry Fancy Sheridan. A tinker’s daughter who possessed none of the qualities that he required in a bride. She was a sweet creature, yes, but one who had no pedigree or connections, who was likely going to be eaten alive by his half-siblings, and who had a greater chance of sprouting wings and learning to fly than being accepted by the ton.
As bad as all that was, another reality was worse: he had taken Fancy’s virginity.
Shame scalded his gut. At the time, he didn’t even know that he’d deflowered her. Yes, she had been exquisitely tight…but he’d chalked it up to his size and her petite frame. And she hadn’t screamed in pain or reacted however virgins were supposed to act. Having never been with one, he had no clue how a chaste female would react to her first tup.
It was only when he had gone back to his carriage and put himself to rights that he’d noticed the blood on his cock. Fancy’s blood. Then her tightness, the innocence he’d always sensed in her, had made sudden sense. The realization that he’d taken her maidenhead on the forest ground, rutted her like an animal, had hit him like a ton of proverbial bricks.
Guilt and self-recrimination had crushed him. He’d ruined her, taken something from her that could never be restored. And for what—sexual gratification?
Memories rose in his brain. Fancy laid out in the mossy hollow like a sensual wood nymph. Her dazed eyes and sweet cries as he’d stroked her to orgasm, the incandescent pleasure of being inside her, of being lost in passion together. That was the worst of it. As wrong as it was, as stupid and destructive as his choice had been, the truth was…he didn’t regret it.
“I ain’t going to mince words with you, Your Grace.”
Milton Sheridan’s declaration returned Severin to the moment of reckoning. He was unsurprised to see the