Still not what she wanted. Not everything she wanted.
So she took it, wrapping her hand around his length and positioning him at her entrance.
“Slow,” he warned.
She nodded, ceding control to him as she flattened her palms on his back. Skin felt this way—smooth fire stretched over marble, a jubilation of sensation for her fingertips to explore as he entered her, stretched her. Heart beating wildly, her entire being panicked. But ready. An odd contradiction.
“Shh.” He kissed her softly as he inched into her, sliding smoothly but testing her limits. “Tell me if you don’t want it. Damn me to hell if you need to.”
Holding her breath, she shook her head, held him more tightly.
Still kissing her, still softly, he inched into her, filling her, stretching her. She focused on the kissing as she’d focused on hating him these past years, with every determined bone in her body. She memorized with her fingertips the rough silk of his hair and the outline of each muscle as she’d previously memorized his every taunt and tease. And there, between this moment and those, between loving and hate, she slipped quietly past hesitance and discomfort, and back into the pool of pleasure. Her hips rolled against him, and with her body’s surge forward, not his, she welcomed him fully into her.
“Christ,” he groaned, sounding gutted, sounding something else. No time to wonder what because he was moving now. No hesitation from him either, and she was scoring his back with her nails as he rocked in and out of her, building waves inside her. She was lit tinder ready to ignite.
And then he pressed a flame to her, rubbing his thumb over that pulsing button at her center. Pleasure drowned her, took her under. What a lovely way to die. He thrust one more time into her, hard and fast, and then pulled out and spent upon the bed, his face pressed between her breasts. She’d become sensation. She’d become thoughtless.
She was quite terrified she’d become his.
Hearts racing, arms clutching, he pulled her to the head of the bed and shuffled her under the covers. She tried a bit to brush his gentle hands away but found herself covered to the chin anyway, his large body curved protectively around her from behind. His face was in her neck, and he pressed little kisses along the entire length and curve of it.
“Mine.” Kiss. “Mine.” Kiss. “Mine minemine.” Kiss kisskiss.
She laughed. It tickled. She swatted him away, but he’d become something of a wet shift, clinging to her everywhere.
“Speak to me in Spanish.”
“No.”
“Thank you. Well done.”
She laughed.
He nipped her ear. “It’s the only word I know. Except for que bruto. That’s me. Your brute.”
He sounded so happy, and that emotion curled up in her chest, purring like a cat. “My brute would bemibruto.”
“Good.” He yawned against her neck. “Now say Peterson is an ars?—”
“Richard!” She rolled in his arms, pinned him with a glare.
“Arse. He’s an arse.”
Was he jealous? Worried? The confident man she’d always known? But perhaps she did not know him. Not as well as she could. With more reluctance than she should feel, she left his arms and left the bed.
“Beatrice!” Her name a whine. “Come back.” That a demand.
“No. I’m going to look around.” She wanted to discover more about him. She yanked the top blanket off the bed and wrapped it round her body, then walked a circle round the room. Walls mostly bare but for generic paintings. She pulled curtains back on one wall to find large windows looking down into a garden. A wardrobe, a small desk, the rug beneath her toes thick and new. Then she was back at the bed, on the other side, standing before a small bedside table and the book laid carelessly atop it. An old book, faded and… familiar?
Richard had pushed up to lean against the headboard and folded his hands behind his head. He watched her quietly, his dark hair a heavenly mess.
Almost trembling, she picked up the book, turned it over to read the spine.Quixote. HerQuixote. She recognized it now, and when she opened it, there—her name in her own hand. Now she was trembling.
“Come here, sweetheart.” He held out a hand.
She took it, sat on the edge of the bed, and let him lay his head in her lap. She stroked those messy locks out of his eyes. “Why do you have my book?”
“Because I never hated you.”
