Her eyes blinked open. Her breath came in shuddering gasps. “I can’t.”
“You can, damn it.”
She looked down to where her fingers held fast to his shirt, and he followed her gaze. Holy God, the sight of his cock in her—her thighs as he worked her over himself—he couldn’t breathe.
“I’ll fall if I let go.”
“You won’t.”
“I’ll fall,” she said again, almost desperately.
“I won’t let you.”
She wrenched one hand away from his chest and shoved it between their bodies, a sob breaking from her. He could feel the urgent unsteady rhythm of her hand, and it drove him half out of his head.
She gasped and stiffened, her head falling back, and he ground her over his erection as she squeezed down hard, a violent wave of sensation that nearly brought him off. He managed, barely, to withdraw, and Selina—beautiful, lovely,perfectSelina—wrapped her hand hard around his cock. He thrust himself into the tight circle of her fingers and was lost, finished, blind with pleasure, his release bursting through him like a hurricane, sweeping everything away except sweetness.
When he could see and think and move once again, he let go of her thighs and balanced himself on the ledge beside her. He caught her against his chest, his hand coasting to the plane of her abdomen. He pressed his chin into the curve of her neck. She was soft and smelled of bergamot spice, warm and clean except for the stickiness of his spend on her belly and breasts.
He tightened his hand across her ribs and tipped both of them backward into the water.
Selina shrieked as they splashed into the bath, and he—
“Bleeding Christ,” he said. “Hadn’t thought the water’d gone so cold.”
She was laughing, pushing against him as she scrambled from the tub. Water cascaded over the sides, down onto the slick marble tile. He stood, his trousers and shirt clinging to him, and watched her fetch linen towels from a bureau.
He loved her. He loved her so much he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move. Could do nothing but watch and memorize her face as she laughed.
He kept the sight of her in his heart even as she pulled him from the room, as she made him dry himself and lie beside her in their bed. He kept it safe, a perfect pane of glass, crystalline and fragile.
Peter slept beside her.
“You have heard of beds?” she’d asked him tartly as she’d stripped his sodden garments from his body.
“I’ve heard of nudity too, and yet keep not quite managing it.”
“You’re managing well enough.”
“Am I?” he’d said, and wrapped his arms around her.
They’d mopped up the water as best they could, then stumbled to their enormous bed and curled up together, despite the fact that it was barely five o’clock and neither of them had eaten supper. He’d fallen asleep almost instantly.
She lay now with her head on his chest. She teased the dark hairs that curled beneath her cheek, slid a finger gently into the hollow at the base of his throat. He was like a great cat, dozing beneath her cautious petting.
She should go downstairs and check on the children. Sheshould ready herself in case Gabe Hope-Wallace arrived early. She should think about supper. She should plan a menu for tomorrow.
White soup. Roasted pheasant. Some sort of sauce. Carrots. Soup?
Blast—she had thought about soup already, and she was trying to distract her mind, whichwas not working, because Peter had—he had—
I love you, he’d said. Again and again as he’d taken her.I love you, God, Selina, I love you, I love you.
Perhaps gentlemen justsaidthat during bedsport. Perhaps it was some sort of… of animal mating call.
Good God, she was cracked. She racked her brain, trying to recall if she’d read anything about uncontrollable declarations of love in the Venus catalog.
Had he meant it? He had not seemed to notice the words as they spilled from his lips, had not acknowledged them after. Had certainly not said it again, when the haze of passion was gone from his mind.
