She relished the ferocity of his embrace, curling herself tighter around him. She tried to make her voice light, but emotion—relief and pleasure and fast-fading terror—clogged her throat. “Do what, precisely? Watch as you are accidentally abducted?”
“Go away from me.”
She swallowed against the ache in her throat.
She did not want to go. The truth of the thought struck her full force. She did not ever wish to be parted from him.
She wanted—God, what didn’t she want? Her body bloomed under his in helpless yearning; his familiar scent filled her nose. She breathed him in and felt need spin up inside her, desire a spool wound tight and then tighter.
She tilted her head up to him. He moved at the same time, quick and almost desperate. His mouth found hers. One of his hands caught at her hair, tipping her head back. He made a low, harsh groan—an uncontrolled sound, the sound of something tearing free in his chest. Her lips parted, and he took the lower one between his teeth and sucked.
She gave as good as she got. She wrapped her hand around the nape of his neck, pressed up into him, and kissed him back, hard and rough and frantic.
“Please,” she gasped when he started to draw away. “Arthur. Don’t stop.”
His mind had not been working properly since he’d lost sight of her that afternoon. Even when the Thibodeaux had come—when he’d been forced to hide in the coach—his only thoughts had been for her.
What would she imagine when she came back and found him gone? Was she safe, wandering the Old Town alone? His feveredbrain had thrown up visions of cutpurses, her heavy reticule a glittering draw. With every splinter carefully prised from the floorboards by his steel striker, he’d thought himself one excruciating step closer to getting back to her.
But now she was here—shehad come forhim, a notion that caused his mind to reel—and still his faculties had not come back into order. He couldn’t think—he could only see and hear and feel her.
Her sunset hair, her quick hot mouth—Jesus, the sweet little whimper at the back of her throat. She had wrapped herself around him, containing him with her body, her busy hands, the murmur of his name.
“Lydia,” he gritted out. Her touch was light and devastating, her fingers skimming across his bared torso. With her jacket undone, he could see the frantic rise and fall of her breath, her breasts pressing against the neckline of her bodice. He cursed and lowered his mouth to her shoulder, his hands sliding down from her hair to grasp her waist.
She came up on her toes and her body dragged against his aching cock—a pleasure so charged he almost could not bear it. He pressed kisses along her collarbone, his mouth inches from her breasts. His hands slipped higher, his thumbs tracing the delicate unyielding bones of her ribs through her damp woolen dress.
He wanted her naked. He wanted to see every inch of her—to know her safe and well and his. God, how he wanted her to be his.
He did not know at what point his fear had transmuted into arousal. It was no rational thing, this wanting. He felt a terrible urgent need to care for her—to see to it that she was dry and warm, that no part of her was hurting. He wanted to touch her more gently than his large and clumsy hands were capable of.
And at the same time, he wanted to be inside her. He wantedher writhing beneath him, sweat in her hair and a cry on her lips. He wanted—
Christ.He wanted to fuck her hard. Madly. Like an animal, mindless with desire and the feel of her.
He pulled back from her, staggered by the force of his desire. “Tell me to stop,” he rasped.
“Never.” Her voice shook with need, with all the courage and stubbornness inside her small form.
And, God help him, he listened. He cupped one breast, stroking his thumb across the stiffened peak. She whimpered—almost a whine—a sound that went straight to his bollocks.
He dragged his teeth along her skin and yanked her bodice down, baring her glorious breasts. “You’ve no idea the things I want to do to you.”
“Do them,” she gasped. “All of them. Don’t stop.”
Fuck, he thought,oh fuck,because her nipple was in his mouth and she was making those sounds again, eager and frantic as he flicked the taut nub with his tongue and then sucked.
Her nails bit into the skin of his back, and he heard himself make a desperate noise. His hips thrust forward without his conscious command, pressing his cock against her. His head spun at the sensation—at the heaven of that soft flesh. The wordgeneroushad been made for her body: the way it gave beneath him, the way it poured out pleasure for the both of them.
She was twisting, almost writhing, her face and chest flushed. Her pupils were large and dark, and the tips of her breasts were wet from where his mouth had been. The sight of her nipples, glistening in the dappled light, was the most dizzyingly erotic thing he’d ever seen.
Her fingers, he realized, were striving at his falls, where the damp cold fabric clung to his burning skin. She was not delicate—she was almost frantic. His cock came free of his trousers, and her fingers—her—
Oh Christ. He closed his fingers over hers, unintentionally clamping her palm against his erection. Fireworks went off inside his brain, but he could not let her get her fingers around him, hecould not—if she did, he would be inside her in half a minute, and he knew he could do no such thing.
So he dragged her hand away and bore them both down to the earth.
He took her weight onto him—the ground was cool and pebbled, and he did not spare one single second for regret as he rolled her over, pinning her beneath him. Her breasts shook as he did, and the sight was a lightning strike, sending demand arcing through him like a current.
