He tried to remember the man he’d been before, the skillful seducer who had won more women than he could recall into his bed. But with Pamela on her knees above him and the decadent swells of her breasts in his face, he couldn’t remember a single way to woo or please or seduce. There was no courting, no slow, no gentle in him this evening. He was mindless in his need for her, and tomorrow he would lose her.
Possibly forever. These fleeting hours were all they had left.
“Put me inside you,” he growled.
And once more, her hand was on his stiff cock, but this time instead of stroking him from base to tip, she was guiding him to the beckoning heat of her cunny. She pressed him to the heart of her, and she was hot and drenched, and he thought he might die before he ever returned to Boritania. Die from sheer pleasure. Save his uncle the effort of trying to kill him a second time.
She took him inside her, and she was as wet and wonderful as ever, and she clenched on him, drawing him deep, and he nearly unmanned himself. She moaned as she rocked on him, taking him to the hilt.
Oh, sweet Deus. He could not recall the English language for seconds, minutes, perhaps more. She was stretched around him, and nothing had ever felt more right. The pleasure of it nearly made him delirious. Her face was flushed a becoming shade of pink, the obsidian discs of her pupils wide and glazed. Her lips were parted.
“Theo,” she whispered.
“Ride me,” he murmured, touching her everywhere he could. Her breasts, her nipples, her creamy throat. Her hair, which was still bound in a chignon until his fingers undid the careful work of her lady’s maid, and he plucked pins free to rain on the carpet.
He wanted her as undone as he was.
Had he latched the library door? He couldn’t recall, but he was in no state to cross the room and do it now. Theo sucked a nipple into his mouth, reveling in her breathy sigh, the way she arched her back, and moved. Moved with punishing torpor, impaling herself on him, rising on her knees, then bringing him deep.
Her wetness sluiced down his cock, likely making an utter mess of his trousers. He would have to shed them and don a fresh pair when he could chance a return to his chamber. It didn’t signify. There was nothing and no one in the world but this woman, who took his lips with hers as she found a rhythm that drove them both to distraction. He found her pearl and teased the swollen bud as she worked over him, and he swallowed her moan as they kissed.
There were so many words he wanted to say filling his head, his mind, his heart. Beautiful words, flowery words, promises he intended to keep. But in the end, he held her tight, meeting her thrust for thrust without ever tearing his mouth from hers. She came on him with a strangled cry, and he lost control, rocking into her, losing himself as she tightened upon him with such frenzied need that he could do nothing but give her everything. All of him. He surged inside her, filling her with his seed before he could withdraw as he should have done.
“I love you,” he whispered in Boritanian, having lost his capacity for all other languages.
His heart was hers.
And one day, Deus willing, his throne.
CHAPTER19
Pamela was dreaming of lips on hers. Masterful and knowing lips. Lips she knew too well, that belonged to the man she loved. He had come to her late, after she had returned from the Torrington ball where Virtue had made her debut as the Duchess of Ridgely with some small amount of tumultuousness, and they had made love once quickly and a second time slowly, savoring each other, steeped in sadness and tenderness.
The kiss lingered, found both corners of her mouth. Her jaw, the shell of her ear. And she realized it was real. She wasn’t sleeping, and nor was she dreaming.
Her eyes fluttered open to a world of shadows, Theo stroking her hair as if she were as fragile as the finest crystal. She cupped his cheek and felt wetness kiss her palm along with the coarse bristles of his beard, and she knew.
He was leaving.
The day she had been dreading had arrived.
He was fully dressed, perched on the edge of her bed as he so often did before he left her chamber before the servants would be about. But his posture was different. His shoulders were stiff. He exhaled a gusty, heavy sigh.
“Today, then?” she whispered, voice breaking on the words, heart breaking at the knowledge.
“You have my solemn vow that I will do everything in my power to return to you,” he murmured instead of answering her directly.
These were promises she knew he meant to keep, but also that were likely destined to be broken. His uncle was a vile, cruel, and powerful man. And he had assumed the throne of Boritania, with all its wealth and privilege. Theo was but one man, rightful king or no. He hadn’t an army behind him. The danger he faced terrified her.
And it was that fear for him that thickened her throat, threatening to choke her.
“I worry for you,” she said, stifling a sob that threatened to rise. “After all you endured before at that evil man’s hands…”
“Hush.” His lips feathered over hers. “I am older now. Wiser. Stronger. I’ve many others behind me. Together, we will triumph over evil. Good will win.”
But good hadn’t won, had it? Not before, nor since, and that was what had brought Theo here to England, to London. Evil had left him scarred and cold, embittered and angry. Evil had killed his mother and torn apart his family and stolen his birthright.
It amazed her that he could possess such tenderness where she was concerned. That he loved her so selflessly when the world had only shown him callous cruelty.
