Page 154 of Dukes for Dessert

Sebastian choked on a groan, but he obeyed her silent command, rocking his hips at first, testing her reactions with motions both careful and sure. Her name tore from his throat, raw and untuned, lost to the sounds of the storm gathering around them both.

She clung to him, lifting her other leg to take him deeper, hooking her calves around the curve of his muscular ass.

Sebastian didn’t kiss her. He didn’t croon sweet nothings or smooth at her hair.

He watched.

Every twitch of her muscles, every flutter of her lashes. When she parted her lips, and how fast her breath sawed in and out of her as he moved. Modulating his rhythm to her silent instructions, he went deeper, harder, faster until she was a wild, inarticulate thing only made of chaos and bliss. Her nails bit into his arms and raked down his back, her teeth bared at him more than once until he finally snarled back his reply, slamming his hips against hers in a merciless war for release.

Her ascension was like the train beneath them. Rhythmic, unstoppable, storming through her with all the speed man could muster, and letting every vessel and sinew, top to toe, aware of its ephemeral presence.

Dimly, she heard a guttural roar above her. Felt him clench and tremble as his motions became less measured and more frenzied.

Then they were clenched in a freefall like eagles, the ground rushing toward them.

Let it. She didn’t care. She could be dashed on the rocks and not feel a thing but the molten pleasure of her blood and bliss of his hot seed spilling against her womb.

Veronica was nothing but a limp puddle of exhaustion when his forehead finally came to rest against hers. They breathed together in the silence for a moment. Eyes open. Bodies joined.

After a tender kiss buttoned closed the wildness of their joining, he lifted himself away from her and went into the washroom. Returning with a cloth, he washed her, saying soft things she couldn’t understand, let alone reply to.

He left again and returned without the cloth to extinguish the lights and slide them both beneath the sheets. Arranging the covers around her, he made a nest with the curve of his body and pulled her into it.

Nestling in, Veronica realized she’d barely slept since London. Due to anxiety over the Wellers and the success of this plot…

Fear and uncertainty hovered in the cold outside of their cocoon. There was so much still unsaid between them.

“Don’t do that,” he breathed against the crest of her ear, nibbling at it without teeth.

“Hmmm?” She still couldn’t summon the strength to form actual syllables.

“Don’t start dreading tomorrow. The light will dawn, my lady, and all will be well. We will say the things we cannot say in the dark.”

That’s what he didn’t understand, she thought as she wriggled closer to his big body, allowing the hairs on the tops of his thighs to tickle her backside.

She could tell him anything in the dark. That she was becoming attached to him. That she’d been thinking of him. Mourning him. Missing him. Fantasizing about him. These were little secrets she could share under the cover of night.

But the light of day was for truths. And the truth was that Sebastian Moncrieff might think of her fondly as a one-time lover…

Veronica, however, would never stop yearning for the safety of his arms.

For this.

She would never stop wanting him, even as he walked away.

12

Veronica had awoken wrapped in Sebastian’s dark scent and the luxurious memory of their lovemaking. Momentarily, she’d forgotten that the world was waiting to tear them apart, until she reached over and found his side of the bed empty.

Now she raced as fast as a body was able down the dark, cramped hallways of the train, praying she wasn’t too late.

They were pulling away from Venice in the wee hours of the morning. A scant few passengers were up and about. They peered at her as if trying to figure out if she were a ghost or a madwoman as she ran, barefoot and clad in naught but her chemise and a belted velvet smoking jacket she’d found in his wardrobe.

What if it was already too late? What if she couldn’t change his mind? What if—

An arm snaked around her waist from behind, and she was hauled into a cabin with two benches facing the other. Only a stunned squeak escaped before a large hand clamped over her mouth.

“What the hell are you doing?” demanded a familiar voice from behind her.

---