Page 39 of Unearthing the Smuggler's Heart
Every sound she made spurred him on to go farther, to taste more, to drive her to the very precipice of her own pleasure.
He could feel her body tensing, could feel the way her hips came off the bed and rocked as he worked. He stroked the pale flesh of her thighs on either side of his head, dizzy and intoxicated with it all. When he felt the muscles in her body begin to tense and quiver, he did not relent, and instead used his mouth to throw her right over the edge into oblivion, right into a sea of pleasure and sin.
He kept tasting her, kept holding her until her body stilled and a whimper of satisfaction sounded from her lips. He held her steady until her legs slackened and he heard her draw in a great gust of air.
With great reluctance, he began to let her go. He set her feet gently on the floor and rose to standing, his own muscles taut, wound so tightly, he thought they might snap. He stood before her in nothing but his trousers, a fine sheen of sweat coating his skin, and took in the vision of her greedily, exhausted in the wake of her pleasure.
"Mathias," she whispered, so softly he could have believed he imagined it, her dark lashes fluttering on her cheeks.
"Jade," he replied, inhaling a deep and steadying breath through his nose. "If you do not go, I am going to ravish you."
"Oh," she replied, opening her eyes and locking her gaze upon him, soft but steady. "Don't you want to?"
He choked on his own shock for a moment, too strangled and strained to reply to her. "Of course I fucking want to," he shot, digging his hands into his hair. "We both know that I want to and we both know that I should not."
"Why shouldn't you?" she asked, pushing herself up to sit, and reaching forward to touch his fingers, to thread her grip into his and tug him toward her. "Isn't that what men like you do? Isn't it what you're made for? To ravish girls so thoroughly, they will never be satisfied again? To ruin us with pleasure?"
He stared at her, uncertain what to make of that assertion. "I have no desire to ruin you," he told her, strained, unable to resist the urge to drift closer to her, to let his eyes sweep over her naked body, to slide the tips of his fingers over her pale skin.
"Yes you do," she replied softly. "And I want you to."
He groaned, a dignified part of himself, a whisper of his conscience, dying at that confession. He pushed her onto her back and climbed on her again, using one hand to dig into her hair as he kissed her and the other to undo the ties at his waist.
Maybe she doesn't know what she is asking for, that voice attempted to say to him. He freed himself from his trousers, kicking them to the floor, and pressed himself up against the slick, pleasured entrance of her core. The little voice was drowned to silence in the wake of something much darker and much stronger, something overpowering that drove him.
"Are you certain?" he groaned against her mouth, his hand wrapping around his shaft and teasing at the warm temptation of her entrance. God, he might actually die tonight.
"Yes," she whispered against his lips. "Yes, Captain."
That was enough. He plunged into her with more ferocity than he had ever intended, a sound of pure helplessness ripping from his throat as he buried himself into her, satisfying that primal drive that had overtaken his entire body. She cried out too, lurching forward to grip his shoulders and bury her mouth into the crook of his neck as her legs came up again to wrap around his waist.
"More," she said softly, so softly, as though she was afraid to ask for it. "More."
He couldn't have slowed himself down for all the gold in the world at this particular moment. He knew he was being too rough, too animalistic, but good God, he had wanted this for too long. The sensation of drawing in and out of her was sending his thoughts to pieces; everything scattered and shattered into brilliant, bright shards as he lost himself in her spell. Nothing existed but Jade and her hold on him.
She was meeting him thrust for thrust, her hips rising and rocking against his invasion, her grip on him tight and approving. By some miracle, his last shred of rationality broke through just before he exploded, just in that critical second before. He withdrew as fast as he could, dropping his face into the sweet curve between her breasts, his fingers digging into where he held her hips, and he attempted to stifle his roar of pleasure as he spent himself on that silky dressing gown, his voice lost in her flesh.
For a while there was nothing; no sound, no movement, no light. For a blissful moment he was held in her arms and there was absolutely nothing else in all the world. Then, ever so slowly, that world began to trickle back in. His senses began to return.
He tilted his head up to look at her, amazed that her fingers were still stroking his hair, that her embrace had not loosened in regret of what had just passed. She met his eye with a calm ease, no turmoil whatsoever boiling behind the green windows to her soul.
"Will you stay?" he heard himself asking, his own voice raw and shallow.
She nodded, the ghost of a smile finding its way to the corners of her lips. "Yes, Captain," she said sweetly. "I will stay."
CHAPTER17
Jade had not expected to sleep at all. The sensation of being held in Mathias Dempierre's strong arms, of the sweetness of his breath against her cheek and the gentle weight of his forehead against her temple was so foreign that she thought she could not possibly drift off to slumber. If anything, she would prefer to stay awake, just to savor it.
Besides, there was much to relive from the night. Much to dwell over. She had lain there just after and over and over, had drawn in cool night air through her nose, holding it for a moment before she released the butterflies that swarmed in her chest from her mouth. So much to remember forever. She had thought sleep a preclusion, an impossibility, after all of this.
And yet here she was, some hours away from her last coherent thought, drowning in the black ambiguity of the late hours of night. She was slowly becoming aware of where she was and with whom again, and not of her own volition.
She had been torn from a fitful slumber by the distress of the man next to her. He had moved suddenly, his body jerking as though he'd been shoved. His hands clenched into fists where they had been slack against her body, his knuckles grazing her ribs. When she turned up to speak to him, she found his face in an expression of agony, as though he was going through the most horrible pain.
"Mathias," she whispered, placing the flat of her hand to his chest. "Mathias, wake up."
His head twisted away from her, a mumble of resistance escaping his lips, the muscles in his body tensing as though bracing for another blow of pain.
