Page 37 of A Kiss Gone Wylde
His grin faded. “I feel about the word ‘nice’, I imagine, the same way you feel about the word ‘like’. It’s more than nice, isn’t it, Benny?”
“Well, of course, it is. Don’t be a ninny!” Annoyed now at having been called out, she smacked his hand away. “Could you possibly be a bit more direct and less…verbose?”
“Then to be perfectly direct, Benny, I kept insisting—mostly to myself—that I couldn’t possibly love you,” he explained.
Her heart stuttered and seem to simply stop beating for a second or two. When it finally started again, it was too fast, too much.Is this what swooning is really like?If so, it was terribly unpleasant, and she couldn’t imagine why it had ever become fashionable to do so. It rather felt like dying, except one would get to experience the unpleasantness again and again throughout one’s life.
“Mostly, I think, because I didn’t really know how to define love,” he continued, “Surely love does not really strike a person out of the blue? And if it could, surely I would not be the man lucky enough to stumble upon the one woman in all of England—possibly in all the world—whom I could instantly and irrevocably fall in love with. That isn’t the way the world works, is it?”
If there was a point to all his exposition, he’d surely walked a circle around it no less than a dozen times.Like an old hound trying to get comfortable for his nap.“Are you asking if it’s possible to love me or telling me that it’s impossible that you ever will? I cannot tell and, I should warn you, it’s creating a terrible urge for violence within me, Payne.”
He reached out, his hand closing gently over her wrist, lightly stroking the bruises there as he pulled her close. When they were nose to nose, him all but doubled over and her standing on her toes, he—rather firmly— said, “I’m telling you, Benny, that I do not want to spend another night without you. There will be no more sleeping alone in the gold room. If that’s where you wish to sleep, fine. So be it. Be prepared for me to join you. Because I will not be separated from my wife—the wife I love—for any reason, be it my idiocy or her pride. Whither though goest and all that bit.”
For lack of anything better to say in the face of that somewhat threatening but also incredibly seductive and possibly life altering statement, she focused on the minutia of it. “I think that might be blasphemy.”
“Then add that to the list of all the other sins I plan to commit… starting now.” With one hand still holding her wrist, he placed her palm flat against his chest, directly over her heart. His other hand moved from the door, sliding into her hair and sending pins scattering to the floor. One slipped beneath the crack underneath, pinging on the marble floor.
The servants would be scandalized, Benny thought. She didn’t say so because she simply couldn’t breathe. First it was her heart that stopped and now it was her lungs. Romance really could be deadly.
Ducking her head and closing her eyes, did actually help. Without him directly in her line of sight, her lungs were no longer seized with paralysis. Somewhat breathlessly, she conceded. “I suppose I am a little proud.”
“I suppose I have been a little idiotic,” he answered.
“I love you more than a little.” It was a grudging admission. “I didn’t want to love you. I was not at all happy about it, in fact. But I couldn’t help it. It was just there and we sort of walked into it, didn’t we?”
“Yes, we did. And I’ll never be anything but grateful for that.”
As he’d spoken, he’d pulled her into his arms. Fully enwrapped by him, Benny leaned into the warmth, savoring the firmness of his chest beneath her cheek. “Is it terrible to ask you to take me to bed?”
“Yes,” he said, his voice rough and his eyes dark with desire. “It is terrible… beds are for boring lovers. And we’ll never be that. Besides, I can’t wait that long.”
It was all the warning Benny had. He simply scooped her up and carried her back to his desk. With one sweep of his arm, he sent everything on it crashing to the floor. She sat there, perched on the edge of it, basking in his hungry gaze. “What a rebel you are.”
“No more talking. No more playing… and no more games. You are mine, Benny, and like it or not, I am yours. Forever.”
Before Benny could even think to ask what he meant to do, he’d shoved her skirts up to her waist, exposing her to the cool air and to his roaming hands. Then he tugged the buttons at the front of her gown free and pushed the sleeves down so that her breasts were bared as well. She hadn’t bothered with stays that morning. They never did a thing to improve her figure anyway unless she padded them to the point of discomfort. It ought to have embarrassed her. There were servants in the corridor. It was the middle of the afternoon. There was bright light spilling through the curtains and she had no place to hide. He could see every part of her that would normally be hidden away. And with that, he could see every flaw that she despised, every imperfection that she bemoaned. All were visible to him.
But he was not content to simply look. His hands roamed freely over her—hungrily over her. Immediately, she responded to that. His need sparked her own. as did the remembered pleasures that had already passed between them. But there was comfort there, as well. Safety. She felt secure in his embrace, sheltered from the world outside and even from all the worry within.
When she felt the hard length of him against her, she shivered with anticipation. Eagerly and far more boldly than she had ever imagined she would behave, she reached out for him, grasping him, marveling at how his skin could be so velvety soft while the flesh beneath was rock hard.
He drew her closer to the edge of the desk and Benny knew what to do through some primal instinct. It was the most natural thing in the world to simply guide him, to grant him entrance into her body and to send them both sweeping toward the glorious release she knew was waiting for them on the other side.
But what happened next was not what she had expected from him. It was not gentle and tender as it had been before. Instead, it was needful, powerful. His hands gripped her hips so firmly she’d likely bruise from it. And shameful as it was, she enjoyed that. She liked feeling that he was driven to the very edge of control and perhaps a bit beyond it. There was a sense of power in it.
And then it reached such a fever pitch that thought was simply no longer possible. It was just bodies straining together. Soft cries and breathless moans as they climbed together toward the precipice.
She tumbled over that edge first, clinging to him desperately as the world simply spun away. He followed soon after. They remained where they were, locked together, leaning into one another like fighters needing a respite.
After the longest while, he drew back from her, and began to tidy her clothes.
“You’re a terrible ladies maid,” Benny said, smacking his hands away as she saw to the task herself.
“I’m better at taking your clothes off than putting them on you.”
“I should hope so,” Benny shot back. “It would be terribly insulting if the reverse were true.”
He grinned almost rakishly. “There’s greater incentive in the former than the latter.”
