Page 50 of A Rogue's Rules for Seduction
“Maybe we should surrender to our fate and go under.” He brought his lips closer to hers, yet they didn’t touch. His exhalations were warm, scented with tobacco and whisky, but uneven across her face.
“I’ll never permit myself to sink,” she said, breathless.
“You can hold on to me.” His voice was as dark and fathomless as the sea. “I won’t let you drown.”
Unable to fight the pull of desire between them, she closed the distance. Her lips found his. Sensation jolted through her at the contact of skin to skin. For a moment, he held himself motionless, and the thought came, brief and humiliating and terrifying, that he didn’t want this. Didn’t wanther.
But then he groaned like a man losing a war, his fingers tightening their hold on her as his mouth opened to hers.
This was nothing like the kisses they had shared before as a courting couple stealing moments where they could. Those kisses had been soft and sweet and respectful sips of each other—yet now,now, there was nothing gentle or reverent about how they greedily devoured one another.
His lips were firm and commanding, and yet she would not yield easily, meeting his strength and demand with her own. She dug her fingers into the hair on the nape of his neck even as her hand—her whole body—trembled. Their tongues stroked against each other, the feeling echoing in deep and needy places within her.
“For so long,” he growled into her mouth, “I’ve ached to taste you again.”
“Am I... what you remembered?”
“No memory compares,” he answered between hungry kisses, “to the truth and fact of you.”
She rose up on her knees to angle herself better and take more of him. While he continued to cup her jaw, his other hand slid around her back to splay just above the curve of her arse. The inferno of his skin burned into her, chasing away the year-long chill that had settled into her bones.
Their bodies moved together, and he lowered back to lie upon the sand as she straddled him.
She gasped against his lips to feel his thick, hard cock press into the juncture of her thighs. He froze, as though holding himself back to spare her from his body’s need, but she would have none of it. Pushing her hips into his, she ground against his length, streaks of pleasure arcing through her at the exquisite sensation and brought even higher by his groan of ecstasy. He arched up, rocking into her with his heavy cock.
This was so much better than anything she’d ever experienced with her own hand, and far superior to her fevered imaginings of what it might be like if she and Dom ever surrendered to their desire. It was real and ungainly and crude and delicious.
God—if she had known what it would be like between them, this combustible, this glorious, she would never have let him go. She would have chased him across the globe, demanding the joining of their bodies.
“Jesus, Willa,” he snarled as he trailed his lips along her neck. “You’re... you’re so...”
“Iknow,” she panted. “And you’re...” She pressed her hips into him, his hand snug against her arse to bring them even closer together.
A moan escaped her at the perfect feel of him, but she was desperately frustrated by the layers of fabric between them.
It wasn’t enough. After what seemed a lifetime of waiting and wanting, she craved more of him. More for herself.
She grappled with her skirts, hiking them up. At the same time, she fumbled at the fastenings of his breeches.
“Willa—wait,” he rasped. “Willa. Stop.”
His hand grasped hers, stilling her.
She went motionless, though she gasped and shook andburned. Beneath her, his whole body heaved up and down.
“You don’t want to do this?” She hated the uncertainty in her voice and yet she couldn’t prevent it. At his jagged chuckle, she snapped, “Don’t laugh at me.”
“Lioness,” he said, his voice uneven, his Ratcliff accent strong, “if I laugh, it’s at myself, because I’ll never stop desirin’ you. There ain’tnothin’in the world I want more than to be inside you.”
Heat surged through her, centering between her legs and in her breasts. “But you stopped me.”
“’Cos,” he said, closing his eyes, “this is exactly thewrongthing for us to do.”
She sat up as the fire within her cooled to ice. Everything inside of her turned brittle and frozen, but that didn’t stop the throb of shame that pulsed in her veins. “I see.”
Her throat burned as she shook sand out of her skirts. “I’mthe one who ought to laugh at myself. Because, as wise as I thought I was, when it comes to you, I was and will always be a simpleton. The blame now belongs to me. I should have known better, but, ridiculous as I am, I honestly believed it might be different between us. That you wouldn’t humiliate me again.”
She forced out a laugh. “I ought to charge admission. ‘Come and see Willa Ransome, England’s Greatest Fool. Trying to make love to the man who abandoned her at the altar.’”
