Page 41 of The Lady's Guide to Marrying a Viscount
To submit might be his undoing, but he’d run mad unless he had her.
He’d been clear regarding Hugo. It was to be all over between them. Whatever hope Geneviève had harbored in that direction would cease. She’d let Hugo down gently. Find herself some other man.
Thinking further ahead was impossible.
She bent one knee, then the other, returning them to a position from which she could rise. Emerging from the water, she stood very still, facing away from him, rivulets of water trickling down her plump, rounded buttocks. Her body was shiny-wet, the elegant curve of her spine arching into her lower back, her delicate waist, and the generous splay of her hips.
She half-turned her cheek, surveying him through wet lashes, and he understood. All along, she’d known he was there. She’d been taunting him, waiting to see what he would do.
He should have realized, but what difference would it have made? Almost as soon as he’d entered, he’d abandoned any thought of leaving.
Stepping out, she didn’t pick up her towel. Instead, she faced him fully, presenting herself—entirely naked, entirely wet, entirely vulnerable. From the ebony fur at the apex of her thighs to her heavy, tip-tilted breasts, she was every red-blooded man’s dream.
Still carrying the sponge from her bath, she held his eyes as she came forward, water dripping from her body. She stroked thesponge upward from her belly, squeezing out its suds upon her right breast, then rubbing its moistness across her nipple.
Drawing it away to reveal the constricted peak, she said, “Don’t you want to touch me?”
Mallon feared his voice would break. He’d never wanted anything more in his life.
Pulling the towel from his waist, she let it drop to the floor. Looking down, a devilish smile played upon her lips. She brought the sponge to his groin, caressing the length of him with its soapiness, stroking back and forth. A ripple of raw pleasure made his muscles clench.
All the while, she kept her head tilted back, looking into his eyes, daring him to take what she offered.
Blood pounding, his control broke, and he dragged her to his chest. Bending his head, he took her mouth. No tender meeting of lips but a kiss of all-devouring hunger. Answering in kind, she opened to him, curling her tongue over his.
Dropping the sponge, she wound her arms about his back, clinging to him, moaning as his hands found the lush curve of her bottom—satin-soft and slippery from her bath.
It was just what he’d wished to avoid, a woman having power over him.
Power to hurt him.
For what if this moment meant nothing to her, while the hunger burning in his soul meant everything?
And then those thoughts melted away, as fire blazed through him.
He was stronger, physically—could have her by force, if he wished, lifting her onto his manhood andtaking her pressed against the wall. Her strength was of a different sort. She was tenacious, independent, audacious! Intensely carnal. Luxuriously sensual.
A sound emerged from Mallon’s throat more animal than human. He’d never been so swollen with lust, so thick and hard.
The only way to be rid of his obsession was to bed her. Only then would the torment end.
She needed him inside her!
To pound away the yearning, consuming her, until she knew nothing but blinding ecstasy.
He was everything that Hugo was not, and it was he her body craved. Something unknown whispered that her heart desired him, too. From the moment he’d lifted her onto his horse, she’d known. In the library, too, she’d wanted him to ravish her—to cleanse her of Slagsby’s foulness through the heat of his passion. The day they’d spent in the cart, she’d been fevered with longing.
Even on the train, she’d known he was unlike any man she’d met before. The attraction between them was more than physical. It was a meeting of souls—made of the same rare mineral, brittle-hard and hidden deep, yet yielding when molten.
And the way he spoke of the moor! She wanted that same ardor for herself, for him to worship her as devoutly as he did the landscape of his birth.
She didn’t give a rat’s arse about the Baroness de Boulainville! Or care a fig for any of thosehateful women and priggish, lecherous men. She saw how empty her wishes had been. To think that marriage to Hugo would change anything.
She’d been clinging to an illusion, born of her desperation to belong. Château Rosseline had never been hers. Her home—the place in which she might be truly loved—was not in that far off place.
She hoped, she believed, home might be with Lord Wulverton. It was he she must have, and she wanted him to yearn for her in the same way. Something in his gaze made her believe that, if she was his, she’d be cherished, protected, and loved unconditionally.
His kiss was growing more insistent, while his hands claimed her firmly, rolling the tender flesh of her buttocks between thumb and forefinger, pinching the underside, making her sigh into his mouth. His manhood was pushing against her belly, the tip moist.
