Page 44 of One Night with a Prince
For the first time in her life, she understood what he must be feeling. And to think thatshe was the one giving this pleasure to him was intoxicating. Perhaps she wasn’t entirely inept at pleasing a man. She stroked him harder. “Is that what you want?” Drunk with her own exhilarating power, she consciously echoed his earlier words. “Is it, Byrne?”
With a heartfelt curse, he threw his head back, the muscles in his neck stretched taut. “You know…that it is…you bloody, teasing…minx.” Reaching behind her, he snatched up the pair of drawers she’d tossed onto the table earlier and wrapped it about her hand and his aroused flesh.
“Damn…damn…damn!” he cried out seconds later as his seed, warm and thick like buttermilk, flooded her linen-bound hand.
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.htmlAs she witnessed the blood flush fill his face and heard his breath come raggedly from his throat, a strange awe stole over her. So even the fiercely controlled Byrne was human. Perhaps he was not so very controlled after all. Perhaps he was even capable of real feeling—
No, how could she even think it? Yes, he enjoyed lovemaking fully—what else could she expect of a man like him? But he would never go beyond that, a fact that he’d made clear in every act, every word. He wasn’t the sort of man to care for a woman beyond the bedchamber. His head lowered, and his eyes slid open. “Well, well,” he managed to gasp as his breathing slowed.
“For a woman who never before experienced pleasure with a man, you are…quite talented at giving it.”
Trying not to let the frank approval warm her, she dropped her gaze from his. “Am I?”
He wiped her hand clean on her drawers, then tossed them aside. “Oh, yes.” Bending to press his lips to her cheek, he murmured, “Time to move to your bedchamber, my sweet, where we can be more comfortable.”
A groan escaped her. He was not going to take this well, was he? “I…I would rather not,” she evaded.
“I’m tired, and you have to be at the club—”
“I don’t, I told you.” He nibbled her ear as he laid his hands on her waist. “And if you’re tired, we’ll sleep a while.” A teasing note entered his voice. “Making love is even better in the morning.”
“No, I can’t.” She drew back from him, her head lowered. She couldn’t look at him. “I…I just can’t.”
His fingers curled into her waist. “You can’t?” he said disbelievingly. “You mean, you won’t.”
She nodded.
Seizing her chin, he lifted her head until her gaze met his, now icy gray as a winter storm. “You never intended for us to share a bed tonight, did you? That’s why you jerked my mutton.”
“I…What?”
“You’re a cock-chafer,” he hissed. “You excite a man, then throw him out of your bed without giving him relief.”
“That’s not true!” she protested. “Idid give you relief!”
A muscle jerked in his jaw. “Yes, I suppose you did. In a fashion. But it wasn’t the kind of relief I wanted.”
She sighed. “Byrne, you have to understand—”
“No, I don’t. What are you so bloody afraid of, Christabel? That you might enjoy yourself? That you might discover you’re secretly as wicked as the rest of us whom you hold in such contempt?”
She dared not tell him that she couldn’t trust herself with him if she took him into her bed. But she could tell him some of the truth. If he could understand.
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
“I’m not like your other women, you know,” she whispered. “I’m not willing to take a man in parts. I can’t share your bed one day and blithely look the other way the next as you share another woman’s bed. It isn’t in my nature.” Drawing her chemise up to cover her breasts, she slid her arms through the sleeves. “And it isn’t inyour nature to be faithful to a woman, is it?”
He was silent a moment, his eyes boring into hers. And even when he spoke, his answer wasn’t an answer. “So you want marriage then.” He spat the word as if it were loathsome. She shook her head no. “I will never again place my future in the hands of some man who will end up—”
“Betraying you?”
She nodded.
A familiar calculating gleam entered his eyes. “Ah, but that’s exactly why what I offer is better than any marriage.” His hands rubbed her thighs, slowly, caressingly…temptingly. If Satan were a seducer, that was how he’d do it, too. “We can enjoy our pleasure without fearing that one of us will destroy the other—as spouses so often do. And when we tire of each other—”
“What if I don’t tire of you before you tire of me? Two people needn’t be married to destroy each other—just witness the havoc that Lady Caroline Lamb’s behavior has wreaked upon her lover Byron and her own family.”
He quirked up one eyebrow. “I somehow can’t imagine you threatening me with a knife at a dinner party.”
