Page 36 of His Brazen Tart
“Tell me you’re mine,” she commanded, gaining the barest entry past the tight ring of flesh. “Tell me you’ll never leave me. Tell me you love me.”
Piers’ entire body shook with the force of the climax building in his loins and threatening to spill at any moment. She had slowed her strokes around his cock, but every nerve ending was attuned to her, shuddering and lighting up with sensation. It wouldn’t take much to finish him off.
“I’m yours,” he proclaimed, arching his back to push fully into her grip. “I will never leave you, and I love you. Joan, please!”
Her hands fell away so abruptly that he lurched toward the bed, held up only by the cords around his wrists. The sound of the crop hitting the floor was followed by the slackening of his bonds. He fell forward, using his hands to brace himself on the bed. At first, he could only stand there and take deep gulps of air, fighting to calm the turmoil churning in his middle. He was certain that even the slightest brush of his cock against the counterpane would set him off in an embarrassing display.
Joan came into view, climbing onto the bed completely disrobed. His chest ached at the sight of her, naked and beautiful and his. All his.
She lay back against the pillows and spread her legs, revealing the wetness making her dark curls and the pink circle of her opening glisten. His little tart was aroused by what she’d just done to him. It was just as he’d suspected from the first; they were perfectly matched. A pair that belonged together, however depraved it might make them.
“Come to me,” she whispered, beckoning to him with an outstretched hand.
Piers couldn’t deny her if he tried. Overcoming the weakness in his legs, he lurched onto the bed. He reached out and took hold of her ankle, yanking her across the counterpane toward him. She slid toward Piers with a shocked gasp, then a groan as he fell on her, seeking her lips with his.
He moaned into her mouth, the sound tangling with her own breathy sigh. She arched into him, pushing against his erection and teasing him with what was to come. He drank from her mouth like a man starved, having missed the taste, the feel, the very essence of her.
“I need you, too,” she whispered, kissing along his jaw toward his ear. “Take me, Piers. Take me now.”
He lifted her legs, pushing them up toward her chest, and entered her with one sharp stroke. She cried out, and locked her ankles at the back of his neck to hold him there. Piers rested in her for a few breaths, fighting for time his body didn’t want to allow.
He rolled his hips, angling himself to stimulate the bud of her clit. She trembled, her slick heat clenching around him and holding him deep. Slow and steady, he rocked into her, seeking the deepest parts of Joan, wanting to touch every dark, hidden place. There was something novel about being inside her this time, the moment sweetened by knowing he would never be with anyone else for the rest of his life. Seeing as how he could happily die cradled inside her, Piers found it a welcome circumstance.
He quickened his thrusts when Joan’s cries became higher and sharper, her insides quivering around him in a hint at her impending climax. Joan raised her hips, her heels digging into his neck in a sign of her urgency. She was lost to her own pleasure, moaning and writhing beneath him, her cheeks beautifully flushed. Piers kept his gaze on her face as she came, her lips parting and her eyes widening as her sheath contracted and pulsed around him in powerful spasms. She pulled him over the edge with her, and with a final thrust he seated himself inside her and spilled, his hips snapping and his entire body convulsing with the force of a magnificent finish.
They melted into one another, panting and clinging to each other with trembling limbs. Joan kissed his temple and whispered sweet words he could hardly decipher through the haze clouding his mind. It wasn’t a chaotic sort of feeling; quite the opposite. For the first time in his life, Piers felt completely, utterly at peace.
He turned onto his back, pulling Joan with him so that she rested against his chest. She wrapped him in her arms and legs and lay in his hold, her breaths slowly changing from swift and panted to slow and nearly silent.
Piers trailed absent hands through her mussed hair and closed his eyes, realizing that this would be his life going forward. No more illicit arrangement or discreet affairs. No more services rendered for funds he didn’t truly need. No more shunning the intimacies he had thought he could live without. As it happened, he couldn’t live without them, or Joan.
“Have I proven myself now, you little tart?” he teased.
He cracked an eye open to find her smiling at him, her face still flushed from their exertions, her eyes bright. “Most thoroughly, indeed. I will marry you, and you’ll never be rid of me. If you thought I made you want to tear your hair out before … prepare yourself. Life with me will not be easy.”
Piers chuckled and kissed her crown. “I think you are the one who has underestimated the hardship that will be life withme.”
She giggled and nuzzled his chest. “We shall argue often.”
“You will win every time,” he drawled, rolling his eyes.
“As is proper. But we’ll always make up. When you are wrong, I will punish you as I just did, and you will accept it like a good husband.”
Piers rolled onto his side to face her, gathering her closer. “If that is to be my punishment, then I shall be mischievous often and happily. But, never forget who you are marrying. You won’t be the only one doling out punishments. If your past behavior is any indication, I will have my hands full with you.”
Joan sighed. “It sounds like the perfect marriage to me.”
Piers smiled. It did, indeed, sound perfect.
Epilogue
London, 3 months later …
Lady Mary Caulfield, Dowager Countess of Rodingham, pasted a wide, false smile upon her face and held her champagne glass aloft as the umpteenth toast was offered in honor of the nuptials of Sir Piers and Joan. It wasn’t that her happiness for one of her dearest friends wasn’t genuine. She, Miranda, Maud, and Joan had been friends all their lives, and the state of widowhood had bonded them tighter over the years. They had all married relatively young and been left to fend for themselves in a world that held limited opportunities for those of their sex.
She had witnessed first Miranda, and now Joan, find love in their second marriages, and couldn’t be happier for her dear friends. Unlike Mary, her friends hadn’t enjoyed love matches their first time around. Miranda’s marriage had been cordial but distant, and both Joan and Maud had hinted at horrific abuses at the hands of their late husbands. But Mary had fallen head over heels in love with the Earl of Rodingham at the tender age of nineteen. Their whirlwind romance culminated in a lavish, beautiful ceremony at St. George’s.
Three long years had passed since Rodingham’s death, and her grief had never subsided despite the assurances of friends and family that she would heal. In her experience, grief never grew smaller. Rather, life grew to encompass new places, people, and experiences, outgrowing the grief day by day, year by year. But the pain was as sharp as ever.
