Page 144 of The Lyon Whisperer
He smoothed his hands over her back. She felt so good in his arms. So right. “Shh, darling. It was only a dream.”
His words did nothing to alleviate her distress. “I finally realized you had left me there because you no longer wanted me as your wife. I went to your townhome on St. Richard’s Street to beg you to take me back and you laughed. You wouldn’t even let me past the front door. You said it was all a game. You said you never wanted me as your wife and left me standing on the stoop.
“All around the square, people stared and laughed. Lady Tully was there, and Lord Selbie. Even Mr. Hoby pointed and laughed.”
“Listen to me, Amelia. It was only a dream.”
She fisted her hands to gently pummel his chest. “But it’s true. You never chose me as your wife. You never wanted me. Not really.”
He grasped her shoulders and held her away from him.
Even in the deeply shadowed room, he read the stark expression on her face. He gave her a gentle shake. “Where is this coming from? You are my wife, now and forever more. Do you hear me?”
She drew a shuddering breath, then nodded.
He couldn’t help himself. He lowered his head and took her mouth in a tender kiss meant to convey the truth in his words. “You are mine, Amelia,” he breathed.
She nodded again, her tremors subsiding.
It was time for him to return to his own bed.
“It’s late. You need your rest,” he forced himself to say. “Shall I leave?”
She shook her head.
On the cusp of profound relief, a primitive need to show her just how much she belonged to him rose up inside him. Tamping the latter down with a will of steel, he swept the bedcovers aside. “I’ll stay until you fall asleep.”
After she lay down, he moved to the far side of the mattress and stretched out atop the night-chilled bedcovers. He had told her long ago he would never enter her chamber uninvited to claim his husbandly rights, and he would keep that promise if it meant he suffered with a state of semi-arousal all night.
Amelia did not cooperate. She reached for him, kicking the sheets down to her ankles, and clung to him like a second skin. Whether by accident or design, her nightshift had ridden up and she twined her bare legs with his.
He groaned as his manhood, already half engorged, swelled to life. Perhaps he should have donned drawers.
She nuzzled the underside of his jaw with the cold tip of her nose, pressed kisses to his throat, toyed with the hair at his nape and shifted her torso against his so her breasts grazed his chest in a tortuous, steady rhythm. The thin lawn of her nightshift did nothing to disguise the pucker of her nipples.
He lost the battle with himself. Dragging her close, he took her mouth in a voracious kiss.
She whimpered and parted her lips beneath his, hooking one sinewy leg over his hip to lock him to her.
“I didn’t mean to…never intended…”
She shushed him, pressing her mouth to his. Just as well, as he was beyond words.
He reached between them to explore her soft curls and the tantalizing secrets they guarded. A groan he could not contain sounded in his throat when he found her already hot and swollen and slick with feminine arousal. He reveled in the welcoming, silken flesh, in the heady knowledge he had evoked her sensual response.
She clung to him, her hips undulating, and pressed her sex into his touch in an urgent demand for release.
Somehow he resisted to draw out her pleasure, caressing her gently, circling her relentlessly, heightening her desire as his own insides tangled in a mass of longing and lust for the siren in his arms.
Without warning, she exploded under his touch.
In the midst of her climax, he took her, hardly able to breathe as the walls in her channel pulsed, squeezing around him.
“I love you, Chase, I love you,” she choked.
It was his undoing. He shouted an exultant cry as his own release crashed through him and he spilled his hot seed into her.
They lay, bodies entwined, breaths mingled, for a very long time.
