Page 71 of The General's Gift
He braced one hand on the wall beside her head, the other tilting her chin until she had no choice but to meet his stare. His thumb skimmed her mouth, then mapped the line of her throat, halting at the frantic beat beneath. He lowered his mouth until it hovered a breath from hers, his stubble rasping her cheek.
He was closing the distance, poised to claim her. She flattened her palm to his chest, right over the violent thud of his heart.
Hawk stilled.
It wasn’t an army that barred him. It was her. Only her. Her touch was delicate, but it pinned him more surely than a regiment of bayonets.
She didn’t speak. And in the silence, the air thickened between them—dense, suffocating, alive.
Her hand slid lower, gliding over the rigid plane of his chest, down his stomach, and then fell limp at her side.
“I surrender, Alexander,” she whispered.
“You play a dangerous game. You don’t even know the rules.”
She caressed his cheek. “Then show me.”
The last of his restraint shattered. His lips crushed hers, hard, desperate, his kiss tasting of port and hunger and nights of denial. He drove her into the bookshelves, tomes rattling as his weight caged her, his body crushing her softness. She yielded instantly, melting into him.
His hands roved—anchoring her waist, spanning her ribs, climbing until he caught the swell of her breast through thin fabric. She gasped into him, and he drank the sound, deepening the kiss until they were nothing but lips and tongue and heat.
Her knees buckled. He caught her, one rough hand yanking up the hem of her camisole, baring hot skin, the other clamping her thigh. With a guttural sound, he hooked her leg high around his hip, fitting her against him.
He swallowed her whole. Surrender, once given, could never be taken back.
“I want you. Not the Duke of Leighton. Don’t send me away.”
He kissed the side of her face, took her earlobe between his teeth, grazed the seams of her lips. Branded every inch of fair skin with his mouth. “He will be good to you, he will make you happy. He is young, titled, well-liked—”
“He is not you.”
Impossible. Hawk could only hold her long enough to let her go.
Air tore through his lungs, his body strung too tight. The book was still between them.
Hawk returned it to her hands. “What did you imagine, Celeste? Did you touch yourself? Did you wish for me?”
He brushed her lips. Her skin burned softly beneath his calloused palms. The book trembled in her grasp. If she longed for soft verses and tender vows, let her learn her mistake. Hewould give her the truth of him—ruthless, consuming, merciless—and she would recoil. Better she hate him for honesty than cling to the fantasy of a gentle youth he could never be.
He hoisted her onto his desk, scattering papers and quills to the floor. She gasped, skirts spilling over the edge, hands scrambling for balance. Hawk’s heart battered his ribs.
“Read to me,” he said, his voice rougher than he intended, but he didn’t care.
She had torn his order to shreds, slipping past every defense, tainting every hour with the torment of her nearness. Now she would feel the fire she stoked in him.
He dragged his chair close, placing himself directly before her. From here, her legs draped over the desk like an offering. Close enough to breathe her fever, close enough to watch her chest stutter and rise.
She opened the book. Her lashes lowered, then fluttered up again. “Her heart raced as her fingers drifted slowly along the edge of her bodice, teasing the lace—”
Hawk tugged the silk of her camisole up her thighs, baring smooth skin inch by inch. She gasped, the book wobbling in her grip.
Hawk’s mouth curved. “Don’t stop.”
“She slipped her hand beneath the folds of her gown, fingers gliding knowingly into damp softness—”
Hawk ran his rough hand up her calf, savoring the silk of her skin. Her words faltered, air catching on the syllables. He followed the curve of her leg upward, her knee trembling, until he opened her thighs and claimed the space between them.
The words she had been reading were not fit to pass her lips—but her body’s response to his touch, her trembling surrender, was sanctity and sin in the same breath.
