Page 54 of Pirate's Intent
He eyed her for another moment, clearly discomforted by the conversation, before he said the last thing she expected. “Why?”
“Why?” She looked at him in surprise. “We are speaking about love, yes?”
“We are,” he confirmed softly, joining her. He took the ribbon and ran it through his fingers as though he had done it a hundred times before. “Why should we not, Hannah?” He met her eyes. “Why, if we feel such, should we turn from it?”
“Because of this.” She gestured at the bed and the walls. “Because of me.”
He perked a brow. “You?”
“Yes, me,” she repeated. “I am...broken.” She glanced from the rings and ropes to him. “I tried to spare you this. To not...become this.”
He narrowed his eyes in confusion before understanding dawned and mayhap a dash of relief and frustration. “That is why you broke our engagement? Why you turned me away?”
“Of course it is,” she murmured. “You helped me...saved me actually, during a truly difficult time in my life.” She touched his cheek and spoke from the heart. “While I loved the idea, I never should have said yes to your proposal in the first place, and for that I am sorry.” She shook her head. “You did not deserve a life like this...the depravity.”
She sighed and pulled her hand away. “Yet ironically, you took to piracy.”
“Did you think it was all you then?” he murmured. “You knew I found pleasure in it. Understood my need for it. Or so I assumed.”
“We were young,” she said. “Everything is exciting at that age.” She shrugged. “Intimacy.”
“Yet we never really shared intimacy, did we, Hannah?” He traced his finger along her jaw. “Not until now, and even then, it was but a fantasy.”
“So you see,” she murmured. “We are incapable...perhaps I am.”
“Have you ever been aroused without these fantasies?” He pulled her blanket away but kept his eyes with hers. “Do you think yourself incapable because you are broken, as you say?”
“I don’t know,” she whispered, referring to the only example she had. “I was not aroused by my husband, and that intimacy was how it should be.”
“Doubtful,” he said dryly, pulling off his shirt and boots. “But that is beside the point.”
Luke removed his trousers then reeled her close. “Have you ever simply been held, Hannah?” He tilted her chin until her eyes were with his. “It is not something you and I ever did, and I have long regretted that.”
“We had an understanding,” she murmured, overly aware of the way he felt against her. The heat of his body. His stiff cock against her soft flesh.
“Wedidhave an understanding.” He searched her eyes. “But I would like a new one.”
She peered at him curiously. “What did you have in mind?”
“More of this for starters.” He brushed his lips across hers. “And more of this.”
He lifted her until she wrapped her legs around his waist, then crawled onto the bed and laid her on her back. She lowered her legs and waited to be flipped or tied or a variety of other things, but instead, he remained over her. He cupped her cheek and brushed his lips across hers again before he deepened the kiss. This time it wasn’t angry and desperate but slow and sensual.
Lost in the taste of him, the feel of his tongue against hers, the warm glow that spread through her, she barely realized what she was doing. Touching him.Feelinghim. She ran her hands over his broad shoulders, the light dusting of hair on his chest, then she touched his strong back and tight backside.
He was so hard and hot and masculine.
The more they kissed, stroked, and touched, the more her excitement built along with something else. Something absent when they played their games. A blossoming warmth that intertwined with the lust.
“What do you feel now?” he murmured against her lips. He pulled back and searched her eyes. “Are you aroused, Hannah?”
“I am,” she said hoarsely, wanting more, desperate for what came next.
Again expecting him to at least order her arms above her head or to close her eyes, he instead continued as they had been. Passion mixed with lust as they kissed and touched, going somewhere far beyond anywhere she had ever been. There was no begging or pleading in agonizing anticipation but a building pleasure that made her whole body burn.
Just when she nearly said please not from habit but because she wanted him in her, part of her, he already seemed to know. He spread her thighs wider and pressed forward. Not harsh and demanding but slow and easy, drawing out the experience in a way she could never have imagined.
She moaned when he fully seated himself, then he kissed her. The combination of feeling him inside her and tasting him all at once made unexpected emotions bubble up. Excitement because she felt remarkably alive. Sad because they had waited so long to do this. That she had turned him away when this was possible. The main emotion, though, was most crippling. Most eye-opening. Most consuming.
