Page 21 of The Rose and the Earl

He eased his thumb deeper, and when she took it to the back of her throat while simultaneously clenching around the other hand he’d placed at the slick, wet slit in the middle of her curls, she was rewarded with groan.

“That’s a good girl,” he rasped as her mouth puckered around the base of his thumb.

She gazed up at him from beneath her lashes as she let her mouth slip to the tip of his nail…and then sucked it again, sliding her wet mouth to the base. She repeated the motion once more, as it seemed to please him, and then on the third time her eyes widened and her body tensed whenheplaced his finger inher. To the first knuckle, the second, the last. She squirmed slightly as she became accustomed to the foreign intrusion. But then he began to move his hand in rhythm with her mouth, and the finger sliding in and out of her slick heat wasn’t as much an intrusion as it was a necessity.

Sheneededhim there, inside of her. Filling her. Building that pressure. Building, building, build–

“Look at me,” he demanded, and she did. “I want to see you when you orgasm for the very first time. When all that pleasure floods your veins, and you contract around me, all hot, clenching velvet. When your vision blurs, and you forget your name, I want you to look at me. Atme, Annabel. Only at me.”

He worked another finger within her, and her hips took over, jerking forward to meet his hand in a pulsing dance that might have made her feel ashamed of her wanton actions if she wasn’t drowning in desire.

Wrenching his thumb free of her lips, he reached down and took his own hardness into his palm before he slammed his mouth onto hers in a greedy kiss that she responded to with an animalistic desperation, her nails leaving tiny crescents in his chest as he drove them both to the peak of a seaside cliff comprised of jagged rock with a restless, rolling ocean waiting for them below.

Ezra’s jaw went taut. His eyes darkened to slate.

He growled her name.

She cried out his.

They both leapt into the tumultuous sea together.

As Ezra absentlystroked Annabel’s hair while she slept, her face tucked into his chest and her knees tucked adorably between his legs, he felt…strange.

There was the quiet hum of a body well satisfied, of course. While he’d used his own had to bring himself to release, she’d been the driving force behind all of his desire. He hadn’t come that hard in…well, ever. Whether he was inside a woman or out.

No, that wasn’t it.

Neither was he ill or suffering the effects of too much brandy, as surely their display of physical exertion had burned every ounce of liquor from his blood.

He felt…it was…perhaps…

Contentment.

His hand paused at the end of a silky blonde curl as the realization hit him like a cartful of bricks over the head. He, Lord Ezra James Harold Washington, Earl of Whitmore, was…contended. In a way that all the gambling, and the drinking, and the womanizing had never made him.

His vices were used to fill an empty void inside of him. He wasn’t quite sure when it had appeared, or why, but he did know that when he rolled the dice, or bet on the gray mare, or went to bed with a bottle of brandy in one arm and a redhead in the other, the void was temporarily filled. But here, now, with Annabel nestled in his arms…therewasno void. There was no piece of him that was missing. No part that felt empty. He was fulfilled.

Shefulfilled him.

This unexpected, outrageously brazen, quick-witted, beautiful woman.

She was what he hadn’t even known he was lacking.

And oh, what a bloody terror that was!

But it was also comforting. Because perhaps hewasn’tthe great, abysmal failure his family had painted him out to be. Perhaps…perhaps he merely needed the right person by his side to succeed.

When Annabel stirred, he kissed her temple, and even that gesture of kindness without want for something in return felt strange to him. But it also felt right.Shefelt right, snug against his side while the crackling fire kept them warm.

The hour was late, and she was tired. He’d let her sleep for a little while…and have her back, safe and sound, before anyone was the wiser. Then he go to the damned dinner party, whether she wanted him to or not, and court her properly as a lady of her station deserved. He’d win the favor of her family, and shock his own when he proposed. Because if this wasn’t love, then it was the closest he was ever going to fucking get, and he wasn’t about to let it slip through his fingers.

When you had a good hand, you held onto it. Even when everyone and everything was telling you to let go, you held on. For you recognized the value in what you had. How rare it was. How special. How every turn and twist in the universe had to come together in just the right way to get you thosespecific cards at that specific moment in time.

Annabel was his ace of hearts.

She belonged, he thought, with a surge of possessiveness, tohim. Just as soon as he convinced her of the same, which he’d do tomorrow at Clarenmore Park. A Christmas engagement, and wasn’t that nauseatingly romantic? His mates were going to have a good laugh at all this. But he didn’t care, because he had the woman he wanted. The woman he hadn’t even known he was waiting for. Or hewouldhave her, once she accepted his proposal.

It was the best idea he’d ever come up with. Genius, really. He couldn’t wait to see the expression on his father’s face. But then, without meaning to, Ezra made a most regrettable error. He fell asleep. And as they tended to do, particularly the most important ones, his best laid plan went straight to shite.

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