“‘Tis smooth,” I observed, astonished. I stroked both hands over him, gentle as I dared. “Like warm silk, until here.” Where the raspy, faintly wiry black hair began at the base.
“Cherry.” A gritted word, my name.
I looked up, into eyes smoldering with such controlled intensity, and could not stop the impish desire no matter how hard I tried. Leaning forward, I pressed my lips to the head of his shaft. A kiss, no more, and a dare of my own making.
I underestimated what it would do to the man.
He moved so quickly, I had no opportunity to truly analyze the taste of him—salty, a little bit musky—before he lifted me bodily, wrenching me away from his flesh and higher on the bed. His skin had darkened, his eyes blazing with something wholly different—something I could not read, had no rules to tell me how.
Suddenly, I was upon my back, my legs splayed and held so beneath his hands. He knelt between them. His shaft thrust proudly between his thighs, trousers bunched at his knees. That muscle leapt in his jaw, a tic that spoke as to the level of restraint echoed in the hard sting of his fingers on my softer flesh.
That I was exposed, my most intimate flesh laid bare for him, was a concern only partly entertained. He had seen me before, after all, and I confess to being swept away by the moment. Raw aggression and poignant need; every note of pain merged with pleasure, every rough touch with a gasp.
My body was too hot, my senses wrapped up too tightly.
I knew what it was I wanted, but I had never asked before, and I would not beg.
I closed my eyes. It did not please him.
“Look at me,” he demanded.
I would not.
His nails dug into my thighs, earning a shuddering exhale. “You will look at me when I take you.”
I cried out, a mewling sound that frothed with need and shame combined, but I did look at him. The satisfaction this carved into his taut features stripped me of that shame—in his approval, I found a kind of serenity.
He bent, looming over me with such abject grace that I wanted to weep; he truly was beautiful. Even with the appalling scars crossing his back, with the devilish eyes that did not match, even the cruel shape of his mouth—he was a man sculpted of such strength and beauty.
The hot skin stretched tight over his shaft tapped my most intimate flesh, and I jerked in surprise. In apprehension.
In aching, wild craving.
“Beg me.” His voice rubbed against places inside me no voice should have the measure of, dark and decadent and so unyielding.
I fisted my hands into the sheets before I gave in to the urge to touch him. My lashes lowered, hid whatever I feared he could read within my gaze. “No.”
“Beg me, Countess.”
A streak of pain no fleshly wound could match. A rise of anger that only fed my wicked need. I opened my eyes to glare into his. “No!”
He shifted, and that hot skin brushed mine once more. A gasp tore from my throat, my hips rose of their own accord and I watched his dark lashes flare as my wet flesh found his, dragged so deliciously that my gasp turned to a moan.
A hand came down by my temple, clenched in the bedclothes so tightly that the knuckles gleamed white.
He lowered his head, sealed the distance between us until my hips cradled his, my breasts cushioned his hard chest, and I was suddenly, deeply aware of him in every way. His heat, his physique. His fragrance.
Every way, that is, but that which I craved.
“Do it,” I demanded between clenched teeth.
Hawke’s mouth turned lazily crooked.
Angry, he was intimidating. Challenging and effortlessly in charge, he was appealing.
This? This laconic smile devastated.
And when he dragged himself across my wet, empty flesh, when he stroked the length of his hard shaft over that most sensitive part between my legs, I groaned with the deliciousness of it. And with the ache that he refused to fill.
“Hawke!”
“Beg me,” he said again, a low growl. “Beg me to defile you, Countess.”
“Why?” I managed, eyes closing tightly despite his earlier demand. “Why, damn you?”
“I would have this truth, at least, between us.” The head of him nudged against my opening, and I thought I might tear my own skin off with the want of it. He pushed, just a little. Just enough that the sensation spread out through my body like a wild flame.
Not enough. Not nearly close to enough.
“Beg me, Cherry.”
No shame could hold me. “Please!” It wrenched from me, wild and wanton. “Please, Hawke, please.” I pulled at the coverlet beneath me, tried to twist my hips but he pinned them too neatly. I inhaled a juddering breath. “I want you to take me. Defile me.” To my unwitting horror, tears burned behind my closed eyes.
Harsh fingers seized my chin, and my lashes flew wide to see the fraying remains of his control snap taut. “Watch me,” he gritted out from between clenched teeth.
I clenched his wrist in both of my hands, nails digging into his flesh. “Make me forget.”
He groaned tightly and pushed himself within my body. I braced for pain on some level, uncertain exactly what it was I expected, but all I felt was the fullness of it, the tightness as my flesh stretched to accommodate this new intrusion. It burned first, then eased to something wholly different—a heat with no end, a bottomless well of yearning.
A thousand new feelings rippled outward, drenching me in awareness, in blind need. “Yes!” I cried, triumph and encouragement.
Hawke moved within me, and it was as if everything I felt expanded. Heightened. In and out, he thrust himself within me with a rhythm that wound my body tighter, drove me further and further into madness, until I dug my short nails into his back and held his sweat-damp body to mine.
He grunted at the act, threw his head back on an animalistic roar when I dragged one hand down his side. I don’t know if I drew blood; I did not care. I
For a brief moment in time, I was lust and need and wicked pleasure, and I cared for nothing else.
Hawke pushed himself up on rigid arms, filled me so completely as his gaze crackled. In my wild state of mind, I swore that his eyes had gone blue once more. Then I ceased to care about anything but the fingers he wrapped tightly about my throat, the beautifully harsh set of his features as he held me down and drove me to untold pleasures, my own spiraling hedonism taken far beyond anything I could have imagined.
When my release took me again, it was to the echo of Hawke’s ragged groan, a pulsing ache, and the sensation of something hot and wet sliding over my hip.
I was at a loss.
What was the propriety of those moments after a tryst? Was I expected to gather my things, thank him graciously and leave?
Would he want more than that? Less?
Fanny’s hours and hours of tutelage had never covered this. Hawke sat at the edge of the bed, his back to me, and fastened the trousers he’d pulled back up his legs. Whether to spare me the sight of his nude body or for some other reason, I did not know. I could not tell.
