“Am I doing it right?” she asked, testing, taunting, teasing. When she firmed her grip, he saw stars.
“Perfect, you’re perfect,” he assured her. But he couldn’t take much more. He needed more but not like this. Not this still-hesitant, too unsure touch. He needed to bury himself in her and loose the beast within.
“You said some wives take their husband into their mouths?”
His heart stopped beating. When his eyes snapped open, he saw she actually considered giving it a go. Swearing a blue streak, he surged up. Eliza smothered a shriek and then laughed as he laid her back on the rug before the fire. The minx had been teasing? Without a moment’s warning, he parted her robe and lifted the indecently short nightshirt she wore. Dragging her forward on the old carpet, her hips closer to his, Darius dropped to his elbows and pushed her thighs open to his gaze. He didn’t need to test her readiness, it showed in the glistening moisture on her pale skin. He rose up and in one strong, sure movement, he plunged into her warmth. She cried out her pleasure and Darius’s groan was triumphant.
“You said you wanted me to touch you,” Eliza commented with tiny panting breaths, her face aglow in the light of the flames.
“I did say that. I just never said where the touching would take you, dear wife. Now it’s time to take your just desserts. If you attempt to drive me mindless, then expect me to repay the favour in kind.”
*
One thought, no, one notion, pounded through Darius’s body along with his blood as he held himself over his wife, as he moved so slowly and torturously, they both groaned. She trusted him. It wasn’t just a need for self-preservation and that of her family that stuck her to his side. The way her eyes sought him out in the room, the way she probably didn’t even realise how she gravitated to his orbit again and again no matter if they were taking breakfast or walking the snowy grounds.
Both misfits in an unfair world, it was almost as if their souls were destined to find each other that day in the forest. Like Fate had finally done something good for Darius instead of cruel.
Time stood still as he stopped and stared at her. His wife. His Eliza. Colour rode high on her cheeks and her breath came short and out of control. When she looked up to meet his gaze, a question in her glazed blue eyes, she relaxed and smiled, lifted her thighs just a fraction higher while her hands drifted lower over the skin of his ruined back to stop and squeeze his buttocks. With a grasp he wouldn’t have credited her with two weeks ago, she pulled hard so he was once again buried deep within her.
“Are you driving me mindless yet?” she asked, shifting beneath him so her inner muscles contracted.
The stars returned to his vision and he pumped into her until she could no longer draw breath at all, until the mischief in her gaze was replaced by simple pleasure and then longer still after she cried out and her body tightened around him.
The climax that washed over him as he penetrated deeper and deeper seemed to steal his very being along with the solid wall he’d built around his emotions at the tender age of fourteen. He’d promised to never let anyone in, never let anyone take another piece of his heart that they weren’t willing to replace with a piece of their own. As he poured his seed and his soul into her scalding heat, he fancied that Eliza hadn’t simply taken a small piece of his heart, he’d give it all to her if only she asked for it.
Chapter Twenty-Six
This time was different. Not just different for Eliza but she could feel the subtleties in Darius also. They were still joined, his sweat-slicked body pressing her into the Aubusson at her back and as she stroked the hair at his neck, she smiled and then laughed.
“If you’re not mindless, then that was only earth-shattering for me,” he mumbled against her shoulder.
She laughed again. “Earth-shattering is a good way to put it.”
Her body twinged everywhere, her hips stretched, her cheeks and chin tingled from Darius’s whiskers and her hands burned hot from the warmth of his body. She’d never known a happiness or contentment quite like it. “I wish we could stay like this.” Were they the same words she’d spoken the day before? The thought kept coming back again and again to offer her hope.
It was Darius’s turned to chuckle as he raised himself to his elbows. “We’re lucky we didn’t attract an audience with your squeals.”
She tensed, forgetting exactly where they were. In the library in a house where the men came and went into any room they pleased. Thank God the children were sleeping three floors above and were unlikely to hear… “I did not squeal. Ladies do not squeal, I’ll thank you to know.”
“Oh, you squealed. You also squeaked.” He kissed her cheek. “You groaned and moaned.” He kissed her chin. “You loved every second of it, my lady.” He punctuated the last word with a long lick of her neck and an undulation of his pelvis.
Her insides verily quivered and the weightiness in her middle that had evaporated into pure bliss re-awoke. “Will it always be like this?” she asked before recalling what Darius had said about not needing a wife, only offering his protection and friendship, a roof over her head.
He didn’t seem to reflect upon his own previously spoken words as he nipped her shoulder with his teeth. “I forgot myself and didn’t withdraw this time. We cannot let that happen again.”
Confusion caused a frown to replace
