“What was your dream about?” he asked as he climbed the padded stepladder they needed for the high bed.
“I dreamed that I lived in a house with over one hundred cats.”
Hugo chuckled, the sound low and sensual. “Maybe that was a premonition; I’d say Cailean is moving in that direction. Spread your thighs for me, sweetheart.”
Martha instantly complied, her sex already pulsing at the thought of what he was about to do.
He stroked up her thighs, his fingers grazing her mound. “I missed you today,” he said, his voice oddly tight.
Martha pushed up onto her elbows, trying to see his face. “Is everything all right, Hugo?” The candle was behind him, casting his face into shadow. He didn’t sound … right.
“Everything is fine, darling.” Hugo pushed her legs wider and pinioned her thighs with his forearms before opening her. He made a low growling sound. “More than fine,” he murmured.
And then he proceeded to tease orgasm after orgasm from her body.
Somewhere around the fourth or fifth, Martha grabbed his hair, needing to yank hard to stop him. “Hugo.”
He allowed her to pull his head back, but he still stroked her swollen lips with his fingers. “What?” he all but snarled.
Martha couldn’t see his face, but she could feel his glare.
“What is wrong?”
“Nothing is wrong.” He thrust two fingers into her and scissored them.
Martha cried out at the stretch exquisite, her hips bucking for more.
“Am I not giving you pleasure, Martha?”
“Of course you are giving me pleasure, but …”
“But what?” He began to pump her with deep, deliberate thrusts.
“But—” Martha gasped as his finger touched something exquisitely sensitive inside her.
“You’re so beautiful and responsive, Martha. It makes me happy to give you pleasure—to give you orgasms. Please, let me make us both happy.”
Martha wanted to tell him to stop—she wanted to know what was bothering him—but his mastery over her body was greater than her selfish desire for more.
He added a third finger, driving into her harder. Her hips lifted to meet each thrust and take him deeper. The sensation within her was subtly different than any other she’d experienced—more visceral and slower to build.
Martha bit her lower lip, but she couldn’t restrain the keening, primitive noises pouring from her mouth as he relentlessly drove her toward bliss.
“Let me hear you,” he ground out, his breathing hard from the sheer physicality of what he was doing to her. “Don’t hold back. Scream and yell; come apart for me.”
His words were the last straw and she shattered.
“Yessss,” he hissed as she spiraled out of control. “Come for your husband, darling.”
Martha lost track of time and was lazily drifting in a haze of pleasure when Hugo gently turned her onto her stomach and then lifted her onto all fours. “Up on your hands and knees for me, sweetheart.”
Once she’d complied he shoved her legs wider with his knee. “So beautiful.” His voice was almost feverish, but his hands were as steady and commanding as ever. “Rest your head and shoulders on the bed for me,” he said, gently pressing her down. “Yes, just like that.”
He had never taken her this way before—the way animals mated—and it felt wicked and primal to be so open and exposed to him.
“I wish you could see yourself, Martha,” he said, as if reading her mind. “You are entrancing.” He stroked the slick folds of her sex, his caresses almost hypnotic. “I ache for you, lover.”
Martha shivered at both his words and the sheer carnality of her pose. He probed her with the tip of one finger and her back arched as she shamelessly thrust her bottom against him, her knees spreading wider, her hips tilting.
He chuckled darkly. “Such a needy little thing, aren’t you?”
Martha wanted what he was offering too badly to care about her pride or modesty. “Yes, Hugo, I’m needy—for you.”
He pushed his thumb inside her and stroked something that made her whimper.
“Mmm. So tight and wet and ready to be filled.”
Her body clenched at his filthy words and he growled his approval before replacing his thumb with something far thicker and hotter. “I love this so much, Martha.” He sounded almost … anguished. “I want you to know,” he said, entering her with only his crown and gently pulsing his hips so that he breached her over and over, “that I have never felt this way with any other lover.”
Pleasure and jealousy swirled in her belly at his words. She loved that she was special to him, but she hated the thought of him doing this with others.
He caressed her hips as he stroked deeper, but still not deep enough. The rush of desire she felt for him—to be taken and dominated by his far larger and stronger body—shocked her. Later, when she wasn’t in the grip of passion, the violence of her emotions would worry her. But right now, she needed him with a hunger that threatened to consume her.
“Please, Hugo.”
He hilted himself with one long, hard thrust.
Martha sucked in a harsh breath at the depth of his penetration.
“It feels different this way, doesn’t it?” He stroked from her waist to her shoulders, the caress emphasizing her bowed, submissive position as he kept her stretched and full. “Deeper and more … primitive.”
He was right on both counts. And even though the pleasure bordered on pain, Martha loved it and needed more.
“I’m going to be selfish and take you now,” he warned. “Hard and fast.”
Martha thought about the multiple climaxes he’d just wrung from her body and wondered at his definition of selfish.
“Tell me you want it,” he asked as he withdrew slowly, inch by inch. “Beg for it.”
“Please, Hugo, I want—”
Her words were the proverbial match to a fuse. “Take it,” he grated, slamming into her hard enough to move
