He’d never forget the glorious look on her face when she crested, back arching, head tilted to the sky. He wanted that again, but this time while inside her.
With a murmured oath, she took his hand and dragged him across the studio. He had no choice but to follow. The dimly lit chamber off the main room was tiny but, miraculously, contained a narrow daybed. He hadn’t considered this, though he supposed he should have. Artists were known to work into the night.
They didn’t waste time on words beyond the incomprehensible mutterings of two people who were mad for each other. Mercy climbed on the bed while he stripped off his drawers, then he was over her, arms braced on either side of her head, legs intertwined. The kiss was greedy, their embrace eager. The mattress dipped and rocked with the frantic rhythm of their bodies fusing. Skin grew slick with perspiration, the heat between them building.
His cock was nestled against her warm crevice, a blunt, undeniable presence.
He tested where they would soon be joined. Sliding a finger deep, he studied her face as she moaned and arched into his touch. Rocking his hips, he set up a false rhythm but a telling one. “I want you so badly, minx. Are you sure?”
Gazing at him, she grasped his shaft and guided him clumsily into place. “No more questions, professor.”
Groaning when her moist quim surrounded the rigid head of his cock, he laughed weakly. “This won’t last long, not nearly long enough. But there’s the next time, and the next. I’ll make love to you as long as you’ll let me.”
She cupped the nape of his neck and drew him into a kiss of hush and promise.
He took over, guiding himself into her in gentle, measured degrees. The experience was nothing like the descriptions in books or those heard in gaming hells and public houses. There could be no feeling more incredible than merging his body with Mercy’s. Merging their souls, if only for a short time. Gliding his arm beneath her, he lifted her hips enough to allow him to go deeper, then deeper still. She equaled the pace with ragged sighs, her leg settling alongside his hip until they were joined completely.
She cradled his face, gazing into his eyes, the jolt of her blazing a trail through him. He shifted his hips, left to right, his breath coming fast. Her lids lowered in bliss, her lips parting.
“You are beyond my dreams,” he whispered, holding her leg in place and pumping, increasing the cadence until the chamber rang with the sound of their bodies meeting. “My fantasy come to life.”
The rushed sensation rose quickly, in his fingertips, spreading to the backs of his legs and his buttocks. His heart tripled its beats, snatching his breath and holding it. “I’m close, minx. Are you…can you?”
She shook her head, her amber lashes long and dazzling against her skin.
It was a trivial bit of mastery to work his hand between their bodies, pause his strokes until he found the bundle of nerves topping her sex, caress, pinch, circle, then thrust into her as she shattered.
Seconds later, he followed, his arms curling around her to hold her close as he shuddered, as she cried out. Brow to brow, they gasped, clung, shivered. Her release rippled into him, the most intimate encounter of his life.
Once their hearts had settled, he rolled to his side, taking her with him. Facing each other, a most cherished aftermath, they stared, stunned. She looked ravished, undone, their scent clinging to his skin, their taste to his throat, his lips.
“Mein Leben hat sich für immer verändert,” he whispered, pressing a tender kiss to her lips. My life is forever altered.
She dusted a strand of hair from his cheek, lingered to trace her finger down his throat and over his collarbone. “What does that mean?”
He paused, hesitant to tell her he was falling in love with her. When it wasn’t the plan. And Damien was a man who followed plans.
The truth was, her father would never consider the third son of a debauched duke. Not when his father had ruined the DeWitt name and the Herschel title for at least the next half-century. Furthermore, professor’s salaries weren’t in line with anything Mercy was set to acquire with a prosperous marriage. That sod Montague likely had in the range of twenty thousand pounds a year, a sum Damien wouldn’t collect in years upon years of teaching.
Heart heavy, Damien tucked her into his body, resting his chin on the crown of her head. “A bit of whimsy. German not as eloquent as French, I realize, but I try.”
“No Frenchman in this world has anything on you, DeWitt.”
Laughing, he leaned back, giving her body a sweeping glance. His cock shifted at the exquisite sight, letting him know he didn’t need long to recover. “Is that so?”
Her hand drifted down his chest and over his belly. “Hmm, that’s so. There are things I might like to try…”
He rolled her atop him and dragged her lips to his. “Let’s see if I can check every damned one of them off your list.”
CHAPTER SIX
WHERE A WOMAN FINDS SHE APPRECIATES A MAN WHO IS EXCELLENT AT GAMES
Damien had played chess all night using her body as his board.
Deliberate moves, sweeping caresses, his thoughtful control sending her over the edge—making her come, a new word or, rather, a new way to use it—without him going as far as he could. Three times over the edge.
He’d made a game of how long they could go without.
