Slowly, he stirred his hips, testing his control and her response. It took everything for him to rasp, “Good?”
“So good,” she affirmed breathlessly. “More. Please, Ian, I can’t stand it.”
He wrapped her leg around his hip and picked up his rhythm. As his thrusts grew more intent, he held onto the edge of restraint. Every exercise, all the training he’d undertaken to master control of his body had been to prepare him for this moment of bliss.
Another night, he’d show her his devil side.
Tonight, he stood at the gates of heaven.
She cupped his face. “How could we deny ourselves this for so long?”
“Never again,” he vowed.
Her hips drew him closer and she bucked against him with delicious friction. “Don’t hold back. I know you’re at the edge with me, darling.”
He pumped in and out of her, and her hoarse cries endangered the thin hold he had over his control. “That’s it,bella tesora. You’re so close, but I’m a selfish devil.” He slowed his pace. “I’ve wanted this so long, I want it to last forever.”
A glimpse of that dream unfolded before him, and he grew heady with the image of staying in bed, never needing to leave her.
With a wanton groan, Diana scraped her nails down his back. “I don’t think I can take much more of this.”
“Then touch yourself,” he commanded.
Her fingers grazed the place where they were joined, and his climax approached. He folded his hand on top of hers, to give her the pressure he knew she loved. She came with a shattering cry that gave him wild satisfaction.
He had scarcely enough time to withdraw and spend his own release between the sheets.
Diana reached for him. He folded her into his arms while they both regained their breath and buried his face against her hair to ground himself.
When she shifted, her sharp gasp made his chest ache.
“I’m sorry for the pain, love,” he murmured.
“It’s over now,” she whispered. “And what came after was the best pleasure I’ve ever known.”
He grunted in agreement; the words to describe what had transpired between them surpassed him. “Shall I draw you a bath?” Despite her assurances, she had to be sore. He’d taken care to withdraw, but they were both damp with perspiration and remnants of their bed sport.
“That would involve getting up, and I don’t want this moment to end.”
“It won’t.” He traced a hand down her arm to caress her silky skin. “This is just the beginning for us.”
He believed it now. In a way he hadn’t dared to before.
They rested quietly while Ian absently played with her hair, letting her russet-brown locks sift through his fingers like water.
Diana caressed the ink on his chest. “I remember the first time I saw this. It was that summer it was so hot, the one before they sent you away to school. I must have been only seven or eight. We escaped to the shore before anyone noticed we were gone. You’d taken off your shirt to jump in the waves and I gawked at the mark before my governess found us and dragged me back inside. Later, I asked Papa if you had a tattoo and he said, ‘Of course not,’ but I argued you did because all true pirates had tattoos.”
“My staunch defender.” He laughed. “When Alberti knew he didn’t have long to live, he inked it himself. I was barely three years old.”
“Good God. Did it hurt?”
“Like the devil. My mother was horrified when she found out. Alberti told her he wanted everyone to know they were both under his protection, even when he was gone. But I don’t think she ever forgave him for it.”
Diana continued stroking his chest lazily. Her voice was thick with drowsiness when she said, “Your father playedIl Giocoto win your mother, didn’t he?”
“No one has ever confirmed it. And it’s barbaric to me that anyone would trade in human lives like they’re commodities.” He sighed. “From what I gather, my father was playing to free her. It all happened before they…formed an attachment.”
When she scoffed, he chided her with a squeeze before amending, “A physical attachment.”
