Page 47 of An Extraordinary Lord

But the first group of men had reached them. With her sword in her right hand and her knife in her left, she crouched in a fighting stance and slashed at the men to keep them back. Her blood pounded like a drum in her ears, every inch of her alert and tense, ready to attack.

Merritt moved into his own battle position behind her. Back to back, they faced the men who now surrounded them. They were both acutely aware of the other’s every step and swing of their blades.

“At my order,” he told her over his shoulder, “lunge, attack, and retreat. Follow me down the street as fast as you can run, understand?”

“Yes.” She swung her blade at a man with a pickax who’d come too close and forced him to jump back.

Her heartbeat pounded off the wait—

“Now!”

He lunged and sliced his blade across the arm of the nearest man. Veronica followed less than a second behind, cutting with her sword into two of the men’s legs. The rest of the group charged, and Merritt and Veronica slashed and stabbed indiscriminately as they lashed out at whichever man their blades could reach.

Merritt pulled back in retreat, grabbed her by the wrist, and yanked her through the gap they’d cut through the encircling pack of men. “Run!”

But a few of the attackers gave chase. Merritt steered her down one dark street after another and darted with her through passageway after passageway. Yet the men pursued, determined to catch them and kill them.

Without warning, he slid to a stop in front of a narrow wooden door to an old abandoned building and rammed his shoulder into it. The door gave way with a loud splintering of wood and slammed open against the inside wall. He yanked her into the building, then kicked the door shut behind them. They were sealed together in the darkness.

Merritt flattened himself against the wall between the broken windows where the slants of moonlight that shone into the building couldn’t reveal them. His arm went around her like an iron band and pulled her tightly against him, out of sight from the street.

He lowered his mouth to her ear and warned, “Don’t move.”

She didn’t dare to even nod as she stood frozen against him, pressed tightly to his chest.

The men ran past. They chased after shadows down the street and away.

Veronica and Merritt continued to stand unmoving and silent as the minutes slipped by. The roar of the riot grew into a distant din as the mob moved into a different part of the city. Her ears strained to catch any sound of the men who’d chased them, yet all she could hear in the darkness was the mingling of her breath with Merritt’s and the fierce thumping of their racing hearts.

Her blood coursed hot through her veins, not helped by the rapid breaths she sucked deeply into her lungs. Every inch of her tingled and pulsed, but only part of it came from being chased.

She wanted him—dear God, how much! She physically ached with arousal to possess him, for him to quench the yearning that he’d flared inside her since the moment they’d met. A yearning he’d only increased to blazing wildfire during all the time they’d been together since.

But her feelings for him were so much more than simple physical desire. She needed him, the way she needed air to breathe, the way deserts needed the rain. The way she’d never needed a man before in her life.

He couldn’t be hers, never completely. Her head knew that.Her heartknew that. But right here, at this moment, he belonged to her. She would take however much of him she could claim and somehow make that be enough.

“Merritt,” she murmured, thanking God that the darkness hid the true depth of her emotions for him on her face.

Then she shifted away from him to sheath her weapons, reached down to unbutton his breeches, and sank to her knees.

Merritt stared down at her as she freed his cock from his breeches, closed her lips around him, and then…bliss.

He inhaled sharply in surprise, and every muscle in his body stiffened. This was so much more than the kisses and caresses he’d attempted to cajole from her in the alley. This was—Sweet Lucifer. But he couldn’t find the will to stop her. Didn’twantto stop her. The blood that pounded in his veins was too heated to tamp down, the pleasure she stirred inside him too much to resist.

When a soft whimper from her throat vibrated against his cock, the breath he’d caught poured from him in a long, ragged sigh, and he knew he was lost.

He couldn’t see her face in the shadows, couldn’t see his hardening length slipping in and out of her hot, wet mouth. But he could feel it…every delicious slide, every teasing flick and swirl of her tongue over his tip, every graze of her teeth.

She sucked—

The sensation shot through him and straight out the top of his skull like a lightning bolt.

His hips bucked. “Jesus!”

But she held on, refusing to release him. Instead, she clung even more tightly as if she couldn’t bear to let him slip away. The soft suction of her mouth increased its intensity as her hand slid up his thigh. It slipped beneath his breeches to cup his balls against her palm and lightly tease him with her fingers the same way her lips teased his cock.

A groan tore from him. What she was doing was incredible by itself, but added to the excitement of the night and the openness of their location, less than a stone’s throw from the street…God have mercy.