Page 66 of To Hunt the Hunter

Matilda nodded. “I’ll bear its twin.”

Her breath hitched as he moved towards the bed, the candlelight casting him in gold. Would she have become used to this, she wondered, if they’d had a future together? Would she have been able to look upon him one day without feeling her heart pound, her breath catch in her throat? She’d never know, but suspected it was doubtful.

“I love the way you look at me,” he said, as he lay down on his side, his head propped on one arm.

Matilda reached out and touched him, her fingers trailing through the scattering of golden hair on his chest.

“How do I look at you?” she asked.

He took her hand and raised it to his mouth, kissing her knuckles. “Like I’m everything you could ever want.”

Matilda smiled. “That’s because you are.”

The smile left his eyes and he shook his head. “I’m not, but I wish that I had the chance to try.”

“Don’t speak of it,” she begged him. “Not now. Make it go away.”

She reached for him and he pulled her closer.

“I will,” he promised.

He did, turning her onto her back and stripping off her nightgown and wrap before kissing every bared inch of her. He found places that made her quiver quite unexpectedly, like the sensitive skin behind her knees, the back of her neck. She discovered the astonishing pleasure of his warm tongue trailing over the curve of her bottom, loving her with exquisite tenderness, his hands and mouth seeking and caressing, bringing her to the peak over and again until she was giddy and exhausted.

“I can’t, you wicked man,” she protested, laughing and dazed as he returned to the tender place between her legs yet again. Surely, he couldn’t command her body to respond with abandon any more than it already had. Could one die from an excess of pleasure? She must be in danger. “Lucian, I couldn’t possibly!”

Yet she sighed happily as he ignored her objections.

“Yes, you can,” he insisted, sliding a finger into the slick heat he’d stoked inside her and finding a tender spot that made her exclaim at the intense surge of bliss.

“Lucian!” she cried, clutching at the bedclothes as he licked gently at the delicate pearl of flesh that seemed to so fascinate him.

His finger returned to that magic place inside her and her breath caught as pleasure rippled through her yet again, bowing her body in a taut arc beneath him before the release took her, ever more powerful, racking her to her core and leaving her boneless and spent.

***

“So sleepy,” Matilda murmured, her frustration at that fact apparent.

She looked up at him, battling to keep her eyes open, but Lucian chuckled and nuzzled at her neck.

“Sleep, love. I’m not going anywhere.”

“No,” she protested. “I won’t waste another night.”

“I’ll wake you again in a bit, I promise. Just sleep for a little while.”

Reluctantly, she closed her eyes, her breathing deep and even in moments. God, she was magnificent, so responsive to his touch, everything he had dreamed she would be and so much more, and he had dreamed of her.

Lucian stared down at her in wonder. He had been cataloguing every moment of this night, every soft moan of pleasure, the sound of his name cried out in ecstasy, every curve of her beautiful body, so he might remember it all when she was no longer his. She sighed in her sleep and he curved his body closer about hers as though he could protect her from harm. An ache filled his chest, so powerful it stole his breath. The worst harm that had ever befallen her, that would ever befall her, was because of him and he burned with sorrow and guilt because of it. He turned his face into her neck, breathing in the scent of orange blossom and fighting the swell of emotion that rose in his chest. She was so beautiful, and she loved him. How extraordinary that was. He had never expected it, never looked for it, assuming that love was not something he could ever experience for himself. He had read about it in poems and in novels with the curiosity of someone reading of a foreign land they knew they would never see with their own eyes, never expecting to find themselves there in reality. Yet here he was, and he wondered if it was a blessing or a curse.

When his parents and Philip had died, he had been cast adrift, his well-ordered world turned on its head. Until that day, he had known precisely what had been expected of them all, of Philip as the heir, and of him and of Thomas. All at once, his parents and Philip were gone, and suddenly the staff addressed him as they’d addressed his father, and all the lessons he’d heard his father give Philip became his to learn overnight. The book his father had written, detailing everything Montagu should be, became his bible, his talisman against failure, the only thing that made the ground beneath his feet feel steady.

He remembered his father’s steward putting it into his hands the day he had received the news that his family was dead. His father was barely cold and Lucian, eleven years old, sat in the big leather chair in the study that had become his, reading of his duty with his stomach in a knot, trying vainly not to cry.

Montagu never showed emotion, and he was Montagu now.

That had been written among those first pages, with words like duty and honour underlined in thick black ink. Lucian had swallowed down his tears and made a vow to the dead, to himself, that he would make his father and Philip proud. He would not let them down. He would be everything Montagu ought to be. He would protect the title, his family, his brother….

Well, he had already failed his brother, and now this woman had shaken his world all over again. For this astonishing woman, he wanted to cast it all aside. He closed his eyes as he heard his father’s voice: the lecture on duty, on marrying to further the interests of the title, and never for any other reason. How strange that he could remember the exact timbre of his voice, the deep resonating sound of a man used to blind obedience. Lucian did not think his sire had ever uttered the word love. He wasn’t sure the man had even believed it existed. Certainly, he’d displayed no sign of it.