Page 67 of The Hood and his Thief

“You’re incredible like this,” he growled. “I can’t decide whether I like you better when you’re throwing punches at me or when you’re on your knees with your lips stretched around my cock.”

Rhosyn whimpered around him, the noise unadulterated desperation.

“Maybe that’s why I love you. Because I don’t have to choose.”

And I don’t have to choose either, Rhosyn echoed in her mind, her mouth too busy to speak the words out loud.

Ansel pulled her off his length, and Rhosyn stared up at him with her mouth still hanging open. She only had a moment to admire him, his flushed face and the way his hair had fallen into his eyes, the silver piece gleaming in the lamplight, before he gathered her up into his arms and swung her onto the bed.

Her back landed on the mattress with enough force to make the ancient springs creak, but Ansel paid no mind, already prowling up her body. He shucked off his pants completely along the way, sitting up above her to pull his shirt off as well. Rhosyn took the cue to shimmy the dress the rest of the way down her hips, until their clothes lay in a discarded heap at the foot of the bed.

Once they were both completely bare, Ansel fell to his forearms, elbows bracketing her head. He circled his pelvis against hers, dipping into the considerable moisture that had gathered there, but not entering her yet.

Rhosyn bucked her hips, but one of his hands fell to her waist, pinning her down.

“Patience, love.” He breathed the words into her neck before nipping at her collarbone.

Ansel sat back on his heels, pulling Rhosyn’s hips into his lap. As he lined himself up at her entrance, a breathy moan escaped her, just the feeling of his tip stretching her open enough to drive her to the brink of madness she had been flirting with for so long.

The noise snapped his gaze to her face, and he pinned her there with it. Holding her eyes, he slowly pushed forward, sliding himself inside her inch by glorious inch. The tortuously slow drag made her eyelids flutter, but she dared not look away from the intensity of his expression. The expression that told him he saw her, not the mask of whatever role she was wearing, in this moment and all others.

Just as she saw him.

His hips met hers, and his mouth fell open in pleasure.

“So good. You take me so well,” he panted.

Rhosyn hardly had time to register the zing of pleasure his words sent through her before he rolled his hips. At this angle, with her hips raised, his pelvis ground against her most sensitive spot and she gasped.

He repeated the action, grinding against her before withdrawing. He repeated the motion again and again, picking up speed until every thrust punched a breathy moan from her. As his hips pistoned into her, Ansel fell forward, bracing one hand on the wall above the headboard. The other gathered her wrists, bearing down on them with his weight and pinning her hands to the pillow above her head.

She rolled her hips against his, her world narrowing to the rising heat radiating out from her core, threatening to liquefy her into a pool of pleasure. But Ansel slowed, denying her the last bit of friction that would send her spiraling in pleasure.

She whimpered, and Ansel planted a kiss in the hollow just behind her ear. “Just a little more, Rhosyn.”

The sound of her name on his lips, dripping with adoration and desperation, was all she needed to dive deeper into the well of pleasure he was driving her into. She tunneled further and further into the roiling inferno of her impending release as his hips snapped against hers relentlessly.

Rhosyn tossed her head side to side, as if it could help her contain the intensity of the moment. But at that instant, Ansel picked up his pace, his own control snapping as he chased his release.

The tension within Rhosyn shattered, so hard it bordered between pleasure and pain as she cried out her release. Her back arched and fireworks danced behind her eyes. She convulsed around Ansel, making it almost impossible for him to withdraw as he stuttered through a few more thrusts before spending himself inside her with a broken groan.

“Rhosyn.”

They both drew in long, shuddering breaths as Ansel’s forehead came to rest on her collarbone. He released her wrists from his grasp, and she moved her hands to his head, where she gently carded her fingers through his hair. The thin sheen of sweat covering both of them glimmered ethereally in the flickering lantern light. It combined with the deep quiet of early morning, amplified by the rushing of blood finally calming in Rhosyn’s ears, to give the moment an otherworldly effect. As if the world beyond this room didn’t exist, and they were held in the perfect bubble of this moment.

When it popped, the direness of their situation would sink back in. But for now, Rhosyn let Ansel bundle her into his arms as he rolled off her onto his side. For now, there was nothing besides his fingers in her hair and whispered praises between the kisses he pressed to the top of her head.

Chapter fourteen

The smell of bacon roused Rhosyn from her doze. Her stomach growled before she even had a chance to open her eyes, prompting a low chuckle from somewhere across the room. She cracked one eye open to find Ansel standing at the foot of the bed wearing a bemused expression.

In his hands was the source of the smell: a plate of breakfast and a cup of tea. It looked almost as delicious as he did in that moment, his hair mussed from bed and his shirt open at the neck, exposing one shoulder.

Rhosyn opened both eyes to appreciate the sight and reached her arms over her head in a long stretch that drew attention to several sore spots in her body, both from her enjoyable night with Ansel and the much less enjoyable chase before that.

“Breakfast in bed? You’re giving me the real princess treatment,” she remarked as she sat up.

“I knew you must be hungry, but I figured we should let as few people know you’re here as possible. There is a substantial reward for your capture, and people can’t let slip a secret they don’t know,” Ansel explained, passing off the plate before setting the teacup on the rickety side table.