Page 51 of The Lady’s Sweet Revenge

“I shall remember that,” he said. “Should I bring you sweets when you return home? I should like to call on ye.”

“I would rather other things than sweets, my lord,” she said with a naughty tilt to her smile. She may not have come to his room knowing how to seduce a man, but she had gained the skill in the time she was in his bed.

She kissed him and as was becoming common, they were instantly swept away.

“Are you sore, lass?” he asked, knowing he might have to wait until she was ready for him again.

She shook her head and tried to pull him over on top of her, but he was ready to show her something else. Instead he rolled to his back and pulled her up to sit on him.

She looked about in confusion and then the slipped his hand between them to settle his cock against her.

“Oh,” she said in some surprise.

“You can determine our pace this time.”

Her green eyes lit up with understanding and she smiled her lioness grin.

Soon enough she was moving much too fast for his self-control. He did his best to warn her and when that didn’t work he simply held on as best he could. When he felt her squeezing him tightly, he gave in with a growl.

She collapsed on top of him, their hearts pounding against each other. When his body slipped from hers, she giggled as if it tickled and he smiled and kissed her hair.

“I must apologize if I fall asleep. It has been a long day and all of our efforts have drained me completely,” he admitted for she was likely to kill him if she attempted to rouse him again.

“I feel the same way, yet I don’t wish this night to end.”

He agreed. He didn’t know what she would have tomorrow or the next. She’d wanted only to know what happened between a man and a woman and now she did. She wanted to live a life that she’d worried she wouldn’t have.

He’d known that same fear once.

That night when he’d been shot. As he’d heard the other agents calling out for help and hustling him off to a surgeon, he’d been in and out of consciousness. And in those areas between, he’d thought strange things. His mind seemed to provide all the things he’d never had the chance to experience.

How he’d never taken a sea voyage. Not that it was something he wished to do now as he lost his stomach when aboard a boat for any length of time.

He also thought of more personal matters. He’d never felt the joy of holding his child in his arms. Something he hoped to avoid for some time. He remembered thinking how he’d never loved a woman.

He thought maybe he was beginning to know what that felt like.

*

“I understand,” Reese said into the quiet that surrounded them. Harlow had begun to doze off while thinking all sorts of random things, but now she worried he’d been speaking and she’d only heard that one thing. When he continued, she realized he’d been lying there allowing his mind to wander as she had.

“That is, before when you said you felt different after getting off the ship as if you wished to live and didn’t want to miss out on things. I understand.”

“You were also taken hostage on a ship full of men who wished to do you harm and chose to plummet into the ocean rather than face living at their hands?”

She’d meant it to be a jest, but he turned to look at her with a frown.

“I don’t know if I told you how brave that was.”

“It wasn’t foolish?”

“Perhaps a little, but let’s go with brave for now.” He brushed a finger through her hair and the slightest touch seemed to wake her desire yet again. She hadn’t realized once it was released it would never be put back in its cage.

“What I meant was that I understand that feeling. Like you may not live long enough to do the things you wished to do.”

It was her turn to frown.

“What happened?”