Page 57 of One Night with a Rake

His mouth tugged at her nipples.

She was spiraling into that hot dark place again. His lips on her bare skin were both torment and delight. She groaned with need.

He rose up to plant fevered kisses on her neck, her jaw, the corner of her mouth, her closed eyelids.

“Make that noise again,” he warned, “and I’ll spread your legs and take you right now.”

“Do you promise?”

They rolled together in a tangle of arms and legs, kissing, stroking, straining against each other, skin on glorious skin. She felt him hard against her thighs, pulsing strong.

“Wait, wait.” She shoved against his shoulders and came up for air. “We haven’t…I mean, how do we…”

“What is it, woman?” His chest heaved.

“What if…I mean, there could be a…” She sat up. Looking down the fine length of his body to his swollen member, she nearly forgot the rest of what she’d intended to say. She was surprised to find she was panting shallowly.

“Could be a what?”

“A child.”

He traced a circle around one of her taut nipples, watching it with absorption as it drew even tighter. “Georgette, you’re trusting me to take your maidenhead. Don’t you think you can trust me with this as well?”

He bent down for another kiss, not as frantic as the last, but more insistent. One of his knees wedged between her thighs, pushing them open.

She didn’t fight him.

“It’ll be all right,” he said as he positioned himself. Just the tip of him entered her.

She throbbed, a deep, low drumbeat between her legs, but she narrowly resisted the urge to squirm down and take him in. She felt so empty, but she was still self-possessed enough to want reassurance on this most important point.

“Nate, I don’t want to be found with child while I’m still unmarried. I don’t want it very much.”

“You won’t be,” he assured her, sliding slowly in, hot and hard. He stopped his forward progress when he met the barrier of her purity. “I’ll never see you shamed.”

That was all she needed to hear. She draped her arms around his shoulders and squeezed. “I trust you.”

“Good,” he said. “This may hurt a bit.”

He thrust forward and filled her in a single rush. She gasped at the shock of it, but she expanded to receive him, stretched to the limit, swollen and achy. He held himself motionless, willing them to maintain control, but in her heightened state of awareness she could feel the blood coursing through him, throbbing with heat.

He was as primed as she.

Nate cradled her cheeks with surprising tenderness after that sharp rending. The shock of it had made her gasp, but then the sting faded. The emptiness retreated.

Not so the ache.

There was no going back now. Perhaps there never had been. From the moment she’d first seen him again, coming to her rescue there at Madam Bouchard’s disreputable brothel, Nathaniel had become both her secret hero and her darkest villain. He filled her mind and heart as surely as he now filled her body.

He drew a ragged breath. “Are you all right?”

“I will be.”

“There shouldn’t be any more pain.” He raised himself on his elbows to look down at her, his face taut with need. “Tell me if I hurt you.”

“You won’t.” She pulled his head down and suckled his earlobe. He began moving inside her and it was nothing short of a revelation. She loved holding him like that, wrapping herself around him.

Slowly he lowered his mouth to hers and began a rhythm with his tongue to echo the thrust of his hips. She rose to meet him, desperation making her sob into his mouth.