Page 75 of One Night with a Rake

He stroked her everywhere—the crease of an elbow, the hollow behind her knee, the skin of her inner thigh. Every touch was potent with meaning, charged with longing. She ached to hold him inside her.

“Come to me, Nate.” She raked her nails up his ribs when he entered her slowly, moving with him, urging him in.

He finally filled her, plunging in with hard thrusts.

She looked up at him in the shadows and saw only the feral glare of a male animal in extremis. He was passion-blind as he moved within her, mindless, unable to stop. She welcomed him, raising her hips to meet each thrust.

Oh, the feel of him. Hard and strong and hot.

Blood pounded in her ears, in her womb, throbbing with life. A coil within her constricted, wound tight, stretched thin till it finally burst in bone-deep spasms. Her body shuddered its release.

Then Nate came, arching his back, and driving as deeply into her as he could. Georgette felt the warmth of his seed pulsing into her.

So much for guarding against conceiving a child, she thought absently.

It didn’t matter. Georgette gathered him close, accepting him with greediness. She wanted all of this man she could possibly hold.

He collapsed on her, nuzzling at her neck. He was still beyond speech, but she knew exactly what he meant by the low groan that escaped his lips.

Beyond the shuttered window of Nate’s Cheapside flat, the world spun on, ever faster. But there in that capacious feather bed, it had stopped its dizzying pace for a bit, spooling down to a slow, slightly wobbly roll.

Georgette decided if she never rose from that fluffy bower it would be quite all right.

Until Nathaniel uttered one word.

“Damnation.”

Twenty-eight

Mercy covered Reuben’s face with kisses. “Oh, ye’re all right. Tell me ye are.”

Blinking slowly, Reuben opened his eyes and smiled. He sat up, drawing Mercy into his arms. “I’m better than all right. I’m…I’m…”

The world began to spin a bit and his eyes threatened to roll back in their sockets, so he let himself sink back onto the fluffed up pillows. His head pounded like a pickaxe, but if that was what it took for Mercy Atwood to admit to loving him, he’d willingly accept the blows.

“I guess I am a little done in, at that,” he admitted.

“Just lie still for a bit,” she said as she extricated herself from his arms and scurried over to the dresser to fetch him a small goblet of wine. “The doctor says as ye can have a bit to drink once ye wake. First the man said water, but where in London would we find a glass of the stuff that’s fit to drink, I ask ye? So he finally allowed wine would do. The only bit of good judgment I got from the man, but ye’re sensible now, as much as ever ye were at any rate, so it seems he may have known more than I credited him.”

“And I know more than you credited me too,” Reuben said, still nearly giddy with the knowledge that she loved him. “It was your voice that woke me.”

Mercy cocked her head and slanted him a questioning gaze. “How much did you hear?”

Would she take it back now that he was fully awake and facing her?

“How should I know? A fellow can’t be expected to know what he hasn’t heard, can he?” He tipped up the goblet and drained every drop of the sweet red stuff. The vintage served at the House of Pleasures wasn’t the first-rate fare the marquis kept for his table, but Reuben figured it was just as potent. “You could have been talking for days for all I know. And changed the subject a dozen times with no help at all from me.”

“There was only one subject,” Mercy said, her expression softening. “You.”

His chest swelled and he felt as if he could run all the way to Snowdon and back with a full barrel of water balanced on his shoulders. If only his head didn’t feel as if it was about to detach itself. “You were talking about me? Well, some folk might say that’s a mighty thin topic.”

“And yet I plan to make a study of it, and I’ll apply myself a damn sight better than I do with milady’s reading lessons.” She leaned down and gave him a smacking exclamation point of a kiss. Then she straightened suddenly. “My lady. Oh! Reuben, she’s gone missing and we have to—”

He reached up and stopped her by pressing his fingertips to her lips.

“Don’t fret. I don’t know where she’s gone, but I think I know who she’s with,” he said, squeezing his eyes shut against the drumbeat in his head.

Mercy settled on the side of the bed again, put her hands on his shoulders, and gave him a little shake. “You can’t go back to sleep now. What do you know about Lady Georgette?”