Page 51 of A Deal with the Devil

That might be a problem.

Later.

This moment was for mouths and hands grasping and heat shooting into her core when his thumbs dug into her inner thighs. She hoped there would be bruises, a mark to remind her that this was not a dream. She kissed him back, wanting, taking. He growled something deliciously filthy into her neck that she did not quite make out. She nearly asked him to repeat it, but his mouth was already at the top of her breasts, sucking at the tender flesh. She squirmed, panting, as sensations bolted into her quim like loosed arrows.

His touch roamed higher, thumbs dragging toward her folds. A gentle stroke, a tease of a promise. “Devil,” she gasped.

“My name is Rhys,” he murmured, stroking deeper into her slickness. “When you scream my name, make it the right one.”

His fingers drew her slipperiness up and around her bud, before delving deep again and robbing her of coherent thought. Of anything but Devil. Rhys.

“Go on,” he said, nipping at her earlobe as he kept stroking, kept rubbing and teasing. Hot tension built inside her, tingling up her thighs, trembling deep in her belly. In and out and around, around and in and out, soft then deep, he built a rhythm that threatened to consume her.

She wanted to let it.

“Go on,” he demanded, rough and soft at the same time. The combination did something to her, snapped whatever last thread kept her tethered to reality and rules and reason.

There was only Rhys and the pleasure he summoned to destroy her.

She knew intimately why one might choose a devil. No one else knew how to make you burn from the inside out. Her climax rocked through her, all trembles and quivers and long spasms that made her whimper. “Rhys.”

“That’s it.” He sounded so pleased, so hungry for her pleasure, that she clenched around his fingers again, just a little. She wanted him in her hands, inside her body. Now.

But he was a devil through and through.

“Ah ah,” he drawled when she reached for him. “Not until you’re begging for it.”

She was fairly certain she had already begged. She had no recollection of anything she might have said between moans. She rubbed against him wantonly, and he groaned.

It sparked through her, that sound. Made her feel like more than a queen. Made her feel invincible. Frantic.

He eased one breast free, sucking hard. She bucked, sensitive and painfully aroused. She might have moaned. Definitely moaned.

“What was that?” He tormented her with a smug, crooked smile against her skin.

“Rhys. Please.”

“Better.”

She was beyond embarrassment. Begging was not a wrench of her dignity. It was merely another kind of release, one she had not realized she wanted. Besides, a strange sort of joy bubbled underneath the desperation and the desire. A game she was more than willing to play.

Challenge accepted.

She rubbed against his erection again, harder, driven by primal instinct, wanting to make him gasp the way she was gasping. The friction made her even wilder, the way he canted his hips to meet her. Demanding. Hard.

And then he stopped.

He just…stopped.

Kitty blinked at him, disoriented, wanting to howl at the interruption. Was the carriage being besieged? Was there fire? The king’s army? There had better be considerable threat to life and limb. Why on earth would one stop otherwise?

And then she knew exactly why one would stop.

Devil’s fingers brushed over her nipples as he pulled the little scroll from between her breasts. That would not be enough to stop him, surely. A mere curiosity. Surely women slipped all manner of things into their stays—ribbons, hairpins, a coin for emergencies. He unrolled it, skimming the words. Do not trust Portsmouth. Run.

“Kitty.” The way Devil said her name had her straightening. It was the command of an earl, and of a man who routinely held other men’s fortunes in the palm of his hand and flicked them away like they were dust. Unyielding. No longer the command of simply a lover.

“Devil,” she returned tartly, mostly because it still activated some kind of shivering over her skin. He made her feel coddled and then hunted.

Yes, please.

No. No.

Damn it, Kitty.

His eyes darkened. The lazy snap of his voice—the underestimate-me-if-you-dare languidness of it:

“I think you had better tell me everything, Miss Caldecott. Now.”