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So she allowed him, and as promised, he pressed back, gripping her thigh, sinking deep.
He paused and Isabelle panted. Visceral and intimate, a beautiful, silvered fog that beckoned her to lose herself within.
“Cariad,” he gasped, and with a kiss to her lips, he began to leisurely thrust, swaying and goading, that pleasure massing once more but this time upon a molten core, the layers of need searing.
Yet his rhythm was still leisured and Isabelle snaked a hand to his back, caressed his broad shoulders, tapered waist and firm buttocks.
“Hell, don’t, I can’t…”
He seized her searching hand, held it flat to the bed at her shoulder, eyes now fierce and direct as he kept that same pace, demanding she surrender, driving her to reckless entreaty.
“Rhys…”
But his gaze merely blackened further in the candlelight, determined to wring every last drop of pleasure from her.
Yet she wished to do the same, to make him writhe and surrender. And then she knew, she knew what would plunge him from such amiable ease.
She leaned up as best she could, gasping as it forced him deeper. “Mon amour. Mon coeur…”
“Cariad, don’t–”
“Je t’aime pour l’éternité.”
With that, any pretence they were civilised creatures vanished as Rhys roared and abruptly arched, his hand grasping her hip as he bucked.
Isabelle sought to retain a grip unto sanity but ’twas a futile endeavour as his mouth devoured her breast, her throat, and his body demanded she yield also to this madness of desire.
So she did, shoving lips to his shoulder, to smother her cries as his girth pounded and ferocious bliss ripped her apart once more, scattering her to the four winds.
Her lover growled from the depths of his chest, before he buried his face in her neck, a roar muffled as his hips pulsed with vigour, body shuddering and clenching and tightening.
Isabelle lay, let the pleasure flow, the magnificence of the night, the safety of his arms.
His tremulant frame softened, little by little, until solely the faintest ripple could be felt, and she cherished these unbeknown sensations, of being embraced, of being passionately entwined and yet at rest.
Her heart still thundered as if it would never settle, and she listened to the rain pelt upon the shutters until, at length, he shifted aside, seizing her waist and bringing her to lie upon his chest.
In her befuddled state, Isabelle was aware she’d confessed her love, albeit in French. And that he’d done the same, albeit in a poet’s verse. Perhaps because they were forever pretending to be their title – the Duke and the Governess – as if the real them was unsure how to express their true selves.
The wind rattled the shutters again, howling through the gaps like an abandoned dog, as Rhys caressed her arm, her shoulder, her nape and whispered in her hair…
“‘Love came to me that dawn.
Wrapped in scarlet and gold,
Undone. Unforeseen…’”
Isabelle frowned, for she’d seen that excerpt of verse scribbled in his study when Lady Elen had sent her to fetch paper. She’d thought it copied from a book but it had the air and cadence of Byrne.
She lifted her head, gazed into his torpid eyes in the candlelight. He smelled of rosemary and lemons, doubtless the inn’s soap.
“That sounds like a Byrne, yet I know all his verse and that isn’t one.”
He cleared his throat, the noise akin to a growl. “Ah, there’s something I keep meaning to tell you but…”
She tilted her chin. “Yes?”
“Well, you see, I…er…” He flattened his head to the pillow and closed his eyes. “Why can I write these words and yet never say them?”
