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“Yes. You see. As did everyone else, this morning. It’s what I do.” Self-loathing flickered in his eyes. When he spoke, his voice was hoarse. “What about Myles? Will he—”
“He’ll live. He’s hurting, but he’ll live.”
His face stayed grim, but the corners of his mouth softened with relief.
She added, “He deserved it, for what he did to Cora.”
At the mention of the girl, Rhys winced again. “She was under my protection. I should never have left her alone.” He cleared his throat and gave himself a little shake. “I’ve unloaded the goods from Bath, packed up my things from the cottage. And I’ve brought back the hounds.”
Her gaze fell. Two pairs of watery brown eyes looked up at her mournfully. A low whimper sounded from a canine throat.
“They’ll miss you,” she said.
“I’ll miss them.”
She opened the door wide, and the dogs rushed through, tumbling over one another in their race to the hearth. Even once the hounds settled, she kept the door open in invitation.
She allowed her shawl to slip from one shoulder. “It’s hours yet before dawn.” Shameless, she knew. But damn it, what use was pride? If he was leaving forever, she wanted one last night.
“Don’t.” His jaw tensed. “Don’t invite me in. Because it’s not in me to refuse, and I’d only be using you. The same way I used Myles this morning. I am angry as hell, and you’d be just another nameless person to pound. I’d work you hard and fast, until I forget who you are. Who I am.” He swallowed hard. “I’d be using you.”
Good Lord. If he was trying to discourage her, he was going about it all wrong. Meredith clenched her legs together as damp heat surged between her thighs. She’d never been so aroused, so quickly. What he described was exactly what she craved. One last hard, fast, unforgettable time.
Looking him bravely in the eye, she opened the door wider still. “We’d be using each other.”
That was all it took.
Before she could even catch her breath, he’d moved through the doorway, caught her in his arms, and slammed the door shut, flattening her against it. She was pinned between the hard door of oak at her back and the harder wall of hot muscle before her, and she’d never felt more completely, deliciously trapped.
He slid his hands to her hips and lifted her, pressing her against the door. Letting her shawl slide to the floor, she pulled frantically at the hem of her nightdress, hiking it to her midsection so she could wrap her legs around his waist. Linking her ankles, she pulled his pelvis flush with hers. They both moaned as the hard ridge of his erection ground against her bared sex. She was already so wet for him, and he was unbelievably stiff for her. No need for preliminaries.
He held her up with one powerful arm as he jerked his breeches open with his free hand. With one hard, quick thrust he entered her, slamming her spine against the door. She gasped, and he thrust again, delivering everything he’d promised. A good, hard, nameless pounding into lustful oblivion.
He bit her shoulder, and she raked his neck with her fingernails. He responded with a growl of crude, unfettered profanity, the likes of which she’d never heard inside a bedchamber. She found it wildly arousing. As the pleasure mounted and coiled in her sex, her limbs went slack. His strength supported her entire body as he drilled her to the door again and again, and she made herself boneless, just trying to stay afloat atop the violent, churning sea of lust.
“Rhys.” She slid her fingers through his cropped hair. “Yes.”
And then he stopped.
He froze, deep inside her, panting against the curve of her neck.
Her hips writhed with need. God, she was so close. Did he mean to torture her?
“I can’t do this,” he said, gasping for breath.
“What do you mean?” She cinched her legs about his waist. Her intimate muscles tightened around him, too, and he groaned with pleasure.
“I just can’t. Not like this.” He huffed against her neck. “The damned dogs are chewing my boots.”
With a gasp, Meredith twisted and craned her neck to see. Sure enough, there the two hounds sat at his feet, nipping at the tassel of his Hessian where it tangled with the hem of her shift.
She couldn’t help it. She laughed. And after a moment, he joined her, chuckling low against her neck.
He lifted his head to meet her gaze. They stayed like that for a moment, joined in body, both breathing hard, laughing with their eyes and speaking without words.
An unbearable sweetness bloomed in Meredith’s heart, filling her chest and spreading out to her limbs. They’d begun this in a frenzy of anger and desperation, and all it took was one minute of his skin against hers for benign normalcy to prevail. It was just as he’d been saying from the very beginning. Being together just felt so right.
With trembling hands, she stroked his hair. His eyes shone with affection and vulnerability, and she had a sinking feeling that they looked that way because they were reflecting the unguarded emotion in hers.
