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Before she could protest that—before she could tell him that she had never felt the slightest bit of greed for any man alive, save him—
Before she could do anything at all, Ago pulled his thumb from between her lips, and then crashed his mouth to hers.
CHAPTER SIX
IFKISSINGHERwas a mistake, Ago could not find it in himself to care the way he knew he should. The way he suspected he would once he quit the temptation of her nearness.
Because something about this woman roused him as none other ever had, no matter how he tried to fight it. The ways he wanted her made no sense. That he had risked everything—his reputation, his good name—to have her in the first place. That he had betrayed all he stood for, all to taste her as he had.
None of it should have been possible.
But here, in this hotel suite where there was no one to witness his continuing fall from grace—save the wife who had caused it in the first place and who he intended to keep barricaded away from view for years to come—he indulged that ache in him that had ridden him far harder these past six months than he cared to admit.
He did not really kiss her. He plundered her mouth like a man possessed and it was as if all the walls he’d built since that night in the garden came crashing down at once.
Maybe he’d known this would happen. Maybe that was why he’d kissed her only in passing at their wedding ceremony and kept his distance since.
Because once the walls went down, there was nothing between them save the sheer madness of the way he desired her.
Ago remembered this feeling. It had been exactly the same that night in Cornwall, when she’d thrown herself into his arms and kissed him herself, making it clear with her very charming ineptitude that she wanted him with all her sweet innocence. And he’d been kissing her before he meant to and then, despite himself and all his lofty ideals, he had been lost.
Some part of him had been lost ever since.
But tonight was different, he told himself, because she was his wife.
And surely he was owed a wedding night.
He wrenched his mouth from hers and was pleased to find her eyes wide and glazed over with the same passion he felt storming around inside him. He stooped slightly to hoist her up into his arms, only idly noting that she was heavier than she’d been in the garden, as well she should be.
And instead of slowing him down, that she carried his child—his heir, his son—only made the need in him beat harder.
Victoria’s lips parted as if she meant to speak, but no words came forth and he found himself grinning as if he’d won some kind of victory. He held her high against his chest and bore her from the room, making his way through the sprawling suite until he found what he was looking for.
A high, well-appointed bed in a chamber that was entirely arranged around the four-poster behemoth at its center, with windows that let the hum of the Eternal City in and a fireplace at the far end to block it out.
He set her down the bed and then turned to build up the fire to keep her warm, happy to discover that unlike those in his family’s old villa, this one turned on with a mere switch. That meant he could return to her all the faster.
Back at her side, and following an urge he did not choose to dig into too deeply, Ago went to his knees before her. Beautiful Victoria, with her hair like gold and her eyes like a summer sky, who was looking at him the way she had that night in the garden. As if he was magical, when he had never been anything but dedicated to his own pragmatism. He moved between her legs and then knelt up so he could begin to unbutton the silk shirt she wore, opening it as he went so that he could marvel at her breasts.
When he’d seen them last, they had been pert and high, a pleasure on her lithe frame. Now they were round and heavy and he found himself growling out his approval, opening the clasp between them and baring them to his sight.
Victoria let out a soft sigh and Ago leaned closer, testing the new weight of her breasts in his hands and then leaning closer to sample what he’d uncovered.
And all this time, he’d been tempted to imagine that he’d simply embellished what had passed between them. For surely no woman alive could be this responsive. No woman could be so overcome by his faintest touch that she should toss her head back the way Victoria did, goose bumps breaking out all over her body, her back arching into a bow.
She had done the same thing on a garden bench months ago, tempting him to imagine her innocence was a ruse—but he had been able to taste it. And here, now, everything seem swifter, deeper.
Better than before, when he could admit—at last and only to himself—that he had never imagined anythingcouldbe better than the passion that had walloped him in the garden last summer.
He could not seem to help himself or hold himself back. Ago sucked one nipple deep into his mouth and felt the way she moaned move through him like a caress. He kept the pressure on one nipple as he found the other, then rolled it gently between his thumb and forefinger. He kept sucking all the while, creating a rhythm between the two that made her wail.
And then, as if he’d conjured her straight from his fantasies, she broke apart and began to shake out her pleasure from that alone.
He kissed his way down her belly, savoring its roundness and finding something primitive inside himself as he did it. As if he was worshiping her, this fertility goddess who had taken his seed and was growing his son. As if he was claiming her. When he would have said that he was far too sophisticated and urbane to ever feel something so...decidedly primal.
By the time he made his way over the mound of her belly, there was nothing sophisticated left inside him. He was all man, all need, and there was no room in him for thoughts of duties or legacies.
There was only one thing he wanted.
