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When she fell back again, panting, he kissed her breathless mouth. “I can keep this up for hours.”
“Why?” she gasped.
His laugh touched strange places inside her. “Because there’s no where else I’d rather be. I want to stay inside you forever, I want to make you come so hard you can’t even think, I want to forget where I end and you begin. I want everything from you, Maddy Rose. Everything.”
Oh, God, she thought, as he slid his hands up to cover her breasts, his thumbs brushing across her nipples and he continued to… to… what was that word the stable hands had used when they thought she couldn’t hear them? Fuck. Such a dirty, nasty, erotic little word. That was what he was doing to her. And she wanted more.
His hands on her breasts set off another paroxysm of pleasure, and this time when he moved again he was faster, his breathing a little more shallow. And then, to her shock and despair, he pulled out of her completely.
She cried out, reaching for him, but he simply turned her onto her knees, pushing her hands down on the mattress, her face into the pillow, as he pushed inside her from behind. It was different this way, he was even bigger, pushing against different places inside her, and she buried her cry of pleasure into the pillow, wrapping her arms over her head, as he moved, faster and faster, and just when she thought she couldn’t stand any more pleasure he reached between them and touched her between her legs, above where they joined, and it was everything, death and madness, pain and joy, as she lost herself completely, drowning in waves of dark, saturnine delight.
He pulled out, and she felt the warmth of his release on her back, and if she’d had enough of her brain she would have wept, but she was still being racked by wave after wave of almost unbearable pleasure that followed her as he slowly pulled her down, wrapping his arms around her as the last bit of control drained from his body.
It was a long time before she could speak. A long time before she wanted to speak. But when she did, she still managed to come up with a challenge. “Hours?” she said in a hoarse whisper.
She felt his smile against her skin. He was lying with his head on her stomach, holding her. “The night is still young,” he said.
And she shivered.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
MADDY WOKE ALONE. OF course she did, she thought, shoving her hair out of her face. Luca had probably already left the boat and set sail for the Argentines, just like Tarkington.
The water was gone from the floor, as were her clothes. Instead there was a pile of clean linen, including a simple day dress and unadorned underclothing, though no corset. The ship was docked somewhere, but all she could see from the porthole was the great wooden side of the quay, and they could be anywhere from Gibraltar to the Orkney Islands as far as she was concerned.
There was even a pitcher of tepid water beside a washbowl. Apparently the bathing room wasn’t working—either damaged in the storm or perhaps it didn’t work when they were docked. It didn’t matter. She washed her body as thoroughly as she could, washed off the saltwater and the rain, washed away the touch and taste of him from her skin. She couldn’t reach the spot on her back where he’d spilled his seed the first time, and she was glad of it. What would have happened if he hadn’t protected her from making a child? What if she’d conceived, and he’d been long out of her life, at sea somewhere, forgetting all about her? It would have been a total disaster.
A disaster she wanted so much she could weep with longing. But not now. She was made from sterner stuff than this.
During the evening and endless night they’d slept and awoken, made love in ways that still made her blush in the morning, and he’d made it clear he wanted her. Made it clear he’d come after her. She was a fool to expect words of love.
But then she was a fool. She didn’t want to stay with a man who didn’t love her, desperate for scraps of attention, signs of affection. Not when she was so desperately in love with him.
He’d done one odd thing. Her wrist had begun bleeding again, and he rose and went to look for bandages. When he’d come back to the bed he’d brought them, and a knife as well. She’d looked at it dubiously, still too languid to make a protest.
To her surprise he took the knife and scored his own wrist, just enough for a few drops of blood to well from his golden skin, and then he set it against hers. It reminded her of a childish ritual, and she said nothing, watching him out of slumberous eyes as he held their wrists together for an endless moment. And then he’d released her, bandaged both her hands, and made love to her all over again.
She looked down at her wrists. She wasn’t a complete fool, just a besotted one. She’d never been in love before—her infatuation with Tarkington had been just that—but she imagined it didn’t kill you, even though right at that moment she felt stabbed to the heart. If it didn’t go away you had to learn to live with it, and she wasn’t the sort of woman to mope and sulk. She’d move on, take Lord Eastham’s offer, and live a happy life as a wealthy, titled woman. She supposed she should feel guilty that she looked forward to her impending widowhood so eagerly, but there was a limit to how cheerful she could be in the circumstances. You did what you had to do. What she had to do was get the hell away from Luca before she made an even bigger fool of herself.
What would happen if she told him she loved him? Nothing good. He was a gypsy, a wanderer, a man without ties.
Though he’d been planning to marry that whey-faced bitch, Gwendolyn Haviland, she reminded herself in a spurt of fiery jealousy. So why couldn’t he marry her instead?
Because he hadn’t asked her. It was that simple.
She had to leave, or end up weak and pathetic. Was her pride more important than love? She didn’t know—she wasn’t being given the choice. She only wished she had his baby to carry to Eastham with her.
It was a wicked thought, but it really shouldn’t matter. Eastham already had an heir and two spares from his previous marriages, and if she were pregnant he’d preen at the sign of his virility. And she’d have something of Luca for the rest of her life.
But he’d been careful each time, pulling out, until she’d wanted him to stay inside her. He hadn’t.
She had the dismal feeling that sometime last night, in the throes of something so bright and powerful she couldn’t quite reconcile it, she might have said something damning. She might have told him she loved him.
If she did, he didn’t notice. Because he hadn’t stopped, in fact, he’d redoubled his efforts, until she had the very real fear that her heart might just explode from so much pleasure.
She wasn’t sure she could face him. Not remembering what she’d done at his soft urging. Not remembering what he’d done to her.
She dressed. To her relief there was even a pair of soft leather slippers beneath the pile of clothing. Had they been put there to ensure she could leave? No money, however, which was a mixed blessing. There wasn’t much she could do in a foreign city without a sou to her name, but money would have felt like a bribe, or even worse, payment for services rendered. She would make do as she was.
