Page 61 of Duke with a Deception
“That’s better. An antidote, then,” she said, kissing him harder before he could respond.
“Yes,” he hissed as she stroked him hard, just as she knew he liked.
Already, a bead of moisture was leaking from the tip, a sign he was every bit as needy as she was.
“I think about you always, too,” she admitted, guiding him to her center and dragging him over her aching folds.
She notched him at her entrance, wrapping her legs around his lean hips, not caring about the weight of her gown or the bite of the hard desk on her bottom or anything else. Nothing mattered but his lips on hers, the pleasure she was about to give and receive.
“Never leave me,” he begged her.
There was something almost frantic in his voice, a quality she didn’t fully comprehend. Surely he didn’t imagine she would want to be anywhere other than at his side. Why would she leave him? Did he not already know how very much she loved him? Did he think she was still distressed over what had happened that night in the nursery? If so, she would have to dissuade him.
Their love was forever.
He pushed into her in one hard thrust, filling her to the hilt and stealing her breath, along with her ability to think. She was so sensitive and slick from his efforts that he moved in and out of her with ease, gliding along in her channel as he intensified their kiss. Their tongues met, hot and wet and carnal.
She clung to him, their lovemaking growing more frantic. His thrusts were hard and fast. Her bottom slid on the desk, and he pulled her back to him, slamming into her, until the pleasure was almost unbearable, and she knew she couldn’t withstand much more. When his fingers brushed over her swollen bud, taunting her and teasing her, she lost control yet again. He gripped her hips and thrust, and the pleasure that had been steadily building exploded.
As she clamped down on him, her release tearing through her, he thrust faster, harder, deeper, his lips never leaving hers. His body stiffened and he pumped into her one last time before she felt the familiar wash of heat inside her as he spilled.
Verity wrapped her arms around him, holding him tightly as their hearts pounded together and he remained inside her. Later, she would fret over what he had said, over the shadows she had seen lurking in his dark eyes. For now, it was enough to simply hold him. To revel in his strength and his nearness.
In the precious few moments they had together, joined as one.
CHAPTER 11
“Is something troubling you, my love?” Verity asked that evening as she lay in his arms, both of them spent and sated.
Her unbound hair flowed freely around her, some of the tendrils tickling King’s chest as he inhaled slowly, trying to find the words that would soothe her. She was an inviting, warm and silken weight atop him, her curves molded pliantly to his body. He had fucked her three times today, and he still wanted her a fourth.
They had both been wrong earlier in his study.
Verity wasn’t a poison or an antidote. She was a need, as necessary to him as air and water and the sun. How he had lived for so many years without her was a mystery to him. He could not fathom ever having wanted another or desiring anyone else again. The depth of his pull to her was a sobering revelation for a dedicated sybarite such as himself.
But then, it had not been King’s only realization of the day.
Just a fortnight into his marriage, and Verity was changing him. Changing him so thoroughly he didn’t recognize the man he had become. One who wanted to speak of his past pain with her,who allowed the desiccated husk of his heart to open for a small child, who wanted to bask in the love of one woman alone.
In truth, it was possible he had begun to change before her blow to the head. He had admired her and been drawn to her even then. It hadn’t been her beauty alone, though Verity’s loveliness was undeniable. Rather, it had been her boldness, her sweetness, her good heart. It had been the way she had chosen to live her life on terms of her choice.
Terms he had inadvertently taken away from her.
Guilt speared him anew at the reminder that the Verity he knew before the fire had been determined to live for the memory of her beloved. She had chosen never to marry but to remain unwed, perpetually in mourning for the beau she had lost.
But she was his now. So perfectly, wonderfully his. He didn’t regret taking her from a ghost. But he did regret the way it had happened, her amnesia making her forget certain threads of her past and allowing him to insert himself into her world instead.
“King,” she said, jolting him from his tumultuous thoughts. “Are you asleep?”
He was very much awake. In need of something to chase the grim introspections haunting him.
“Why should anything be troubling me?” he asked, because a question was so much easier than an answer.
So much easier than the truth.
“You have been unusually quiet.”
He kissed her crown, idly sifting strands of her hair. “Can a man not simply admire his wife in the darkness?”
