Page 57 of The Spy and the Nightingale
“Tonight,” he clarified when she did not immediately answer. “Here, now. Away from Le Repaire.”
Surely his eyes could set her afire. It took effort to fill her lungs with sufficient air, to find the next words. “That’s the crux of it. I do not want to think any longer about what took place at Le Repaire.” Any of it—what she’d seen, what she’d learned, even what had occurred in that scarlet room. “I want to stop thinking of Le Repaire altogether. I want something without artifice.”
Chapter 17
Nate’s blood thrummed through his body, urging him past the precipice of something he doubted Isobel fully comprehended. He understood it all too well because he’d seen it after combat and in its very worst forms of excess after the Siege of Badajoz. Dangerous situations could arouse primal appetites afterwards, postbattle savagery.
Living on the margins of death and solitude for years fundamentally changed a man. Not for the better; he’d lost his finer sensibilities over the years. He might at one point have tried to check baser instincts towards Isobel, but the gentle boy he’d been was well and truly gone.
And it wasn’t only danger that had him roused. Both of them.
Did she understand the nuance? He doubted it, and he wanted her an equal participant, fully consenting to whatever ensued, for her sake and his.
He removed his gloves and shrugged out of his coat with slow deliberation. Her eyes never left his face as he slowly began to close the distance between them.
“I want you. Very much. But if we have one another tonight, it won’t be gentle. I have little tenderness in me right now.”
Her breath caught audibly and shallowed as she apprehended his meaning.
“The decision is yours.” He was nearly to her now. “If that is not what you want, it will not happen at all.”
A slight negative shake of her head. “I do not need tenderness.” Her laugh was more breath than sound. “Perhaps I don’t want it either.” She reached out to curl fingers around his upper arm, face lifting towards his. “But I want you.”
A bolt of lightning, those words, electrifying his every cell.Thank Christ.She knew her own mind tonight. He hoped she would have no cause for regret tomorrow.
Her bare arm was silky between glove and gown. “I have command enough of myself to stop,” he rasped, “if at any time you tell me so.”
“I will not.”
The blood left his head at that, his hand on her arm tightening.
There was no preamble; the kiss was open-mouthed from the start. Their clothes came off quickly, his tongue in her mouth for the entirety of it, portent and promise. His hands and hers seized hold of one another’s curves and angles, slid everywhere and gripped hard enough to hurt, to bruise. Took decisive possession of one another.
Lungs too heavy for air, he backed her, naked, into the door, her shoulders hitting audibly. Dizzy now with wanting to claim her, to refute contrived falsehoods and find the most elemental truth that could pass between two people: absolute dominance and utter surrender.
This,this, was real. Her nails scraping his back, bright lines of pain, when he bit her lip. Her moan when his teeth found the skin over her collarbone. His answering gasp at the pressure just shortof pain—the roughness his mood demanded—when she closed a hand around his cock, stroking him hard.
She hooked an ankle behind his knee, climbing him a little.
Not here. The bed.He wasn’t quite so far gone as to take her here—to fuck her hard against the door, however willing she was. He took her by the shoulders, panting, turning her. “I want you. Now.”
Surely every drop of blood in his body was in his cock now. He stroked a hand roughly up his length as he followed her.
She lay on her back on the bed, drawing her knees apart, and he loomed above her, reaching a hand to tangle fingers through the curls between her legs. Despite what he’d insinuated, he had the hazy plan of giving her release first, only because once he was inside her, his own appetite would drive him hard. She dug her nails into his wrist, sighing, as he slid first one, then a second finger into her wetness, thumb stroking her just above. She was slick, already clenching around him.
It came in flashes: her hands, ungentle on his face to bring his lips to hers.
Her tongue, demanding an answer.
Her fingers, gripping his cock.
Her words, his own given back: “I want you now.”
He held himself above her, nipping at her lips, tracing them with his tongue to savor the last dregs of heady anticipation as she guided him home. She gasped as he seated himself fully.
Slowly, deep as he could go. Holding deep until his lungs screamed for air. Again. Again.
Harder now, each stroke rocking her body backwards. She caught the rhythm, met each thrust.
