Page 54 of A Dance with the Wayward Duke
Instead, he reached for her.
“Eros left because he feared the outside world. Let’s forget it exists,” she whispered, and her voice went into the animal place that did not understand endings. Yes. That.
Tristan peeled away her dress. When her breast came into view, he cupped it in his palm and brought his mouth to it. His lips closed around her nipple, and he suckled once. She gasped.
He did it again, slower this time, drawing the nipple against his tongue, feeling it harden in his mouth.
He took her to the bed. And kissed her everywhere. Her ribs. The place where her thigh met her hip, where the pulse flickered strong beneath the skin. He felt the tension there—how she held herself in, even now. He pressed his lips to the hollow gently, warming it. He tasted sweat. Salt. The faint musk of desire. He kissed her bent knee and the inside of her thigh, skin that rarely saw light. By the time he arrived at her belly, her legs had eased open, arms drifting above her head. Marguerite was undone, like a nymph abandoned by the gods at dawn, exhausted from too much worship.
His vision blurred at the edges. He wanted to command the ship to turn forever. No port. No dawn. No world beyond this bed.
Tristan settled above her, knees pressed into the mattress. He braced his weight, lowered his chest to hers, and felt their skin meet. The contact stole his thoughts. Her heart struck against his.
Marguerite looked up at him, and her gaze held nothing back. He entered her slowly, and she welcomed him in one fluid breath, her body rising to meet his, her lips parting in a sound somewhere between surprise and surrender.
He thrust home. The grip of her around him tore a groan from his throat.
She gave herself again and again, her hips catching his rhythm, her fingers digging into his shoulders. He wanted bruises there. Proof that she had held him hard enough to leave evidence.
Tristan moved harder. The bed creaked. He kissed her—open-mouthed, deep, full of every unspoken vow. She returned the kiss with urgency. He pushed deep, arching his back. Her breath broke, a sharp little fracture against his mouth, and her thighs drew higher around his hips, and Tristan drove deep, as deep as her body would take him, then held there.
When she came apart around him, he felt every pulse of her sex. The soft, desperate clench of her body, the tremors drawing through her in waves, the helpless lift of her hips as if she could pull him closer still. He stayed buried inside her and did not move, jaw locked, arms shaking.
His release built too fast, surging from his thighs to his spine, coiling behind his ribs. Too soon. Too soon.
He wanted to stay inside her. He wanted to fill her. To leave a mark, a claim, a piece of himself that would linger long after the ship docked.
He pulled out—barely in time. His seed spilled hot over her belly, across her thigh. He groaned against her mouth, panting,trembling. The loss of her body around him was like being thrown from warmth into glacial water.
They didn’t move, bodies still open to each other. The room held them in the silence after pleasure, and in that silence the loss arrived.
Marguerite opened her eyes.
He looked down at her, and whatever he saw there must have been on his own face too, because her hand rose slowly to his cheek and she touched the corner of his mouth. His chest caved inward with a tenderness so sharp it bordered on pain.
“I suppose,” she whispered, “we must return to the real world now.”
No. Not while her hand was on his face and her body was warm beneath him, and the soft look in her eyes made leaving feel like violence.
“Not yet,” he said.
He took his cock in hand and pressed it against her sex.
Her voice came soft against his throat. “I thought you already—”
“I did,” he said.
He pressed a kiss to her cheek. Then her temple.
“Outside,” he murmured. “You’re safe.”
He moved just enough for her to feel it. The slow, partial stretch. The deep echo of their joining still imprinted in her body.
“But I want inside you again, Maggie. Open for me. Welcome me in.”
His voice dropped lower, rougher, no longer the sea captain or the corsair or the man who had once taken cities by fire.
She stilled. Then she wrapped her arms around his back. Her legs parted. Her body welcomed him—tender, open, warm.
