Page 46 of A Dance with the Wayward Duke
Her mouth twitched. He would have taken a broadside more calmly.
“I see,” she said. “You have come to me for medical reasons.”
He grunted. At midnight, desire had worn the decent coat of an agreement. This was morning, and he had no right to look at her as if the day belonged to him too.
Her gaze moved over him, from the open throat of his shirt to his hands braced at his sides, then back to his face. He felt the look straight to his cock.
“Very well. If it is to prevent the captain from falling ill.”
The quill touched the desk. A small sound. Tristan heard it like a pistol cocking. One moment, he stood by the stern window, inventing poor excuses. The next, he crossed the cabin as if the deck had pitched him forward.
Marguerite’s eyes widened as he caught her face between his hands and kissed her. Her mouth opened under his with a shocked breath that made him harder than a wind-strained spar.
He caught her beneath the thighs and lifted her from the chair.
She gasped against his mouth. One hand flew to his shoulder, the other to the back of his neck.
He set her on the desk, scattering papers. The quill rolled, dropped, and vanished somewhere below. He did not care. Heart pumping, he grabbed her waist and dragged her to the edge until she was flush against him, skirts rucked between his hips.
Tristan touched her throat, his thumb finding the frantic beat beneath her skin. Holding her there, he searched her eyes. The need for her nearly stopped his breath.
Her smile trembled at the edges. “You are looking at me as if you are planning an invasion.”
Tristan did not smile. “I am.”
She tilted her head. “Pirates usually invade when they want something. What do you want, Tristan?”
What did he want? He needed to take all of her, this treasure of a woman, so this maddening thrill would fade.
“I want your taste.” He drew his tongue along the seam of her lower lip, slow enough to feel her breath catch before he took her mouth. When he drew back, her lashes had lowered, her lips damp from him.
“And all your thoughts,” he said, pulling the pins from her hair. Gold loosened over his hand, sliding down her shoulder in a heavy fall. He watched it spill over his desk, and something savage moved through him.
“Every clever one. Every foolish one. Every thought you hide behind diplomacy.”
Her eyes searched his. “And if I do not surrender them?”
“Then I shall have to lay siege.”
He watched her as he pressed her leg open by slow degrees, giving her time to stop him, needing her not to. Her fingers curled in his shirt, and her breath came shallow and quick.
“I want the part of you that forgets how to negotiate.” He leaned close, his mouth brushing her ear. “Every inch of you that answers before the diplomat can object.”
She trembled against him.
He pushed her skirts up with one hand. When he found her slick and ready, she moaned.
He freed himself with one hand. “I want your breath, your sighs, your moans.”
Tristan took his cock by the root and placed the head between the lips of her sex. Then he slid his palms under her buttocks and pushed home.
Her breath left her in a burst. His own breath followed—dragged out of him by the devastating relief of being inside her. Her forehead dropped to his shoulder.
The world narrowed to the fierce, perfect shock of her body closing around him as if the whole voyage had been leading to this single point of arrival. Triumph tore through him, primitiveand blinding. There. At last. Want achieved. The prize taken. The ache answered.
Then she gasped against his mouth, her fingers tightening at his collar.
And he wanted more.
