He’d warned her.
True to form, she’d refused to listen.
And, as usual, she would have to reap the consequences.
One of which might be her very first broken heart.
Chapter 10
Raphael never sampled the substances his father—and now he—sold. Because he’d seen time and again what physical attachment did to a person.
How ruinous it became.
But as Mercy rose from the cobalt velvet swirls of her bed covers, like Calypso from the sea, he knew he was lost.
She might have been stripped to the skin, but she’d left him exposed and raw, down to the very essence of what made him a mortal.
A man.
Her flavor was ambrosia.
Her body an altar to the bacchanalian gods.
Her skin pale and soft or—in some places—peach and succulent.
That flesh called for him to reach for her now, but something in her eyes caused him to hesitate. A new expression she wore, both marvel and melancholy.
Withstanding her perusal was an exquisite torture.
But he’d been tortured before.
He’d survive it.
Better that she become used to the sight of him first, to the idea of his body, before he fell upon her like the lustful beast tearing through his veins.
Though she seemed uncertain, she was the one to rise to her knees and reach out.
To close the gap between them.
Her questing hands branded fingertip-sized trails of fire over his shoulders, down his pectorals and across the ticklish spokes of his ribs.
He didn’t dare move. Her innocent exploration of him was a most elegant agony, one he wasn’t certain he ever wanted to escape.
She didn’t take much time, impatient minx that she was. Didn’t linger over his tattoos or his muscles, or the parts of him that were not foreign to her.
They both had arms, nipples, a stomach.
There was certainly a difference in shape between them, but not one that seemed to unduly concern her.
She looked him right in the eyes as slim, cool fingers wrapped around the girth of his throbbing sex, forcing a tight gasp from his constricting throat.
Heat collected behind his spine and pulled the pendulous weight beneath his cock tight into his body with the gathering spasms of release.
Groaning, he seized her hand.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, eyes wide with concern. “Did I hurt you?”
He brought her knuckles to his mouth and kissed each precious one. “Quite the opposite. Your touch threatens to end this moment too quickly.”
“I don’t mind,” she cajoled.
“I do.” Affronted, he pulled her close for a searching kiss.
Didn’t she understand that he needed this night to last forever?
Not only because he didn’t have many nights left, but because even though he was a man who always claimed what he went after, he rarely went after what he truly wanted.
Somehow, this young, untried woman seemed to know what it was that he needed. Intrinsically answering questions he hadn’t yet thought to ask.
Her fingers slid into his hair, both soothing him and setting the nerves there alight with sensation. He’d needed her touch, craved it, and yet a sense of guilt kept him from seeking it.
Tonight was his to give. To teach. To soothe and comfort. A woman’s first time took patience and skill and reserve that only a knave would abandon.
His ferocious and terrible instinct would have him pin her to the bed while he remained standing so he could press her knees by her head and watch himself fuck and fuck and fuck her until they collapsed with thirst and exhaustion.
He wanted to feed her from his hand and bathe her so he could bend her over and do it again. He wanted her to tie him up and ride his mouth. His cock.
He wanted her in every depraved way a man could take a woman.
And the simple ones too...
Mercy Goode was inherently a carnal woman, given to impish mischief and endless curiosity. She wouldn’t be content with basic, gentle lovemaking for long.
She’d want more.
And he’d be gone before long.
Holy Christ, she’d find someone else.
Possessive instinct surged, and suddenly she was in the circle of his arms, her lithe body clenched against his with such strength, he lifted her knees from the bed.
A turbulent rage rose beneath his lust, churning opaque emotions from where he’d forced them to lie dormant like the bed of sludge beneath a lake of ice.
Why now?
When decisions had been made, and his fate sealed. When he’d vowed to atone for all the wrong he’d never wanted to do...
The right woman barged into his life and turned his entire world upside down.
Made him question everything he thought he knew about himself.
Made him yearn for things that were patently impossible.
Made his blood froth and churn with torrents of need, and his heart trip and kick with boyish, frivolous emotions.
Like hope, for example.
Or whatever this odd amalgamation of impossible softness and desperate intensity could be called.
Was there a word for it?
For yearning more insatiable than lust? Hunger more excruciating than deprivation?
Pain more insidious than the shattering of bone?
The three languages he spoke fluently offered up nothing. Though, the feel of the naked woman molded to him might have addled his brain somewhat.
Her response to the imprisonment of his arms was unfettered and open and fearless, just like her.
Pressing herself to him, she scored his scalp with her nails, rolled her body in sinuous undulations, as if the entire ravenous intensification of their encounter had been her bloody idea.
In fact, she tugged at him with surprising strength for such a delicate creature, pulling him back to the bed and nearly climbing him like a falling tree as he lay her back on the counterpane.
Her thighs fell open beneath his weight, her long legs locking around his waist.
The delicate heat of her sex singed him with need.
“I’m ready,” she sighed, her voice still husky from her climax and her lashes fanning long shadows against her flushed cheek.
He bloody wasn’t.
Or—rather—he was. Too ready. Too hungry. He wanted to shove into her like a brute. To rut like a stag and submit her like a stallion. If only he could crawl inside of her, somehow, to join with her in a way that would leave a part of him locked within her.
Christ, was this why people procreated?
Something about that thought sobered him a little. Enough to let him pull back and gaze down into her lovely face.
Her hair was a riot of precious metals in the lamplight. The strands at her nape a deep bronze, and those at her temple light as mercury. The tresses fanned out around her creamy shoulders in waves of corn silk and spun gold.
Eyes shining like brilliant sapphires, she flicked her little pink tongue across lips red and swollen from the abrasion of his kisses, as if savoring the taste of him there.
Or the flavor of her own desire.
The gesture nearly undid him.
Her pert nose flared with heavy gasps that fell against his face in sweet-scented puffs. Their shared breaths felt more intimate than the most immoral acts he’d ever committed.
Finally, he settled his hips into the cradle of hers, grunting as the crown of his cock slid against the wet cove of her body.
Her gaze showed no uncertainty and it lanced him all the way through. He’d done nothing in his entire benighted life to deserve such trust.
And yet. There it was.
“I’m sorry if I hurt you,” he whispered, kissing her with a conciliatory tug of his lips.
“I forgive you,” she whispered, squirming her hips in gasp-inducing impatience. “But only if you hurry.”
If only all demands were so easy to satisfy.<
br />
If only all hurts were so easily forgiven.
Setting his jaw, Raphael nudged forward.
Initially her body gave, welcoming the plump crown of him with a slick kiss. When he encountered hindrance, he cursed viciously, stalling his progression.
“I’m sorry,” she gasped, her features tight with concentration.
“No, mon chaton.” He dropped kisses onto her cheekbones, her eyelids, the wisps of curls at her temples. “No. I am sorry. Tell me to stop.” It would be a feat even Hercules might have failed, but he’d do it.
“You’re trembling,” she remarked, smoothing her palms over his shoulders shaking with the burden of his restraint.
“I—I can’t bring myself to hurt you.”
“I’m not in pain. Just...pressure.” She wriggled against him again, testing the barrier.
Jesus. Fuck.
He couldn’t do this. Not with her. Not to her.
When he made to withdraw, she gripped at him with sharp claws, her nails creating delicious little crescents of pain on his back.
“Do it,” she commanded, her features becoming a mask of determination before she buried her face against his neck. “Do it. Now.”
He could do nothing but obey.
With a surge of his hips, he impaled her.
Her teeth sank into the meat of his shoulder and she gave a whimper that gutted him.
Gathering her close, he curled around her as they each shuddered and surrendered to the feel of him seated inside to the hilt.
Their breaths synchronized, as the tight clutch of her molded around him. Eventually the pulsing muscles milked at his cock, seeming to pull him even deeper, like a fist of wet silk.
He could come like this. Deep inside of her. Without moving anything.
The Fauve that he was desired just that. He could simply bathe her womb in his seed, thinking it could take root.
How could it not when he was so deliciously deep?
Never. An insidious inner voice reminded him. You promised to never.
A hasty breath created a movement where they were joined. And the noise she made stirred him.
A sigh of curious delight.
Encouraged, he rolled his hips slightly and she responded each time with tiny sounds in her throat. Little mewls, like that a kitten would make.
His kitten.
Mon chaton.
Then she said the most dangerous words one could utter to a man like him.
“More. I want more.”
It was all he needed.
He gave it to her, in long, deliberate—if careful—thrusts. He fed her his length once. And again. And again. Wedging himself impossibly deeper each time.
Her arms clutched at him, her lush mouth opening in a silent quest for a kiss, but he denied her.
He had to watch, to see the play of emotion run across her face. To observe what he wrought inside of her. The astonishment and the acceptance. The heat and the hunger. The shuddering surrender.
Raphael knew the moment she’d become a prisoner to her pleasure. It pulled her away from him. Unfocused her eyes and brought her entire concentration inward. He knew what his languorous strokes built, that the angle of their hips created friction not only inside but against the engorged knot of sensation that was the button to every woman’s desire.
Sweat bloomed between them, creating a damp, erotic slide of flesh against flesh. It was as if they had fused into one, that he’d become buried so deep inside her body, that he might have reason to hope to lodge himself in her heart, as well.
Their limbs tangled in untidy knots, mirroring his emotions.
Perhaps if he entwined them so thoroughly, there would be no unraveling them.
This.
This was the danger of addiction.
When something took you away from yourself. When it became as essential as air or water. Oblivion merged into sensation and colors fused into high-relief and time lost all meaning. Perhaps the future was a memory. Or the past was a lie.
Or there was only this.
This moment. This joy. This act. This emotion.
This woman.
He’d not expected her to come again. Not her first time.
But when her spine arched and her sex spasmed around him in delicious contractions, something like panic surged as his own climax gathered through his veins.
It sped toward him, an avalanche bent on annihilation. He already knew how powerful it would be and still couldn’t leap out of the way.
It would ruin him. Shatter him.
He barely pulled out in time.
Burying a roar in the velvet of her quilt, he let his cock slide between their bodies as his release ripped him apart. It was a cataclysm of pleasure, something so mind-altering he knew the moment defined him.
Because there was the resolute man he’d been before he tasted the heaven that was the embrace of Mercy Goode.
And the tragedy of everything that was about to happen next.
Chapter 11
Mercy thought that relinquishing her virginity would make her feel older, somehow. More experienced and womanly. Perhaps even wise, now that she’d been initiated into the society of secret smiles shared by Nora and Pru, her two married sisters.
Instead, she felt very young and vulnerable as she complacently allowed Raphael to wipe away the slick leavings of their joining from her belly and between her thighs.
She stared at the shoes he’d discarded in haste. The one’s he’d wear to leave her.
Would he put them on? Was it time for him to go now?
Now that she was cold and oddly small and lonely in her massive bed.
Mercy took a moment to admire the masculine shape of his backside as he turned away from her and ministered to his own hygiene.
She wished she were a sculptor. A painter. Any sort of artist that could capture him in a rendering.
For memories had a tendency to fade, and she wanted to appreciate his beauty every day.
He returned to her, and her heart lifted as he slid into the bed and gathered her against him. Settling on his back, he arranged her boneless limbs over his muscled form like a marionette before spreading her curls across his chest so he could stroke her hair with lazy fingers.
She nuzzled into him as he yawned with such ferocity his jaw cracked and his limbs shuddered with it.
As elegant and sinister as he was with his fine suits and caustic conversation, Mercy discovered she rather liked him like this.
Silky hair mussed by her fingers in the throes of pleasure, hazel eyes at half-mast and a drowsy curve softening his hard mouth. Even his jaw had relaxed, the cords beneath his ears and next to his temple released.
The damp chill of the late-winter night lurked just outside of where their cobalt coverlet and gold lamp ensconced them in a decadence of warmth and flesh and velvet.
Though he’d pulled the blanket to their waists, she could still consider their differences with idle curiosity. Decide what she liked and what she had to accustom herself to...
If that were an option.
The steely muscle beneath his marble-smooth skin mesmerized her as she let her fingers wander the peaks and valleys of his geography. She appreciated all that he was, the dusky hue to his skin. The warm fragrance of him, like cotton and salt.
Crisp hair on his leg tickled the inside of her thigh, and she drew her appendage over the abrading stuff, letting it scratch away the irksome itch.
His breath evened. Moving from the chest beneath her cheek down to his stomach. The hammer of his heart slowed to a thump, and he was silent for so long she thought he might have fallen asleep.
She lifted her head to check and found him staring—unblinking—into the middle distance as his fingers toyed with her hair.
“Is something troubling you?” she asked, pretending not to be anxious as she perched her head on her palm.
He was not quick to reply. “I don’t know if it’s the darkness of the hour or of the situation, but I can
only think it is a cruelty of fate that I found you.”
“Well...there’s a thing to say.” A frown tugged at her mouth, at her heart, and she pushed back from him, offended in the extreme. “When I was feeling just the opposite. Thinking how fortunate I was to have spent such a time with you. To have enjoyed myself so thoroughly. Did I..um... Have I misunderstood your seemingly enthusiastic responses?”
“No, no, sweet Mercy, that is not what I meant.” He cupped her chin, cradling it as if it were made of spun glass. “It is cruel to have a night like this, knowing I cannot have another. It tinged this incomparable pleasure with exquisite pain.”
“We could do it again.” She brightened, his words a balm for her bruised heart, even as she lamented the idea of losing him. “My parents have extended their stay on the continent another month. And even after they arrive home, I could finagle a way to occasionally meet you at the Savoy or—”
He shook his head, his eyes abysmal wells of bleak despair. “Mon coeur, you mustn’t care for me. You mustn’t become attached.”
Mon coeur. My heart. How could he call her something like that and then insist there was nothing further between them?
Was the endearment just a sweet and flippant nothing to him?
She cocked her head. “Do you care for nothing? For no one?”
He drew in a long breath through his nose. “It has been my secret all these years. I have gained so much because I didn’t care if I lost it. I risk everything when I take a gamble, and I have not lost for so long...until now.”
“What do you mean?”
He speared her with a gaze so intense she felt as if it punctured her all the way through. “I told you I only love one person on this earth, and I referred to Gabriel, but...I am in danger of falling for you, Mercy Goode.”
She blinked at the immediacy of his confession. He hadn’t said love, though the word lingered on the periphery of their conversation. “I’ve heard it said that men in bed are often men in love. You do not know me enough to fall—”
He coiled at the waist, levering to a sitting position so as to bracket her cheeks with his hands, capturing her face in a gentle prison so he might bore the truth of his words into her. “I want you to know that I have been unable to stop thinking about you since the moment we met. That is something—”
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