A Wild Night's Bride (The Devil DeVere #1)(24)

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In that close, dark space, Ned’s senses were acutely filled with her—the silky smoothness of her skin, the deliciously malleable weight of her breast, the soft, round globes of her arse, the very air he drew in was redolent of her musky essence.

Dear God, he wanted to cry out in rapture when his fingers met the welcoming, wet heat of her quim. She climaxed easily under his skilled touch, sending his thoughts careening. Her muffled cry broke all restraint. Unable to hold back, he plunged deeply into her slick and decadent wetness, overwhelming his senses in a madness of lust borne of long-suppressed need.

She gasped. He turned her head and caught the ragged exhalation with his mouth, mingling her moans with his own while continuing the mind-numbing plunge and drag. She arched her back, thrusting her arse, grinding, urging, and meeting his need to go deeper, harder. The pressure mounted, his sac contracted. With a hiss between clenched teeth, he abruptly withdrew and spent hot jets that made his body convulse and his knees buckle.

Quivering with aftershocks, he held her tightly, panting into her hair, his mind devoid of any thought beyond taking her into his own bed and doing it all again and again.





CHAPTER TEN




Phoebe was shaken, dazed, and incredulous. She had never experienced what he had done to her—had never known her body and soul could be melded as one and transported to such a pinnacle of mindless rapture. He held her against him in a silent grip of iron as if he were thinking the same thing.

They stood thus for a long moment, bodies and skin slick with sweat, breathing ragged, the musky tang of sex filling their senses, afraid to move or speak, fearful of breaking the fragile and incredible erotic spell.

Phoebe spoke first in a reluctant whisper. “Are they gone?”

“They must be,” he replied. “Or we would surely have been discovered.”

His big hands and strong arms dropped from her body, leaving her feeling bereft. Closest to the door, she gently turned the knob and opened it only enough to peer into the empty chamber. “I think we’re safe.” Slinking out first, Phoebe was acutely aware of her nakedness. “Please, I need something to cover me,” she said. “The sheet. Anything.”

With his color high and his gaze averted, he handed her the same sheet she had earlier wrapped about her. “Kitty,” he began, “About what just happened...I can’t begin to apologize.”

The breath exited her lungs in a painful gush. She snatched the sheet from his hands. “Apologize? You wish to apologize?” She had just experienced the indescribable at his hands, and he was regretting it? Her chest seized. The spell had not only broken but lay shattered at her feet.

“I can’t explain what came over me,” he said, looking helpless and agonizingly contrite. “I lost all self-possession, any sense of decorum, of restraint... Here I meant to save you from DeVere, and I have proven no better.”

“Don’t!” She choked down the lump in her throat. She had never felt more exposed or vulnerable. She had sworn never to be hurt again but had lost all good sense. With his open display of pain and grief, he had touched some deep recess of her heart. She would never have believed any man could love so deeply had she not seen the sorrow, the longing in his eyes. She had wondered what it would be like to be the center of someone’s world, to be essential to their happiness. Her inner soul, the part she thought locked safely away, had craved that, coveted it. Foolishly, she had given herself to him with a hopeless hunger for just a small crumb of what he had given another and was now at peril of losing her heart.

“I used you.” He groaned.

No. She gave herself a brutal shake. She knew she meant nothing to him. It was his personal honor and conscience that nagged him. He had already demonstrated an overdeveloped sense of it with his self-imposed celibacy. She reminded herself that she had come here only for the money, to win DeVere’s wager, but now he was out cold. If they left this place now, everything she had risked would all be for naught.

While they had come under the guise of his wager, DeVere had revealed to her that he’d had something entirely different in mind all along, that his true intent was Ned’s seduction. Without guile, she had willingly done her part, but would DeVere still uphold his bargain? She wondered how much he would even remember in the morning. Would he require proof that she had seduced his best friend? Perhaps she needed the sheet after all. While he had lost himself to passion in a weak moment, he now seemed to have replaced his shield of gentlemanly reserve. How now to seduce a principled man who thought he had used and dishonored her? What would Kitty do?

With hammering heart, Phoebe masked herself in an entirely new cloak, turning to face him with a shrill laugh. “You think you used me? But you have it all backward, my darling. Did it never occur to you that I might have used you? That this entire night might have been naught but an outlandish ploy to satisfy my own wanton whim?”

Ned’s face darkened. “What do you mean ploy?”

“I came alone to a brothel, after all. Perhaps I am the one no better than DeVere. I told quite a convincing story, did I not? One entirely crafted to engage your sympathy.”

He studied her in tight-lipped silence as she pressed on.

“I am a fashionable woman, after all, and women of fashion must have their intrigues. My husband is not only the biggest bore in London, you see, but a clumsy dullard in bed. No imagination at all. Thus, I am forced to seek my pleasure where I can in these delicious, little adventures. Given DeVere’s reputation, I had originally sought him out, but then you presented yourself, and your resistance only made for better sport. DeVere will plant his staff anywhere, after all. Hardly a conquest.”