How to Woo a Wallflower (Romancing the Rules #3)(57)

“Clary,” he said in warning, though the words emerged as a plea.

“The statues in museums are wildly misleading.” She grinned up at him, as she continued to stroke. “I must draw you like this.”

“I won’t be like this for long if you keep touching me.” He knelt on the bed to kiss her, and she released him with a little groan of frustration. “Lay back, love.”

She fell back onto the bed, her long hair spread around her, and she was so lovely his whole body burned to be inside her. He again told himself to go slow. Despite her wonderful boldness, he suspected Clary was innocent, and he’d not been with many women himself. He’d never much liked being touched before Clary. Never cared to be truly intimate with anyone. Now he wanted nothing so much as to be close to her, to strip away every lie he’d ever told, to lose his forced control, to be unfettered with her. To hold nothing back.

As he stroked a hand up her leg, she parted her thighs, lifting her arms to urge him closer. “I need your heat,” she said huskily.

He positioned his body over hers, eased himself between her legs, rocked against her slickness. Bracing on his elbows, he feared crushing her if he let her take his weight. But she was having none of his hesitation. She wrapped an arm around his shoulder and whispered, “Closer,” before lifting for a kiss. When she bucked her hips, he breached her an inch, and she broke their kiss with a gasp.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” he said against her neck. “We must go slow.”

“I hate slow,” she pouted. Gabe took her plump lower lip between his teeth, before taking her mouth. He stroked her with his tongue and eased himself against her, rocking ever so slowly, nudging deeper with every thrust. When he lifted to gaze down at her, to ensure she was all right, she lifted her hips. “More,” she whispered, before lifting her hips and drawing him deeper.

Sweeping her hair aside, he planted a hand on the bed beside her head, arching up to gaze into her eyes as he thrust deep. She nodded as if urging him on, and he built a rhythm as she stroked a hand down his chest, clutched at his shoulder, let out a delicious gasp as he slipped inside her.

He was lost. Clary was all that mattered. She was the bounty he was ever seeking, the reward for which he’d been searching all the ugly miserable days of his life. She was a bigger slice of heaven than he could ever deserve, but he would never get enough. Somehow, some way, he had to keep her. Love her every day, as she deserved. Pleasure her every damned night, as many times as he was able.

“Faster,” she hissed, his insatiable beauty.

When she twisted her head on the pillow, he dipped down to catch her pink taut nipple against his tongue.

“Please, Gabriel, don’t stop.” She bucked out of rhythm to his thrusts, drawing him deeper. Then she let out a lusty moan as her sweet body spasmed around him.

“I won’t, sweetheart,” he rasped, lowering himself against her chest, as the unbearable agonizing bliss of his release built.

She turned her head to kiss his neck, flicking her tongue out to taste him. “I love you,” she whispered against his skin.

Gabe jolted at the words. He craved them, needed them, and resisted their strange unsettling effects. Then his release tore through him, a violent rapture that turned his vision black but for flashes of light, like fireworks bursting across a night sky. He buried his face against Clary’s neck, rolled to his side, and pulled her with him. She curled against him, soft, warm perfection in his arms.

He didn’t deserve her. He never would. But he couldn’t bear to lose her either.





CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Clary awoke to a cloudy-dusk light. A breeze, fresh with the scent of rain, wafted in from her open bedroom window. She reached out for Gabriel, but he wasn’t beside her—though the sheets were still warm, as if he’d just stepped away. His clothes were still pooled on the floor too, except for his trousers and shirt.

Sitting up, she wiped the blurriness from her eyes and slid to the edge of the bed. Strange parts of her body were sore, but she didn’t regret a moment she’d spent with him. Yawning, she stretched her arms over her head and smiled. Her first thought was to find him and do it all over again.

A sound drew her attention to the window. Shouting, angry voices. Altercations were rare in Bloomsbury Square, especially out in front of the row of houses for all to see.

Rushing toward her wardrobe, she grabbed a dressing gown and tied the belt at her waist as she made her way to the window.

Down on the street, Gabriel stood arguing with a little boy. He fisted his hand in the child’s shirt front as he shouted at him.

Pushing the curtain aside, she slid the window up, and ducked her head out. “Gabriel.”

He either didn’t hear her or chose to ignore her call. Without bothering to find her boots, she started downstairs. Gabriel burst through the front door, pushing the boy along ahead of him. The child had a colorful vocabulary and seemed determined to expend every foul word he knew denouncing Gabriel’s rough handling.

“ ’E’ll ’ear o’ this, ye can bet a crown, and ’e’ll bury ye in the Thames, you bleedin’ rotter.”

Gabe released the child, and he stumbled forward, straightening his ragged old frock coat as if it were Bond Street’s finest.

“Well, I never.” Kit and Phee’s housekeeper stood near the stairwell, eyes gaping, a hand covering her mouth. “Miss Ruthven, this is most unusual.”