How to Woo a Wallflower (Romancing the Rules #3)(74)

Turning, he stepped with her until her back was against the wall and settled her on her feet. Kneeling down, he eased her gown up. She shivered as he dragged his fingers up her legs, slipped the ribbon of her drawers, and pulled the gauzy garment to her feet. Clary reached back and unlatched the hooks of her double petticoats, and Gabe tugged the fabric until the cotton pooled between them.

When he stood and lifted her again, her body began to pulse with aching need just where she could feel him hard and hot against her middle. Trusting him to hold her, she wrapped her legs around his waist.

He groaned as he took her mouth, stroking his tongue inside her.

“Love me like this,” she told him.

His lips found hers again as he delved a hand between them to unfasten his trousers. Breathless, on fire, heat sizzling through her veins, Clary waited for him to fill her. For some mad reason, they’d adhered to propriety since her proposal, exchanging only kisses and caresses, but this joining with him was what she craved. She would never get enough of being this close to him.

“I have a better idea,” he said hoarsely, shifting to carry her to the edge of his desk. He settled her down gently and then, in one violent sweeping motion, removed everything else from his desktop. The metal tray protested with a clatter, his beloved fountain pen spun like a top, and his blotter landed with an unceremonious thud.

“Who are you?” Clary teased. “And what did you do with my husband?”

“Your husband’s here,” he said as he gathered her skirts and wedged himself between her spread thighs. “And I never wish to part from you again.”

“Promise?” she gasped as he nipped at her neck while he slid against her.

“Forever, Clary,” he vowed as he joined with her, lifting her thighs to his hips as he thrust deeper. “I love you.” He pressed his forehead to hers as he built a rhythm, caressed her bare shoulders, pushed her bodice low to cup her breast. “I love you,” he repeated as he claimed her mouth.

Clary pulled so hard at his shirt, buttons popped free. She needed to feel him bare beneath her fingers, stroke her hands across his skin, get close to him. He took her mouth, kissed her cheeks, her nose, her neck, as he took her on his desk. When he nipped her earlobe between his teeth and whispered with heated breath, “Tell me you’re mine,” something in her sundered. She was floating, melting in bliss, clinging to him, one hand on his back, her other threaded in his hair.

She came against him, squirming and shuddering, and telling him, vowing with her body and soul, “Gabriel, I’m yours.”

“You’re mine,” he vowed before burying his face against her neck and groaning out his release.

Afterward, he fussed over her, settling his suit coat over her shoulders, fetching her a cup of tea from the urn in the workroom, looking at her with a worry she didn’t wish to see in his eyes.

“What is it?” She slumped down into his desk chair.

“I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to concentrate on work in this room again.” He lifted a hand, and she came to him, letting him settle into his chair and pull her down onto his lap.

“About that—”

He burst into robust laughter before she could manage another word, and she pressed a hand to his chest, relishing the reverberation of his amusement as it echoed in the room.

“Promise me you’ll laugh more often.”

After a kiss on her nose, he said, “With you by my side, I fully expect my days to be filled with laughter.” He grinned. “Except at the office, of course. Don’t wish to ruin my reputation with the lads.”

Clary pushed at him playfully, and he settled his hands around her hips.

“Now, tell me what’s whirring in that brilliant mind of yours. I can almost see the wheels turning when I look in your eyes.”

“Well . . . ” Clary drew a circle with her finger on his chest. “This is assuredly your office.”

He pursed his lips and glanced at the desk’s edge where he’d made her shudder in pleasure. “Perhaps it’s ours now.”

“That is exactly my idea! What would you say to . . . ” She paused and assessed him. “Managing Ruthven’s together?” The words emerged as a question, her tone uncertain, hesitant.

Gabe drew in a long breath and narrowed an eye at her as he exhaled. “Will you require tea and biscuits at every meeting?”

“Probably.”

“And waste time assuring dreadful writers that they can improve and flood our postbox with more stories?”

“I might.”

He frowned and stared at the ceiling. “Will you douse yourself with ink on occasion?”

“You married a rather accident-prone woman,” she teased, pushing the placket of his shirt aside to draw her fingers across his bare chest. She gripped a few strands of soft hair and warned, “You did vow to love me forever. There’s no going back now.”

Following her lead, he tugged her bodice down, slipped his fingers past her corset and chemise, and stroked her nipple until she was taut against his fingers. “I have no desire to be anyplace but here with you. I’m never going back,” he vowed as he stroked her. “And forever won’t be long enough for how much I love you.”

Clary shifted in his lap and felt him stiffen beneath her. She reached down, eager to shape the length of him with her hand. He only let her touch him a moment before lifting her in his arms and settling her back on his desk. He flipped up her skirt.