The Hellion (Wicked Wallflowers #1)(74)

“Stop,” he entreated, staying her movements.

She looked questioningly up at him, but he immediately shifted over her, taking her mouth again in a kiss. They tangled with their tongues in a primitive dance that increased the sharp ache at her core until incoherent pleas were falling from her lips.

She dimly registered Adair settling between her thighs, and she let her legs fall wider. His shaft pressed hard and thick against her damp curls.

“Please,” she begged, not knowing what she pleaded for, only knowing he could assuage the ache at her center.

He responded by palming her there. Biting her lower lip as the desperate hunger built, she looked at him wildly. All these years, she’d believed this act was a dirty one that stripped a woman of pride and strength. Only to be set gloriously free, under the power of his touch. “I need . . . more,” she breathed, reveling in that new freedom, abandoning everything she’d erroneously believed as a woman. There was no shame in this. Only wonder.

He slipped two fingers inside her sopping channel, slowly torturing her with his ministrations.

An incoherent plea spilled past her lips. “Please,” she moaned. She had no pride where this man was concerned. He entered her slowly, inch by agonizing inch, stretching the tight virginal walls.

The chiseled planes of his features tightened, and a sheen of sweat formed on his brow. “I’ve never felt anything like this,” he rasped, stopping when his manhood reached the thin flesh she’d preserved in the streets of St. Giles.

For him. I saved myself for this man and only him . . .

“Oi don’t want to hurt you,” he said in low, guttural tones.

Cleopatra held him close. “I want this,” she panted. Before she left him, she needed to know him in this way. Wanted to take every memory of Adair Thorne she could.

He clenched his eyes and pressed forward.

A scream tore from her lips, and Adair instantly covered her mouth with his, swallowing the sound of her pain.

He stilled inside her, going absolutely motionless.

Breaking his kiss, Cleopatra tightened her arms about him. As one who’d been punched, kicked, and burned, she’d thought herself largely immune to pain, only to find she was still human, after all. “That ’urt,” she acknowledged in ragged tones.

Adair touched his lips to the corner of her mouth, then trailed a tender path of butterfly-soft kisses to her brow. “Oi’d rather cut myself with my own knife than cause you pain.”

She didn’t want to think of his suffering. Cleopatra focused on evening her breaths. “Oi’m fine,” she finally said.

The ghost of a smile dimpled his cheek, and Adair gently shoved her spectacles back into their proper place. “Cleopatra, are you trying to reassure me?”

“Ya look loike you’re going to toss the contents of your belly, Thorne. Green like you just—” He reclaimed her lips in a tender joining that rekindled the fluttering inside her belly.

And then he began to move. She held herself stiffly at the slow drag of him. The dull throbbing of pain receded, and in its place was the familiar ache of desire. Their chests moved together with the force of their breaths.

Cleopatra laid her palms on the side of Adair’s neck so she could retain his gaze, wanting to see him as he made love to her. He leaned down and caught her mouth. Then the slide of his tongue between her lips matched the pace he’d set for them.

She gasped and lifted her hips, meeting his movements as he filled her again and again. “Yes,” she rasped as he dragged her back up to that precipice where she’d hovered before. The pulsing between her legs intensified, so she could focus on nothing but the feel of their bodies joining together.

Adair gripped her hips and stroked her harder. Faster. “Come for me,” he urged.

“Yes,” she whimpered. “I want . . . I want . . .” Cleopatra went taut, and then he pulled free and thrust home once more. She softly screamed, exploding in a blur of white light.

With a hoarse shout, he came inside her in long, rippling waves. Rapturous shudders racked her body as she took all of him. His chest heaving, Adair collapsed. He caught his weight with his elbows, anchoring them on either side of her head.

Tears pricked behind her lashes as their ragged breaths filtered around the quiet of the room. She tried to speak. “I never felt . . . I didn’t know . . . I . . .” Cleopatra struggled to find adequate words to capture what she was feeling—and failed.

Adair kissed the tip of her nose, that gesture so achingly tender, her heart filled all the more with her love for him. “This isn’t why I brought you here,” he said, a smile in his voice.

In one fluid movement, he rolled her from under him. She gasped as he reversed their bodies’ positions and brought her atop him. The crisp curls matting his chest tickled her cheek. Cleopatra struggled herself into a semiupright position and propped her chin on him. “I would not mind if you did,” she teased.

He gave her a teasing swat on her backside, eliciting a sharp laugh. “Minx.” Adair opened his eyes, and her own dazed, silly smile reflected back in his eyes.

When have I ever been this happy? This trusting? With anyone? Having kept even her own sisters out, she’d believed herself incapable of this closeness with another person.

And he’d despise you if he knew who you really are.

It was the ultimate secret she’d convinced herself Adair didn’t need to know because she was only a fleeting presence in his life.