Proof by Seduction (Carhart #1)(53)

Her body stiffened. Her passage clamped down on the fingers inside her. “Oh.” The word was wrung out of her. “Oh.” Again, and louder. Then—“Gareth.”

His name swept through him, a sensation as primitively powerful as the strongest release. Wave after wave pulsed through them. He tasted her pleasure, felt it throb around his fingers. “Gareth,” she screamed again, and his name on her lips seemed more intimate than the physical connection he shared with her.

She gasped so hard she could have been sobbing. Gareth was hard and erect. He levered himself over her. The erect tips of her ni**les brushed his chest. She struggled up onto her elbows and kissed him. His tongue found hers. He wanted her desperately.

You.

The full length of his erection pressed against her belly. She spread her legs, angling her hips up toward his. As soon as her slick softness touched his member, he was lost.

He was lost, but he was coming home.

Her hips shifted, and the crown of his c**k pushed against her body’s opening. And then she rose to meet him—he pushed against her—and he was sinking inch by inch into her soft, waiting flesh. She was tight, so tight, around him. Hot satisfaction gripped him. She fit. Not just her slick female passage, but her body, her hips, her br**sts. His hands were of a size to cradle her head. She molded against him as if he’d been made for her. She engulfed him. He filled her.

“Gareth,” she said again.

“Jenny. Oh, God. Jenny.”

The names came simultaneously. Gareth could restrain himself no longer. He took from her. He gave to her. It was an age-old dance, one more powerful and more riveting than logic. She was hot friction clasping him; sparking electricity tracing his veins.

She was his.

Her fingernails cut into his back. She pulled his mouth down to hers in the dark. She kissed him, and he tasted his name on her lips again. As he plunged into her, his mind filled with a coruscating fire. Heat rose around him. Beneath him, she stiffened. Her womb clamped around him in the beginning of a second release. And Gareth let himself go, let everything he had held back flood from him.

He pulled her against him in those final moments, shielding her from the chaotic storm that raged through his body. It passed, leaving him wrung out and sated, his limbs intertwined with hers.

He gulped for air and sanity. It was slow in coming.

What would she say now? Even though it was his body covering hers, his chest pressing her soft curves into the mattress, it seemed that Gareth was the one who was trapped. His lungs burned with exertion. Or emotion. No matter which, he could not find his breath again. It was buried somewhere inside her, deeper even than his still-throbbing cock, clasped in her womb.

What had he just experienced? It had been pleasure. Communion. Connection. It had been the end of a long, dark loneliness. Gareth could not bring himself to pull away from her. Because it had been everything.

Everything, that is, except the one thing she had asked it to be.

It hadn’t been goodbye.

Her chest rose and fell beneath his. Her heart beat steadily against his sweaty skin. He couldn’t see a damned thing through the dark night, but he could feel the heavy pulse in her throat thumping into the hollow cavern of his lungs.

A layer of London grime coated her windows, letting in only the barest hint of light from the street. He pressed his forehead to hers. Say my name again.

Instead, her muscles tensed in rejection. First her thighs grew taut underneath his own, then her stomach. The tension traveled up her shoulders. She put her hands against his chest. Infinitesimal pressure; unmistakable message. Get off me.

With a sigh, he withdrew from her body and rolled beside her. The mattress sagged as he moved, compressing under his weight. It was some kind of an uncomfortable straw tick. He could feel every hint of unevenness against his bare back. The ropes supporting them swayed with the movement.

On this small a bed, it was difficult to lie beside her without touching. Somehow, she arranged herself to manage precisely that. Gareth shut his eyes. He imagined a nimbus of heat and light surrounding her. Touching him, like a tentative kiss. When she rolled on her side, away from him, cool air washed over his bare skin.

“Well.” His voice sounded foreign, clipped and shorn of emotion. “Maybe we should have said goodbye with a handshake.”

“Where would be the fun in that?”

And just like that, she trussed him up. Because what Gareth wanted was this—this naked intimacy, from this woman. From the one woman who had seen that the isolating role of Lord Blakely was as much a facade as the colorful costume she’d once worn. He wanted her.

“Fun.” The word tasted oddly in his mouth. Fun didn’t encompass this.

“Fun,” she repeated firmly, turning slightly toward him. “That’s when people enjoy themselves. I hear it’s even possible for lords with a serious, scientific bent.”

When he didn’t say anything, she sighed. “You can’t tell me you didn’t enjoy yourself just now.”

“I believe,” Gareth said quietly, “I was too busy enjoying you.”

Damning silence. He’d said too much.

If he expected to maintain any dignity in this, Gareth knew precisely what to do—stand up, find his clothing in the darkness and walk out her door. Give her the farewell she’d asked for. But while the ferocity of lust had burnt through him, something far more primitive called to him. His skin ached for hers; his arms clamored to hold her. He wanted to feel the rise and fall of her chest as she nestled against him, wanted to run his hands down her skin slick with sweat, until the moisture evaporated.