Her Reformed Rake (Wicked Husbands #3)(85)

Everything she’d done gave him cause to doubt her. The reports from the Home Office made him doubt her. Her own actions made him doubt her. The fact that her father was the puppeteer for an ever-growing web of Fenian plotters made him doubt her. But doubt and need were two separate propulsions.

He tongued her nipple, and she arched on a breathy moan, responsive as ever. And then he nipped her again. Not hard enough to bruise, but enough that she gasped and writhed against him in obvious frustration. A liar she might be, but there was no pretense in the way her body wanted his. Nor in the way he wanted her. His desire for her was all-consuming.

“Release my hands,” she said.

He licked the puckered flesh he’d just bit. “No.”

“I want to touch you.”

Fuck. Longing slammed into him at her simple words. He wanted her to touch him. He could overpower her in an instant. What was the danger, the risk?

Only his heart.

Where the hell had that rogue thought come from? He forced it where it belonged, into the dark recesses of his mind. Good and bloody buried. He did as she asked, and then with two free hands, he took his knife from his boot and lowered it to the waistband of her trousers. One quick, careful swipe, and he’d cut straight through the silk and her drawers both. Fabric gaped. He tossed his knife to the floor where it landed with a carpet-muffled thud. And then he caught the rent fabric in his hands and tore it down her body in one, fluid motion.

Her eyes widened. “Sebastian.”

He looked down at their bodies, his poised for entrance despite the barrier of clothing he still wore. Hers… bloody, bloody hell. He took in a curved length of creamy thigh, an impossibly perfect knee, a sweetly turned calf and a trim ankle. But that wasn’t what made his mouth go dry. No. His gaze skimmed back up her body, lingering on the soft flesh at the apex of her thighs. Ah, yes. He had not forgotten the taste of her, the way she’d reacted to him. Here was his prize at last, what he’d longed for each seemingly endless day of the three months he’d spent away from her.

His fingers slid into her folds, finding her so slick that he couldn’t suppress his groan. His cock surged. Wanting. Needing. His heart pounded. “Daisy.” He circled her responsive bundle of flesh once, twice, then traced the seam to her entrance.

He was drawn as tense and still as the strings on a violin awaiting the slide of a bow. He needed to calm himself, to slow down. His heartbeat pounded in his ears, his cock so rigid he had to take a few steadying breaths just to regain his equilibrium.

One, two, three.

Counting again, blast it all. Blast her.

“Sebastian,” she said his name again on a gasp, and it bloody well killed him. “I want you so badly I ache with it. I wanted you every day that you were gone, and I want you now more than I ever did though I hate myself for it.”

Jesus. He knew the feeling. The breath he’d inhaled hissed from his lungs. When he found his voice, it was dark and low with the same suppressed anger that had been guiding him from the moment he’d first caught sight of her, resplendent in her evening finery, trousers and all. “Damn you. How is it that I want you, so badly, Daisy? It makes no bloody sense, but I want you so goddamn much that I burn with it.”

Her right palm caressed down his chest, over the taught plane of his abdomen, before traveling lower. Seeking and bold. Her fingers glanced his trousers directly over his cock. He jerked into her, and her fingers curled around his length.

His mouth descended upon hers, bruising, scalding, possessing. This kiss held no quarter. It was meant to ravish her. Take her. Remind her she was his. That he was her bloody husband, like it or not.

Not in truth.

There it was again, his sainted conscience, interrupting at the most inopportune moment. But nothing, not the fact that she’d been parading her lovers in and out of his home, nor that she was working for the Fenians, neither her duplicity nor the fact that he was meant to remove her as a threat, could cool the raging fires within him. Not even his conscience would keep him from sinking deep inside her tonight.

He thrust against her hand, caught her lip between his teeth and lightly bit. His free hand cupped one of her full, beautiful breasts, his thumb working her nipple. Everywhere he touched her, she was hot, soft as silk. Her scent, the scent that had haunted him in his absence, went to his head like fine whisky.

He kissed down her neck, licking and nipping. She tasted sweet, like vanilla with a trace of bergamot, and by God, he could lick every bit of her all night long if not for the painful state of his engorged cock.

“Open my trousers,” he commanded against her skin, before playing his tongue over the elegant hollow where her throat and shoulder met and her pulse raced.

She hesitated only a moment before her fingers found the closure of his waistband. Slowly, his trousers came undone and then the placket of his drawers.

He dragged his mouth lower in appreciation, over her breast to the nipple he wasn’t currently plucking between thumb and forefinger. His tongue teased the stiff peak, back and forth, wringing a moan from her lips. Unable to deny himself or her any longer, he gave in and drew her into his mouth. He used his teeth against her, a subtle pressure designed to heighten her arousal, before releasing her.

“Touch me,” he said, pressing a kiss alongside that pretty nipple. Pink, so pink. The sweetest pink he’d ever seen, rivaled only by her luscious lips. He kissed the tip.

She gripped him then, and the taunt of her fingers over his bare length was enough to nearly unman him. On another night, when he wasn’t quite so carried to the edge by his commingling anger and lust, he would’ve taken his time. He would’ve removed his boots and his bloody trousers. His shirt.