The Study of Seduction (Sinful Suitors, #2)(87)

“What kind of wife would I be if I let you die defending me?”

Their gazes locked for a long moment. Then he kissed her.

Though it took her by surprise, she welcomed it, needing to be sure of him. His kiss was all-consuming, hard and sweet and urgent by turns, as if he couldn’t bear to stop.

And she gave herself up to it with the same desperation. She had to make him see that what they had was too precious to throw away. That together they could get through anything.

“I want you, minx,” he rasped in her ear. “Now. Here. It’s mad, I know—”

“Not mad at all. I want you, too.”

That was all the invitation he needed to start dragging up her skirts while kissing her as if it were their last time together. Which it very well might be.

No, she wouldn’t let that happen. She couldn’t. She would show him just how perfect it could be between them, tempt him not to be so foolish as to risk everything out of some noble pride or fear of scandal.

He unbuttoned his trousers, then tried to pull her astride him.

“No,” she whispered, “not this time. I want you on top of me.”

“Clarissa, I wasn’t saying—”

“I know. I want to do it. I want you to take me as you’d take any woman. As you’d take your wife if she were . . . any other woman.”

She had to make him understand that she no longer saw him as a man who could ravage her, but as her husband, the only man she trusted with her body.

When he still hesitated, she said, “You’re not remotely like the Vile Rapist, and I’m no longer the same Clarissa he raped, nor even the Clarissa of a few weeks ago. I’m finally ready to put that behind me. But I need to prove that to myself. And to you.”

Even in the dim light, she could feel him searching her face. “Do you realize that’s the first time you’ve ever called it a rape?”

That startled her. Was it? Her heart began to pound. Yes, it was. “He raped me,” she said, trying out the sentence and feeling the truth of it.

“Yes.” His voice was firm and sure, bolstering her confidence.

“It wasn’t my fault.”

“It was never your fault, my sweet. It’s time you stop blaming yourself.”

She clutched at his shoulders. “He had no right to rape me,” she said fiercely. She’d partly acknowledged it in her head, but now she accepted it. Believed it. Was angry over it.

“No right whatsoever. As far as I’m concerned, he deserved to die. Who knows how many other women he would have assaulted if he hadn’t?”

She’d never thought of it that way. It dampened the guilt she’d always felt over Niall’s sacrifice, soothed the hurt of his exile a little.

But that didn’t mean she would let her husband follow the same path. “If you’re still determined to fight Durand, then I’m going to show you what you’ll be missing if you’re exiled or murdered.” Scooting back into the corner, she tugged him toward her. “I’m going to show you how it could be between us if you’d only refuse to fight him.”

He let her pull him against her until he was crowding her in the corner, as much of him between her legs and on top of her as they could manage in the confines of the carriage. “This is what I’m fighting for, my sweet,” he growled. “You. Us. Our future.”

“We’ll have no future if you die.”

“I won’t.” He seized her mouth once more, and for the first time, the weight of him on her was a reminder rather than a warning of how strong he was. That it made him fierce in her defense, determined and fine and noble.

Yes, the panic was lurking, but it had shrunk to a pea. So very small, she could ignore it. And one day, she would banish it, too.

She tore her lips from his to whisper, “Take me, Edwin. Fill me up.”

With a growl, he entered her, more forcefully than usual but not enough to alarm her. And it was amazing. Not because he was on top of her and driving into her, but because she wasn’t afraid. Because she knew she could stop him at any moment, that she could end things on a word.

This was what trust felt like.

He gave her no quarter, and to her shock, it thrilled her. He thundered into her, she rained on him, and it was like coming home. They were two parts of a whole, moving together in such intimate perfection it made her want to cry.

“Edwin,” she whispered. “Yes, like that. Harder. More. Give me everything, my darling.”

“Everything is already yours,” he rasped as he fondled her breast through her gown. “That will never change.”

For her, either. And as the truth blazed into her soul, she kissed him to keep from blurting it out.

She loved him. She wasn’t sure how or when it had happened, but somewhere in the past few weeks, she’d fallen in love with Edwin. And now that she’d found him, was she to lose him?

No. No!

Slipping her hands down to his fine, taut buttocks, she cupped them to get him closer, deeper. She would drown him in pleasure, if that was what it took.

Instead, he drowned her in it, reaching between their bodies to finger her until she was fighting for breath and thought, fighting not to be the first one to succumb to her release. If she couldn’t have his love, she wanted his surrender. Needed his surrender.

Shimmying and writhing beneath him, she ran her hands down the backs of his thighs, the tips of her fingers just brushing his ballocks between his legs.