style="font-size:15px;"> He couldn’t go slow. She cried out against his lips, but he devoured the sound with his kiss and thrust into her hard and then harder, fast and then faster. Finally she was his. His. And still it wasn’t enough. Her hips matched his savage rhythm, taking him to the hilt with every thrust, but he wanted more. He wanted every bloody thing she had.
She panted against his mouth, clinging to him. He looked at her lips, wet and swollen from his kiss. Fixed his gaze on those half-closed topaz eyes, drunk now with desire. And then he felt her begin to tighten around him and knew he was about to make her come to her peak.
He drove into her even harder. “Katherine,” he rasped. Ah, God—he watched her face as the pleasure took her and she tightened around him harder, harder, convulsing in waves around his shaft.
Her fingers gripped his shoulders. “James!”
And that was all it took. The sound of his name on her lips drove him over the edge. He dug his hands into her buttocks and surrendered, buried deep inside her. The release ripped through his body and into hers and left him mindless. Voiceless.
And still—still—it wasn’t enough to satisfy him.
KATHERINE SHUDDERED, GRIPPED by waves of pleasure so intense they entirely controlled her. She tried to think, tried to regain her senses, but they’d been lost—stolen, along with her breath.
She’d never known.
She closed her eyes and felt herself pulse around him tightly. Intimately. Felt him throb in reaction.
“Never known what?” he asked in a rough, throaty voice, and she realized with dismay she’d breathed the words out loud.
Another shudder, this one less intense. She opened her eyes, only to have her gaze land in the space between them where her bare breasts jutted out above her stays.
“Nothing,” she said, unwilling to let him know how much of what they had just done had been new. He expected her to be experienced—assumed she was, and there was no reason to let him suspect how little she really knew.
His hands closed possessively over her breasts, and his thumbs circled her nipples. The touch sent pure pleasure shooting down through her belly, straight to the place where their bodies were joined. His eyes were dark and on fire as he watched his hands move against her flesh. “Never known what?” he asked again.
Instead of answering, she inhaled deeply and let the breath push her breasts closer to him. The distraction worked. His mouth closed around one distended nipple and she let her head fall back again. The female breast, she’d learned, carried much power.
This is Captain Warre, a voice reminded her, as though it mattered anymore. Captain Warre. It didn’t matter. Soon enough he would be another part of her past. She would be married to Lord Deal, and there would be no reason to see Captain Warre again.
He didn’t have to know that here, in the privacy of her own thoughts, she had just given herself to him in a way she would never give herself to another man as long as she lived. This was for herself, and nobody could ever take it away from her.
It was enough. It would have to be.
Already she could feel him stirring inside her, and already her pleasure began to build again. He nipped her with his teeth, and she gasped. His touch, the fire between her legs—she may as well have been a virgin for all she’d known about passion. She tried rocking against him and had the satisfaction of hearing him groan against her breast. He moved inside her, suckling and thrusting at the same time, and she barely recognized her own ragged cry.
He may have been Captain Warre. But here, now, in the secrecy of her coach with his body joined with hers, he was simply James, and his passion was madness. She put her hands on his face. Traced the bridge of his nose, the angle of his cheekbones. With that unruly, silver-streaked hair, those green eyes, those arrogant brows—he was the most beautiful man she’d ever seen. And he was inside her.
She felt his rough jaw beneath her palms and the soft give of his lips beneath her touch. Watched him take her fingertip into his mouth, felt his tongue circle it hotly while below he withdrew a little, then pushed deep, filling her completely. The penetration touched her very core.
His thrusts grew more powerful. Deeper. Faster. Instinctively she braced her knees into the seat cushion, lifting her hips and pushing herself down as he drove his shaft up. He let her finger go and used his mouth elsewhere to bruise her lips, bite her neck, ravage her breasts. She raked her fingers into that glorious hair, dug into those powerful shoulders. He commanded her now, despite everything, and the pure pleasure of him washed over her like waves crashing over a deck.
She heard herself whisper his name, then gasp it louder as the urgency began to build. It was happening—the pressure inside her that fought for release anew. He leaned his head back, and suddenly she was staring into those green eyes at the same time as she drove herself down on him.
“James—”
“Yes—” The word hissed from his lips. “Ah, Katherine.”
And then that explosion of bliss took her, only this time she was looking into his eyes when her body clenched around his throbbing erection, squeezing him so tight she could feel every pulse.
“Katherine,” he breathed again, the cords in his neck taut, his hands gripping her bottom. She could tell he hadn’t found his release again—not yet. He leaned forward, kissing her breasts, the base of her throat, the curve where her neck met her shoulder, where he nipped and suckled her skin until she gasped with the sting of it. He pulled her against him and kissed his way to her jaw, her ear. “Katherine, marry me,” he whispered into it.
Everything inside her went still. “What?”
He nipped her earlobe, played his hands over her bare buttocks, lightly stroking a finger over their cleft so that she could hardly think beyond the feathery touch. “Marry me,” he said again, this time against her lips. His tongue slipped between them, simulating the intimacy they still shared below.
Marry? Instinctively she twined her tongue around his, drinking the taste of him even as she grew keenly aware of the complete, utter way he possessed her—his tongue in her mouth, his arms around her body, his hard length buried between her thighs as she’d ridden him the way a ship rode a storm.
A ship can only have one captain...
And he was proving, at this precise moment, that he would be that captain. A sharp, painful regret lodged somewhere behind her heart. “No,” she said into his mouth.
His hands stilled on her buttocks. “Don’t be a fool, Katherine.” He kissed her again and groaned, and again his hands moved on her skin, his fingers seeking and finding that place where they were joined. “It would solve everything.” His voice was rough. Languid.
“Where one problem would be solved, a dozen more would appear.” It was hard to think with his tongue caressing her lips. “More the fool, you, for thinking anything different, Captain.”
His face turned to stone. “I won’t be ‘Captain’ to you—not anymore.” He looked at her with his eyes on fire.
James.
