“Stop,” he interrupted, before kissing a path up her arm to her elbow. “No more arguments. I need you, Em.”
Em.
He did not know where the pet name for her had emerged from, this shortening of her given name. But the moment it fled his lips, he acknowledged the rightness of a name that was his alone for her.
“Hart,” she said, and this time it was not a protest but a sigh.
He twined his arm around her waist and pulled her solidly against him, then dipped his head to kiss the curve of her breast. Her nipple jutted in a tantalizing offer he could not resist, so he flicked his tongue over it, then gently bit.
“Oh,” she said.
Another sigh slipped from her lips.
Good.
He wanted more of them. Floating hell, he was insatiable when it came to this woman. He wanted all her sighs. Every last one of them. Forever. He wanted to be the only man to touch her thus, to bring her pleasure, to take her. Even if he acknowledged it, deep inside, for the impossibility it was. For tonight, he could pretend.
Just one night, he promised himself. And then never again.
He sucked long and hard, his fingers coasting over her bare flesh. Along the feminine curves of her waist, up her back. Her skin was smooth and softer than silk. He had touched her intimately before, but somehow the mayhem of the day had seemed to heighten his senses so that he was experiencing her in a new, more intense way than he had previously. When his hand glided over her warmth, he understood why a man would surrender everything he had to possess a woman. He understood why a man would change everything about himself, why he would want to be better, to do better.
She made him want to forget everything but her.
He kissed the inner curve of her breast, then pressed his lips to the pale flesh where her heart beat with such fierce persistence. Worshiping her with his mouth, that was what he was doing. Like a man in a bleeding church pew, praying to a power that was higher than him. He kissed the sweet valley between her breasts, inhaling deeply of the fresh, decadent scent of her skin.
God, she smelled like heaven. She felt like every sin he wanted to commit. And he had not even touched her cunny yet. He would rectify that travesty immediately.
Hart moved to her other breast, sucking her nipple, as he caressed down her hip, over her inner thigh. His fingers dipped into the silken thatch of curls there, finding her seam. She was wet and hot, coating him with the evidence of her desire. She made a whimpering sound low in her throat, and he took the subtle encouragement for what it was, parting her folds and finding the stiff little bud within.
He swirled his fingers over it, simultaneously raking over her nipple with his teeth.
“Hart,” she gasped, hips bucking, pressing herself more firmly into his hand as if to ease the burden of the ache there.
Yes, he had her where he wanted her. Almost.
He strummed over her with his thumb, then released her nipple, lifting his head to meet her bright, passion-glazed gaze. “I want to pleasure you, sweetheart, but we are going to have to do this a bit differently this time. Do you trust me?”
You should not trust me, my sweet innocent.
I am the man who is going to destroy you.
He should have said those words. He should have set her free. But he was a greedy, selfish bastard when it came to Lady Emma Morgan, and he was not about to confess. Not when he had her naked and warm and soft and wet and here, in his bed with him.
“Yes,” she said. “I trust you, Hart.”
Her admission sent a burst of something hot and full in his chest. A blossoming. Pride warring with desire. The guilt was banished for now. For tonight, he would cast aside what he must do and devote himself to pleasuring her.
“Good,” he rasped. “Then do as I say.”
* * *
Finally.
Emma felt the lone word to her core as she allowed Hart Sutton to position her atop him in a shocking fashion. He was naked beneath her, and she was on her knees, legs carefully placed on either side of his chest, to avoid the wound he had suffered in his side. The arrangement left her most intimate place open to his avid gaze, and although he had already touched and pleasured her there, she was acutely aware of the wickedness of such a blatantly wanton pose.
But she was also thrilled by it. Her sex was pulsing with need, swollen and wet. And his eyes on her, that deep and mysterious hazel, made her ache. He made her want to do anything he asked. Everything he wished. And everything she longed for, too.
“Christ, Em,” he said, using the abridged version of her name he had called her by once before. “You are so bleeding beautiful.”
She liked the way his pet name for her sounded in his deep, gruff voice. Adored the notion there was a name only he called her. The idea she was his and his alone. Although she knew their agreement was temporary in nature, for tonight she could pretend that he wanted more from her than this week, and that it was hers to give as freely as she would her body.
He stroked her thighs in slow, reassuring caresses that chased any embarrassment she may have known with flames of desire, threatening to burn into a conflagration. When he told her she was beautiful, she felt beautiful.
It was nothing new, being told she was lovely. From the moment she had made her debut in society, she had been named a diamond of the first water. But there was something about this man, about Hart, saying those words to her. Something about him looking at her as if she were the loveliest sight he had ever beheld. There was reverence in his eyes, in his touch as his work-roughened fingers trailed up and down her sensitive flesh, and she felt truly beautiful, because he told her so.
“Tell me what to do,” she said, aching for him in every way she could fathom and all the ways she could not.
He skimmed his nails over her inner thighs and then drew his tantalizing touch higher, curving over her legs to linger at her hips. “Come closer. I need to taste you again. I want to lick you until you come undone for me.”
Everything inside her turned molten. More of what he had done to her before? She was not certain she would survive another moment without him giving her what he had just promised. Her hunger for him was as strong as it was desperate.
“Yes.” Her agreement was more sigh than response.