How long he prolonged the delicious torture, how many times he brought her almost to the peak, then let it shift away, he didn't know, but she was wild, sobbing in her need, her fingers clenched on his arms, her lips burning his, when he finally thrust deep and let her fly.
She came apart in his arms.
Cursing the darkness that stopped him from seeing it, from reaping the reward of his expertise, he gathered her to him, letting her cling, then cradling her as she collapsed completely.
He drew her closer, sensing her heartbeat, feeling it thunder, then slow. Then she stirred.
"I want you."
His lips curved against her hair. "I know."
Her breath was a soft huff against his neck as she shifted, and reached, and found him. "How?"
Her fist closed, and he shook. "Ah…"
Fingers as quick as his slipped the buttons on his waistband, brushed aside his shirt. Slim digits dipped, then stroked, caressed…
Words were superfluous. He drew her hips nearer, sliding his own to the edge of the seat. They met-it was she who sank down, a long-drawn sigh shattering in her throat. It was all he could do to stifle his groan as she closed hotly about him. After that, he lost touch with the world as she became his reality, the hot, wet, generous woman who loved him in the dark.
She was everything he craved, mysterious, giving, intensely feminine; in some sensual way, she held a mirror to his soul. She filled his senses until he recalled no other, until he knew nothing beyond her luscious heat and the primal need that gripped him.
He sank into her and she wrapped herself about him; at his urging, she shifted her legs, awkward for a moment as she repositioned them, locking them around his hips. When she sank fully onto him again, she gasped. Gripping her hips, he lifted her, thrusting upward as he lowered her.
She sobbed, then found his lips. They clung, and loved, gave and took and gave again. The horses plodded slowly on.
The gloom inside the carriage became a heated cave, filled with lust, desire, and so much more. Hunger, greed, joy, and delirium ail spun, a kaleidoscope in the dark. Then she flew high and he followed, soaring beyond the stars. The end left them shattered, broken and destroyed, reborn in each other's arms.
The gentle swaying of the carriage slowly drew them back to earth, yet they lay still, letting the long, achingly sweet moments wash over them, neither ready to lose the soul-deep communion.
His lips at her temple, her hair silk against his cheek, Gabriel dragged in a breath. His chest swelled, shifting her warm weight. He locked his arms around her; he didn't want to let go. Didn't want to lose the peace she'd brought him-she and she alone.
Never had he reached this state, this depth of feeling. Beyond sensation, beyond the world, a sea of unnameable emotion still lapped him. He wanted to deny it, shrug it aside. It frightened him. But it was a drug-he feared he was already addicted.
She stirred, first again. Sitting up, she sighed and shook back her hair. "I meant to tell you…"
He got the distinct impression she'd intended to say, "before you started this," and, what's more, in a censorious tone. He was too sated to do more than smirk in the dark. He was still buried to the hilt inside her. "What?" Reaching for her, he drew her back into his arms.
She acquiesced, then relaxed; despite her resolution, she was still dazed. "My stepson… he overheard a conversation at White's-between a Captain Something and another man. The captain was dismissing the Central East Africa Gold Company."
He frowned, "I thought your stepson was too young for White's."
"Oh, he is. This was on the steps-he was walking in St. James Street."
"Who was the captain talking to?"
"Charles didn't know."
"Hmm." It was difficult to think with her warm weight snuggled against him, with her body intimately clasping his. That last, and his resurging vigor, prompted him to say, "A captain recently returned from Africa shouldn't be impossible to trace. The shipping lists, the Port Authority, the major merchant lines. He'll be known somewhere."
"If we have a witness like that, we'd be able to petition the court immediately."
But then there'd be no reason for them to meet, and he'd yet to learn her name. He frowned, grateful for the dark. "Perhaps. It depends on how much he knows." Turning his head, he squinted down at her, but still could see nothing. "I'll look into it."
"Have you heard anything else?"
"I have contacts in Whitehall sounding out the African authorities over the company's mining claims, and there are others I'm hunting up who might know of the company's presence in those particular towns." Shuffling higher on the seat, he glanced upward. "Now-tell your coachman to roll back, slowly, to Brook Street."
She sat up, still clutching his coat, and cleared her throat. "Jones?"