Total pages in book: 173
Estimated words: 163328 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 817(@200wpm)___ 653(@250wpm)___ 544(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 163328 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 817(@200wpm)___ 653(@250wpm)___ 544(@300wpm)
When his legs began to shake, he spun, and my back hit the nearest bulkhead, jarring an oomph past my lips. His hand flattened on the wall, and he used the leverage of that hard surface to tunnel inside me with unrestrained savagery.
Senses heightened. Fingers clawed. Gazes held, and we exploded into urgency, possessed by passion, grinding and gripping, lips reaching and missing.
My vision clouded, and a primal noise wrenched from my throat.
“I’m going to come.” I bore down on his cock, trying to slow the detonation.
“I’m with you. Jesus Christ, Bennett. I’m… Goddamn—” He jerked, lost his breath.
I peaked. He followed, and I kept coming and coming, hurling my screams loud and wide as I chanted his name and stared into his eyes.
Watching him fall apart was the most erotic thing I’d ever seen. Throaty male groans hissed past clenched teeth, his head thrown back and cords stretching along his throat.
I felt him releasing—the intense throbbing of his shaft against my muscles and the molten wash of fluid spurting deep within. He held my gaze and clutched me hard in the flex of his arms, rocking into my body as if trying to milk his pleasure to the last drop.
Then he expelled the low humming breath of an exhausted, thoroughly satisfied man.
“Incredible.” He slid a hand into my hair and kissed me lazily, deeply, sweeping his tongue through my mouth. “Nothing compares, Bennett. Nothing.”
Hard to argue. I felt so peacefully content. There was no room for regret. Not even thoughts of Priest could wreck the moment.
Ashley continued to hold me against the wall, his hands roaming around my face and along the curves of my body.
“I daresay…” He kicked his hips, still full and very hard inside me. “You’ll be enduring my unseemly manners for another round. And a few more after that.”
He wasn’t jesting.
As he carried me toward the sleeping chamber, he stopped in the day cabin and fucked me on the desk. Afterward, when I crawled onto the bed, he grabbed my hips and took me from behind.
Following several more orgasms, my hearing went fuzzy, and my muscles lost coordination. Any limits my body might have imposed had been eradicated by the endless stamina of a commodore thirteen years my elder.
His strained male gasps of exertion couldn’t be trusted. Just when I thought he’d worn himself out, he broke me all over again.
As the sun crested the rail of the balcony, yellow-pink fingers of light crept over our tangled, sweaty limbs. We lay naked on our sides, face to face, waning in the softness of a new day.
He twisted a coil of my hair around his finger, regarding me with the grin of a sated wolf.
It made my heart dance, and I couldn’t stop myself from touching that curved mouth. “So this is what you look like when you smile.”
“I haven’t…experienced this in a long time.”
“Smiling?”
“Feeling. You make me feel again.”
“Why ever did you stop?”
“Titles. Ranks. Responsibility.” His gaze roamed my face. “But you…with your unrehearsed words, bold touches, fierce eye contact, raw, untamed beauty… God help me, everything about you is such a welcome freedom from the tedious, rigid order of my life.”
“Then change it.”
“Change…?”
“Your life. Remove the things that confine you. You can do anything you want.”
“Like your mother did?” he asked gently. “She was the daughter of an earl, and one time, she ignored the rules and followed her heart. How did that work out for her?”
My stomach hardened. In fourteen years, I’d never once seen her smile. She’d been utterly and completely miserable. Because of her mistake. Because of me.
I hooked my leg over his hip. “Have you ever been in love?”
“I’m betrothed.”
“And?”
“It’s a sensible contract. Business. Love is unneeded, and frankly, unwanted.”
“You’re a fool.”
His eyebrows formed an angry V. “Careful…”
“Surely you see the gross stupidity in forsaking your happiness for that which is perceived as sensible. Nobility as a notion is objective and impersonal. What a horrible doctrine to live by. From where I stand, aristocrats rob the world of pleasure.”
“Says the woman who chose a dangerous career that put her constantly on the run. Tell me, Bennett. In your life beyond the reaches of laws and social constraints, have you been happy?”
I’d been happy for a year. In the arms of a libertine.
“No.” I sighed, feeling the press of exhaustion. “But at least I’m free to love who I want.”
But I wasn’t free.
I was a prisoner, facing an uncertain end.
As if he read my mind, he tucked my head beneath his chin and stroked my hair. “You need to sleep.”
“I can’t.”
“All right.” He released a slow breath. “Then I’ll tell you a true story.” He leaned back and ran a knuckle along my jaw. “I met your father once.”
“What?” My eyes widened, my pulse hammering. “When?”
“I was around your age so… Thirteen years ago. I was a sergeant then, taking a short leave in Nassau with some mates.” His thumb rested against my neck, softly caressing. “He was in a brothel.”