by Stacy Reid
A sob hitched in her throat, but he did not stop. He had ensured he brought her to pleasure so she was wet enough to take his thick length.
“Arch your breast to me.”
Her eyes widened but she complied. The move pressed her sweat-drenched body against his chest. He groaned at the friction of her bare skin rasping against his, a primitive triumph twisting inside, for the sensation did not repel him. Her nipples were a dusky pink, and he took a hardened nipple between his teeth and bit, before rolling it gently and sucking. She damn well purred, then shivered on his cock, bathing him in liquid heat.
A strangled groan escaped Mikhail’s lips. The feel of her slick heated flesh slowly engulfing the crest of his cock nearly drove him to his knees. Pleasure rippled from his engorged length to his balls.
“Marry me, Payton.”
Her eyes flared. “No.”
He’d never felt this lust curling through him with another woman. He clenched his teeth against the searing pleasure. The edges of his control frayed, he coasted his hands up to the curve of her back, hugging her close to him, and drew her down to meet his upward plunge.
“Mikhail!”
Her cry echoed in the cottage. She tugged at her wrists, but the knotted cravat held firm. He brushed his thumb over her trembling lips. Then without any urging from him, she rode him slowly, rolling her hips in a rhythm that was instinctively sensual and decadent.
Mikhail gripped her hips, encouraging her wicked motions, and she groaned. Need coiled hot and intense through him. He wanted everything.
“Mikhail.” Her moans poured through the air as she rocked on his length.
Lust rippled through him at the picture she presented, her hands bound, her back arched, the graceful curve of her throat on tantalizing display, her tangled hair rippling down her back and cascading over his knees, her skin sweat-drenched. She was so beautiful.
He lifted her and dropped her down on his length with strength. A low, keening cry broke from her throat as he seated her fully on his cock. He stood with her, tugging at the knots at her wrists to loosen them. He tumbled with her to the bed, keeping his weight on his arms. “Grip the pillows and do not release them.”
She gasped, growing even wetter, and he groaned low in his throat. She was so wonderfully responsive.
“Wrap your legs around my hips.”
Her eyes flared, and a sensual smile curved her lips. She complied, and he withdrew and plunged into her with the full force of his desire driving him. She whimpered but her flesh parted to take him, and she arched her hips into his ravenous thrusts. He pressed his nose into the hollow at the base of her neck and let his world catch fire.
Mikhail drowned himself in the maddening bliss of being surrounded by her wet heat. He made love to her fiercely, taking and giving, driving into her with a pounding rhythm that shook the cot against the wall. There was a distant clang in his head to remember her innocence, but she did not allow it with her whispered moans and pleas for more. Her breathing grew ragged, and she undulated underneath him with raw carnality, gripping his cock in the tightest, wettest clasp he’d ever experienced.
She was a sensualist, and she was his.
When the bliss claimed her, she clamped her supple legs around his waist, restricting his motions, burning him with cold ice at the feel of being trapped. She yelled her pleasure, and he lifted from the crook of her neck and claimed her lips. He rode her through her orgasm, and she sobbed and moaned all of her delight and need into his kiss, drawing his passion from him. He bit into the soft of her lips as he tumbled with her.
Payton’s heart raced, and sweat slicked her skin. She fought the sense of drowsy contentment and glanced at Mikhail. It was very difficult for her to remain distant and to hold onto the betrayal that had shafted her insides when they were entwined so intimately.
He lay on top of her, cradled between her thighs, holding his weight off her by resting on one of his elbows. His other hand cupped her cheek, and she could not tear herself from the intensity of his stare.
“I can see the distance in your eyes,” he said softly.
“And I can feel it in your touch.”
His muscles locked, and her heart pounded.
“This was farewell, Mikhail.” She pushed the words past the lump in her throat.
He held her gaze for the longest time, not speaking or protesting. His blue eyes darkened with an emotion she was unable to decipher. Lacing his fingers through hers, he pressed her hands above her head and shifted between her thighs.
She gasped as she felt the broad length of him against her tender entrance. Without releasing her from the power of his mesmerizing gaze, he thrust deep and embedded himself in one hard stroke. The cry strangled in her throat. She felt deliciously impaled, the penetration stretching her despite the wetness of her flesh. But the shocking and devastating thing was the brutal punch of pleasure that roared inside her and shattered her into pieces.
A low, sensual chuckle came from him.
Heat dusted her cheeks. He had brought her to pleasure from simply entering her body. She tugged at her hands, and he released them. She wound her hands around his neck, tugging his lips to hers. “This does not mean anything,” she whispered hoarsely.
He froze, and it was a dagger to her heart. She slowly slipped her hands from his skin and fisted them in the sheets.
“Wrong,” he murmured, then withdrew and plunged deep, sinking her hips into the mattress, without breaking the connection of their stare. “The way you bathe my cock with your pleasure, the ecstasy you feel at my touch, the pleasure that wrapped around my heart from simply breathing in your scent, is everything.” His voice was dark as sin. Then he withdrew and snapped his hips forward with shocking strength.
A sob clawed from Payton’s throat at the devastating pleasure.
“This means everything,” he said, then he took her lips in a kiss so soft and gentle she quaked.
Though his lips and tongue coaxed and soothed her, the rhythm of his hips as he loved her was untamed. She wanted to coast her hands over his shoulders, feel the ripple of his muscles under her palm, bite the cord of his neck, and taste the sweat on his skin.
“Please let me touch you,” she breathed. “I will go slowly.”
“No.” His refusal was a pained moan and a piercing to her heart. She could not imagine a life where she never held him.
“I want to run my arms over your shoulders, your back, your buttocks, I want to feel the sweat on your skin, the power in your body as you push your c-cock into me over and over,” she tempted against his lips on a soft purr.
“No.”
His lips denied her, but his eyes were a dam of need so powerful, she expected it to crash over her at any moment and drown her.
“Let me taste you,” she said, and bent her head to nip his shoulders.
“No.”
“I cannot bear not holding you.”
“If you want me to stop, you’ve only to say the word.”
Alexander. Yet it was “Mikhail,” she gasped, as his thrusts grew rougher, more demanding, and she slid deeper into bliss, burying her face against his neck, and sliding her hands against the silken sheets to once more grip the pillow, desperate for a firmer anchor.
His hips snapped harder and deeper, and every nerve ending in Payton came alive with pleasure and erotic pain. He captured her lips in a fierce kiss and thrust, once, twice, and on the third plunge her entire body shuddered under the onslaught of bliss.
“Look at me.” His voice was a growl.
She lifted her eyes to his.
Please, she silently begged, let me touch you.
She couldn’t break the power of his stare, the demand to be connected on such a level as they tumbled into ecstasy.
A rumble of thunder echoed in the cottage, and the cool air chilled the sweat on her skin. She trembled, and he shifted, drawing the blanket over them, cocooning her in blissful warm, yet false, intimacy. He pulled her to him, so close she coul
d feel the heat, yet he was careful they did not touch. She remained silent, floating in a haze of pleasure, trying to ignore the questions prodding her mind, and the raw pain in her heart. The fire turned to ash yet they did not move or speak.
“How long has it been since you welcomed another’s touch?”
His breathing did not change, nor did he stiffen, but she swore she could feel the tension weaving itself through his muscles.
“Ten years.”
Her stomach knotted. She wanted to soothe the emptiness she heard in his voice. She slid her hand across the silken sheets without looking in his direction. She held her breath when the side of her hand bumped into his. Payton slowly relaxed when he did not flinch or shift away. A small smile lifted her lips, for this was the first time she had touched him, though it was the lightest of touches, and he’d not flinched. “I am deeply sorry, Mikhail.”
Silence.
“Will you tell me?”
He tensed. “When I was sixteen I was kidnapped.”
Her breath hitched.
“My father was a friend and great supporter of the Emperor of Russia, Alexander II. Our emperor was hated for some of his bold political successes, and there were those who sought to undermine him. It was hard for their arms to reach and influence the emperor himself, so they turned to those close to him, their families, seeking a weakness to exploit. Once they found that weakness, they would have then used Alexander’s supporters to infiltrate where they could not. A group of people who years later formed the Narodnaya Volya, turned their eyes on my father’s family and activities.”
Mikhail glided his fingers over her hand beside his, and then finally locked them together.
“I was taken, and while the ransom for information was sent to my father, I was held in a brothel, a place they were sure the authorities would never look to find me. I was tied to a bed, hand and foot, waiting to be rescued. Hours later, the Madam of the house—Anya—came into the room. It seems she just had not been able to resist me, or resist bringing in her clients, men and women to use me. No threat I used could discourage her, and despite the disgust, shame, and rage I felt, nothing prevented me from responding to their vile touches. I was with her…and them…for several days before my father’s man arrived.”
The echoes of rage and pain in his tone had Payton biting her lower lip. She gripped their clasped hands and lifted them to her lips where she pressed a kiss to his knuckles. “You do not have to tell me anymore,” she said hoarsely.
“I can hear the tears in your voice, Payton. I forbid you to pity me.”
Tears rolled down her cheeks, her mind alive with imagining such violations. “I do not pity you. I am deeply sorry—”
His hand tightened on hers.
“Nor will you express sentiments of regret, for you had no hand in causing my pain.”
She nodded, lifting their laced hands to once again kiss his knuckles.
“Are they dead?”
He chuckled. “Bloodthirsty little thing, aren’t you?” Then a beat later he said, “They were punished to the full extent of the law.”
“I am glad,” she said softly.
Was this why he had suffered society’s displeasure? She had a multitude of questions roiling through her, but she tempered them. It could not have been easy for him to confide such a painful experience. It would not do for her to badger him with questions when she could feel the dreadful tension seething from him.
“My kidnapping and torture was a vile scandal that lived in my court for years. I could not bear the touch of another, and it became evident, as I would withdraw from every embrace, or brush of skin, deliberate or accidental. I could not survive allowing anyone close unless I allowed it. I was betrothed to Lady Olga, yet upon my return I could not endure her closeness. Months passed and I still could not. I found her in the arms of another. I understood, and I did not hate her for it, but it made me realize I may never be able to experience normal intimacy.”
Oh.
“Scandal has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. Princess Tatiana compounded it by painting me as a seducer of the worst sort. When I arrived in England, I knew how it would be, the haute monde watching and waiting, young ladies behaving silly just to garner my attention or entrap me. I wanted a break from it all, so I had thoughts to bury myself in Sherring Cross. Then I met you…”
Scandal.
She tightened her fingers on his, and with a tug he pulled from her.
Though she understood, it still hurt.
“I do not know if I will ever be able to suffer your touch,” he admitted in a bleak tone.
Suffer…
She nodded, her throat tight with emotion. How could she ever hope to overcome such memories?
He drew her to him, and though she was sore, she did not protest when he flipped her to her stomach and covered her like a warm sensual blanket, nudging her legs apart with his to slide his thick length impossibly deep within her once again. The groan that pulled from her throat was echoed by Mikhail.
His breath tickled her ear. “Do you believe you will ever consent to walk in my world?”
She closed her eyes and gasped as a tear leaked from her lids. “No.” Their fierce loving had not changed anything. He was still a prince, a duke…and she was still woefully ordinary.
She shifted and grasped the fingers he had clenched on the pillow above her head. His muscles tensed above, and he trembled. It was subtle, but she felt it.
Her heart broke just a bit more. “You cannot bear my touch, Mikhail, and I cannot survive the pain, scandal, and hypocrisy of your world. Why should we trap each other in such an impossible situation?”
Please show me the way, she silently begged.
He remained silent, and she felt when he retreated emotionally from her.
Farewell, Mikhail.
Chapter Sixteen
Cold rain fell in a steady drizzle, wetting him, but Mikhail did not care. He stood on the small front porch of the cottage, gazing into another starless night, Vladimir at his side. Mikhail had woken the second Payton roused from her exhausted slumber. He’d watched her observing him through slitted eyes, pain and regret darkening her lovely features.
The heaviness in his heart was an unbearable weight. You cannot bear my touch…why should we trap each other in such an impossible situation?
She’d dressed as best she could without assistance and then fled the cottage, racing away on Aeton. He’d dressed, appreciating the coldness encasing his heart. It pushed against the dart of slashing pain stuck within. Mikhail could not guess how long he’d remained outside in the cold before Vladimir had ridden to join him.
“Miss Peppiwell has left Sherring Cross,” Vladimir said into the quiet of the night.
“I know.”
“Forgive me for interfering in a situation I had not comprehended,” Vladimir said hoarsely. “The princess is a friend, and I believed her, when I should have known you would never act with such dishonor.”
Mikhail remained silent.
“Won’t you go after Miss Peppiwell?”
“I told her of Madam Anya, but Payton still left.”
The man’s eyes widened, and the awareness of what Payton meant to him must have penetrated, for Vladimir blanched.
“Forgive my interference.”
“The fault does not lie with you…but with me. Society bows to my wealth and influence, but she does not care for it.”
I will not survive your world. She had sounded so final, yet she had given herself to him. Even now she could be with his child. Fierce possessiveness gripped Mikhail’s heart.
“That is very unusual,” Vladimir said.
Yes, one of the very aspects that had drawn him to her fire was also serving to keep her from him.
Another rider emerged from the dark, and Calydon brought his horse to a stop and dismounted.
“Leave us,” Mikhail ordered.
With a nod, Vladimir departed, greeting Calydon before mo
unting his horse and riding back to the house.
His cousin approached with measured steps, his eyes assessing Mikhail.
“Payton has left Sherring Cross. Her parents are firmly on her heels, no doubt eager to drag her back to accept your offer.”
Mikhail grunted.
“I am certain you have more to say,” Calydon said with a lifted brow.
He joined him on the steps, a bottle of brandy clutched firmly in his hands. Calydon handed it to him, and Mikhail took a deep swig, letting the burn slide down his throat and settle in his belly.
“Will you go after her?”
“No.” He had seen the pain in her eyes when he did not allow her to touch him. It had been the same with Lady Olga, and she had only withstood the distance for a few months before breaking from him in tears. How long would it take Payton?
“Why not?”
“She does not want me.” Impossible, his heart taunted. The woman who had surrendered to him so sweetly, with such ardor, needed him, just not the trappings of society.
“Is it because of what happened with Madam Anya?”
“Yes…no… Who the hell knows?” You are a prince and that is the only reason she is rejecting you. And the most painful part of his admission was that he understood. There had been days when he walked through the halls of the Russian court, and the rabid and shocked whispers had gutted him. When his aversion to touch had been realized by those he flinched from—his family and friends—pity had been mixed with the curiosity, urging him to shun society. But he’d refused to bow to weakness and had shrouded himself in cold distance from it all—pity, curiosity, love, and understanding. “Payton believes there is no hope for us. She cannot imagine being my princess and duchess, and she does not believe I will ever be able to endure her touch.”
He handed the bottle of brandy to Calydon.
“You can force society to accept her.”
“I do not want to,” Mikhail said. “I would prefer to show Payton she does not need society’s approval, and it is hers they will need to gain. As my princess, my duchess, she will have more influence that she can comprehend.”
His cousin smiled fleetingly. “And what of her other concern?”
