by Shayla Black
“We have not had a moment alone since Cornwall to talk. I’ve missed you,” she murmured.
He drew in a deep breath and looked at the ceiling, as if seeking divine guidance.
Puzzled, Kira sat up and took Gavin’s hand in her own. Teeth gritted, he looked at her again, at their joined hands, then at the hard pebbles of her nipples peeking out between the streaming coils of her black hair. His shaft swelled before her very eyes.
“We must talk,” he said.
She watched in fascination. “I agree. What would you like to say?”
He reached for his nightshirt again, but she kept it beyond reach. “Kira, I— No. It must be now.”
Her breath caught. Did he wish to honor her by waiting until after their marriage before knowing the joys of their togetherness again? The notion was sweet, if unnecessary.
With her gaze touching him, Gavin lengthened, hardened, until his manhood stood erect against his belly, nearly to his navel. He groaned.
“You want me.”
Sighing, he looked down at himself. “Obviously. But—”
“No buts. Tonight is about considering all the reasons—and ways—in which we should be together. To do that, I must first tell you that I am no longer engaged to your cousin.”
Gavin peered down at her with a frown, clearly struggling to think in the midst of his arousal. “What?”
“I released James from his obligation. He and I did not suit. I feel much differently, however, about you and me.” She gazed at him with all the love in her heart. “I have never felt about another as I do about you,” she whispered. “Have you ever felt this way about someone else?”
He hesitated, gaze heavy as he scanned her face.
“Have you?” she prompted, squeezing his hand.
“No.” The ragged syllable sounded as if he’d torn it from his chest. “That is the problem.”
Kira frowned. “Problem? Why? It’s wonderful! I can imagine nothing better than the way you make me feel every time I’m with you. You’re solid and protecting, but you can be so genuinely understanding… I feel as if I can almost fly when I’m with you.”
“You make me out to be far too good and noble.”
“I know you have faults. Your temper, for one. At times, your autocratic nature. And your tendency to think with only your head.”
“Kira—”
“Think with your heart, Gavin. What does it want?”
He stared at her, fists clenched at his sides. His pensive expression soon became a pained frown. He swallowed, looking as if he wanted to resist her words. And she refused to let him. Gavin cared for her. She believed that with all her heart, just as she believed fate had destined them for one another.
His struggle softened her heart. He needed her. Kira brought his palm to her mouth and kissed it, teeth nipping at his fingers.
His body jerked at the contact. His member swelled again. “Stop.”
“Not until you listen to your heart.”
“I do not have one.”
At that, Kira’s heart lurched. Certainly he did not mean that. “Of course you do, and I know it is very caring.”
She abandoned the blankets, stood on her knees, and edged across the mattress to his side. Gavin closed his eyes but did not move away when she pressed her full, bare length against his body and kissed his mouth.
She eased her lips over his in an experimental brush. He smelled of wood and musk—and Gavin. Her heart expanded at the feel of him close, exclusively hers. She touched a gentle hand to his neck, tracing a soft line down his naked spine.
“Kira, it… You—”
“Hush. Your heart, not your head. What does it say?” She kissed a warm trail down the strong column of his neck.
Gavin could not control his heart, nor did he need to try. She would teach him that lesson.
To begin, she pressed her lips to his in a lingering sweep, exploring the textures of their kiss. As she caressed his bottom lip with the tip of her tongue, he groaned.
Then suddenly, he banded his steely arms around her chest, slanted his mouth over hers, and plundered with a fierceness that left her breathless and reeling. He gripped her face in his hands, drawing her deeper and deeper into his embrace. Passion sizzled in her veins as he loved every inch of her mouth.
There is his heart, she thought with a sigh.
“What are you doing to me?” He forced the question out as he panted for air.
“Showing you the way it should always be between us. Now stop talking.”
Gavin looked as though he wanted to speak again, and Kira objected. They would have plenty of time to talk—their whole lives, in fact. Talking was not high on her schedule at the moment, experiencing the care in his touch was.
She slid a pair of fingers down the solid length of his chest, his flat belly, then lower still. Their first night together in the library, he had touched her intimately and brought her amazing pleasure. Certainly she was past due in returning the favor.
As she reached for him, Gavin grabbed her wrist in a steely grip. “Kira—”
“I want to touch you.” She wriggled her hand until he released her. “I want to give you all the pleasure you give me.”
Gavin drew in a breath that became a hiss as Kira wrapped her hand around his shaft. He was like iron sheathed in velvet. How interesting. And when she caressed her way to the head, Gavin rose to the tips of his toes and groaned. The bulbous top turned blue. She repeated the process while pressing lazy kisses to his face and neck.
“Dear God.” The moan slipped from his mouth as he gripped one of the bedposts for support.
She grazed a gentle hand down his length again, then up, fingers exploring the smooth, damp tip of him.
“Does that feel good?” she whispered in his ear.
He shivered. “Too good. Kira—”
“Hush,” she insisted softly. “I want to do this for you.”
And she did, again and again, watching the gamut of Gavin’s expressions. In that moment, he was vulnerable to her in ways he had not been when they had previously made love. Pleasure and need dominated his expressions, rife with something reckless. His head snapped back, his breathing harsh. Kira knew she held power in her hand. Even more, she sensed he did not surrender that power often.
“No more,” he growled, grabbing her wrists to stay her next stroke.
His heavy breathing betrayed his arousal, and Kira smiled, despite her own excitement. Pleasing him had not only empowered her, but stimulated her as well. The tips of her breasts felt heavy and sensitive, though Gavin had done nothing more than look at them. Tingles skated in languid circles low in her belly. Already, she felt the ache of emptiness where Gavin would soon fill her.
He gave her no time to revel in her victory or linger in her awakening. Instead, he pulled her hand away from him, climbed up into the bed, and toppled her flat on her back.
In the next instant, he covered her completely with his sizeable body. The skin-to-skin contact seared Kira everywhere she was sensitive—her breasts, the flat of her abdomen, the downy skin inside her thighs. She arched up to him, and he fitted his wide palm beneath her back, keeping her pressed against him mercilessly.
With his other hand, Gavin grabbed her nape and drilled her with a blazing stare. “Your turn.”
The words were a vow, and they made Kira shiver.
Then he took her mouth in a hungry kiss, fierce in its ability to storm her senses and awaken them to his touch. His lips were demanding, seeking. He devoured her like a man who had been deprived of gratification for years, not days. Kira could not hold back her moan of pleasure. She felt wanted—and taken.
As his mouth mated with hers in an endless joining, the blood raced through her body. Her skin felt alive as he shifted the hand beneath her to her buttocks. He dragged his other hand across her shoulder. His fingers drifted down farther still until they circled the taut pebble of her nipple. He awakened a new fire inside her, one that consumed her whole body.
She arched into him again. This time, Gavin was ready. He fastened his mouth over her swollen breast and sucked greedily, teeth scraping the sensitive tips. Kira clutched his shoulders, her thighs parting beneath him in blatant invitation.
“Gavin…” she whispered restlessly, wanting the feel of him deep inside her.
“Not yet,” he barked between shallow breaths.
Then he shimmied down her body until his mouth was level with her breasts. He latched on firmly, leaving his hands free to tease the slick tissues of her vulva and everything they hid.
The dual torment made her cry out within seconds. Each time the suction of his mouth pulled at her breast, his fingers passed over the sensitive bud between her legs. It was heaven and hell, this reeling through sensation, neither knowing time nor weight. She only knew Gavin—his delicious scent, the hard feel of him against her, the glory of being in his arms and his bed. Her heart swelled as quickly as the rest of her body until every part of her ached to receive Gavin’s possession.
The laps of his tongue against her engorged nipple was a sharp, keen pleasure, so she protested with a cry when he laved the side of her breast and descended further still. He atoned for the act by stroking her intimately, the delicious friction of his fingers against her tingling button made her mind reel. The explosion she remembered and craved drew ever nearer.
With determined lips, Gavin explored the smooth skin of her stomach. He lapped a circle around her navel, sending a fresh wave of sensation stabbing south to join the provocation of his fingers stroking her.
Kira felt taut and coiled with need. She twined her fingers in the unusually overgrown length of his hair and tried to bring his mouth back to her aching nipples, which seemed to throb in rhythm with the frantic beat of her heart.
Instead, he continued down, easing his way toward the edge of the bed, and grabbed her hips. His mouth lay but inches from her—
“Gavin?”
He merely sent her a glittering smile.
Then he bent his head to her. The first touch of his tongue stunned her with the riot of sensation darting up her belly, down her legs, exploding in her head. It was so intimate a kiss, and the fact he gave it to her, as if he wanted to love every part of her, made her heart flutter.
“Gavin…”
He soothed her with a stroke of his hand over her hip while he licked her again, sampling her slowly. With a mewling cry, Kira arched up. He continued to devour her in rhythmic laps, and her pulse skittered. Kira saw no end to the ache in sight. The sensations built, multiplying so fast, she could scarcely catch her breath. She felt intoxicated by the desire resonating deep inside her, swirling her ever closer to the edge of satisfaction. Her want and love for this proud, stubborn man made the need ripping through her even more staggering.
Gavin pushed a pair of his thick fingers inside her and teased her inner walls. She cried out at the new sensation. Then he compounded it by taking the hard little bud above in his mouth.
Kira felt herself hurtle over the edge into the rainbow-bright abyss of pleasure. The peak spiraled out of control, striping her of reason. She released a guttural cry as a second wave of satisfaction hit her moments after the first, this one longer, stronger, more devastating.
She gripped Gavin by the hair as feeling after feeling hammered her with blinding force. She felt exalted by the power of their passion.
And when the bliss dimmed to a sweet throb, Gavin made his way back up her body, plying a series of evocative kisses along the way.
“Gavin,” she murmured. “Oh, my. I can’t breathe…”
“You don’t need to.”
He planted an open-mouthed kiss on her neck, one that made her shiver. Then he plunged inside her. Kira gasped as the friction of his hard length slid against her awakened, swollen flesh. He climbed deeper inside her, filling her completely. She sighed.
Once buried to the hilt, he shuddered. “Why can’t I resist you?”
His hoarse whisper rolled over her. Kira heard the torrent of need, the explosive desire in his words. A man like Gavin did not give up his self-control easily, and the fact he did so with her every time they touched told her the depth of his feeling. With every touch, she felt the love in his heart.
“You’ve no need to,” she whispered.
Then she rocked beneath him in invitation. Without uttering more than a groan, he accepted.
He thrust inside her slowly at first, long, heavy strokes that fanned the fire of the arousal she’d felt certain he had already sated. But no, it returned and built as he entered her again, possessing her fully once more. Kira slid her palms down the slick, taut length of his back and pressed a kiss to his wide mouth. He planted a hard kiss on her lips, then buried his head in the crook of her neck.
She nipped at his lobe with her teeth. “I love the feel of you inside me, Gavin.”
Her words seemed to break his control. Suddenly, his strokes became ravenous, almost desperate. He drove into her, one intent thrust after another swept her into the wind of need once again.
“I…love…being…inside…you,” grunting out a word between each strong stroke.
Her spirits soared, along with her hunger. He was listening to himself, to his heart. His head would never let the self-controlled Gavin confess such a thing. But a man lost in love and passion… He would say everything he felt.
Gavin fitted his hands beneath her buttocks and lifted her to him. The position allowed him to reach tissues inside her he had not before. Soon Kira found herself laboring to breathe as the pleasure became urgent, jagged. She tensed and swelled. She clawed at his back, needing relief.
“Come with me,” he urged.
He plunged into her recklessly again and again. Kira could not have stopped the peak from bursting within her if she tried. She pulsed around him, gripping his length inside her. Gavin gritted his teeth, cried out, then surrendered in a long shudder of helpless desire.
They lay entwined, the silence broken only by their ragged breathing. A glow of fulfillment wafted through her, golden, perfect. She nearly felt as if she floated, weightless, without a care. Only the love she felt for Gavin remained.
Chapter Seventeen
Minutes later, Kira lay below him and lifted a graceful hand, slicking a lock of dark hair away from his forehead. Gavin lifted his gaze, met hers. He tried not to flinch.
She had talked about listening to his heart. But he did not know what was in it. Emotions barraged him from every direction, nearly deafening. Never had he been so confused. Did the tangle of his thoughts show in his eyes?
Moonlight spilled through his window, illuminating Kira’s face with a soft silver glow. What did he feel for her? Hmm. He cared, certainly. He thought of her too often for sanity.
What he felt now went beyond mere satisfaction. That alone would not urge him to stay inside her as long as he could. That alone would not make him reluctant to release her.
Gavin more than wanted her. He knew that. But he also feared the reason he could not resist her.
His damned Daggett blood.
Once he’d seen her naked in his bed, that legacy of lust running through his veins had ridden him hard, demanding he take her, claim her, wring every ounce of pleasure from her before finding his own.
Beneath him, Kira’s starry blue eyes glowed with love and hope, damn near blinding him. And his reckless urges were prodding him to give her anything she wanted so he could have her anytime, anywhere, be the recipient of her first sleepy smile in the morning and her last sigh of pleasure at night.
And Gavin knew those tantalizing images should never come to pass, not as long as he was cursed like his father.
Afraid, uncertain, he rolled away, onto his back. With a frown, he closed his eyes. Bloody hell, how had he let this happen again? Every time she came near, a haze descended over his reason. He had no defense against his want. It overtook every rational thought. How could he be so weak?
Something about Kira incited the Daggett curse, made him l
ose control over his conscience, his passions. That quality drew him inexorably to her, made him yearn for even her smile.
How terrible that the very quality which made her irresistible comprised one of the very reasons he could not wed her—though not the only one, of course.
The humid still of the night pressed in, stifling his every breath. How could he live, knowing he never should—or would—touch her again? He had no answer. Yet how could he betray his family and his honor and risk provoking his lustful nature over and over again? Neither did he want to hurt Kira by bringing her in the middle of the mess that had become his life.
“Gavin?” She frowned, her face a mask of concern. “If you’re worried that you hurt me, I assure you nothing could be further from the truth.”
No, that wasn’t his worry at all. What they had done together felt far too good to involve pain—only regret.
“You do remember me telling you that I am no longer engaged to your cousin?” she asked.
Oh, he remembered. The news had stunned him. And damnation, it had elated him as well. At last Kira was free to be his, even though he could not claim her in any way other than he had tonight.
He sighed. “I remember, yes. But—”
“I know you did not want to hurt James, and I vow to you, he is not. I told him that my feelings dictate that I marry another, and he did nothing but wish me well.”
Marry? One look at her shining face told him she still wanted marriage. And she had every reason to expect it. Three times now he had taken her to his bed without benefit of marriage. He had claimed her innocence. Every dictate as a gentleman screamed that he should offer for her. Something inside him—the lust probably—concurred.
But even if James had not been hurt by her defection, there were many other obstacles. The scandal, for instance. Though Lord Vance’s evil would be known to the ton within days, he had no assurance if the truth would mend her good name. Scandal like that tended to follow a woman everywhere.
And Kira’s Persian heritage, while an affliction she would bear her whole life, it was also an impediment to any marriage they might make. He doubted she would be accepted by the ton, worried she would always be subject to the very whispers and gossip that bruised her soft heart now. To put her through that day after day, year after year… She would eventually hate him and their lives together.
