Free Lord Ruin by Carolyn Jewel

you.”
    “I am sorry, I am sorry, I am sorry.” She gasped for air and got very little. “I don’t know you,” she said with a soft hiccup. “I know you are my husband, but in fact, I don’t know you at all. I thought you would send me away until the divorce. Now you’re not, and you expect me to ... do ... do whatever it is you intend.”
    “You are my wife. And I must have an heir. We will do this often, you and I.”
    “I know,” she whispered.
    “Kiss me, Anne.” A moment passed before he felt her lips press briefly against his. Catching the nape of her neck before she could back away, he kept her close. “Not like that. Like you did last night. Like this.” And he lowered his mouth to hers and kissed her until her lips softened under his and she responded. He kissed her until he was completely taken away by the sweetness of her. Leaning back, he touched his fingertips to the side of her face. “You surely do kiss like an angel.”
    Behind them, a servant coughed. Her eyes darted past him, but Ruan didn’t look away. “Ignore that.” The moment he heard the door discreetly close, he gathered handfuls of her skirts. “I adore women. I adore making love. I’m told I’m very good at it, but I think you’re better because God knows I’ve never wanted a woman the way I want you.” Slowly, he brought the material up and up and up until he touched the bare skin above her garter and was stepping forward to let his body trap the material between them. “I’m harder than a stone,” he said as he opened his trousers to the imperative.
    He knew he should save the more interesting variations of sexual congress for later, but he just couldn’t. She set him on fire. He took her there, against the wall, sliding inside her, nearly undone by the soft exclamation that accompanied his entrance, lifting her thigh to open her for him, feeling her not as ready as he might have liked. “Christ, but you are perfect. You are so hot inside.” Moving in her exposed the head of his sex to her depths and almost immediately, pleasure coiled in him, threatening to take over. “Oh, God.” He couldn’t believe the intensity of his every sensation. He’d not been abstinent long enough to feel everything so sharply, but he did.
    She put her arms around him, palms touching his back and holding him close. Her earnest and thoroughly unschooled intent to please him did just that. He groaned into her ear, briefly caught the lobe between his teeth before sliding his mouth to the hollow at the base of her throat. Determined to make her want him the way he wanted her, to have her the way she’d been last night, he held her waist and then her upper thigh and for all of five minutes concentrated on her. The effort ended in failure because she made a small sound, an intake of breath, and then he was gliding in her more and more easily and his urgency built. Their hips found a rhythm and there wasn’t anything left of him but desire. The siren call of release beckoned. “Oh, sweet Christ.”
    While he moved from orgasm to an otherworldly pleasure that threatened to turn him inside out, she whispered his name. He heard it low and soft, an undercurrent of tenderness beneath the roar of his climax. Cynssyr.
Cynssyr
. One moment, he clung to the edges of himself, in control, if just barely, of his pleasure, and the next he was gone. The sweetest death he’d ever felt in his life.
    When he let her go afterward she began to slide to the floor as if only his body, his manhood, had held her up. Then, she gathered herself, adjusting the hem of her gown so that it once again fell to her ankles. She arranged her face with as much care as her skirt. No other description would do. The chin firmed, her back straightened and her mouth curved in a gentle smile. Her hands, though, trembled and gave away the emotion so carefully concealed.
    He still didn’t have his breath or his customary equilibrium back. The pleasure lingered, but he wanted it