Free The Secrets of a Courtesan by Nicola Cornick Page B

and hung there poised for what felt like the longest moment of her life. The
    emotion strung out between them, fierce and tight and impossibly tense, and then he slid into her,
    claiming her, so smooth and deep that she cried out.
    Her body shifted to accommodate him as he thrust with strong, slow strokes. Already the
    pleasure was building within her, shimmering and tantalizing just out of reach. She wanted more.
    She wanted to explode.
    “Faster, if you please…” She dug her fingers into his buttocks to pull him even tighter inside and
    felt his body jerk in response.
    “So polite…” His breathing was ragged. He obliged her by plunging deeper and harder, driving
    her higher and higher as she smoothed her hands down his back to encourage him on and bit his
    shoulder in an agony of need and ecstasy. She had lost all coherent thought, everything drowning
    in pure pleasure and the absolute necessity of fulfillment. And then her body clenched and she
    came with a blissful, dazzling intensity. Fireworks exploded in her head, flooding her mind with
    light. Her body clasped his in helpless spasm, and she held him and heard him call her name as
    he, too, fell into the deepest languor and pleasure. Past, present and future collided in the most
    perfect reunion.
    In the aftermath she felt him draw her close, tucking her into the curve of his arm as though she
    was the most precious thing on earth, her head on his shoulder and the beat of his heart against
    hers, and it felt like coming home.
    Eve woke to see the light flooding the room and to feel a quick, uncomplicated joy. Rowarth was
    lying beside her, his arm about her waist in casual possession, his legs tangled with hers. She
    could smell his skin, at once familiar and exciting. Her body quickened again and she shifted,
    feeling the ache inside that was the aftermath of bliss and the promise of pleasure to come. It had
    been so perfect. She had never imagined it would be like that again.
    The happiness fled. The loss she had staved off the previous night came flooding back, filling the
    emptiness within her soul with its bitter harvest. She had gone into this knowing that she loved
    him but that she could never keep him. Not Rowarth, with his responsibilities and his
    obligations, not least amongst which was his need to produce an heir for his dukedom with some
    suitable, blue-blooded, fertile aristocrat. She had borrowed him for one last night, loving him too
    much to deny either of them. And now she would have to give him up because that was the only
    thing to do.
    “Sweetheart…” He was stirring. He stroked a palm over the soft skin of her stomach. He
    sounded happy. Another crack appeared in her heart.
    He rolled over, looked at her, and at the expression in his eyes she felt sudden acute
    apprehension. Her heart was thumping. She knew he was going to ask her to be his mistress
    again and she was so sorely tempted to agree. To have Alasdair Rowarth in her life again, even if
    it was only for a little while…Would she sacrifice the independence she had achieved here and
    all she had worked for in order to be with him? And could she watch him wed another woman
    and produce an heir when she had thought once that she would be his wife and she knew that she
    loved him more than anyone else ever could?
    “I once asked you to be my wife, Eve,” Rowarth said. “Now I am asking you again. Will you
    marry me?”
    “Oh, no!” Eve could not quite bite back the words in time. This really was a disaster. She had not
    imagined, not dreamed, that this could happen. And of course it was utterly impossible, for all
    the same reasons that it had been before.
    Rowarth was looking quizzical and a little chagrined at her outburst.
    “I did not think the idea would be so abhorrent to you,” he said.
    “I thought you were going to ask me to be your mistress again,” Eve said helplessly.
    Rowarth did not look pleased. In fact he looked most forbidding. “That position is not on