Free Jo Beverley - [Malloren] by Secrets of the Night Page A

him. Around him. Part of him.
    He was saying things, urging her to things as he moved harder and faster.
    Never stopping.
    Never pausing.
    She began to almost want him to stop. This was too much.
    Too hard.
    Too unrelenting.
    Don’t stop
!
    Oh mercy, mercy
.
    She was mad with something that must be completed, terrified of the hovering doom, racked with a pain that she loved, groaning with fear and pleasure….
    Sobbing with it.
    Until—at last, at last—it happened!
    No wonder she’d never started a baby, she thought with startling clarity just before she burned up in sudden, obliterating fever. She’d never done it properly!
    She held on to that thought as she spun wildly through the fire, and afterward, as she wept into her mask. She wasn’t at all sad and was glad the mask hid her folly.
    She held on to the thought as a promise—a promise of the baby she’d surely created. Held it as she lay beneath his shuddering heat, feeling as if she’d melted entirely into a puddle of sated senses and sweat.
    Truly, that had been the most remarkable thing that had ever happened in her life, and she was very grateful not to have missed it.
    He was kissing her neck, her breasts again, but she just wanted to stay a puddle, a surely pregnant puddle….
    He rolled onto his back, taking her with him, holding her close. After a languorous while—a moment, an eon—he whispered, “Delightful mysterious lady. More?”
    “What?” Even talking seemed too much effort.
    He slid down a bit, holding her up on his arms, and suckled her dangling breasts.
    “Oh no.” Rosamunde had never imagined doing it more than once a night. Or day.
    “Oh yes.”
    “We can’t.”
    “We can.”
    “
I
can’t.” And she couldn’t. She felt as wrung out as a boiled sheet on laundry day.
    “Yes, you can.” He nipped at her, making her want to giggle. “I’m not niggardly when it comes to paying debts. You must let me pay in full.”
    “You’ve paid….”
    “For my very life?” He ignored her feeble protests, lowering her and soon trapping her in need again.
    Twice to make sure. Why not?
    But when he rolled her onto her back, he used his hand between her legs, slowly, slowly, so she was whispering pleas and even cursing his control before the brilliant end.
    As he stroked her and soothed her, she said, “But we didn’t do it. Did we?”
    “Do what?” Though she was too embarrassed to look at him and talk about this, she could hear the humor.
    “Er … the whole thing.”
    “Didn’t you like it?”
    She knew it was pointless to lie, but tucked her head down as if there was a point to hiding her masked face.
    He raised her chin. “You know, your husband could do that for you, even if he can’t do other things.”
    Rosamunde tried to imagine prosaic Digby indulging in such antics.
    “No?” he asked.
    “I don’t think so.”
    “Some men don’t deserve their treasures. But most of it you can do for yourself.”
    “That’s a sin!” How absurd, when she was here, sinning.
    “More?” he asked.
    Limp and almost quivering, she shook her head and meant it. “You’re trying to kill me.”
    “I’ve killed no woman yet. Turn, my dear.” He didn’t wait, but turned her and raised her onto all fours. From behind, he covered her, nipping her protesting neck like a stallion with a mare. “More?”
    Stiff in shock, Rosamunde resisted a moment longer, but he wrapped an arm around her and brushed her sensitive nipples while his new erection stirred between her thighs.
    A moan escaped her and he licked around her ear, whispering, “More? Please?”
    “More,” she agreed, and he entered her, quick and fast this time. Like a bitch, or a mare, or a ewe with a tup she let him master her and take her, until they collapsed down in shattered ecstasy, him half over her.
    Tangled like that, they slept.

Chapter 6
    R osamunde awoke, sticky and aching in odd places, still half under his big body. She wondered if she and Digby had been doing it