She'd known it from the beginning.
She'd known he would never be hers.
What she didn't understand however, was Beau St. Jules's force of wil
l
—
a
rbitrary, occasionally despotic, irrepressibly unhampered by discretion. And when he suddenly rose from his chair like a striking deadly force, his lethargy replaced by a graphic power, she came face-to-face with that resolute will.
"Now then," he softly said, towering over her, forcing her back a step, wanting what he wanted, no longer interested in appeasement,
"
you
may understan
d
—
w
hatever the hell that platitude mean
s
—
b
ut your understanding doesn't solve my problem. I came her
e
—
a
ctually I rode across half of Italy so I could fuck you and," he went on, forcing her back another
-
step, his voice dropping to a whisper, "I intend to."
He advanced and she retreated in a pulsating, smoldering silence until her back was to the wall and when he spoke next his mouth was only inches away. "What do you think of a mutual orgasm?" he murmured, gently placing his hands palm down on the wall, framing her head, capturing her, leaning forward so his body lightly brushed hers. "Or would you rather be just friends?" His smile was wicked, his erection swelling against her, his mouth so close she could feel the warmth of his breath.
"Would you force me?" she whispered.
"Is that what that flush on your cheeks means?" he softly breathed. "I thought it meant something else."
"Please, Beau . . ." She tried to bring up her hands and push him away, but he quickly caught them, forced them back down, pinned them against the wall.
"I think I'll make you pregnant this time," he said, dominant, intractable. "I'll keep you here in this country inn and fill you with sperm . . . day after day . . . after day." His dark eyes bored into hers, bold, shameless. "Would you like my child?"
She would, the thought a living hope in the weeks since he'd left her. But she'd found her way out at last from the grief of his departure. She'd worked very hard at making a life for herself without him and she knew better than to live on futile dreams. "Would you be faithful then?" she pointedly asked.
Startled, he pulled back slightly a
nd
gazed at her. When he finally spoke his voice was brusque. "I don't know. How the hell do I know? ..." Goaded that infinitesimal distance too far, her query stinging nerves already raw with doubt and jealousy, he rasped, "Screw it," and his mouth came down harshly on hers, taking what he'd come to take, what had driven him for days and haunted him for weeks and months. "You're mine," he hotly whispered. "Now, tomorrow, next month . . . maybe next year."
He grabbed handfuls of her skirt and pulled it upward, forced her legs apart with his knee, and leaned into her. "We'll do it the first time standing. You used to like that," he murmured, lust twisting in his belly, his fingers nimbly unfastening his breeches. "And after that, we'll take this"—he swept her skirt asid
e
—"off."
But when he entered her a weight of memory saturated his senses and his hands gentled on her shoulders. "I missed you," he whispered, her fragrance striking familiar chords, the feel of her engulfing him. And he kissed her then with a tenderness.
And wishing she didn't and not wanting to, she breathed, "I love you."
His eyes went shut briefly, a feeling of peace, contentment overwhelming him.
She was his.
He had her back.
It didn't matter where they were; it didn't matter that they'd come together in frustration and anger. It only mattered that they were together, joined in passion.
"You're staying with me," he said, his voice low, intense, his lower body firmly set, plunging, withdrawing in a ravishing, penetrating rhythm.
She clung to him, wanting him as she always did, hot-blooded desire coursing through her veins, all the thorny difficulties dissolving.
"You're staying," he repeated, his hands sliding down her back, cupping her bottom, securing her for his upstroke.
"I don't know," she weakly equivocated, trembling, already near orgasmic.
"/ know," he said, tightening his grip, plunging deeper. "This time you're having my baby," he whispered, withdrawing marginally, driving in again, restless, forcing himself to the finite limits. "Do you hear me?"
She was shuddering, a millisecond from climax. "Yes," she gasped, no longer grounded in logic, irrepressible need blurring reality. And she felt it begin, the explosive ecstasy, the heartfelt delirium. It had been so long. . . .
He felt the same wildness, as if he couldn't wait a second more,
hi
s
n
eed to possess her so violent he shuddered under its spell. His fingers bit into the tender flesh of her buttocks, his lower body took on an annihilating force. "You're mine," he growled, convulsing into her, his savage ejaculatory thrusts punctuation to his words. "Mine . . . mine."
"I should hate you," she panted, bliss and torpor numbing her senses, dying away in his arms. "I should . . ."
"Not now," he murmured, holding her up as she leaned weakly against him. Maybe later, he candidly thought, resting his forehead against the wall, utterly drained, drawing great gulps of air into his lungs.
When he could breathe again and a degree of consciousness returned, he took note of the bed, and lifting Serena into his arms, he carried her over to it and placed her on the rumpled covers. He stripped away her gown and chemise, her slippers, stockings while she lay drowsy and replete, his actions competent, efficien
t
—
l
ike a man with a
m
ission. "And now we'll start working off those hundred thousand florins," he said, trailing a proprietory fingertip down her wet cleft.
"A formidable task even for you, Glory," Serena breathed, her face flushed from passion, her body still pulsing, carnality animate, alive inside her. "Undress for me," she softly said. "I haven't seen your grand body in months."
His brows quirked briefl
y
—
h
e was always surprised by her calm acknowledgment of her sexualit
y
—
a
nd then he quickly discarded his clothes, like a man who'd done it countless times before. "Well?" he said brief moments later. "Do I pass?"
Her assessing gaze slowly ranged over his tall,
a
thletic form. "Oh, you always pass, Rochefort." She smiled the way he might in flattering a woman. "I have a taste for you."
He disliked her easy charm; it smacked of masculine privilege and accessibility when he wanted her locked away for his eyes only. "My taste for you borders on obsession," he murmured, spleen in his soft tone.
"Does it really?" she purred. "And you hate it, no doubt."
"I'll survive," he muttered.
"As you'll survive without me, you mean. Don't look so sullen, darling. I won't make you marry me. As if I could.
There. I like your smile better. I like to fuck too, Rochefort. It's not exclusively your domain."
His scowl reappeared.
"Are ladies not supposed to say that?"
"You're not." She'd never seemed like all the others.
"You can't stop me."
"I can ... I will."
"But not for long, we both know that. See, I can be realistic too. All women don't want to be shackled to your title. You're leaner, darling." Her gaze traveled leisurely over his body, his powerful muscled form honed, attenuated, like a monk too long in the wilderness. "Have you been fucking yourself to death again?" No monk, the Earl of Rochefort.
"I've been looking for Bonaparte," he said, his voice still fractionally sullen, not sure he liked her arch and dégagée anymore than he liked her contentious. "I've been on the move."
"Perhaps you could move in my direction then. That hard cock's caught my fancy."
"Don't talk like a whore."
"You just paid a hundred thousand florins for me. For that amount do
I classify as a courtesan instead? Is that more to your liking? Although / particularly like your cock," she silkily added, sliding up on the pillows. "I always have. So come and give me my favorite toy," she murmured, slipping her hand downward to rest between her thighs.
Voluptuously nude, pinked from her recent orgasm, she languorously spread her legs and offered him a salacious display. As she gazed up at him, her fingertips lightly stroked her clitoris. "You taught me this, remember?" she insolently reminded him. "You taught me all of this, Rochefor
t
—
t
his hot wanting, this uncontrollable need, this hunger for sex. ... I should thank you." Her lashes drifted seductively lower, her gaze warmed, the glisten of moisture materializing under her fingers.
And
a barbaric anger suffused his brain as he thought of her thus disposed with another ma
n
—
o
r men .. . with Massena or Solignac, with Londes, who sampled all the ladies. She was the hottest piece he'd ever ha
d
—
a
nd tutoring had nothing to do with it. "You can thank me by screwing me," he said, low and heated, overcome with jealousy.
"Of course, darling."
"Don't call me darling," he bit out, annoyed with her flippancy.
"Yes, milord . . . forgive me. You prefer more deference from your whores? I'll keep that in mind."
"I prefer more silence from my whores," he grimly said, moving t
o
the bed in two strides, brushing her hand aside, settling between her legs in a graceful flow of muscle and sinew. "So kindly fuck me without any added commentary."
"Yes sir," she murmured, her voice laced with mockery, her eyes blazing up at him. "Whatever you wish, my lord."
He covered her mouth with his, cutting off her sarcasm with a bruising kiss and, hot-tempered, plunged into her tantalizing body. Instantly, her legs wrapped hard around his hips and she uttered a small luscious sound of delight, annoying him, reminding him how infinitely receptive she was. "Did you sigh like that for other men too?" he asked in a low, savage tone.
"Maybe I did." Furious, she raked her nails down his back.
Grunting at the sharp, stinging pain, he jerked away. Exhaling a string of obscenities, he lifted her bodily and flipped her on her stomach. "We'd better keep your hands where I can see them," he growled. "Up on your knees," he ordered, slapping her rump the way one would a horse that had to be moved.
When she didn't respond, he slid his hands under her hips, raising her on all fours. Clamping his arm around her waist to hold her firmly in place, he moved up against her from behind, touching her vulva with the tip of his penis, nuzzling it, teasing and rubbing against the sensitive flesh until she stopped struggling and began squirming, whimpering.
"That's better," he whispered, caressing her bottom with his warm palm in a sweeping arch from waist to heated cleft, inserting the swollen crest of his erection the merest fraction, readying her. "Would you like it rough now? Should I repay you for this blood dripping down my back?"
He pushed into her even before she could answer.
But as he moved inside her, she found herself moving to
o
—
o
ut of shameful need, rocking back to meet each plunging stroke, craving him, an unbearable hunger intensifying with each gliding flow, the desperate, blissful sensations so compelling, so impossibly acute she felt faint from the pleasure.
She moved against him more and more urgently, insistent, demanding, and with the need to restrain her no longer an issue, his hands shifted, cupping her heavy breasts, caressing them as they swayed with the rhythm of her hips, tugging her taut nipples so she felt the bewitching frisson in her toes and down her spine and hotly in the melting center of her body.
Bending over her back, he bit her ear
l
obe, the nape of her neck, nipping at her like a rutting animal, tasting her. "Jesus, I could fuck you mindless," he muttered, his voice husky, ragged, his hands clamped hard on her breasts, his body imposing his wi
l
l on her, stretching her, making her shake, quiver with desire. He thrust into her hard, harder, his strength, his sexual demand unmistakable, seething, as if he could bludgeon her with his penis and make her submit.
"Tell me you want it," he hoarsely growled.
She was panting, frenzied, wanting him so fiercely she felt as though she were drowning. "Yes," she said on a sobbing breath.
He rammed himself further into her and she cried out, her climax jolting her like shock waves, her knees buckling as the exquisite rapture flared, flooded through her body.
Following her down, he didn't miss a stroke, agile in extremity, a curtailed orgasm unthinkable.