Cecelia tried to move her hands from where he’d imprisoned them. She wanted to push him away. To pull him closer. To thread her fingers in the silk at the nape of his neck.
And to tug at it with claws.
She wanted him to consume her as his eyes had done so often. With his mouth. His teeth.
His tongue.
She wanted him to lose control with her. To dive into that place where reality fell away. Where no conversation was needed, and no analysis of morality belonged. Where they might only communicate in grunts and groans and cries and screams.
Ramsay didn’t allow her to move. He maintained control of the kiss, driving her mad as he licked at the tears that had settled into the corners of her mouth before laving into the depth of her. Leaving the flavor of salt and sadness behind before replacing it with seduction and sin.
A taste she never wanted to be rid of.
His body surged against her. Big and hard and lethally strong. His spine rolled as if a wave poured down his back, ending with a curl of his hips, thrusting the evidence of his desire against her belly.
Long and hot, his sex branded through the layers of their clothing.
A warm rush released at her core, and her intimate muscles swelled and flexed, clamping almost painfully around emptiness.
Her body undulated in a sinuous, unbidden arch, enjoying the feel of him against her sensitive nipples, even through their clothing. She became one long pulse of need, craving his touch everywhere. Longing to explore the masculine mounds of his topography uninhibited.
His imprisonment of her hands was a delicious frustration as he devoured her lips, bruising them with the force of desire so long denied. Of passion left unspent.
Suddenly she felt very much like the cauldron heated over the cookfire. Simmering with a sensual, aromatic potion of ingredients.
Helpless against this craft, urges she’d struggled to keep dormant bubbled to the surface. An intrinsic female sensuality burst forth, luxuriating in the feel of such a ferocious male laying siege to her senses. Claiming her body as his. She felt as she imagined one did in antiquity, when people lived in huts and were swathed in furs and skins. When the rules of civility did not apply, and the greatest of warriors claimed his chosen maiden by right of might.
Ramsay was just such a man. She understood that as she submitted to the delicious demands made by his mouth.
In his soul he was a Scot. Barbaric and tribal. Fierce, independent, and ruthless.
His blood was closer to the beast’s than most. His ancestors fought off Romans, Vikings, and a plethora of would-be invaders. That savagery lived inside of him, and he caged it. Fought it. Starved and smothered it beneath propriety and determination.
Yet it endured to pace behind the iron bars of his will like a hungry lion.
God, but she yearned to set it free. To offer herself as his next meal.
Driven by an exceedingly powerful primitive need, Cecelia tangled her tongue with his. Meeting his passion with a claim of her own. Her legs parted over his knee, driving their hips closer. She rubbed against his sex, allowing him to feel the tremors of pleasure rippling down her body.
She purred in triumph when his hips ground against her.
Ramsay broke contact. His breaths, harsh and ragged, landed against her cheek in hot, wine-scented bursts. “Tell me to stop,” he panted.
Cecelia stared at him mutely, her breasts heaving against him. She knew what he was asking. He needed her practicality as he battled his lust. He wanted her to tell him that they were still enemies. That they would regret each other. He was asking for the reminder that this heat between them was wrong, somehow.
She could give him none of that, because her reason had been replaced by nature. By desire. She was more aware than ever before that tomorrows were not guaranteed, and yesterdays didn’t matter as much as everyone seemed to think.
“Cecelia.” Her name on his lips was both invocation and benediction. This moment between them either a beginning, or an ending. Either way, they stood at a cataclysmic divide searching for the bridge across.
She could bring herself to say nothing. They’d talked and talked and that had gotten them almost nowhere. It was time to allow their bodies to do the communicating, to soothe the singular pain of children born of loneliness and the lifelong shame of being one of the unwanted.
That was their common ground. The place where their souls might meet and merge.
She stared up into his savage, brutal beauty, aching to say so many things, yet unable to make herself vulnerable to his rejection.
Pleasure me, she wanted to plead. Take your pleasure from me. Fill this emptiness and enmity between us with something we both want. Lend me your strength and I’ll give you my softness.
The dirtiest demand leapt to her tongue. She even curled her bottom lip between her teeth but bit down hard, unable to bring herself to say it.
Fuck me.
A whimper of need escaped her, and that was all it took to break down his last defense. A dark mask covered his features, this one dangerous and unrestrained. Cecelia gasped out as a pang of delicious fear pierced her before he dove for her mouth. His fingers plunged into her hair, all sense of gentility replaced with feral lust.
Their kiss became a battle, each of them driving against the other, shoving closer, demanding heat and friction.
He devoured her with strong plunges of his slick, velvet tongue, his hands dragging down her rib cage to mold to her bottom. With one swift flex, he lifted her from where she’d risen on her tiptoes to reach his mouth with hers and curled her legs around his waist.
He pinned her to the door with his hips, his erection trapped against her sex, pulsing with insistent demand through the many layers of her skirts and his trousers.
For her part, Cecelia attacked his shirt, ripping the buttons from their bindings until she could peel it away from his wide shoulders, smoothing her appreciative hands down the rippling cords of his long, beautiful arms.
He was built like an Olympian, his flesh smooth as marble poured over mounds of iron. Blood pumped through thick ropes of veins beneath his skin, warming all the earth and clay of him, animating his every impulse with strength and life.
Her greedy hands danced over him, taking advantage of their position. She raked her fingers through a soft wealth of golden hair over his chest, finding the flat, masculine nipples that pebbled beneath her touch.
He made a noise that wasn’t entirely human and allowed her to slide down his body until she stood again so he could gather her hands in his own.
No, she thought, pulling her hands from his grasp. No, you don’t get to control this.
She wanted him like he was now. Free and wild, uninhibited and mindless. She wanted the man to give way to the animal beneath. If almost every one of their interactions had been a battle, this one would be different in a very unmistakable way.
This was a battle she’d win.
She’d bring the Lord Chief Justice to his knees by what she could do on hers. Her intention caused her both anticipation and anxiety. She’d seen the act and read about it in the volume in Henrietta’s library. The one that’d fallen open to her the day they’d met as enemies.
This was a man’s ultimate pleasure. The questions remained, was it the giver of pleasure, or the one who received who maintained control?
She’d just have to find out in the practical application.
Cecelia lowered herself until she was no longer on her tiptoes, and then bent her knees slowly, dragging her lips from his mouth to his stubbled jaw and down the thick column of his neck. She was certain to leave a slight trail of moisture, so her intent could be unmistakable.