“What if you sired another daughter?” she asked. “I can’t really pick, now can I?”
“I’ll happily raise a bevy of daughters, if ye consent to mother them on my behalf.” His lips caught at her earlobe, nibbling gently.
Her body bloomed, undulating against him.
“You’ll have Redmayne, I suppose, and Jean-Yves to help even the odds,” she said a bit breathlessly. “But then there’ll be Alexander and Frank.”
He made a soft noise, exploring her jawline with his full lips. “I’ll need to hire a staff now that I’ve taken on a wife and child,” he proposed before kissing the tip of her nose tenderly. “I could leave that to ye when ye’re Mrs. Cassius Gerard Ramsay.”
“Cassius,” She tested his name, remembering what it stood for. Pulling back, she looked up into his dear, handsome features. “Do you still feel you are empty?”
Suddenly, his arms closed around her waist and he pulled her down over him on the bed, rolling until she straddled him. Filling his arms with the weight of her.
“Not anymore,” he said seriously, and as he stroked her cheek, she felt a tremor in his powerful hands. “Not ever again.”
She sighed happily and he pulled her down to possess her mouth in a kiss that left them both breathless and writhing.
He hastily peeled off her clothing, levering up to peel off his own.
When he had her bared above him, he filled his palms with her buttocks and lowered her against his shaft, letting her rub and writhe against the impressive sex like a kitten begging for attention.
She gave a broken sigh as his fingers toyed and teased her. She arched and danced over him, anchoring her hands on the springy hairs of his unyielding chest.
He was a golden god. A paragon that hardly belonged to this world.
But he belonged to her.
She dragged her palms down the delineations of muscle on his stomach, counting them, until she found the little trail that led her to the velvet silken skin covering the hardness that throbbed for her.
He expelled a guttural moan. “I love ye.”
Lost in the enchantment of the moment, she almost forgot to reply as sensation and need robbed her of speech.
But as she lifted her body and sank down slowly in a slide of silk and fire, she whispered the words they’d say every night for the rest of their lives. “I love you.”
This time, their passion wasn’t a storm. It contained no thunder or urgency. It was a whisper, one the very night stilled to hear. It was warm rather than hot and unhurried rather than frenzied.
This was a moment of discovery between them. Of intent and trust and utter fulfillment. Ramsay’s touch contained awe, and his gaze was full of promises.
This time, when they arched together in a glorious spasm of bliss, Cecelia knew that, though she’d not been his first lover, this was the first time Cassius Gerard Ramsay had ever made love.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
As always I couldn’t produce these books without a truckload of help.
I’m especially thankful to the team at St. Martin’s Press. Monique, Marissa, Mara, and the bevy of others who guided this book from inception to distribution.
I’m eternally grateful to Christine Witthohn, who is always looking out for my best interests, even when I’m not.
I have to thank Cynthia St. Aubin, Staci Hart, Tanya Crosby, and Kim Loraine, who all touched this book in a unique way and, with their friendship, helped to inspire such fierce female characters.
Read on for a sneak peek at the next scintillating novel in the Devil You Know series
by Kerrigan Byrne
The Devil in Her Bed
Coming in 2021
from
St. Martin’s Paperbacks
Before Francesca could close in on her prey, a familiar feeling lifted the fine hairs on her body. A strange dichotomy of warmth and chill. Something like the gaze of a god, or the presence of a ghost. It struck a chord of awe in her, and a bit of fear, if she were honest.
Turning, she used a sip from her champagne glass as an excuse to scan the teeming, glittering, whirling mass of revelers.
There. Across the ballroom. A man stood out by standing still.
He stared at her from the shadows of deep-set eyes.
And just like that, in an overheated room overfilled with people, they were utterly alone. She and the ghost.
Francesca blinked a few times, just to be certain he wasn’t, indeed, some figment of her imagination or truly a specter of the dead.
No, he was still there. Staring.
Strangely discomfited, Francesca affected an air of nonchalance. When others would have retreated, she lifted her glass in a slight toast.
I see you. I see you watching.
Her next thought was to wonder how on earth she’d missed him before?
He had harsh-hewn features that contrasted with his immaculate, elegant attire and a commanding brow. His nose was bold rather than broad, and his mouth defied description. It shouldn’t have tempted her. Not as hard as it was. Hard like his gaze.
He was a hard man all over, it appeared, and extraordinarily fit. Not as monstrously big as Ramsay, or as tall and rangy as Redmayne, but a man of medium height, bred to stand in a crowd, not above it.
The pallor of his skin, the perfection of his slick auburn hair, and the sartorial grace of his stance seemed incongruous with the rest of him, somehow. Like he’d once been a wild thing and only recently, if impeccably, tamed. A sportsman, maybe?
The man was, in a word, striking.
In response to her gesture, his lip quirked, and his angular chin dipped in a nod. He drifted forward with such poise, exuding an overabundance of authority and such inadvertent menace that people melted aside before he took a step. Both repelled and entranced, the crowd moved away from the force of his dynamic presence, and then they looked to see what had prompted them to instinctually do so.
Some of them seemed to know him, and he murmured a returned greeting to a few as he passed.
But he didn’t stop until he’d reached Francesca.
No, he didn’t tower like Ramsay, but he hadn’t the need. Everything about him bespoke domination. Power. Unequivocal strength.
Something deep, deep within Francesca trembled. Not with fear, per se. It was more feminine than that. Abruptly, ridiculously, she wanted to purr at him. To do all the things she’d done before to attract a man.
To see if she could cast a spell as powerful as his.
Francesca abandoned her glass of champagne so he wouldn’t see it quiver.
Here was a man who would smell her weakness, and at the moment that weakness began in her knees and worked its way into all sorts of alarming places.
“Dance with me.”
Francesca rarely responded to commands, and this one was no different. The issuer didn’t have to know, however, that her lack of response was an involuntary mutism caused by his astoundingly seductive Scottish brogue. His voice was smooth and dangerous and beautiful, like molten ore hardening into lethal steel.
“Dance with me,” he said with an air of someone unused to repeating himself.
Francesca adopted a demeanor of disinterest to cover his effect on her. “You’re not on my card, sir.” She turned toward Murphy, but the ghost stayed with her as if he’d anticipated her move.
“Do ye care about any of those men on yer card?” He reached out and flicked his thumb over the ribbon tied at the wrist of her glove on which the filigreed card dangled.