Invitation to Ruin (29 page)

   Anthony clenched his jaw and battled the wave of passion engulfing him, but his control grew more brittle by the second. She was such an innocent, yet her instincts were sound,
her actions robust, and her hands on his pulsing member pure heaven.

The sunlight played to her advantage, the light letting him see her, all of her. What would she look like under him as he drove into her hot, slick folds, when he finally claimed her?

The image sent another surge of heat, of pure unadulterated desire lancing through him, hardening and lengthening his already throbbing shaft, the object of her focused concentration. She paused, seemingly fascinated by the bead of moisture seeping from his tip. He looked down as she sent her thumb stroking over his aching head, spreading the latent drop down the length of him.

The sight of her finger moist with his dew sent him spiraling out of control. He caught his breath, nudged her face up, and took her lips again, drawing her into a drugging kiss, then ruthlessly, deliberately, he let his walls fall. He seized and devoured, claiming her mouth, her lips. He wanted all of her.

He captured her wrist and drew her hand from him. He rolled on top of her, reveling in the sensation of her soft, satin skin caressing his chest, his arms, his erection, while he plundered her mouth and caught her up in his tide of desire. Anthony knew this was dangerous, but he could not think straight.

All he knew was he had to have her.

   Melissa quaked with her victory. He was helpless against the passion she’d aroused. He was out of control. She did not fight his passion—she’d never stop him. This is what she wanted—for him to make her his. For him to make love to her. She sank into his arms, giving herself up to his commanding lips, his hands. She surrendered to his dictates, waiting with nerves strung tight with anticipation to be claimed, marked for all time by the one man who, in a flash of blinding light, she realized owned her heart.

Breaking the kiss, he bent his head and set his lips to her
breast. Set his hot mouth to one puckered nipple and sucked fiercely.

Her gasp echoed in the room, her head falling back, letting him feast like a king. She was a slave to his passion.

He laved her breasts, suckled, nipped, torturing the tightly pebbled peaks, his mouth sending arrows of heat downward to curl in her stomach, increasing the ache between her thighs. Her hands lifted to his head and held him to her, lost in the roaring sensations his mouth was creating.

His hands roamed her curves; he became the conqueror, and she almost wept.

   Anthony stopped, still panting, and looked at his wife. He tried to control the savage need he felt to take her.

He’d made love to numerous women—some of the best courtesans in the world had pleasured him—but he’d never felt this hunger, this need to drive into a woman, before. She’d bewitched him. Likely his ardor for her was driven by the knowledge he couldn’t have her. Not in the way he wanted, not in the way he craved her.

He wanted her so badly his body felt like it wasn’t his own. He closed his eyes and dragged in a deep breath. He knew they could find pleasure without penetration, but his blood sang for more.

He rose up on his arms over her and drank her in. Melissa lay eager below him. Her thighs dropping open, her musky scent of arousal filling his nostrils. He thrilled at the thought he was the only man to see her like this—wet, hot, and aching with desire.

She looked into his eyes and, in a sultry whisper, said, “Take me. Make me yours.”

Painful need twisted deep in his groin. Her words thrilled him—she
was
his.

Needing no further encouragement, he bent and quickly captured her left breast and suckled. He moved his head and laved her other breast with his tongue, torn with the need to take both breasts in his mouth at once.

He groaned as she reached for him and caressed his skin, running her hands up his back and down his arms as he devoured her breasts with reckless, fiery, suckling kisses.

He lifted his head and swept his gaze down her body, over her flat stomach, lingering over her brush of dark curls and down over her slender firm legs. She was beautiful. He shuddered with the need to feel her legs wrapped around his hips. But he wanted her wet and begging to be taken first.

He trailed kisses down her stomach, while his hand dipped between her legs. She was wet, and so hot he burned to taste her.

He moved between her thighs and, lifting her bottom off the bed, hitched her legs up over his shoulders so her mound was directly in front of his mouth.

“I want to taste you.” Before she could protest, he placed his tongue on her wet folds and gloried in her shuddered response.

Her taste was intoxicating. He probed her sleek heat, and he soon had her bucking beneath his tongue’s onslaught. He gripped her legs tighter so she couldn’t pull away. He wanted to hear her come, to feel her juices exploding against his mouth.

He mercilessly drove his tongue deep within her over and over, and then he took her engorged nub in his mouth and sucked hard. He felt her body spasm, and her legs gripped his neck with incredible strength.

Her head thrashed on the scarlet sheets as he continued to drive her toward another completion. She still quaked when he began to lick her again, his tongue lapping every drop of her passion.

He kept up his ministrations, plunging his tongue deep within her, then suckling her with his mouth and then lapping at her folds until the room filled with her moans. He continued to work his tongue in time to her moans. Her hips moved toward him, her natural instincts driving her on.

He gripped her thighs more firmly, his tongue penetrating
her. He could feel her intimate muscles contract as her female musk surrounded him in a sensual cloud.

Her body quivered uncontrollably. She was so close to another climax. He gave one hard suck and she cried out his name, “Anthony!” Her voice cracked as she reached her shuddering peak. “Oh, Anthony!” she screamed before she fell back on the sheets, panting.

He placed her legs back down on the bed and moved between her thighs, his legs pushing them wide. He waited. Waited for her to focus on what he was going to do to her. He wanted her to watch as he claimed her. He wanted to see the passion burning within her eyes.

The delay was almost blowing the top of his head off.

   For an endless space, she clung to the burning light and stars. She’d never felt anything like it. She opened her eyes and looked into his face. It was hard with his own need.

She looked down to where he was positioned between her legs, which were wide in invitation. He was poised above her, looking intensely into her face. He looked like a Greek statue carved in stone, yet the heat radiating from him was scorching.

Melissa reached between his legs. He jerked as her hand circled his hot, silken erection.

She spoke. “I want you inside me. I want to feel all of you as you move deep within me.”

Anthony groaned.

She gripped him gently and began the rhythmic stroking Cassandra’s book described to her.

“Harder,” he groaned. “Grip me harder.”

She tightened and applied more pressure until he closed his eyes and flung his head back. She could see the tautness in his jaw. He liked what she was doing.

“Christ.” He surged in her hand, and his breathing grew more rapid. When she looked up, his eyes glared back at her, full of heat and fire. “No more, stop. I didn’t perform particularly
well the last time I was inside you. I want to make this joining last.”

He slowly began to enter her, inch by incredible inch. He was big, and she felt his invasion. His eyes never left her face, and she knew he wanted her to feel every inch of him as he slid deep within her.

He leaned down and kissed her tenderly, catching her bottom lip between his teeth and swirling his tongue inside her mouth. Her body opened to him, and even without the knowledge gained from Cassandra’s book, her legs lifted to encircle his hips, allowing him even greater access.

He filled her to the hilt. He paused above her, his arms straight, muscles taut, and then he lowered himself to her completely and buried his face in her neck as he slid deeper still. His hand stretched out to where hers clutched the bedcovers and covered it. With a soft groan, he lifted his hips and began a delicate and stimulating dance of penetration and withdrawal. It felt as if she were floating, almost above them, as he continued his even course of stroking her with his body, lengthening inside her. Melissa watched the sunlight dancing across the walls in time to his body’s movement.

She shifted beneath him and felt the mound of her sex brush against the hair that covered his groin. A sharp bolt of pleasure seared her at the contact. She wanted more. She lifted her hips, meeting his thrusts. Carefully he withdrew, then stroked into her depths again until she was arching up off the bed. An unbearable, sweet pressure mounted, and she moaned and tried to find his mouth. He turned his head aside.

His hand tightened around her wrist. “Let me hear you. Your small whimpers drive me mad. I want to hear you scream when you come.”

He increased his pace, the thrusts getting faster and harder, a torturous movement, pushing her toward an anticipation of ecstasy like she’d never experienced.

She began to squirm and buck beneath him, matching his
frantic pace. His strokes took on a new urgency, which she matched. The sound of their bodies meeting filled the room. He met her body with a fierceness that had her begging for more.

The grip on her hand loosened, and she eagerly sought the corded muscles in his shoulders and back, running her hands down to cup his flexing buttocks.

“God, you’re heaven, so hot, so tight …” he whispered roughly as he slipped his hand between their joined bodies and began to stroke her. “I can’t wait. Come for me—now.”

As if her body understood his command, she was all at once soaring high above herself as overlapping waves of pleasure spilled over her. His hand continued to torment her sex, and yet another erotic assault built to another mind-blowing climax. Gloriously, when she thought she could bear no more, her body released itself again and she screamed, “Anthony, oh, my God, Anthony.”

At her scream Anthony’s thrusts quickened, and he plunged into her over and over again, until with a roar, he flung his head back and withdrew from her, spilling his seed on the sheets between her thighs. He collapsed on top of her. She felt his heart beating rapidly against her breast.

She relished Anthony’s heavy weight on her. That had been the most awe-inspiring experience. No book could have prepared her for what she’d just shared with Anthony. It was more than just the mere welding of two bodies; it was hearts and souls as well. It had to be. It was the intimate act of love, and she wanted to stay locked in his arms and revel in its glow. His embrace filled her emptiness with warmth and tenderness and … love?

No.

He had withdrawn before … Why had he withdrawn from her? That was not supposed to happen unless … unless a man did not want his seed to take root in a woman. Madame du Barry detailed exactly how this practice could prevent women from getting with child.

Her world trembled, her heart fractured, and she came
back down from the heavens with a resounding crash. She pushed at his dead weight above her.

Anthony lifted his head. “Am I too heavy?”

She swallowed painfully and quietly asked, “Are you ashamed of me?”

Rising onto his elbows, his cool mask hardening his features, he replied, “Of course not.”

Then why? A small tear slipped out of the corner of her eye. She shoved at his massive shoulders. “Get off me.”

He rolled to her side and tried to pull her into his arms. She slapped his hands away and scurried off the bed, heedless of her nakedness.

“You do prefer whores; you just treated me like one. You didn’t stay inside me. I picked the right outfit last night. That’s what got your attention. Not me. Not your wife.”

She watched Anthony go absolutely still, and his eyes narrowed. “Calm down, Melissa. You don’t know what you are saying.”

“Calm down. Calm down!” Her tears burned a trail on her cheeks. “Why? Why did you just … Why did you just ruin one of the most perfect moments for me? What is so wrong with me that you would deny me the one thing I crave in life—children?” She was sobbing and she didn’t care. She hated him. Anthony had just taken her dreams and squashed them.

He had used her. She’d been convenient. He didn’t really want her. Hadn’t she learned by now that she was not special? No one truly cared for her. Especially her husband, who’d been forced to marry her when all he’d really wanted was Cassandra.

Had he been thinking of Cassandra the whole time he was making love to her?

She sucked in deep breaths, trying to gather her composure. “I know you did not wish to marry me, but you don’t appear to want me—for anything. You don’t even want me to have your children. I love children. I want loads of children. I could survive a loveless marriage if I had children.

Why did you work so hard to ensure I accepted this monstrosity of a marriage when you had no intention of including me in any aspect of your life?”

She angrily swiped her tears. She tilted her head, clutching her hand to her bosom. “Why did you bother bringing me to Bressington with you? I may as well have stayed in London.” She felt the blood drain from her face, and she gripped the bedpost until her knuckles turned white. “Oh, God. You brought me here to leave me—Bressington is to be my prison. To discard me while you go back to London, back to your life. Didn’t you?”

He said nothing, but she saw the flicker of truth flash in his eyes.

Her hands dropped to her sides. “Why Anthony? Why did you trap me in this … in this … I don’t even know what to call it. What did I ever do to you?”

A
nthony stared at the woman whose life he’d just shattered, and guilt gnawed on his innards. Melissa deserved his honesty, deserved to know he was not ashamed of her—just deeply ashamed of his own actions. He should have told her before they married.