As they walked through the crowd, he paused to respond to a few people. He maneuvered them toward the card room. Instead of entering, he took her farther down the hallway. They passed the Dewitt’s massive library, then the parlor, and then with a quick look around, he led her upstairs. They walked down the eerily quiet corridor.
She swallowed, her throat dry, unable to speak, even though words begged to tumble from her lips. He opened a door and drew her in. The darkness swallowed them and her senses heightened. The scent of clean linens reached her nostrils and his own masculine scent.
She had thought to bombard him with questions. Instead, her mind now clouded with desire and conversing was the last thing she wanted to do. Tension and need roiled within her, triggered by the familiar, musky smell of his need for her.
He backed her farther into the small room, until her buttocks met a table. She could barely make out his features in the darkness. Her limbs shook as she lifted her hands to grasp his shoulders.
The soft rasp of his trousers being unbuttoned made a hot bolt of lust drilled through her body. Her knees went weak, and she was instantly aroused for him.
He lifted her and placed her on the table, then kicked her thighs wide apart and stepped between them, bunching her dress up at her waist. Her petticoats crinkled and the material conformed under his will.
Her throat convulsed as his hand reached for her drawers, but found none.
“Still thumbing your nose at the rules, Phillipa?”
“No. Preparing myself for you,” she murmured, and for a moment he froze.
Then his finger unerringly found her core. Her cheeks grew hot at the wetness he found without even kissing her. A hiss escaped his lips, and the sudden feel of the broad head of his erection pressed at her entrance.
“Is this what you want?”
An agonizing need for him to fill her encompassed her whole body. “Yes.”
“It will be hard and rough.” His voice was guttural.
Arousal nearly stole her voice as she whispered into the dark, “Please, Anthony.”
He slammed deep into her, forging past her resistance, plunging to the hilt. She slid on the polished wood of the table, and his hands thrust under her buttocks to pull her forward.
“I missed you,” he growled. “I dreamed of you. I bloody ached for you.”
She held him tight, her heart soaring. “And I for you.”
He withdrew his length slowly until he was once again poised at her entrance. He shoved back in hard and deep, wrenching a strangled groan from her throat.
“I resolved to stay away from you, as you wished, but the moment I saw you I had to kiss you, touch you, be inside you.” His thickness moved inside her with powerful thrusts, and exquisite tension coiled in her inner muscles.
“Please don’t ever stay away again. I missed you so much, Anthony.”
His grip tightened on her hips, and pleasure arched up her spine beading her nipples. They stabbed against her corset, and she desperately wanted to free her breasts.
“Not ever?” he growled between plunges.
“Never.” She mewled; she was so close. “Ever.”
He hammered into her. “What are you saying?”
“Yes, I will.” The words wrenched from her, unstoppable.
He dipped his head lower, kissing the corner of her lips. “Yes what, Phillipa?”
“Yes, I will marry you.”
His body halted, and he took her lips in a searing kiss. Then it deepened, and grew more passionate, fierce elation exuding from him.
He gripped her hips tighter. “It’s going to get rougher. Hold on.”
She responded with shivering waves of need. She lifted her legs to circle his hips, crossing her ankles high on his back, and she clasped him tightly. She buried her face against his throat, trembling from the viciousness of the arousal that burned inside her.
He palmed both cheeks of her buttocks, leaning her back on the table so that his weight settled more on her, sinking deeper into her. She pressed a wet, open kiss on the corded muscles of his neck, loving the taste of his skin.
He rasped against her inner walls as he withdrew from her slowly. Anticipation had her filling with wantonness, both dreading and craving the roughness he promised. She screamed into his neck when he slammed home. She drove her fingers into his hair and gripped his head. He rode her rough and hard, peppering kisses against her shoulder and growling out words of encouragement. She luxuriated in his heat, in his powerful maleness, in his strength as he loved her with fierce need. She arched into him as he gave one final thrust, roared his pleasure, and swept them under together.
Afterward, she lay beneath him panting and heart thundering. But never had she felt calmer and more content.
Finally she was at peace, now that she was back in his arms.