The Royal Conquest(58)

“Wrong,” he murmured, then withdrew and plunged deep, sinking her hips into the mattress, without breaking the connection of their stare. “The way you bathe my cock with your pleasure, the ecstasy you feel at my touch, the pleasure that wrapped around my heart from simply breathing in your scent, is everything.” His voice was dark as sin. Then he withdrew and snapped his hips forward with shocking strength.

A sob clawed from Payton’s throat at the devastating pleasure.

“This means everything,” he said, then he took her lips in a kiss so soft and gentle she quaked.

Though his lips and tongue coaxed and soothed her, the rhythm of his hips as he loved her was untamed. She wanted to coast her hands over his shoulders, feel the ripple of his muscles under her palm, bite the cord of his neck, and taste the sweat on his skin.

“Please let me touch you,” she breathed. “I will go slowly.”

“No.” His refusal was a pained moan and a piercing to her heart. She could not imagine a life where she never held him.

“I want to run my arms over your shoulders, your back, your buttocks, I want to feel the sweat on your skin, the power in your body as you push your c-cock into me over and over,” she tempted against his lips on a soft purr.

“No.”

His lips denied her, but his eyes were a dam of need so powerful, she expected it to crash over her at any moment and drown her.

“Let me taste you,” she said, and bent her head to nip his shoulders.

“No.”

“I cannot bear not holding you.”

“If you want me to stop, you’ve only to say the word.”

Alexander. Yet it was “Mikhail,” she gasped, as his thrusts grew rougher, more demanding, and she slid deeper into bliss, burying her face against his neck, and sliding her hands against the silken sheets to once more grip the pillow, desperate for a firmer anchor.

His hips snapped harder and deeper, and every nerve ending in Payton came alive with pleasure and erotic pain. He captured her lips in a fierce kiss and thrust, once, twice, and on the third plunge her entire body shuddered under the onslaught of bliss.

“Look at me.” His voice was a growl.

She lifted her eyes to his.

Please, she silently begged, let me touch you.

She couldn’t break the power of his stare, the demand to be connected on such a level as they tumbled into ecstasy.

A rumble of thunder echoed in the cottage, and the cool air chilled the sweat on her skin. She trembled, and he shifted, drawing the blanket over them, cocooning her in blissful warm, yet false, intimacy. He pulled her to him, so close she could feel the heat, yet he was careful they did not touch. She remained silent, floating in a haze of pleasure, trying to ignore the questions prodding her mind, and the raw pain in her heart. The fire turned to ash yet they did not move or speak.

“How long has it been since you welcomed another’s touch?”

His breathing did not change, nor did he stiffen, but she swore she could feel the tension weaving itself through his muscles.

“Ten years.”

Her stomach knotted. She wanted to soothe the emptiness she heard in his voice. She slid her hand across the silken sheets without looking in his direction. She held her breath when the side of her hand bumped into his. Payton slowly relaxed when he did not flinch or shift away. A small smile lifted her lips, for this was the first time she had touched him, though it was the lightest of touches, and he’d not flinched. “I am deeply sorry, Mikhail.”

Silence.

“Will you tell me?”

He tensed. “When I was sixteen I was kidnapped.”

Her breath hitched.

“My father was a friend and great supporter of the Emperor of Russia, Alexander II. Our emperor was hated for some of his bold political successes, and there were those who sought to undermine him. It was hard for their arms to reach and influence the emperor himself, so they turned to those close to him, their families, seeking a weakness to exploit. Once they found that weakness, they would have then used Alexander’s supporters to infiltrate where they could not. A group of people who years later formed the Narodnaya Volya, turned their eyes on my father’s family and activities.”

Mikhail glided his fingers over her hand beside his, and then finally locked them together.

“I was taken, and while the ransom for information was sent to my father, I was held in a brothel, a place they were sure the authorities would never look to find me. I was tied to a bed, hand and foot, waiting to be rescued. Hours later, the Madam of the house—Anya—came into the room. It seems she just had not been able to resist me, or resist bringing in her clients, men and women to use me. No threat I used could discourage her, and despite the disgust, shame, and rage I felt, nothing prevented me from responding to their vile touches. I was with her…and them…for several days before my father’s man arrived.”