‘You,’ she said roughly. ‘I want you. All of you.’
His faint groan told her that he was as close to losing himself as she was, and she let her legs part even further to encourage him, inviting him in. The blunt heat of him was nudging at her; his mouth was fixed on one breast, tugging sharply on the aroused nipple as she gave herself up to his intimate invasion. Abandoning all control, she raised her hips from the bed, pushing herself against him, and felt the hard force of his possession surging into her, taking her out of herself and into a mindless, needy hunger that could only be satisfied by joining together harder and faster.
‘Ma belle…’
His voice was a rough, hoarse gasp as he pushed in, deeper, further, then drew back, again and again and again. Each time he took her higher, further, the storm of pleasure building, swirling, growing until there was nowhere else to go but over the edge and into the oblivion of ecstasy that splintered all around her.
A thudding heartbeat later, she heard Raoul’s cry as he abandoned himself to his own release and followed her into the raging darkness.
It was a long, long time before her breathing slowed, her heart stopped racing and she slowly, dazedly came back to reality and awareness of the room she was in, the man who lay beside her, long body slick with sweat and the aftershocks of reaction.
‘And you wondered why there are the rumours that I’m here to steal you away.’
His broad chest was still heaving, his words coming roughly and unevenly.
‘I think it’s a little late to try and deny that now.’
‘But I can’t have people thinking that—it would ruin everything.’ The words escaped in an unthinking rush.
‘Ruin?’
Raoul heaved himself up onto the pillow, propping it behind his back as he leaned against the bedhead.
‘That seems to be a word that’s been used a lot today. If I’m supposed to have ruined everything, at least you could have the courtesy to tell me exactly how I’ve done that.’
The way he looked down at her, the laser probe of those bronze eyes, made her shiver inside. She wanted to reach for the sheet, to pull it up to cover herself from that searching stare.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ she hedged. ‘Nothing matters now—everything’s…’
‘Ruined?’ he supplied sardonically when she let the sentence trail off unfinished. It was unfinishable. There was nothing left to say. ‘Explain!’
‘Nothing to explain.’
She couldn’t meet his eyes, so instead stared down at her own fingers where they lay on the bedspread, watching them trace out the pattern of the golden flowers as if they could wipe away the design and everything that had happened in the past few days. She couldn’t explain anything, least of all how she had ended what had been supposed to be her wedding day here, in bed, with a man who was not the bridegroom. She had just made hot, passionate…
No; her mind flinched desperately away from the word ‘love’ in that sentence. She had just had hot, passionate sex with the man who was responsible for breaking up the marriage she had thought she would be consummating tonight.
‘You can’t expect me to believe that.’
‘Can’t expect you to believe that, because of the way you broke up my marriage plans, I am probably—no, definitely—currently spending one of my last nights ever in Blacklands?’
The full horror of the truth broke over her like a cold wave, and even the way Raoul’s black brows snapped together in a fierce frown couldn’t stop her.
‘Can’t expect you to believe that as soon as the news about the cancelled wedding gets out—which I expect it already has—there will be a line of creditors queuing up outside that door?’
A wild gesture with her arm indicated the window and the drive up to the house that lay beyond it, yet Raoul’s eyes didn’t follow it, but instead stayed, unblinking and fixed on her face.
‘And why would they do that?’
‘Because we owe them. We owe them more than we can ever pay. Even our famed stud horse isn’t ours! And as soon as they see our last chance of redemption has gone then…’
‘Al Makthabi was your last chance?’