Hawke said nothing, yet the hungry edges of his face tightened. It was almost as if he fought himself, struggled with some internal concern I could not understand.
Whatever it was he fought, it did not slow him. I stared as he pulled his shirt tails from his trousers. I could not help myself. As the sweat cooled on my skin, as my heartbeat hammered like the bells of Westminster, I watched him reveal himself bit by bit. It exposed the lean athleticism of his chest, the muscles flexing with every move he made. He was no lumbering dock man, but I was seized with a vicious need to sink my fingers into all that beautiful flesh. Feel the tensile strength of that lean body beneath my hands.
Hear him growl for me.
The edge of my thumb slipped between my teeth as I drank in the beauty unfolding before me.
Halfway through the buttons, his eyes caught on mine. The sound he made fixed in his chest, and he stripped the shirt over his head entirely, buttons forsaken.
I was left with an impression of taut strength, lethal tension. Those muscles carved over his belly drew my gaze lower, to a stern ridge thrust against the confinement of the trousers he made no effort to touch.
Once more, I felt that pulse within me. That needy ache. I knew what that bulge signified, what it would mean. I was no stranger to anatomy, or the working elements of a physical consummation, yet...
I bit my thumb harder.
The shirt fell from his fingers. He approached me, not wholly nude, and I could not decide if I felt the loss or the relief of it more.
I wanted to see what lay beyond that flap in his trousers. Wanted to look at it, feel it, dear God, I wanted to know it. Just as much as I wanted to cover my face and hide the uncertainty that seized me now.
That, my pride would not allow.
Seizing my courage in both hands, I reached for his waist.
Hawke froze. The taut expanse of his belly sucked in as my fingertips skimmed beneath the fabric’s edge.
I could not believe my own temerity, but I would do it. I would unbutton his trousers and roll them down his muscled thighs. I would kneel on the narrow bed and stare, wide-eyed with wonder, as his shaft sprang free of the confined fabric, as swarthy in color as the rest of his skin, deeply red at the tip and glistening with fluid.
I would, and I did, shocked at my boldness, breathless with wonder and fear and a need that would not loosen its grasp.
Hawke stood because he allowed it. Because I think it pleased him to wonder what I would do, faced with such an unknown.
Perhaps he expected me to take that part of him into my mouth, as I knew that doxies and skilled women of the craft would do.
I could not. Not yet. I had not the courage nor the finer understanding, and a part of me bristled with fury at the possibility of being compared to other women, other acts, other nights Hawke had no doubt entertained.
But because I could not help myself, either, I wrapped one hand around his shaft and measured its width.
The organ leapt against my palm.
Hawke’s breath hissed through his teeth.
“‘Tis smooth,” I observed, astonished. I stroked both hands over him, gentle as I dared. “Like warm silk, until here.” Where the raspy, faintly wiry black hair began at the base.
“Cherry.” A gritted word, my name.
I looked up, into eyes smoldering with such controlled intensity, and could not stop the impish desire no matter how hard I tried. Leaning forward, I pressed my lips to the head of his shaft. A kiss, no more, and a dare of my own making.
I underestimated what it would do to the man.
He moved so quickly, I had no opportunity to truly analyze the taste of him—salty, a little bit musky—before he lifted me bodily, wrenching me away from his flesh and higher on the bed. His skin had darkened, his eyes blazing with something wholly different—something I could not read, had no rules to tell me how.
Suddenly, I was upon my back, my legs splayed and held so beneath his hands. He knelt between them. His shaft thrust proudly between his thighs, trousers bunched at his knees. That muscle leapt in his jaw, a tic that spoke as to the level of restraint echoed in the hard sting of his fingers on my softer flesh.
That I was exposed, my most intimate flesh laid bare for him, was a concern only partly entertained. He had seen me before, after all, and I confess to being swept away by the moment. Raw aggression and poignant need; every note of pain merged with pleasure, every rough touch with a gasp.
My body was too hot, my senses wrapped up too tightly.
I knew what it was I wanted, but I had never asked before, and I would not beg.
I closed my eyes. It did not please him.
“Look at me,” he demanded.
I would not.
His nails dug into my thighs, earning a shuddering exhale. “You will look at me when I take you.”
I cried out, a mewling sound that frothed with need and shame combined, but I did look at him. The satisfaction this carved into his taut features stripped me of that shame—in his approval, I found a kind of serenity.
He bent, looming over me with such abject grace that I wanted to weep; he truly was beautiful. Even with the appalling scars crossing his back, with the devilish eyes that did not match, even the cruel shape of his mouth—he was a man sculpted of such strength and beauty.
The hot skin stretched tight over his shaft tapped my most intimate flesh, and I jerked in surprise. In apprehension.
In aching, wild craving.
“Beg me.” His voice rubbed against places inside me no voice should have the measure of, dark and decadent and so unyielding.
I fisted my hands into the sheets before I gave in to the urge to touch him. My lashes lowered, hid whatever I feared he could read within my gaze. “No.”
“Beg me, Countess.”
A streak of pain no fleshly wound could match. A rise of anger that only fed my wicked need. I opened my eyes to glare into his. “No!”
He shifted, and that hot skin brushed mine once more. A gasp tore from my throat, my hips rose of their own accord and I watched his dark lashes flare as my wet flesh found his, dragged so deliciously that my gasp turned to a moan.
A hand came down by my temple, clenched in the bedclothes so tightly that the knuckles gleamed white.
He lowered his head, sealed the distance between us until my hips cradled his, my breasts cushioned his hard chest, and I was suddenly, deeply aware of him in every way. His heat, his physique. His fragrance.
Every way, that is, but that which I craved.
“Do it,” I demanded between clenched teeth.
Hawke’s mouth turned lazily crooked.
Angry, he was intimidating. Challenging and effortlessly in charge, he was appealing.
This? This laconic smile devastated.
And when he dragged himself across my wet, empty flesh, when he stroked the length of his hard shaft over that most sensitive part between my legs, I groaned with the deliciousness of it. And with the ache that he refused to fill.
“Hawke!”
“Beg me,” he said again, a low growl. “Beg me to defile you, Countess.”
“Why?” I managed, eyes closing tightly despite his earlier demand. “Why, damn you?”
“I would have this truth, at least, between us.” The head of him nudged against my opening, and I thought I might tear my own skin off with the want of it. He pushed, just a little. Just enough that the sensation spread out through my body like a wild flame.
Not enough. Not nearly close to enough.
“Beg me, Cherry.”
No shame could hold me. “Please!” It wrenched from me, wild and wanton. “Please, Hawke, please.” I pulled at the coverlet beneath me, tried to twist my hips but he pinned them too neatly. I inhaled a juddering breath. “I want you to take me. Defile me.” To my unwitting horror, tears burned behind my closed eyes.