Page 112 of The Boxing Baroness

“I told you I’d not importune you,” he said roughly. “I’m a liar and a scoundrel who can’t keep his word.” His lungs were rising and falling with unnatural swiftness, the moonlight silvering his skin. “You have bewitched me, Marianne.” He took her mouth again, but more gently this time.

She gave herself up to his kiss, a leaf borne on a powerful current.

He licked and caressed and teased, until they were both breathing like winded coach horses.

“I want to be inside you,” he said, kissing her nose, her cheek, her brow. “Come into the pool with me.”

Marianne ground her hips suggestively against the indisputable evidence of his desire. “What about this? I thought they didn’t like freezing water?”

He barked a startled laugh. “We don’t care how cold the water is.” He slapped her on the buttock and she squawked. Before she could reciprocate in kind he stepped forward and slid into the water, not diving, but submerging his entire body in one long glide.

She watched him swim a moment, marveling at the breathtaking sight. His was the sort of beauty that must have made the ancient Greeks believe gods came down from Olympus and played among humans.

He broke the surface of the water and shook his head, sending icy droplets glittering in the moonlight.

“How is it?” she asked.

“Lovely. Quit stalling.”

She gritted her teeth and strode into the water, not stopping until they were once again chest-to-chest.

“You lied to me,” she accused. “It’s freezing.”

His arms slid around her and his hard shaft—undaunted by the chill—thrust insistently against her midriff.

“I’ll keep you warm.” He nuzzled her neck.

“Your nose is like ice,” she muttered, burrowing into his embrace.

Some part of her mind wanted to spoil this moment—knew she ought to get out of this pool and start running and not stop until she was back in London.

But Marianne ignored it. Whether she ran now, or walked away later, didn’t matter.

She would suffer either way.

Before she suffered, she would take every last bit of him she could get—until she couldn’t.

* * *

It was bloody cold. But holding her like this—suspended in water with nothing between them—was heaven.

She squirmed against him in a way that made his already hard cock stiffen even more.

“You feel so good,” she said, her cold lips and nose on his neck, kissing and nipping and licking.

“Is that your teeth chattering?” he asked in disbelief.

“Mmm-hmm.” She shivered and his eyes rolled back in his head as her hand slid between them and closed around his shaft. “Ahhh, you’re as hot as a furnace.” She bit his neck hard enough to make him start. “Put it inside me, Your Grace. Make me warm.”

“Not until you say my name.”

She stilled in his arms. “I always say your name.”

He thrust his hips, making his shaft slide up and down in her fist. “Say it.”

She groaned. “You’re torturing me.”

“Don’t think that I haven’t noticed that you’ve never said it—”