The Wolf of Mayfair

To him alone her heart turned, and for him alone fell her bitter tears.

—Ann Radcliffe, The Mysteries of Udolpho

She’d stopped her weeping. That was good. Wingrave abhorred those drops as signs of weakness. Oh, there’d been plenty of false ones from mistresses who’d sought grander gifts when he’d tired of their affections. But those, he took for what they were—a manipulative attempt to wheedle more gifts and more money and more of his time in their beds.

This display from Helia, however, proved unnervingly real—she didn’t cry because she desired something from him, but rather, because of him.

Why should that stir this peculiar discomfort in his chest?

Suddenly, her shock and sadness lifted, to be replaced with an indomitable spark.

The lady was a quivering, apprehensive, weepy chit one minute, and the next a fierce, ferocious spitfire who boldly called Wingrave out.

That contradictory display of shy kitten and tempestuous lioness fired his blood.

“You’ve gone silent, my lord.” Helia raised a delicate red eyebrow. “Nothing to say?”

“If I said the things I’m thinking to you, kitten,” he said silkily, “you’d find yourself on your back, begging me as I pumped between your legs, this time until we both came.”

Her cheeks fired. “You are saying that to distract me. I won’t be distracted, Anthony.” She paused. “Not this time.” That latter part she uttered as though a reminder for herself.

Actually, he gave her only truths. Wingrave found himself consumed with a ferocious hungering to possess her, this mindless lust the likes of which he had never known with any woman. He’d be damned, however, if he admitted that craven yearning.

Like some Spartan-warrior princess, Helia tipped her chin up at an obdurate angle. “All this time, I’ve sworn my mother was a dear friend to yours, and all along, you insisted that couldnae be because I’m a Scot and yer ma would nah keep company with the likes of a Scot.”

“For accuracy’s sake,” he drawled, “I indicated my father would never condone such a fellowship, and that remains true.” Wingrave favored her with a mocking grin.

Helia stared at him with big, wide, hurt eyes. “Everything is a game to you,” she whispered.

“Nothing is a game to me, sweet. I don’t have time for them.”

She remained planted there; she looked at Wingrave with a disbelieving glimmer in her gaze.

Then, giving her head a disgusted little shake, she sifted through the notes and quickly scanned them.

Methodically, Helia set aside some in favor of others.

Through her investigation, Wingrave stood there, forgotten.

It was a foreign position in which to find himself. This brazen hoyden was the only one who’d ever shown him anything less than the due regard his position, rank, and power merited.

And Anthony got a thrill out of her willful disobedience.

“Need I remind you those are not your private correspondences, Miss Wallace,” he coolly warned.

“Aye.” She didn’t so much as deign to glance up from her survey.

Another wave of lust flashed through him.

“One can argue that given these notes were written by my mother, I’m at least half their rightful owner.”

With that cheeky pronouncement, she tucked them in the pocket of her night wrapper.

“You cannot have rightful ownership of letters that were sent by another to another, my dear,” he said, more amused than annoyed at her audacious display.

Helia stopped in the middle of the floor and glared. “Try to take them from me.” She dared him with both her words and gaze.

More. He wanted to take even more from this sassy Scot.

Wingrave gave her a lecherous appraisal. He glanced pointedly at that piece of furniture where she’d lain sprawled and open to him. “I find myself positively titillated by that prospect.”

She eyed him with a chary expression.

Wise girl.

Then, it was as though the fight left her. “You lied to me,” she said, her gaze wounded.

Anthony balled his hands sharply. How bizarre he should prefer her insolence to this serene sadness.

“I didn’t get around to mentioning it because you took yourself off like some twit, and nearly got yourself raped by and married to your dastardly cousin,” he said between gritted teeth.

They remained at an impasse; each stared at the other.

Helia looked away first, breaking the deadlock. She gave her head a shake. With her shoulders drawn back, Helia took a wide berth around Wingrave.

His brow dipped, and he stared in absolute consternation as she continued sailing toward the doorway.

And then it hit him.

“Just what the hell do you think you’re doing?” he barked.

People didn’t walk away from him.

“Leaving,” she said, without breaking an impressive stride.

Apparently, this chit did, however, walk away from him.

Wingrave gnashed his teeth.

The hell she would.

He took a step toward her.

Even with the sizable lead Helia had on him, Wingrave overtook her in three long strides.

He slapped a palm over the panel, anchoring the door shut.

Unfazed, Helia’s scowl only deepened. “Move yer hand, my lord.”

When fired up, her brogue thickened, and he found himself not repelled but further lured by whatever siren’s spell she’d cast. He dipped his gaze to the rapid rise and fall of her chest; the pink, erect tips of her breasts pressed invitingly against the thin fabric of her modest night garments.

“That is, unless ye find yerself in the habit of trapping women who want nothing to do with ye,” Helia taunted.

“I confess, kitten,” he said, desire thickening his voice, “I’ve never found myself in this position.”

“Never tell me, because all women want ye?” she dryly asked.

“Yes.”

Helia rolled her eyes. “Well, I am nah that woman.” Her expression hardened. “Now move.”

“I’ll do so happily.”

Like a good girl, she waited patiently.

“When?” she snapped, like the naughty girl she truly was.

“After you tell me just where it is you’re going with those letters you’ve pocketed.” Boldly, Wingrave slipped his fingers inside that pocket and caressed not those pilfered notes, but rather her soft, flat belly.

Her lithe muscles lost the tension in them. The graceful column of her neck moved.

He stroked his hand lower, so that he brushed the dark curls shielded by that cotton.

Her thighs slipped apart, and Helia bit her lower lip.

Suddenly, Wingrave stopped, and her body sagged.

Still, he made no attempt to withdraw his hand.

He bored his angry gaze into Helia’s dazed, desirous one. “Tell me,” he demanded sharply.

She blinked furiously, then snapped upright, as if jolting herself out of the haze he’d placed over her.

“I’m l-leaving.”

She thought to just leave? The audacity. The gall. She’d just up and go, without so much as a parting farewell?

Wingrave narrowed his eyes on her and removed his hand from her person, denying her body the pleasure she sought.

Good, let her. He didn’t need a bloody goodbye. He’d be better off. His hands would finally be clean of her, and she’d be someone else’s problem—his mother’s.

You’re a bloody liar. You’ve not only become accustomed to having her near, you hunger for her. With her innocence, fiery spirit, and strength, she’d imprinted upon him.

Nor, for that matter, was Helia truly the duchess’s problem. Her Grace may have maintained a secret friendship with a Scottish woman through the years, but the Duke of Talbert would never countenance having a spirited, red-haired, heavily freckled Scot amongst them.

No, the duchess had challenged the duke but once—at Wingrave’s wedding ceremony to Lady Alexandra. The day Dallin McQuoid had stepped forward and objected to the union on account of his feelings for Lady Alexandra, Wingrave’s mother had lent her support to the love match. That bold showing had seen the duchess banished by the duke for the rest of the London Season—and a vow on His Grace’s part to send her to a madhouse were she to stage any further displays of rebellion.

Helia took advantage of Wingrave’s tumultuous ponderings. She hastily drew the panel open.

She managed to get only a foot in the hall before Wingrave shot an arm around her waist and drew her back inside and against him.

“The hell you’ll leave,” Wingrave rasped harshly against her ear. She belonged to him and only him.

“What do you want, Anthony?” she pleaded, and that crack in her composure made him feel a way he didn’t want to look too closely at, and certainly didn’t want to feel.

“The duchess will not help you,” he scoffed.

“Why are ye being so cruel?”

“I’m cruel by nature, my dear, but in this instant, I’m giving you only the blunt truth, Helia.” He jerked his head back, toward the letters her mother had written his.

“Do you truly believe, given the fact she said nothing at all about your mother to anyone, that she’ll freely own a connection to the departed woman’s daughter?”

A fierce and welcome fury surged through her sadness. “Do you truly believe I can go to your mother now?” she cried. “As you predicted from the start, my reputation is ruined . . . and I have no place to turn.” Her misery-tinged outburst echoed around the room, and this first real display of hopelessness in the always naively optimistic miss jolted him to the core.

Helia stepped out of his arms, and with her head held high, she left.

As she glided, all in white, like a specter wandering the halls of Horace House, Wingrave stared after her proudly retreating figure, transfixed.

Lust fired in his veins. Like that great untamed king of the jungle, Wingrave filled his lungs with the heavy scent of sex that lingered in the room.

Even on her own and without any options or anywhere to turn, over and over she’d proven intrepid. She possessed an imperial fearlessness and courage that set her apart from every other woman he’d ever known and would ever know.

Never had he wanted to possess any woman. But then, only Helia had revealed an indomitable spirit that marked her as his ideal mate. It was why, from the very start, he’d not turned her away from his foyer.

It was why he’d let her remain and cared for her when she’d faltered and fallen ill. Like a savage in the jungle, he’d possessed an inherent, animalistic knowing that Helia Wallace belonged to him, and he was the one to safeguard her.

His gaze slid over to the desk where he’d buried his mouth in Helia’s muff and wrung another climax from her sweet lips.

His breathing grew shallower; his pulse throbbed in his veins. He wanted to fuck her whenever he wished, which would also be whenever she wished, because he’d keep her so sated, she’d never tire of the feel of him between her legs.

Yes, he needed to have her. He’d never be full in control of himself unless he had a claim to her. Not just her body.

He wanted her in every way, and he would have her. He’d have her body and soul, so she belonged to him and only him.

For too long he’d failed to see the truth laid bare before him. She was the only woman strong enough and courageous enough to be his partner and wife.

He’d rectify that prodigious error.

Growling, Wingrave quit his mother’s office, and set off in hot pursuit of the one he sought.

Like a beast with the scent of his mate compelling him, Wingrave beat a quick path along the route Helia would have taken to her chambers.

The moment he reached her rooms, he didn’t even stop; he tossed her door open.

Helia, in nothing more than a new chemise, and poised with a knee on the bed, gasped. She remained frozen with her nightskirts rucked about her knees.

Hungrily, he drank in the sight of her shapely limbs and imagined himself shoving them apart and lying between them and pumping himself inside her until he filled her with his seed.

Her innocence had snared him from the start—a virginal offering of the gods Wingrave had, for far too long, rejected. Not anymore. Never again.

The fabric clenched in her bloodless fingers slipped. Helia hurriedly readjusted her grip.

“Anthony?” She stared at him with big, luminescent eyes. “What are ye—”

With the heel of his foot, he kicked the door closed behind him and stalked toward her.

An emotion somewhere between fear and desire flitted across her gaze, and he reveled in male primality.

“Mine,” he proclaimed in guttural tones.

Those crimson eyebrows, as fiery as Helia’s spirit, nearly touched the lady’s hairline.

“You are mine,” he repeated, this time infusing steel within that avowal so there could be no doubting she belonged to him and only him.

Her chest hitched.

“You love those words, Helia,” he growled, and gently caught her by the nape. “Because you know you belong to me.”

“I belong to no one, Anthony.” She caught her lower lip and leaned into his touch; her body’s easy surrender to him made a liar of Helia, but her fight further fueled his lust.

“No,” Wingrave whispered.

He swept his gaze over her flushed, freckled cheeks. Even those light-brown, tan, and red specks set her apart from every other banal, dull-featured lady who’d ever walked amongst Polite Society.

“You don’t belong to anyone.” Wingrave tightened the grip he had upon her. “Me, Helia,” he repeated. “You belong to me.”

You belong to me.

Anthony’s possessive declaration, which stripped Helia of ownership of self and put it squarely in the hard, unforgiving hands of society’s darkest lord and wickedest rake, should repel her.

Instead, she felt resurrected from the ashes of her recently broken life, and reborn anew for the male dominion he’d declared over her.

For so very long, she’d yearned to be his, and knowing he shared a like hunger for her stripped her of pride, and God forgive her, Helia was all too content to surrender and submit in the ways he demanded.

In this moment, with his body arced over her partially bent frame, everything from his words to the way his big, powerful body towered over her granted Anthony supremacy.

Still, however, there existed enough shreds of self-control and pride within Helia that she managed to resist him.

She scrambled up onto her knees so that she could meet Anthony’s gaze.

The feather mattress dipped under her shifting weight and proved her foe as it abetted the marquess’s attempt of mastery over Helia.

She, however, would not bend.

Helia laid her palms upon Anthony’s hard, broad chest. The heat of him pierced all the way through his lawn shirt and burned her palms with the delicious warmth of his sinewy body.

Reflexively she curled her fingertips into him; her nails dug into that material and left crescents upon it.

Anthony’s muscles jumped under her touch, and she reveled in the knowledge that she, a small woman, impotent in so many ways, should wield this power over him.

“I want ye, Anthony,” she said softly.

A charged, savage shadow flickered across his gaze.

“But I’ll be no man’s mistress, Anth—”

Her declaration ended on a gasp as Anthony shot a hand out.

He caught her wrist in a gentle but completely unbreakable grip.

“I’d cut out the eyes of any man who ever dared to look at you,” he whispered. His scorching eyes drilled all the way through Helia. “I’d chop off the hands of anyone so stupid as to touch the woman who belongs to me.”

Helia shivered with a shamefully wicked thrill at that lethal, protective promise. Since her parents’ passing, she’d been on her own, reliant upon herself to stay alive and keep herself safe.

How very alluring it was being in the care of a man who’d declare himself her steadfast sentinel.

He placed a fierce, unapologetic kiss upon the inside of her wrist. “Marry me.”

Even though Anthony’s wasn’t a request but rather a lordly demand, she went warm all over.

“You’ll want for nothing. As my queen, your crown will drip with diamonds, and the shine of gold will blind the mere mortals who dare look at you. Everyone will live to serve you.”

Some shameful, wicked part hidden deep inside her reveled at the fantastical world he painted with his evocative imagery. “These are th-things, Anthony,” she said softly, reminding him as much as herself.

“I will fill your every day and night with mindless pleasure,” he murmured.

She did not doubt it.

Suddenly, he tightened his grip and fiery rage filled his eyes. “No man will ever dare touch what is mine, and you will never want anyone other than me, because I will assuage your every yearning so just thinking of the things I do to you will make you come.”

Helia’s heart missed a beat as she recalled how he’d encouraged his former betrothed to keep a lover after they wed.

That this virile man should expect Helia’s fidelity sent another rush of heat between her legs and brought her eyes shut.

Anthony wasn’t done with her.

“I will protect you with my very life. I will kill for you.” With each vow, his eyes blazed brighter and brighter from the gleam of every promise made. “And if needed, I would give my life so you may live.”

She fell further and deeper under his spell.

Anthony wrapped a hand about her waist, and as he pulled her against him, Helia went unresistingly.

“Then, in the afterlife,” he whispered against her temple, “I will be your watchman, whose only purpose in death is to stalk and destroy every person who so much as walked in your shadow.”

She drew in an unsteady breath.

In the bastion of his arms, Helia truly knew what it was to be protected and safe. He was a savage, muscle-bound warrior of old. With Anthony near, no harm would ever befall her.

Anthony made to take her mouth in another possessive kiss.

Helia pressed her fingertips to his lips, stopping Anthony as much as herself from surrendering to him.

His low, feral, angry growl vibrated against her fingers.

“Why do ye wish to marry me, Anthony? I would have you tell me.” She delivered that as much a demand as any of the many he’d put to her.

As if enflamed by Helia’s boldness, he moved his eyes over her face with a savage intensity.

“I have never known any woman like you, Helia. I have never met anyone like you. You possess a strength, fire, and spirit that somehow make me stronger. Align yourself with me,” he urged, shadowy, like they were a medieval couple of old, forging an alliance in the now.

Anthony withdrew his gold watch fob.

Helia stared on confusedly as, in quick order, he freed his gold timepiece and let it fall forgotten to the mattress. Anthony removed his signet ring and wordlessly held it up to Helia.

He slipped the gilded intaglio piece upon the fob. “Bind yourself to me in name, soul, and body, Helia.”

Then, without ever taking his eyes from hers, Anthony placed that golden, everlasting chain about her neck.

The cold metal of the makeshift necklace settled in the crevice of her breasts.

Trembling, Helia touched her fingertips to a shackle that, when conferred by Anthony, brought her, as its wearer, a liberation from fear and the strictures binding her as a young, unmarried woman.

It did not escape her that he’d not said “heart,” and that organ clenched in her own chest in response.

With everything Anthony proffered this night, Helia should seek nothing more from him, but she proved greedy and ungrateful for wanting most the only gift he continued to withhold.

Suddenly, with the skill only a rake could surely manage, he cupped Helia’s buttocks, shoved her skirts up, and palmed her already damp curls.

His masterful skill drew a sharp exhale from between her teeth. “I want you, Helia,” he said sharply. “But I want you every night and in every way.” Anthony slipped a finger inside her sinfully wet channel. “And I know you want me, too.”

More. She wanted him more.

Helia bit her lower lip hard enough that she tasted the metallic tinge of blood in her mouth.

Savagely, Anthony kissed her; he sucked those sanguine drops like they were a life-sustaining nourishment from which he drew his strength.

Helia whimpered and met each bold, possessive slant of his lips.

She yearned for this man in every way. She longed to crest more of those rapturous peaks in his arms. She wanted to belong to him and wanted him to belong to her.

As if he’d heard and sought to fulfill those yearnings, he lured her with the sensuous promise of more.

“I will see you well loved every night so that when we, London’s most powerful couple, appear together, gracing mere mortals with our presence, your legs will tremble from how often I’ve fucked you, and everyone will know at one glance I’ve laid claim to you, and that you belong to me.”

She bucked against the one finger buried inside that he now teased her with. He rewarded her efforts by adding another long digit.

In search of another surrender, Helia panted and rocked her hips.

Anthony’s dark irises gleamed with male triumph, and he continued to give her what she so desperately craved.

But she also wanted more . . . with him.

Helia drew back.

His gaze, angry and black, speared her with an exacting glint.

“Ah dinnae want a marriage of convenience, Anthony,” she explained through hard-to-draw breaths. “Ah want—”

“The only thing convenient about our union will be all the ways in which our relationship was ordained by the gods,” he interrupted. “Now, Helia,” he purred, tugging off his shirt. He tossed the lawn garment over the edge of the bed. “I’m going to make love to you. With my body, I’ll mark you as mine and claim you as my queen. With you at my side, together, we will not only take on the ton, we will also conquer and rule the whole world. I’ll claim your body this night, and seal the pledge we’ve made, and tomorrow? Tomorrow, you will belong to me in every way. Just as I will belong to you.”

He pushed his trousers down, revealing his rampant erection.

Anthony kicked aside the pants so he stood resplendently naked before Helia.

Och, God. Her mouth went dry. He was a magnificent specimen of manhood.

“Ye find me passable enough to bed, Anthony?” She somehow found the ability to tease him with those words he’d once spoken to her.

Anthony frowned. “Passable enough . . . ?”

Helia, empowered by the same power Eve had held over Adam, gave him a brazen smile.

Anthony looked her over approvingly. “You minx,” he said in husky praise, as he looped an arm around her waist. “I see that wry glimmer in your mischievous eyes. Do you know what I’m going to do to you, Helia?” he whispered, his words like sin itself.

She was capable of only the tiniest shakes of her head. She lifted her gaze to his. “I’d rather ye show me.”

Anthony stilled. “God, you are magnificent, Helia.” The glint in his eyes darkened. “Then, let us get on with it.”

She shivered at the ravenous way in which he devoured her with his gaze.

Anthony pulled Helia into his arms and crushed his mouth over hers. Unlike the earlier kisses, aggressive in their own right, these were even more frenetic. He nipped and bit her lips: the lower, the upper, their corners.

She whimpered, and he took that parting of her lips as a surrender. Perhaps it was.

“I’m going to take your small hand and wrap it around my cock,” he said harshly against her mouth. His vow didn’t bring fear; rather, with it came an agonizing throbbing.

He moved to the edge of the bed, so his feet were planted on the floor, and Helia scooted nearer him.

“I’m going to teach you how to tug me off, little love.”

As promised, Anthony took her fingers and guided them over his long, proud erection. He proceeded to show Helia exactly what he’d meant with his dirty promise.

Heat crept across her cheeks, and Helia buried her head against his shoulder.

“Ah-ah, little love,” he scolded. “There is no embarrassment between us, and certainly not in this. Not in my arms. Not in my bed. Now, touch me,” he demanded.

He’d already guided Helia’s hand up and down smoothly, slowly, teaching her, until she caught on to the rhythm he so loved. “Just like that,” he gritted out, his features strained.

By the tensing of his features and the pleasure-pain radiating from his eyes, he favored her efforts greatly. Helia thrilled at the knowledge she could move him as he moved her with his touch.

“Christ, that feels so bloody good,” he rasped.

His wicked words and the feel of his hot, steely rod in her fingers sent wetness flooding to that hungry place between her legs.

From almost her first night within this dark, sinister household, she’d craved things she’d not known about or understood at the time. Since then, he’d opened her eyes to the wonder to be had in his arms, and she yearned for all of it—all the mysteries of her body and his that remained, as of now, still unexplored.

Helia grazed her fingertips lightly over the plum, round tip. She resumed her exploration. Veins pulsed and bulged on the thick rod. A crystalline bead pebbled and then leaked from the tiniest slit.

Fascinated, Helia smoothed the pad of her thumb over that lucent fluid, smearing it around the head of his penis.

Anthony emitted a deep, guttural, pain-filled growl.

Helia instantly stopped and looked up.

“Do. Not. Stop.” He bit out each harsh syllable of that order.

Helia did his bidding. She continued to stroke him up and down, over and over, until his eyes slid closed and obscene curses fell from his lips.

Recalling the potent effect his mouth had upon her, Helia lowered her head to Anthony’s lap and tasted of that clear fluid; the salty taste of him filled her mouth.

A low, animalistic groan shook Anthony’s whole body. “How did you learn that, sweet?” he hissed.

Helia hesitated and, with a frown, glanced up. “Ye dinnae like i-it,” she stammered. “I-I th-thought ye might enjoy it like when ye k-kissed me—”

His eyes bored into Helia’s. “I do not like it,” he rasped. “I love it.” He cupped her possessively at the nape.

Brought to life by both his primal grip and approval, Helia licked his length. She trailed a path of kisses along the rock-hard shaft.

He teased his fingers along her jaw, urging her to open. “Please, sweet, take me in your mouth,” he implored.

Exhilarated at having been the one to reduce Anthony, this proud, powerful man, to begging, Helia moved up and down on his length. Each time she took him a bit deeper.

“Less teeth, little one. Yes, yes, that’s it,” he said through gritted teeth, as with his words and low groans he guided her exactly toward what he sought. “God, I want to come in your mouth so bad.”

Anthony shoved a hand under her chemise and slid two fingers inside her.

She moaned and her channel tightened around his long, strong digits. While she sucked him, he rewarded her efforts by stroking Helia in time to the same rhythm she’d set with her mouth.

Soon, their grunts and moans filled the room.

Then, with his usual mastery, Anthony pulled Helia off him, flipped her onto her back, and towered over her as if she were some kind of pagan sacrifice beneath him.

“I’m going to give you what you want, Helia,” he said, harsh in his declaration. “I’m going bury myself ballocks deep inside you, so deep, you can’t tell where I end and you begin.”

She whimpered.

But he wasn’t done. Mercilessly, Anthony continued filling her ears with a carnal imagery that drove her wild.

“I’m going to pump myself inside your quim, over and over, until you’re mindless and begging to come.”

Anthony, further torturing her, wrapped his hand around his thick length and stroked himself as he’d taught Helia.

Helia moaned and rocked back and forth to bring herself some relief of the agonizing ache he’d wrought.

With his spare hand, Anthony reached down and pressed his palm against the soaking entrance of her body.

He smeared Helia’s juices all over her curls and rubbed the glistening fluids over his shaft, until, Helia, incoherent with need, thrashed her head wildly back and forth upon the mattress.

“Please, Anthony,” she cried, furiously lifting her hips.

Anthony came down over her, inserted a knee between her trembling thighs, and parted her.

Then, with a torturous languidness, he slid the tip of his rod inside Helia.

At last!

Suddenly he stopped, and Helia keened in misery as he denied her what she craved. “Please.”

His black gaze seared her all the way through. “I’ll be the only one you beg for your pleasure. Is that clear?”

She managed a shaky nod.

“Say the words,” he rasped harshly. Anthony gave her another inch of his length, before he again stopped. “Tell me, and I’ll give you more of this.”

“Only you, Anthony!” Helia screamed. “You will be the only one I ever surrender my body to. I am yours.”

His eyes glinted with that hard, possessive gleam . . . and something more. “And I am yours, Helia, my marchioness, my queen.”

With that, Anthony claimed her lips and buried himself to the hilt, deep inside.

She cried out and her entire body spasmed in bliss, relief, and some parts discomfort.

For even as her soaking channel had eased his entry some, his enormous shaft stretched and filled her virginal channel.

Anthony brushed a sweaty curl back behind Helia’s ear and placed a kiss upon her damp brow. “Have I hurt you, little dove?” he asked hoarsely.

“It feels . . . you feel so good, Anthony.” Her center throbbed from the force of her need. “Please, don’t stop loving me.” Helia, in a bid to spur him on, thrust her hips up.

“Never,” he rasped, and her words and gyrations seemed to unleash him.

In a powerful rhythm, his body moved over Helia’s. He stroked his length inside her, until that now familiar pressure built between her legs.

She yearned for that peak. Helia hurt with the force of her need for release. Still, Anthony withheld that gift, keeping it an elusive goal that she arched and begged for.

Biting her lower lip, Helia wrapped her arms about him and dug her nails sharply into the contoured muscles of his back. She leaned up into Anthony so as to somehow get herself closer, to no avail.

The harsh angles of his face were drawn tight, and he gritted his teeth like he, too, fought the same battle within that Helia waged with herself.

“You feel so good,” he rasped. “So bloody good.” He drove himself harder, deeper inside her, and then, at last, Helia reached that glorious zenith.

She screamed her surrender to the ceiling. She screamed Anthony’s name.

Anthony stiffened over her, and then with a low, guttural groan, he spent himself inside her; as promised, he filled her with his seed, and she continued coming.

Helia gasped, her entire being jolted by the resplendence of at last being joined with him.

“I love you, Anthony,” she cried, and then collapsed onto the mattress.

The echo of her avowal danced around the walls and off the ceiling . . . only to linger, and then fade into nothingness—unreturned.