CHAPTER FORTY
Owen
Blood was still rushing in my ears, hot and fast and violent. I closed the door to my bedroom and turned slowly to face Tabby, who plopped down onto the bed with a heavy sigh.
“What a night,” she breathed with a smile.
She looked adorable beaming at me like that, but I wasn’t in the mood for adorable. I was riddled with adrenaline, a walking mass of aggressive energy, and I was seething. Her face fell as she observed my expression, and I knew she knew I was furious. Her shoulders turned inward, her head dropped an inch, and she pulled her knees up to wrap her arms around her legs like an armadillo rolling up into a protective ball.
“You took some serious risks tonight,” I said, speaking low with the intention of forcing her to listen closely. “If Pippa hadn’t ended up confessing, you would have looked like a spy with that microphone.”
Her brow furrowed. “It was the only choice I had. You even helped me with it.”
“I helped you with it so you didn’t go rogue and do something even stupider.” I walked toward her, each step measured and even and slow. She tightened her grip around her legs. “And once you’d gotten her to admit what she did, you could have come back to me instead of doing the auction.”
Loose hair fell over her face, and she tossed her head. “No, I couldn’t have. I signed up to participate, so I had to participate.”
“Well, aren’t you just the goody-two-shoes?” Sarcasm lived in the words.
Her legs dropped away to reveal the crimson bodice and the swell of cleavage above, and her eyebrows knitted together with frustration as she snapped, “I don’t see why you’re so upset about this. Everything worked out just like we wanted it to, and I’m here with you instead of somewhere else with Dr. Donahue or whatever his name is.”
She was right. It had turned out exactly right. But still… there was this emotional swamp of fury and fright still swimming around in my head. A testament to how important this woman was to me. I wasn’t used to this. I wasn’t used to feeling. I wasn’t used articulating my feelings.
And I was terrible at it, I realized.
“But you almost weren’t,” I hissed, pouncing across the last few feet of floor to land on the bed in front of her. I snatched her wrists before she could scramble away from me and slammed her backwards onto the mattress. Pinning her arms over her head, I leaned down until our noses were touching and our breath mingled. “And ‘almost’ is too near a miss for me.”
“Sorry,” she grumbled.
“Yes, you will be sorry.” My voice was husky with emotion, and the blood that had been throbbing in my head since we’d arrived at The Blackjack Club now flowed into my groin. “If there’s one thing I’m not going to tolerate in this relationship, sweetheart, it’s you taking unnecessary risks.”
She glowered at me. “The risk was perfectly necessary.”
I swooped down and bit her collarbone. She yelped, and I resurfaced again to look her directly in the eye. “Not all of it.”
“Well, I thought it was.”
“Then you were wrong.” I nipped her pouting lower lip. “I refuse for you to get hurt, Tabby, and not necessarily because of some cavalier knightly propriety. I’m selfish. The very idea of you suffering, especially because you took foolhardy actions, is something I can’t stomach.”
Her grin was wicked. “Too bad!” She bucked her hips to try and throw me off her.
I felt my inner beast awaken with a roar. In one motion, I thrust my arm beneath her back, flipped her over onto her front, and yanked her ass into the air. Hiking her skirt up to her waist, I ripped her panties clean off her pelvis and pinched her clit between my fingers. “Damn it, Tabby,” I groaned into her ear from behind. “Don’t you know I’m in love with you yet?”
She moaned. It was a guttural, clawing moan that splintered through her vocal cords and bloomed from her mouth like shrapnel in a dust cloud. The individual notes of the plaintive cry smacked my senses hard, and I rolled her clit between the pads of my thumb and forefinger to deepen the sound.
“You’re mine,” I whispered against her lobe. “You’re mine, and if I have to remind you of that every day, I will.”
A trickle of arousal streamed across my palm as I flattened my hand to cup her entire sex, grinding against the sensitive flesh. Tabby’s hands were curled into my comforter like she was already trying to control herself, but I was barely getting started. I’d promised her I was going to make certain she didn’t stand for a week afterward if she participated in the auction, and I was a man of my word.
I drove two fingers through her folds and pulsed against the place inside her that drove her wild. She grew louder, and her rear rose to meet my movements.
“Ah!” she wailed and rode my hand, making me even harder, and I kissed the smooth skin of her ass, then lower…
Pressure built around my digits and she grew even wetter, the sounds of my fingers moving inside her more erotic. I knew her body. She was close. Her hips sprang backward, her belly constricted, and her walls clenched my fingers in a vice grip. The moans she sang and the helpless twitches rocketing through her made a world-class show.
Jesus Christ, I was in love with this woman.
“Get ready, sweetheart,” I murmured. “You’re going again.”
I spiraled my forefinger around her inner walls, taking care to add slightly more pressure to the spongey bundle of nerves behind her pubic bone. Simultaneously, I lifted all pressure from her clit and merely applied tiny, featherlight strokes to its curved face. Before her cries had even stemmed from her first orgasm, I threw her headlong into a second. Her knees collapsed below her, and she writhed on the mattress with piercing screams.
Over and over again, I stole her control until she looked at me with hazy, glazed eyes. Then, I took her myself, plunging my cock into her and bringing her to meet utopia three more times before joining her with my own finality.
She dropped flat against the pillows, panting yet hardly breathing. I picked her up gently and resituated her onto my chest, covering her forehead with delicate kisses and gentle nuzzles. She was limp, motionless, and I assumed she’d fallen asleep or passed out as was typical for such intense sessions. I leaned my cheek against the top of her head and listened to her breaths.
This was perfect. This was Eden without the snake and the apple. I had fallen for the nymph who’d fallen on me in the casino all that time ago. She was the one.
My Christmas bet.
And then she whispered, “I love you too.”