The Serpent Prince (Princes #3)(58)
Author: Elizabeth Hoyt

He thrust and she cried out.

He felt a grin, not a nice one, split his face. He looked down and watched his reddened skin slide into her flesh. Lifted her up and pulled almost out. Saw the glistening moisture of her cunny coating his cock. And slammed back into her. Thrusting into her. Filling her. Claiming her. My woman. Always. Never to leave. Stay with me.

Always.

She shook her head wildly. He pressed his fingers against her mound to feel it and to find that special pearl. She moaned, but he didn’t relent. He filled her with cock and diddled her clitoris with his thumb, and he knew she couldn’t hold out. The walls of her sheath clenched and she came, raining her sweet pleasure on his prick. He buried himself in her until his balls met her bottom. His body convulsed and he felt the pulse of his seed filling her.

Mine.

Chapter Fourteen

Oh, God!

Lucy woke with a start, her breath coming in gasps in the dark of the bedroom. The sheets clung to the cold sweat on her skin like a shroud. She froze and tried to calm her breathing, lying as still as a rabbit on sighting the snake. The dream had been vivid. Bloody. But it was already fading with her consciousness. All she recalled was the fear—and the feeling of hopelessness. She’d been screaming in the dream when she’d woken, and she’d been surprised that the sound was as phantom as the images.

Finally she moved, her muscles aching from being held in tension too long. She reached out to find Simon, to reassure herself that there was life even in the depths of night and nightmare.

He wasn’t there.

Maybe he’d gotten up to use the necessary? “Simon?”

No answer. She listened to the silence with the irrational fear that only came after midnight: that all life had died. That she was alone in a dead house.

Lucy shook herself and rose, wincing a bit as the cut on her side pulled. Her bare toes touched the cold carpet, and she patted her hand in the air, searching for a candle on the bedside table before realizing she’d gone to sleep in Simon’s room. The table was on the other side of the bed. She held the bed curtains for a guide and felt with her feet as she rounded the bed. All she remembered of the room from last night was an impression of darkness and the severe colors, an almost black-blue and silver, and that his bed was even bigger than her own. That had amused her.

She held out a hand blindly, felt a book and then the candle. There were still embers glowing in the fireplace, and she crossed to light the candle. The feeble flame hardly revealed the whole of Simon’s room, but she already knew he wasn’t here. She put on her gown from the theater and pulled a wrap over it to hide the fact that she couldn’t do up the back on her own. Then she shoved her bare feet into slippers.

She shouldn’t be surprised that he’d disappeared. He’d made a habit of it in the last week, leaving in the evening, only to reappear in the early hours of morning. His nightly wandering seemed to have become more common in the last few days. Sometimes he came to her chamber looking so very weary and smelling of smoke and drink. But he’d never left her bed before, not after making love to her, not after holding her until they both gave in to sleep. And the way he’d made love to her only hours before—so intensely, so desperately—as if he’d never have the opportunity again. She’d actually been afraid at certain points. Not that he’d hurt her, but that she’d lose a part of herself in him.

Lucy shivered.

Their rooms were on the third floor. She checked her bedroom and sitting room, then descended the stairs. The library was empty. She held her candle high and saw only long, ghostly shadows thrown over the rows of book bindings. A window rattled in the wind from without. She reentered the hallway and debated. The morning room? Highly unlikely, he’d—

“May I help you, my lady?”

Newton’s dirgelike tones behind her made Lucy shriek. Her candle went tumbling to the floor, hot wax burning her instep.

“I’m most sorry, my lady.” Newton bent and retrieved her candle and lit it with his own.

“Thank you.” Lucy accepted the light and held it higher so she could see the butler.

Newton had obviously just come from bed. A nightcap covered his bald pate, and an old coat was thrown over his nightshirt, pulled taut across his small, round belly. She looked down. He wore rather fancy, curl-toed Turkish slippers on his feet. Lucy rubbed one bare foot over the other and wished she’d thought of stockings.

“May I assist you, my lady?” Newton asked again.

“Where is Lord Iddesleigh?”

The butler averted his eyes. “I couldn’t say, my lady.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

He blinked. “Both.”

Lucy raised her eyebrows, surprised he’d answered with the truth. She studied the butler. If Simon’s absence was because of a woman, she was sure Newton would’ve made excuses for his master. But he hadn’t. She felt her shoulders relax from a tension she hadn’t even known was there.

Newton cleared his throat. “I’m sure Lord Iddesleigh will return before morning, my lady.”

“Yes, he always does, doesn’t he?” Lucy muttered.

“Would you like me to warm you some milk?”

“No, thank you.” Lucy walked to the stairs. “I’ll go back to bed.”

“Good night, my lady.”

Lucy put her foot on the first tread and held her breath. From behind her, Newton’s footsteps receded and a door closed. She waited a moment more, then turned. Quietly she tiptoed back to Simon’s study.

This room was smaller than the library but more richly appointed. It was dominated by his massive baroque desk, a recklessly beautiful piece of furniture, picked out in gilt and curlicues. She would’ve laughed at any other man owning such a piece, but it suited Simon perfectly. There was an arrangement of wingback chairs before the fireplace, and two bookcases flanked the desk, easily accessible to someone sitting at it. Many of the books were on the subject of roses. Simon had shown her this room only the other day, and she’d been fascinated by the detailed hand-colored illustrations in the big tomes. Each rose an ideal of the flower, each part identified and labeled.

So orderly a world.

Lucy settled herself into one of the wing chairs before the fireplace. With the study door open, she had a view into the hallway and all that happened there. Simon would have to pass her by when he came home. She intended to quiz him on his nocturnal ramblings when he did.

APHRODITE’S GROTTO WAS A DEN of howling wolves tonight.