The Spinster & The Thief – Excerpt

He should be going. 

He really should have been gone already. 

But she was still standing before him, waiting. Her blue dress muddy at the hem. Her dark hair flowing over her back and shoulders. The signet ring at her finger. 

An alarming smile playing around her lips.

It was nothing like that prim, demure smile she had given him in Ulrick’s ballroom mere nights ago – this was an invitation, a challenge, a mixture of amusement and temptation with perhaps a dash of recklessness thrown in. For the gods’ sake. If he had known at that ball what he was about to unleash… 

He might have made a little extra effort, he had to admit.

But the first clouds were already glowing orange and gold above them, she still shouldn’t forgive him that easily, and in half an hour he would disappear from her life and never see her again. He should know better than to volunteer as her escape – but knowing better would have been a hundred times easier without the lights dancing in her pale blue eyes.

‘Zovinar…’

He didn’t finish his sentence. She stepped towards him, and he closed his eyes.

‘Zovinar, you might regret this.’

‘I might.’ Hell be damned, why did she need to sound so confident? His body reacted before his sane mind could intervene; the arousal stirred in him at that tone alone, awaking memories of the slender lines of her body, the taste of her pleasure under his lips. ‘But I’m far more certain I’ll regret letting you go now. So I think I’m picking the best of my odds here.’

He looked up. She stood far too near, close enough to touch her – close enough to distinguish the determined lines around her eyes, the firm curves of her lips. The duchess of Tanglewood. Perhaps he believed it for the first time now.

‘You really are horribly irresistible when you know what you want, did I tell you?’

Zovinar threw her arms around his shoulders and planted her mouth on his. 

There was nothing careful about this kiss, nothing of last night’s gentle harmony, She met him with hot, hungry lips, kissed him as if they had spent the past year apart, as if he had survived bloodshed and battlefields to return to her; her hands found his back, fingers clawing into his muscles as if to mark him hers. The arousal simmering in his loins burst through him at that determined, confident touch. At once he was back in his dark hostel room, holding her, the taste of her body on his lips. He grew hard against her in an instant. He still should know better – but gods, that small moan she gave him when he slid his fingers around the back of her head and drew her even closer…

She was so soft under his touch, so innocent and yet so shamelessly inviting. Her lips so lusciously sweet. The pressure of her body so infinitely tempting against the bulge of his erection. He wanted nothing more than to devour her again, to make her tremble with pleasure under his lips and take her like he hadn’t dared to take her last night – his last chance before he would disappear to hell knew where and never see her again. But she was still a duchess – and he? A thief? An exile?

Without warning she slid her hands along his hips until she found the band of his trousers. Garreth drew back from their kiss, barely suppressing a curse. ‘Zovinar…’

She gave him an innocent, wide-eyed look as she loosened his first button. ‘Complaints?’

A breathless laugh fell over his lips. ‘I’ll disappear on you in minutes. Don’t let me—’

‘Can’t steal what’s given freely,’ she whispered, and the second button sprang open under her fingers. Garreth closed his eyes. Her soft, careful touches trailing around his groin were nearly too much to take. His desire was pulsing through his veins in red-hot flares of recklessness now, an overwhelming need to be inside her, to make her his for these last few moments they had – given freely. Gods be damned.

‘You really should know better than to let a man like me…’

‘Garreth.’ His erection sprang free, so hard it hurt. Her cool fingertips against his scorching flesh nearly sent him to his knees. ‘Don’t say that. There really is nothing dishonourable about you.’

‘Do you have any idea…’

‘What you want to do to me?’ She giggled quietly, sinking through her knees. ‘I think you’re giving some clues.’

‘But you can’t want me…’

She pressed her lips to his tip, and his mind shut down at once, all sensible objections gone in the haze of his lust. Careful kisses, as if she might hurt him, brushing along his hard length and back again…

‘Zovinar.’ His voice came out hoarse through gritted teeth. ‘Zovinar, either you stop now or I really can’t promise I’ll keep control of…’

‘Hm?’ she murmured, slipping him between her lips.

He gave in. Damn the honour, damn the sense, and damn the sun rising behind his back – he cupped his fingers around the back of her head and guided her as she swallowed him deeper and deeper, cautiously, gingerly, but still so enthrallingly determined. The garden did no longer exist. The paling sky, the arbour, the bag waiting for him in the grass – none of them could pull his mind away from the sight of her, kneeling at his feet and taking him in between her glistening lips. Her tongue circled over his flesh, and lightning bolts fired through him. She pulled back at his involuntary groan, glancing up at him with elated blue eyes. 

‘Come here,’ he managed, falling to his knees and pulling her along as he rolled back into the grass. ‘I need you.’

Zovinar moaned as he kissed her and slipped his hands under her skirt. The lines of her body were nearly familiar to him already, her soft thighs, the dark curls between her legs – but this time he didn’t stop at that most sensitive place where her lips met. He reached the secrets that lay beyond, warm and silky and slippery to the touch already. Again that breathless moan rose from her, and it was all the encouragement he needed to slowly push into her – oh, gods, to feel her shivering around his finger alone…

‘I should take longer for this,’ he whispered, bending over her to kiss her. ‘If I had the time—’

‘Doesn’t matter.’ She gasped as he pulled out his finger of her again. ‘Do it.’

His painful arousal was screaming at him to delve into her, not to waste another minute without her. Somehow he held back. ‘It may hurt a little. It—’

‘Garreth.’ Half laugh, half moan. ‘I’m not stupid. Do it.’

He fell back into the grass without an answer, rolling her on top of him so that she straddled him, her skirt covering his thighs and chest. Holding up his erection with one hand, he positioned her on her knees with the other, until her slippery entrance lay against his tip and he’d only have to thrust up to take her.

‘Come.’ It took all his self-restraint to stay down. The gleam in her eyes seemed to be begging him to have her, hard and urgent. ‘You determine how fast you go. If it hurts…’

She was already lowering herself over him, impaling herself on his dick, taking him in so deliciously slowly that he thought the tension might shatter him. Her body gripped him so tightly it was almost painful. Then, abruptly, she pushed through, with a small yelp of pain – and he was in her, all of him, buried into her clenching warmth. Leaning over him, Zovinar laughed, a sound like sparkling gemstones.

‘This really is the funniest feeling…’

Garreth managed a breathless laugh, coming up on his elbows to kiss her. She bent over and rose from his dick in the same movement, then slowly sank back the moment their lips met. Locked in her velvet embrace, he fell back into the grass and closed his eyes as she rode him with cautious restraint, faster and faster, breathing in jagged gasps. Unbearable bliss rose in him – pure, unthinkable bliss – until abruptly the tension in his body erupted and he burst into her, with a rough cry that seemed to rise from the tips of his toes.

He found her beaming down at him as he came to his senses again, her smile bright enough to outshine the golden sky. The duchess of Tanglewood. His, for this blissful moment.