One Night of Surrender: The Brothers Mortmain, Book 1 Read Free Page B

its arrow at him and the decent man fled.
    Separate chairs be damned! he’d thought. He would have her this night, his last night before the devil took him to Hell. And wasn’t that a better revenge than punishing the woman for her man’s sins? Edward Prime had kept his Katherine out of sight, hiding her away like a fabulous jewel for his own delectation. How he would have hated the thought of Gervais handling that jewel, tasting it, taking it again and again.
    Gervais smiled. “Shall we rid you of this abomination?” he asked. His fingers hooked into the thin cloth of her dress, testing it. He felt her body tense, just before he gave a savage tug.
    The cloth rent, all the way down to her waist. Her body was pink and white in the firelight, perfect to his eyes. He—the rake—found himself dazed by the sight of her.
    “Oh!” She tried to cover herself with her hands. He caught her wrists, lifting her hands up and away, baring her again to his greedy gaze.
    “Peerless,” he whispered.
    Her breasts had lifted with her arms and, though in proportion to her small frame, they looked swollen and heavy with growing desire. Her nipples were pointing toward him, and his mouth watered to taste their sweetness. His dark gaze ran up to hers, noting her pupils growing larger. With fear? He didn’t think so. His Katherine had the look of a woman who was ready and willing for the delights of the flesh.
    Gervais had wanted to see her naked the moment he first saw her. Not, as she no doubt thought, in the court of the Old Bailey. He’d first seen her in Edward Prime’s inn, through a gap in the parlour door. She had been arranging flowers in a bowl on a polished table and her beautiful face had been entranced with the task—lips slightly parted, pale lashes long on her lowered lids. He’d wanted her then, with a heat and craving he’d never felt before. The sight of her had gone straight to his cock, and if there had been a small longing ache in his chest—where his heart was meant to be—then he ignored it.
    He’d wanted her. He’d thought about her for days afterwards.
    So when he saw her again in this grim place, well…surely it was the fates giving him permission to have her? And if it made Edward Prime writhe in fury beneath whatever rock he was hiding under, then so much the better.
    “Enough thinking,” he muttered, and reached for her.
    The time had come to feast on her bare skin, the perfect shape of her breasts with their pale pink peaks, and the darker rose-coloured buds that seemed to tighten even as he watched. He bent closer, breathing warm air upon them, and heard her catch of breath.
    “Do you like that?”  
    “I don’t know,” she demurred, her eyes very blue.
    “I think you do know.”
    He bent closer still, so that the tip of his tongue trailed over the rounded curves of each breast, finding first one nipple and then the other. He whirled his tongue around the little buds, and then sucked hard. Her body went rigid and she made a keening sound. He sucked harder and she arched upwards, her body bowing toward him.
    “Do you like that, Katherine?”
    “Yes,” she gasped raggedly. “I do.”
    “Should I do it again?”
    “Yes…”
    Her hands closed on either side of his face, a little clumsy in her sudden, desperate need to keep his mouth upon her.
    Gervais’s cock was pressing uncomfortably against his tight trousers. He wanted to reach down and free it. He imagined pushing it deep inside her, taking her now, hard and fast. Panting, shouting, releasing the lust within him like an animal.
    But he stopped himself.
    Haste wasn’t what tonight was about. This was his last night on earth and now that he had this woman he’d been thinking about for so long…He wanted to savour her like a delicate fruit. Like the orange he had fed her earlier. He wanted to lose himself in her and forget tomorrow in the pleasures of the night, but he also wanted her to enjoy what he was doing to her. He wanted