She nodded. “I shall allow it.”

One side of his mouth lifted in stunning masculine amusement. “Queen is right.” And then he sat back again, letting his head hit the chair once more.

“Tell me what you want.” Not question. Command.

“Suck me.” The command was rough and sweet, just as everything that had led to it. His fingers tightened in her hair, firmer now. “Go on.”

She parted her lips and took him slowly, learning the size and feel of him. The hard steel of him. The taste of him. The way he held himself perfectly still as she delivered his pleasure. As she took her own, her hand still wrapped around him, stroking.

Grace had spent years running a sex club, making certain that every woman’s desire was met to exacting specifications, and in all those years, she’d considered her own, of course—but she’d never once imagined the pure revelation that came from this act. From giving a man the kind of pleasure that threatened his sanity.

And one’s own.

Because in her lifetime, Grace had never experienced such pleasure or such immense desire for her partner’s pleasure. But now, as she licked and sucked and drew him deep, reveling in his taste and his strength, she was driven by a singular purpose. To give him release. To make him come. To taste it. To know that she was the one who had drawn it from him.

She’d never felt so powerful.

She worked over him, finding the precise speed that made him mad, the precise sensations, the precise spots that drove him wild, loving the sounds he made, and the half sentences he spoke, and the blasphemy he whispered, and the way he said her name like a prayer. And then his hands tightened in her hair and he gasped, “Grace. I’m going to . . . I cannot stop . . .”

Don’t you dare stop, she thought to herself—to him. She sucked a touch deeper, moved a touch faster, feeling him grow against her, the head of him pulsing. Give it to me.

Mine.

His fingers tightened and he growled a wicked curse, and Grace drank in her power as he called her name to the room and gave himself over to her and to his release. She stayed with him, until he returned to himself, his body relaxing into the chair for the first time since he’d sat. His hands lifting her hair up off her shoulders, the cool air of the room running over the hot skin on the back of her neck.

It was her turn to groan, because it did not soothe, that air—instead, it set her nerves on fire, and the ache she’d held at bay while controlling his pleasure was enhanced and now turned too impossible to ignore.

He knew it, and he leaned down, and he said those words that had tempted her from the start.

“What do you need?”

You. I need you.

No. She couldn’t say that. It gave away too much.

“I—” She couldn’t find the words, the hot ache in her too much. “I need—” She looked up at him. “Please.”

Instantly, he was moving, lifting her, pulling her back into his lap, not caring about his bruises or his bandages—not caring about anything but taking her mouth and cupping the place between her legs, sliding one glorious hand to where she needed him. He broke the wild kiss. “I know,” he whispered, a hot promise at her ear. “Here.”

“Yes,” she whispered back, as he stole the sound with his lips, spreading her wide until she was straddling him, even as she reached for the falls of her own trousers, yanking at them. She fumbled and he was there, unbuttoning them deftly, the magnificent man, even as she realized she had a different problem. She broke the kiss. “Boots.”

He nodded, and together they moved with lightning speed, divesting her of boots and trousers until she was bare, except for her corset and coat. He watched her, rapt, as she turned to wriggle out of her coat, leaving her more beautifully bare in an elaborately boned corset, blue the color of the summer sky, with wide straps that covered her shoulders. And when she came back to him, to straddle him once more, the ache was worse and she whispered, desperately, “Do it again. Touch me again.”

He obeyed instantly, pressing his hand to her, tight. Strong. Steady enough that when she rocked against it, it set her aflame. She reached down to where he touched her, his gaze following her movement, watching as she clasped his wrist and held him steady.

“Wait, love.” She didn’t want to wait. She had waited long enough. She wanted this. Now. She grunted her disapproval at the words and worked herself against him, pressing him more firmly.

He groaned a little laugh and said, “Grace.” She looked at him, ready to do battle for her own pleasure. Out of her mind with want. With his free hand, he pulled her in for another kiss, and as his tongue slid deep, one of his fingers parted her folds, finding purchase.

She gasped at the lick of pleasure, so acute.

“You may always use me, love,” he rumbled in her ear, his finger sliding against the spot where all her desire seemed to have pooled. “But when you use me, I wish you to use me well.”

Pleasure rioted through her and she rocked her hips against him, working herself, loving the way he stroked and pressed and moved against her. “Show me,” he whispered, dark and lush. “Show me what you ache for.”

And then her fingers tangled with his, and she was rocking there, against him, learning the rhythm of her pleasure, teaching it to him, and ultimately ceding it to him, rising up over him, her hands on his shoulders as she panted her need and worked herself against him, knowing she shouldn’t, and not caring as he watched her and moved against her, and guided her into a flood of pleasure, until she was crying out in the quiet room, and he was saying the most sinful things, like harder and faster and take it and yes, love and you’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.

As she lowered herself back to his lap, he pressed a kiss to her cheekbone, and another to her temple, and he held her in place as she trembled with the aftershocks of her orgasm—giving her his body and his time and making her wish they would never leave this place.

When she returned to thought, she stiffened, instantly lifting her weight from him. “Your bandages.”

“You think I feel pain right now?” He pulled her back into his lap and pressed another kiss to her hair, the caress so natural that it warmed Grace in places she had never been warm.

She smiled. “I only wish you to feel pleasure.”

His hand slid down her arm, the touch sending a shiver through her as it changed from lazy to purposeful. “Then we must do that often.”

Her smile disappeared.

It couldn’t happen, of course. There was no often between them.

There was no future between them, because all the space had been filled with the past.

This had been a mistake.

She moved to leave his lap, and he grasped her hand. She froze, expecting him to hold her there. He didn’t. But he did hold her, the warmth of his hand in hers a lure and a promise and a temptation that she did not need. She pulled away, hating the feel of her hand sliding from his.

He didn’t resist. He didn’t pull her back.

Frustration flared, and Grace knew it was irrational. “I must go.”

He did not move, watching as she pulled on her trousers, then picked up the items that had dropped to the floor, leaving him the salve and the ice box, and the cloth. Setting the basket of bandages carefully on his table.