Unwilling to spend and very near the verge of doing just that, Valentine reached down to drag her up, his mouth sealing over hers, and his hands wrapping around that round arse. She fumbled at the buttons of her own fly before he took over, unfastening the wet fabric and peeling it over her hips. Skirts would have been preferable in this situation, but he wasn’t about to complain, not when he slid his palm inside against the heart of her and was rewarded with copious amounts of wet, delicious heat.

She was drenched, and not from the rain.

“Bloody hell,” he muttered. “You’re…”

“Wet,” she supplied on a moan when he slid his fingers through the silky dampness of her arousal. “Don’t be so shocked, Your Grace. It’s a natural reaction to desire.”

“Not shocked. Delighted.”

“I never realized how much of a chatterbox you are,” she said. “One would think you intended to talk me to death instead of fucking me to death.”

Her vulgar words shocked him. Thrilled him. Inflamed him.

“I didn’t know you had such a filthy vocabulary.”

She rolled her pelvis into his. “There are a lot of things you don’t know about me, Your Grace.”

“I won’t be gentle,” he said on a ragged kiss that toyed with the edge of violence, his tongue desecrating her mouth with carnal plunges that left her in little doubt of what he wanted to do.

The saucy little minx raked her nails over his bared buttocks and hauled him closer. “I don’t want you to be.”

Growling, he dragged his mouth down the column of her neck, sucking on that tantalizing little pulse that teased and tormented, before lifting her shirt to knead a handful of a luscious breast. He bit at the rigid nipple through the layers of fabric. Blast, he wanted her fully bared to his view. Later. This would have to do.

“Turn,” he ordered in a voice made of gravel. “Hold the tree.”

His hand traced the length of her spine, depressing right before the swell of her buttocks, making her arch. He couldn’t see her bared bottom in the gloom, the curves gilded in shadows making his mouth water, but his hands more than made up for his lack of sight. He filled them with the fleshy globes before freeing himself from the confines of his own trousers.

“Valentine?” There was a breathy question in her voice, and he stilled for a moment, reason intervening in his lust-addled mind. She must never have done it this way.

“Trust me,” he said and reached around to where she was wet and wanting. A few circles of his fingertips on that needy little bud and she was writhing back against him, seeking the completion that only he could give her in this moment.