Adam had not gone mad.
Yet.
After three months of captivity, the thing that kept him from relinquishing control was not Grace but Georgina. He scrubbed his hands over his rough beard. Grace’s features were becoming less clear in his mind. With his bound hands, Adam reached for the charcoal and scribbled an image onto the paper. He welcomed the way the cord bit into his flesh, reminding him that he was alive.
Grace’s face began to take shape.
Except the heart-shaped lips he drew were too full. There was too much of a curl to her hair. And there was a faint birthmark at the corner of her mouth that most certainly didn’t belong there.
His stomach clenched in a vise-like knot as Georgina’s face materialized on the paper. He gasped and ripped out the page. Wrinkled it into a ball and tossed it aside. Somewhere along the way, Grace’s face had dissipated in his memory and there was nothing Adam could do, aside from mourning the loss of a far simpler time.
The door to his prison opened. Hunter nudged Georgina inside then locked the door behind her.
She stood, poised by the doorway. Her words came out hesitant. “Adam?”
He reached for another page. His fingers trembled over the sheet. Closing his eyes, he tried to call up memories of the precious lines of Grace’s face. Adam made another attempt. When he’d finished, he sat back and assessed the result.
The woman in the sketch did not possess Grace’s lean, lithe form but rather well-rounded hips and buttocks. He dragged the page out of the book, taking a perverse glee in the tear, and tossed it to the floor beside the other.
He didn’t look at Georgina as she moved deeper into the room, but then he didn’t need to. Her wide-eyed expression stared back at him from the bloody sketchpad.
His body went motionless as he realized there was just one more page in the book. With a roar, Adam tossed it against the wall. It hit with a loud thump and fell open on its spine.
Finally, he allowed himself to look at Georgina. All the color had left her cheeks. She moved with sure strides across the room and proceeded to undo his bindings.
When he caught her gaze, she focused her attention on the mess littering the floor.
“Georgina,” he began hoarsely. This woman who bathed him, fed him, sat with him and kept him from descending into complete madness wasn’t deserving of his fury.
Georgina shook her head. “It’s fine.” She continued to clean.
Adam blinked at her. Oh God, the sight of her on her knees at his feet did something to him. Her lips were mere inches away from his aching shaft. If she glanced up, she would see his erection reaching out to her, begging.
Georgina sank back on her heels in a flutter of skirts. She was an enchantress weaving a potent spell over him.
Don’t do it. Do not look at her lips. If he looked, he would begin to imagine those tantalizing dreams that kept him from sleep at night: Georgina on her knees, her sweet mouth wrapped around him as he urged her on. He needed her. It had been too long since he’d made love to a woman. He glanced at her lips. The glance became a gaze. And he was lost.
Adam stood so fast, the chair went crashing to the floor. The room dipped with the suddenness of that movement and tingles shot down his ill used legs.
Georgina scrambled to her feet. “What’s wrong?” Then she did the absolute worst thing she could have done in that moment. She trailed the tip of her tongue over those sinful lips.
With a groan, he pulled her into his arms. She tipped her head back to look at him.
Her eyes were wide, giving her a look of an unblinking owl.
Is it fear? He would’ve wagered his brother’s entire holdings it was desire that flared to life in their brown depths.
“Adam?” His name emerged as nothing more than a whispery sigh and he lost the fight.
He kissed her as he’d dreamed about since she’d first entered his room, a Joan of Arc bent on saving him. He plundered her mouth as if it were the last time he would ever kiss a woman. She opened her lips and he slipped his tongue inside.
His efforts were rewarded with a purr. His erection thickened. Adam swung her into his arms and carried her over to the bed. He lowered her until her head rested on the pillow. Feverishly, he passed a hand over her body. Exploring. Teasing. Tormenting.
He released her breast from the confines of the drab, brown dress she wore. She sucked in a breath and his shaft throbbed with longing. A little moan escaped her.
“Adam,” she whispered, and he didn’t know if his name was a plea, a prayer, or a command but it urged him on, fueled his hunger and his desire to pleasure her. Then he cupped one breast, raising it to his mouth. God, her breasts were enormous, pale moons of silky flesh. The red tip of her nipple puckered in the cool of the air before he closed his lips over the bud.
She cried out, thrashing her head back and forth on the pillow.
A deep, primal groan of male satisfaction escaped him. He needed more of her. Now. He tore his lips away from her nipple.
“Please,” she begged. She threaded her fingers in his hair and urged his head forward, a gentle woman turned tigress.
He lifted her skirts up. Higher. Until he’d worked them around her hips, exposing the soft flesh of her thighs. Her hips bucked in anticipation of his offering.
“Do you like this, love?” he whispered, taking a nip at her neck in the primal instinct of a man marking his mate. A man who’d had his urges denied for too long. “Do you want to feel my hands on you? My fingers inside you?”
Georgina cried out. “Oh God, yes. Touch me. Please.”
That throaty entreaty drove him on. Adam moved a hand between them and found the thatch of dark brown curls shielding her center. He slipped a finger inside her hot, moist passageway. She clenched her thighs tight around his hand. He was a man possessed. Like an untried youth with his first woman. He stroked her. At that moment, his body craved her more than it did water or food. She was a molten flame beneath him. Never before had he wanted to play with fire as he did just then.
Adam returned his attention to her other breast, flicking his tongue over the engorged tip, trailing a circle over it until Georgina was bucking against him, keening his name.
He wedged his thigh between her legs and looked at her. She was close. Her eyes went wide in her face. Then she arched her hips into him, grinding into his upper thigh. Her rhythm became frenzied. He delved deeper, playing with her slick nub.
She came on a piercing scream. He continued to work her sex, bringing her to climax again.
Adam freed himself from the confines of his breeches and moved over her. Her quivering pale thighs fell open in invitation.
“Oh, Adam, yes!”
He positioned himself at her center, his shaft pressed against the entrance of her womanhood. And froze.