His lips were firm and insistent, hot and wonderful. Helena fell into the kiss, winding her arms around Huntingdon’s neck. It seemed surreal, the man who had been so cool all day long, burning against her. If this was a dream, she never wanted to wake.
Her fingers found their way into the silky softness of his hair. Every part of her was keenly aware of him. His mouth on hers, his teeth tugging at her lower lip, his hard chest crushing into her breasts, the thick ridge of his manhood prodding her belly. He filled her senses. Even his scent, musky, familiar, intoxicating, twined around her. His taste was sweet and smooth with a hint of claret.
She kissed him back with all the fiery, pent-up need within her. Kissed him with the anger and the passion, with the longing and the love. And as she clung to him and he fed on her mouth as if he were starved for the taste of her, she made herself a vow.
Tonight, she would not let him escape.
He would not run from her.
Would not put an abrupt halt to the desire catching flame between them.
No, indeed. Tonight, he was going to make love to her. They would lie together as husband and wife, and if he still decided to leave her in the morning…well, that was a worry for the light of the dawn sun. There was no room for fear or common sense in this moment. There was only space enough for the two of them.
Fortunately, Huntingdon did not seem any more inclined to put an end to this madness than she was. He guided them, backing her in the direction of the bed she had spent the last night in alone, wishing he had been there with her. His hands were on her waist, firm and possessive. His kisses never wavered.
This meeting of mouths was different than all the exchanges which had preceded it. This time, there was an undeniable carnal intent, heightened by their dishabille and the lateness of the hour and the fact that they were alone in her chamber, nothing and no one to stop them. He sucked on her lips, ravishing her with his mouth.
She could not quell the moan that rose from deep within. Every part of her was ablaze. Her breasts felt heavy and full, the place between her thighs throbbing and slick. She wanted him to touch her there as he had before.
As if he had heard her thoughts, Huntingdon broke the drugging kiss, lifting his head to gaze down at her. “Off.”
She blinked at him, trying to understand his one-word command. “Pardon?”
It amazed her that she was capable of speech. Of coherent thought.
He tugged at her night rail, his eyes searing her. There was a new light within the blue depths, a hunger she had never seen. She shivered beneath the force of that stark desire. Not because she feared it, but because she wanted it to consume her.
She released him with great reluctance and obliged, taking the soft cotton in her hands and pulling it over her head in one swift motion. Cool night air bathed her skin. She was naked, from head to toe, nothing to hide her from him.
Though a wave of shyness hit, she refused to give in as Huntingdon’s gaze traveled over her. This was her husband, the man she loved. The man she had loved from a long-ago moment when he had visited their country house as Shelbourne’s school chum. He was hers to keep now, but he was also hers to lose.
And lose him she must not.
Therefore, she dared.
Calling upon some of what she had read in Shelbourne’s pilfered books, she reached for her husband’s dressing robe. If she was nude, it was only fair that he must be as well. The tantalizing swath of his muscled chest, finely stippled with dark hair, was not enough. Her fingers found the belt, undid the knot. Beneath it, he was naked.
“Helena,” he protested, his hand catching hers to stay her progress.
But she was having none of it.
“Let me, my lord,” she said, part demand, part plea.
She wanted so badly to touch him, the need an ache in her fingertips. Helena pushed the robe from his shoulders, gliding her hands along his firm, warm flesh as she did so. The garment fell to the floor. She continued her exploration. He was so male. So beautiful, all angles and cords and sinews. His hardness different from her softness, the blunt, angular lines of him nothing at all like her curves.
He stood still under her ministrations, allowing her to touch him as she liked.
Helena grew bolder. She pressed a kiss to his chest, directly above his wildly beating heart. Her hands drifted lower, seeking the part of him she had not dared to directly behold. She glanced over his firm, thick hardness.
On a growl, he caught her wrists. “Damn you, hellion, not yet.”
There it was again, the reminder of the night before. She wondered just how much he remembered. But in the next instant, his hands were on her, his arms around her. She was suddenly floating above the floor as he carried her the rest of the way to her bed before laying her gently upon it.
He joined her, his body settling between her legs, his hands coasting over her skin and sending sparks shooting through her like stars. “You are every bit as ravishing as I imagined.”
His low words dashed away any lingering timidity. He had imagined her without clothing before? She would have demanded to know when and how often, but his head dipped, and those sinful lips of his latched on her nipple. An exquisite rush of sensation sent her reeling as he sucked.
Her back arched from the bed, her hands settling on his shoulders. She had read about such matters, but reading them and experiencing them herself, Huntingdon’s mouth hot and wet upon her…there was no comparison. Nothing could have prepared her for the sleek suction.
Nor the next sensation he unleashed when those long, elegant fingers of his slipped between her already parted thighs and he teased her pearl with slow, tantalizing circles. Her hips bucked, seeking more. And he gave her more, releasing her nipple to flick his tongue over the distended bud while he rubbed her sensitive flesh harder below.
“Oh,” was all she could manage to say when he moved to her other breast, torturing that nipple as surely as he had the first.
A sea of pleasure was running through her.
Delicious, overwhelming pleasure.
And she wanted to drown in it.
“So wet,” he murmured against the curve of her breast, his voice dark with seduction and a note of approval. “Will you welcome me, Helena?”
Did he need to ask?
Could not the man see she was out of her mind for him, that she had been all along?
She was about to tell him so when his fingers left her pearl and traveled down her seam, finding her core. He slicked her moisture as he went, painting her with her own dew. How strange and feverish she felt, almost overwhelmed by need, wanting him there. Inside her. Any part of him, all of him.
“Helena,” he said again, his gaze finding and holding hers through the low light of the lone gas lamp she had kept lit. “I must be mad to be here with you, to be touching you like this. I promised myself I would not.”
As he uttered those unwanted words, he slid a finger inside her sheath. Just a shallow thrust. She inhaled at the sudden invasion. He moved slowly, rubbing her, allowing her body to stretch and relax around him. Readying her, it seemed, and with each knowing caress heightening her desperation to a raw crescendo.
“You…” she began to speak, but words fled her once more when he sucked her nipple again, then used his thumb to pleasure her nub while he moved in and out of her passage.
“I?” He prompted wickedly, lashing her with his tongue.
Think, Helena. What were you about to say?
She struggled to form thoughts, but making sense of anything with the weight of his body atop hers and his mouth and fingers working magic was an impossible feat. In and out, shallow dips, his thumb swirling.
“Yes,” she managed, finding the word at last. The only word that mattered, aside from mayhap three others.
But she would save them for another day. For now, they remained her secret, locked deep within the hidden depths of her heart.
“Yes,” he echoed, and then his fingers were gone.
> Her throbbing core cried out at the loss. She had been so close to release, and now she was left aching and writhing beneath him. She pumped her hips upward, desperate to find him, to make contact.
He kissed a path down her belly. “Patience,” he whispered as he went. “Have patience, hellion.”
For some reason, the sobriquet, which she had supposed he used as an insult the night before, sent a strange frisson of something else through her now. Warmth. Longing. Love.
Different love, stronger than before. This connection between them—the physical bond—moved her in a new way. Deepened her emotions. Strengthened everything.
“Huntingdon, please.” She was restless beneath his traveling lips. Wanting more.
He kissed all the way to her center. When his tongue flicked over her pearl, she jolted. His touch there had been incredible. His mouth was incendiary. It was shocking and wicked. She had read about this as well, but words could not begin to describe the delicious sensations coursing through her.
He drew on her there, just as he had done with her breasts. Then he feathered fast, decadent strokes over her, alternating between sucking, licking, and nipping. His hands moved as he pleasured her, caressing her hips.
Her fingers fisted in the bedclothes as he feasted upon her. She could not keep a low moan from rumbling free. His dark head between her thighs was at once startling and beautiful. His groan of desire vibrated her already pulsing pearl, sending a ripple of decadent desire through her everywhere.
She was helpless, pinned to the bed by need. His hands coaxed her thighs wider still, opening her to him. His tongue traced back down to her entrance, thrusting there in the same manner his fingers had worked her. She writhed, moaning, trying to get him deeper.
And then, his fingers were back upon her pearl, teasing her, taking her to the edge.
“Spend for me,” he urged her. “I want your cream on my tongue.”
The vulgar words should have shocked her, but she liked them. There was something so wicked about hearing them, so unexpected, emerging from Huntingdon himself. They made her wilder.
So, too, did his mouth. His tongue moved faster, his fingers swirling over her with increased insistence. And she was soaked, the sound of her wetness echoing in the chamber with erotic abandon. But the sounds mingled with her responses only seemed to increase his ardor. He buried his face deeper between her legs, his fingers biting into her hips.
It was all so good. Too good. And she was close. Too close… No, she was already there.
The frenzied rush of her release caught her by surprise. One moment, she was near, the sensitive place between her legs throbbing and pulsing. The next, she felt as if she had come apart. Her eyes slid closed, bursts of light dancing on her eyelids. Something inside her contracted, then pulsed. Wave after wave of bliss crashed over her.
A whimpered moan escaped her lips as she gasped to catch her breath. Her heart pounded as fast as the hooves of a spooked horse galloping into the distance. She was nothing more than splintered shards. And although she had touched herself in the dark sanctity of her own chamber on many nights, nothing had ever compared to this complete owning of her most intimate self.
Nothing wrought by her own fingers had ever brought such soul-gripping pleasure. Her eyes fluttered open to find his gaze on her. For a moment, she feared this was all he would allow, that he would flee back to his chamber as if this wicked interlude had never been.
But first, Huntingdon pressed a kiss to her sensitized flesh, and then he moved. Up her body, his mouth warm and wet upon her bare skin. Her hip bone, the curve of her belly, the hollow of her waist. Higher. Each breast. Her nipples. He sucked one again as his fingers found the secret places where she burned for him most.
She clutched at his shoulders, body bowing from the bed. Wanting more. Wanting him. Wanting everything.
And he was right there, settling over her, his powerful body once more a delicious weight. He kissed a path over her collarbone. Dragged his mouth up her throat. She trembled with the violence of her own need for him, not at all abated in spite of the pleasure he had already bestowed upon her.
“Huntingdon, please,” she said. “I need you.”
Inside me.
The last words were too bold, even for her. They hung in the air, though, unspoken yet somehow still there, vibrating with potency.
He kissed her ear. “If I consummate this marriage, we can never undo what has been done.”
Had he intended to undo it? Her mind whirled, the spell of desire disrupted. There were no causes for divorce, so that meant he had contemplated an annulment. Perhaps that was the true reason behind his sudden trip to Shropshire.
Hurt lanced her heart. She could not help it. Helena wished he had not said anything at all. She ought to push him away, to stop this madness. Should she truly surrender her body and heart to a man who had been secretly contemplating abandoning her?
“Helena?” He lifted his head until his face hovered over hers.
She wished she could look away, but he stole all her attention as ever. There had never been anyone but him. He was the only one she longed for. The only man who had ever made her feel those queer little sparks fluttering through her, the tightening in her belly, the breathlessness and heart-fluttering moments when their eyes connected. And when he touched her, good Lord…
But still, she had her pride.
She cupped his face, the prickle of his whiskers, reemerging after his morning shave, stinging her palms in a delicious rasp. “Do you mean to annul our marriage?”
She had to know.
She did not want to know.
His eyes did not flit from hers. “I had considered the possibility.”
No subterfuge from him, then. She could respect his honesty, if not his intentions.
They were almost as close as man and woman could be, their naked bodies pressed together, and yet, he still held a part of himself from her. She did not know if he would ever relent enough to allow her into his heart. To welcome her there. When she had spent the last few weeks plotting to rid herself of Lord Hamish, somehow, she had been desperate to do everything in her power to keep from marrying a man she could never love.
In her haste, she had never stopped to think about what it would be like to marry a man who could never love her.
“And now?” she asked him, needing to hear his answer, no matter the damage it would do her.
“I want you,” he said, the raw confession sounding as if it had been torn from him. He moved, and for the first time, she knew the sensation of his rigid manhood rubbing over her, the tip of him brushing over her pearl until she quaked with a renewed sense of urgency. “Do you not feel how much?”
She did feel. And it was marvelous. Helena jerked against him, undulating her hips so that his length rubbed up and down her needy flesh. But still, he had not answered her question. She would not lie with him if he was uncertain about what he wanted, the lust inspiring him notwithstanding.
She understood well enough the way it was between a man and a woman. A man could want a woman without loving her, and the same was true for a woman. The problem was, in this instance, the woman was desperately in love with the man, and her heart could not bear to be split in two.
She was still holding his face in her hands. Her thumbs investigated the sharp delineations of his cheekbones as she studied his face. “That is not an answer, my lord. Do you wish to remain married to me, or would you rather be free? I cannot bear the thought of you spending the rest of our lives resenting me. If you shall hate me forever, then I set you free before we go too far.”
“We have already gone too far,” he told her, turning his head to drop a kiss upon first her left palm, then her right.
Still, this was not the answer she sought.
“I have to be inside you. It is a need which supplants all else. Therefore, I surrender. You have won.” He lowered his head and sealed his lips to hers.
Helena did not want his surrender.
Nor did she want to win. She wanted his love. But if there remained the chance she might ensnare that, surely she owed it to herself to try…
He licked along the seam of her lips. She opened to him. Their tongues tangled, and the musk of her sex invaded her mouth along with him. Her hands traveled from his face to his silken hair, then to his back. The muscles of his shoulders flexed beneath her questing touch, and she could not help but to marvel at the strength and softness of him. Smooth, warm skin encompassing rippling muscle and sinew.
It seemed at odds, much like the man himself.
One moment, he consumed her with the ardor of a lover, and the next, he viewed her with the cold reckoning of a scorned suitor. How could a man so hot also be so cold?
Any misgivings fell away beneath the power of his kisses. As he kissed her, he rubbed his shaft over her pearl again and again. She shuddered and quaked beneath him as a small tremor of renewed release passed through her. But it was not enough. Nothing was. Nothing ever had been.
Helena had been waiting her entire life for this claiming. For this man. For this night. She clung to him, kissing him back with all the frantic ardor clamoring through her. There would be no annulment. After this night, they would be bound to each other forever.
It was what she wanted. She would fret over the rest later. Not now. For now, all she wanted was this. Him.
He bit her lower lip, a low sound of need emerging from his throat. “Ready for me, hellion?”
“Always,” she whispered, half promise, half plea.
He aligned himself with her, and then he was inside her. The tip of him at first. Slow and shallow. She inhaled swiftly, shocked at the size of him, so different from his fingers and tongue. So much more, in every way.
“More?” he asked against her lips.
“More,” she agreed.
He moved again. Deeper. A small thrust. She burned. But still, she did not feel any pain. Only a slight discomfort at the newness of it all.
“More,” she said again, moving her hips beneath him in an attempt to seat him fully.
But he was stronger than she was and, in this instance at least, possessed of greater control. He kissed her furiously, his tongue lashing at hers. Then he caught her leg and hooked it over his hip, bringing their bodies flush. He sank inside her a bit deeper. His encroachment was painstakingly slow. Helena was desperate for him. Her entire body clambered for more. Instantly.
Lady Reckless (Notorious Ladies of London Book 3) Page 15
