He seemed to understand, or perhaps his emotions were in accord, for he entered her short moments later with a soft apology for his impatience, gliding in with a silken friction that touched her to the quick, over whelmed her senses, gave credence to the phrase lost to all reason. And when at last he filled her completely, when she felt as though she couldn’t breathe for the size of him, when ravishing sensation strummed outward from her tautly stretched tissue and pulsed through her body, she sobbed from the sheer, sublime, overwrought pleasure.
“Don’t cry,” he whispered, terrified he’d hurt her.
“I’m—not …” she sobbed, her hands hard on his back.
And then he understood and put away his brief apprehension and did what he did so well—what made him vaunted, pursued, cherished by females far and wide. He made love to her as though she were the first in his heart—in the world—taking care to please her, knowing how to please her, going slowly when she wished it and not slow at all when she wanted more. And when she came that first time—quickly, as she had before—and melted around him, the sun on his back and the heat of ardor merged in an uncommon feeling even he was forced to recognize as rare.
“You don’t have to be so polite,” she breathed, knowing he’d withheld his orgasm.
“It’s not politeness.” His voice was low, hushed, the warmth of his breath caressing her cheek. “It’s a fucking game….”
She could feel him hard inside her, the smallest of tremors beginning again, rippling, shimmering up her stretched tissue. “I’m pleased you came back….”
“Not as pleased as I.” He kissed the tender flesh behind her ear.
“I haven’t had a playmate before.”
He smiled at his good fortune when it shouldn’t have mattered, when he’d had playmates galore. “I haven’t either,” he whispered, understanding he spoke more truth than lie. She fit perfectly, they fit perfectly, the notion of play had taken on a degree of pleasure hitherto unknown—the fluid rhythm of his lower body a gratifying case in point—and hedonist that he was, he wasn’t about to let her go. “I’ll be staying …” he said, sliding in deeper, holding himself hard against her womb.
“I’ll … let … you.” Breathy pauses punctuated her words, her fingers tightened on his back.
“Much obliged,” he drawled softly.
But she didn’t hear him, or if she did, the impudence in his tone didn’t matter with another orgasm beginning to overwhelm her. And her soft cry a moment later drifted up into the bank of yellow roses tumbling overhead.
After a time, the scent of crushed grass rose in the balmy air—and the aroma of sex, and were it possible, the fragrance of bliss would have mingled as well in the sweet-smelling air.
She was insatiable, he thought, indoors and out, and he wondered if she’d truly been without a man at all. From a personal point of view he wouldn’t have thought it possible, but after her fifth climax he was no longer so sure. Although, perhaps the lady was just hot-blooded.
No matter the reasons for her demanding sexuality, the mutual ravishment couldn’t be faulted, and much later, when he considered his gentlemanly duties sufficiently performed, he finally allowed himself release.
Gazing up at him, she smiled sweetly and said “Thank you. I’ve really enjoyed myself” as though it were over.
“No need to thank me yet, I’m not finished.” And grabbing a corner of the sheet, he wiped the come from her stomach, rolled away, and lay spread-eagle under the sun, content. “This is much better than being polite to the Prince of Wales all afternoon….”
“Your politeness to me can’t be faulted,” she replied, a small drollery in her tone.
Turning his head, he offered her a lazy smile. “But then, I’m having fun too.”
“Fun?”
“Isn’t it?”
Quicksilver, she rearranged a lifetime of perceptions. “Does anyone ever disagree?”
A transient pause brought the trill of birdsong suddenly to the fore.
“I’ve never actually—”
“Talked to a woman?”
He rolled upward into a seated position, the play of his abdominal muscles dramatic. “I’m not so sure I like your insinuation,” he said, frowning faintly.
“Answer my question.”
He exhaled softly. “If you must know, most women aren’t interested in talking.”
“Or you don’t give them time.”
“There’re better things to do.”
“What if I wanted to talk?”
A sportive grin lifted his mouth. “What do you mean ‘what if?’”
“I mean really talk.”
Leaning back on his hands, he tipped his head. “Talk away.”
“You’ll listen?”
“I’ve plenty of time.”
A small silence fell while Alex mentally scrambled to find a suitable topic.
“There. You see?”
“I dislike smug men.”
“Do you dislike men who can make you come another dozen times?” His gaze flicked downward to his erection and then back again to her.
“That’s exceedingly smug, Ranelagh.”
“Answer my question,” he said as she had only moments before.
“I suppose I don’t,” she noted grudgingly.
“You suppose?”
Her glance fluttered to his rampant erection and as quickly away.
“Why let this go to waste?” He looked up at the sun as though gauging the time.
“Is your schedule busy?” Taut, thin-skinned, not wishing to feel so needy and overwhelmed, she sat up quickly. “Don’t let me keep you.”
His laugh was beguiling. “I don’t have a schedule, and if I did, I’d change it to stay here with you.”
She found her temper subsiding under the charm of his reply.
“I’ll have to mind my manners,” he observed playfully. “Your temper is damnably quick.”
“I’m sorry.”
His eyes widened in feigned astonishment. “Have I finally done something right?”
“You’ve done any number of glorious things right, as if you didn’t know,” she said with a sudden grin. “And perhaps we really shouldn’t waste our time.”
“Are we done talking, then?” His voice was smooth as silk.
She nodded.
“Thank you, ma’am.” Leaning over, he lifted her onto his lap, minutely adjusted her as though it mattered where their bare flesh met.
His power was awesome—the startling width of his shoulders, the solid, honed muscles of his chest and arms, the iron-hard thighs beneath her. “You’re very strong,” she said on a caught breath, feeling exceedingly small against his body.
“The better to handle you, my sweet.”
“Even if I don’t wish to be handled?”
“Even then,” he replied quietly, swinging her around so she was straddling his thighs.
She touched the dark curve of one brow with her fingertip. “Should I take offense?” Their eyes were almost on a level, desire mirrored in their depths.
“You probably should,” he whispered, lifting her bottom with one hand, guiding his erection to her damp cleft with the other. “If you didn’t want this cock I’m putting—”
She sighed softly as he thrust upward.
“Here,” he breathed, pressing her hips firmly downward.
She purred, a low, pleasurable sound, and clung to his broad shoulders, giving herself up to the rush of pleasure, no longer questioning his power to incite, only reveling in the wondrous feeling. Every cell, every nerve, was alive with delirious sensation, the world distant and ordinary, delectable rapture coiling in the pit of her stomach and in her brain, in the heated silk of her skin, most exquisitely where he rested deep inside her.
As he gently raised her, she resisted.
“There … there,” he whispered, forcing her upward. “I’m coming back.” And he held her suspended on the very crest of his erection.
“Now,” she insis
ted, struggling against his strength.
“Soon …” His breath brushed the jewel-hard tip of one nipple. “If you behave,” he promised, drawing the taut bud into his mouth.
She should repudiate his authority; she shouldn’t be so in thrall, but at that instant his mouth closed on her nipple, a racing heat melted downward to the pulsing core of her body, and covetous lust inundated her brain. “Please … please—oh, God, please …”
“Are you begging me?” he asked against her skin, pausing in his sucking.
“Yes, yes, whatever you say … please….”
Such sexual largesse was too much for even the most practiced libertine, and the concept of casual play gave way to a more avaricious hunger. Precipitously, she was impaled on his engorged penis, his large hands spanning her hips, holding her motionless while she panted in ecstasy. Struck by his own irrepressible sense of engagement, he decided there must be a God after all—why else would he be here with this particular woman in this particular garden, feeling these staggering sensations or, more pertinently, why was he feeling as insatiable as she? The question was briefly disconcerting; he was never insatiable. But male impulse quickly took over, obliterating intellectual preoccupations. Leaning back on his elbows, he focused on her delectable offer to do anything. Which thought brought a new dimension to his erection.
She moaned, a full, lush sound.
He briefly shut his eyes against the need for restraint, and then he said, his voice husky with passion, “Ride me, Miss Ionides. Show me what you can do.”
It was the voice of authority however softly put, and were she less insensate with desire, she might have responded differently—slapped him for his effrontery perhaps, or lashed him with her tongue. As it was, she was too much in rut to experience anything but a stabbing rush of longing, and she complied, because she desperately needed what he could give her.
He watched her raise and lower herself, once, twice, three times, while an unnerving tumult coursed through his brain. Her large breasts quivered as she moved, he noted with a reckless lack of detachment. Her cheeks were flushed, her flamboyant eyes half-hidden behind her lowered lashes, and he wondered why he felt such a headlong need to master her.
Her fevered gaze met his as she slid downward again and traced her forefinger down his chest with just enough force to leave a mark on his bronzed skin. “Who’s winning?” she whispered as if she could read his mind.
He brushed her hand away, the stinging path left by her nail as provoking as her gaze. “It depends on who wants to come the most,” he muttered, not sure of the answer for the first time in his life.
She drew in a sharp breath. “Bastard.”
“Bitch.” But the word was dulcet and low, without rancor. “Sweet, fucking bitch …”
He abruptly took over then, because he suddenly couldn’t wait any more than he could pretend this game was like the others.
It wasn’t.
She wasn’t.
It wasn’t even a fucking game anymore.
He wanted her as much as she wanted him—maybe more—because he knew his eagerness and impatience had nothing to do with any possible celibacy. Quickly rolling her onto her back, he covered her, engulfed her, drove into her welcoming heat with an unnecessary ferocity, as though he could possess her and obliterate his own chaotic feelings by brute strength alone.
She was literally panting in his arms, his own breathing equally labored, when voices intruded from beyond the jasmine hedge and rose trellis and a conversation about watering hydrangeas brought her rigid in his arms. Not about to stop this side of death, he quickly covered her mouth with his, inhaled her soft cry of alarm, and tightening his grip on her hips continued his hard-driving rhythm until she no longer cared about the neighbors’ discussion or no longer heard it. She was clinging to him now as if he were her last hope or her best hope or her own personal savior, and when she came, she bit down hard on his lip, sank her nails into his back, and silently died away in his arms.
No more than a second after her climax ended, he followed her to his own blissful fulfillment and, braced above her, panting, he tried to catch his breath.
“I might have to move away after this,” she whispered, the neighbors’ voices having drifted away. “Oh, dear—you’re bleeding!”
“It’s nothing.” He licked away the blood on his lower lip. “And consider, I learned not to overwater hydrangeas.”
She laughed. “And I learned not to make love in my garden.”
“No one even knew we were here.”
“Nevertheless, you’re corrupting my sense of propriety.”
One dark brow rose. “It’s a bit late for complaints, isn’t it?”
She blushed a deeper shade of pink. “I don’t know what’s come over me. You’ve quite turned my head.”
A number of replies having to do with turning various parts of her body sprang to mind, but interested in continuing their pleasurable acquaintance, he only smiled. “Then I should beg your pardon and say please consider me your servant in all things, ma’am.”
Her purple eyes sparkled. “Do you mean it?”
“Have I been somehow obtuse in pleasing you?”
She had the grace to look embarrassed. “No, and never, and I apologize profusely.”
“No need to apologize. Just tell me what you want.”
She blushed again.
“Or I could tell you,” he said.
She took a small breath and said so low he could scarcely hear no matter they were only inches apart, “Or we could tell each other …”
His heart skipped a beat. “What a good idea,” he replied gently.
Much later, when the sun was almost set, when there was no longer any question of who wanted whom, or how much or how often, they lay side by side, both in full measure replete and content.
A rare feeling for a man of Ranelagh’s restless temperament.
As rare for Alex, who had filled her days of late with a multitude of well-ordered, useful efficiencies.
Lying on his back, his eyes were shut, his hand lightly touching hers. “Do you still want to go to the exhibition?”
Sprawled beside him, Alex turned her head. “Do you?”
His eyes opened and he glanced at her. “I asked first.” Inexplicably, he felt like an adolescent with his first lover. He wished to show her off, wanted everyone to know that she was his, that the flush on her cheeks was because of him. But when she didn’t immediately answer, he said, “If you’d rather not.”
“No, I’d like to.”
He rolled over and kissed her, and smiled from mere inches away. “Do you know when I last lay in the sun like this?”
She looked amused. “I’d rather you didn’t tell me.”
“I meant myself, alone”—he smiled—“content like this.”
She reached up and touched the dip of his brow. “In that case, tell me.”
“I was twelve and at the beach in Brighton, or near the beach, lying on the grass. I was completely alone—no servants, no family.” He grinned. “That’s probably why I was content.” He shrugged. “Anyway, it’s been a long time. So I thank you.”
“My list is long in terms of thanking you.” Her voice was very soft. “I won’t forget this….”
“Consider me available to refresh your memory anytime,” he drawled.
“How kind of you,” she teased.
“Kindness has nothing to do with it. Now, before I lose control again, which I never do, by the way—like lying in the sun—why don’t we dress and you can point out your paintings at the show.”
They dressed, but leisurely as it turned out, because Sam was particularly good at putting on her silk stockings, Alex discovered, and then inevitably, taking them off again. Until as twilight fell, they agreed that if they didn’t dress themselves, it would soon be too late to go to the gallery.
Chapter 10
They arrived at Grosvenor House just as the doors were closing, but Alex knew the attendant. “Yo
u just go along in, Miss Ionides,” he said. “I’ll wait to lock up when you leave.”
“Another admirer, I see,” Sam remarked with a smile.
“I’ve known Charlie since childhood. He was the first to congratulate me when I was accepted by the jury and my first painting was hung three years ago.”
“When did you start painting?”
“Seriously? About five years ago.”
“When you were still married. Did your husband mind?”
She shook her head. “John encouraged me. We went to Paris together and visited all the studios. He was a great collector.”
John Coutts had owned one of the prominent West End banks. Sam suspected he was capable of buying a painting or two, but he was struck instead with his benevolence toward his wife’s career. Most wealthy men preferred their beautiful young wives concentrate exclusively on them. “Did you see the first impressionist show in Paris in ’sixty-nine?”
She nodded. “And those in ’seventy-four and ’seventy-six and all the exhibitions at Durand-Ruel as well. I know most of the artists.”
“Do you have a favorite?”
“Manet, I think, for the intensity of his color and his interesting perspective. Although, perhaps, he’s more conservative than some.”
“Your work has a lighter palette than his.”
She smiled up at him. “It depends on my mood, darling.”
He pulled her to a stop in the middle of the broad bank of stairs and kissed her because he found not only her smile appealing, but the fact that she was smiling at him. And when he released her mouth after a lengthy interval, he said, “I find my mood much improved in your presence.”
“What a coincidence. I do as well. And if you’ll pose for me sometime, I’ll have the best of both worlds—good spirits and sex personified right before my eyes.”
“Or anywhere else you might like it.”
“We could discuss that later tonight—that anywhere.”
His expression went blank for a moment.
“Oh, dear,” she said, but without alarm, because she was feeling confident of her appeal.
“Sorry, force of habit.” He grinned. “I’m available tonight.”
“I rather thought you might be.”
Seduction in Mind Page 8
