Blast and damnation, she was tight. She’d feel like heaven when he thrust into her, but he dreaded hurting her. Her breath escaped in jagged rhythm to match his stroking. The broken exhalations were astonishingly arousing. Hell, right now, everything about her was arousing. She could recite irregular Latin verbs and it would make him crazy.
God help him, he knew he should wait, but he couldn’t. Drawing back, he met dark brown eyes. Fathomless. Rich as coffee. Sparking with uncertainty and desire.
His hand shook as he ripped at his breeches. “Sidonie, forgive me,” he said on the last gasp of a drowning man.
Chapter Fifteen
Sidonie’s mist of pleasure receded as she felt hard pressure between her legs. She whimpered at the discomfort and dug her fingernails into Jonas’s bare shoulders. Immediately he stopped. He bent his head into her neck, long shudders running through him. There was something poignant about this strong, experienced man shaking with need in her arms.
She shifted to ease the sensation between her legs. This far, the act was disagreeable but not painful. She wriggled again and felt as much as heard him groan into her skin, his breath warm and damp.
“Sidonie, if you do that, I won’t be able to stop.”
“Don’t stop.” She’d ventured so far. She couldn’t retreat now.
He rested his weight on his arms but even so, his body crushed her against the hard, narrow bed and restricted breathing. Or perhaps that was the rush of her heart. The intimacy of this connection went beyond anything she’d imagined. She hadn’t seen that part of him before he pressed it into her. It felt the size of a brick. And twice as hard.
When she’d decided to batter down his reluctance and make him take her, she hadn’t counted on how profound the experience might prove. It was terrifying how dominated she felt. If it had been any man other than Jonas, she’d struggle to break free. She lay quiescent, while her pulse galloped not just with fading arousal but also with long-held fear of masculine oppression.
This is Jonas. This is Jonas. He won’t hurt you.
She inhaled and her muscles loosened a fraction. He inched farther with a smoothness that surprised her. A whimper escaped her at the unaccustomed fullness and he stopped again. His heart thundered against her chest and under her hands; his back was slick with sweat. The pleasure she’d always found in his arms ebbed beyond reach. This was sticky, awkward, and starkly physical. It wasn’t at all how she’d felt when he kissed her. She loved his kisses. She didn’t love this.
Although for all the discomfort, the union held a grim fascination. She’d never felt so close to another human being. It was like she breathed for both of them.
“Don’t fight me, Sidonie.” Jonas sounded like he too teetered over a chasm. “You’ll shatter like glass if you do.”
She shut her eyes and grabbed another shallow breath. “I don’t know what to do,” she said helplessly, her fingers digging into his damp skin.
He released a harsh breath that could have held a laugh. She felt the muscles of his back flex and release. “It’s all right, tesoro. I’ll keep you safe. Trust me.”
Her embrace tightened even as the impulse to shove him away gathered like a scream. Right now he was everything she wanted and everything she didn’t want. His lips grazed her neck and found a place where she was all sensitivity. To her astonishment, fleeting excitement shimmered through her. When she’d thought any possibility of pleasure had fled.
His back tightened and he moved more purposefully. This time when he thrust, her world exploded into scarlet pain.
For what felt like forever, Sidonie’s cry resonated around the room. The pain was excruciating, as though Jonas tore her in half. He’d turned terrifyingly still, although his chest rose and fell roughly over hers. It was frightening to be so aware of his every breath, his slightest shift. Why on earth did women do this? She bit back a demand for him to get off her.
Jonas kissed her neck again, as if in apology, and through fading agony, she experienced a tiny frisson. The pleasure countered the pulsing incursion. She shivered, overwhelmed by conflicting sensations. His musky scent. The hard reality of his body. The stinging pressure between her legs where she was a maid no more.
He scraped his teeth across coiled nerves in the hollow between her neck and shoulder. This time she didn’t inhale through a red haze of pain. Infinitesimally he moved. She was so attuned to him that the tiny slide felt like an earthquake. He cupped her breast, tweaking the peak to an aching point. More pleasure to color discomfort.
He squeezed her nipple and it was as if a heated wire ran to where his body joined hers. She sighed and this time, the sound conveyed more than protest. With a soft groan, Jonas slid carefully from her body. She experienced a faint quiver at the friction, then nothing.
She opened dry eyes and stared at the beams on the ceiling. Merrick’s face was still buried in her shoulder. Now that he’d withdrawn, she should be relieved. Instead she was irritable and disappointed.
Was that it?
Before she voiced any reaction, he slowly thrust inside. This time, her body stretched to receive him. After brief resistance, he planted himself deep with a long, satiny glide.
Deeper than before. So deep he touched her heart.
She braced for pain. There was discomfort but nothing to compare to the thrills juddering through her. He claimed her in a way he hadn’t claimed her when he’d taken her virginity. Her muscles unfolded like a bird taking flight or a flower blooming. The effect was extraordinary. She hadn’t cried before, but this beautiful wholeness brought stinging tears to her eyes.
“Oh, Jonas,” she whispered. “I didn’t know.”
“There’s more.” He rose on his arms to stare into her face. What had been cruel invasion now felt hot, hard, and fulfilling.
He looked younger, kinder, a brighter image of the man she knew. A man life hadn’t mistreated or betrayed. Whatever the pain of this union, she loved that she gave him this momentary peace. This encounter lurched from the physical onto a different plane. A plane revealing a new emotional landscape. She felt lightheaded, lost.
She blinked back more foolish tears and brushed away a lock of hair that tumbled over his forehead. Tenderness lit her from within. As though this man were her other half. As though they were meant to be together forever.
Stupid.
“I hurt you.”
She found it in her to smile. “Not now.”
“I’m glad.” He tilted his head to move into her caress like a cat.
Carefully, so she relished each inch, he slid free of her body. She shut her eyes on the loss, although his retreat awakened a thousand new sensations.
“Prepare to be surprised, il mio cuore.” He dropped a fleeting kiss to her shoulder. The salute’s reverence moved her as deeply as anything else in this painful, astonishing encounter.
“Show me, Jonas,” she murmured, surprised at how readily she entrusted herself to wherever he wanted to take her. Right now if he asked her to fly to the moon, she’d grab his hand and ask which way to leap.
“With pleasure.”
He thrust again. Under them, the bed creaked loudly. Her hands curled into his shoulders and she tilted her hips. The change in angle launched a volley of pleasure. An incandescent web of delight tangled around her.
He groaned with audible approval and pressed a fevered kiss to her lips. All became biting, eager passion. He surged in and out of her as endlessly as the ocean surged against the cliffs. Tenderness dissolved into hunger, although its memory lingered like the echo of distant music and lent a glow to rising excitement.
Jonas drove her higher and higher. She stretched beneath him as he pounded into her. She opened dazed eyes. Tendons stood out in his neck and his mouth thinned over his teeth. He looked savage. He looked desperate. He looked like a man she trusted with her life.
For a blinding moment, she poised on the edge of something beyond comprehension. Something wild, free, and true. Then the tension spira
led and shattered, and she tumbled into a dazzling hail of fire. Flame assailed her from every direction. The astonishing pleasure took her where she’d never been before. Into the stormy ocean. Up with the whirlwind. One with the lightning.
From a distance, she heard a guttural groan, then Jonas tensed and liquid heat gushed inside her. He moved once, twice, three times, then collapsed upon her with another groan.
Sidonie lay on her back, gasping and staring upward. Jonas’s body pinned her to the mattress. Jonas’s arms held her against the night. Jonas’s seed pooled inside her. He’d taken her on an incendiary journey to ecstasy. Now she floated back to earth with every preconception in tatters.
As rapture slowly ebbed, she reluctantly returned to the real world, even if that world was forever changed. Beneath the lingering pleasure, disquiet stirred. She almost wished Jonas had left her in ignorance of this radiant joy.
Because having tasted such joy, how could she live without it?
Through the golden haze, Jonas recognized a growing imperative to move. He must be heavy as the devil, crushing Sidonie into this rock-hard mattress.
He wasn’t eager to shift. Superstitiously he feared if he broke the physical connection between them, some awful fate would befall. He didn’t trust happiness. He’d experienced so little since his father’s disgrace. Making love to Sidonie Forsythe—he wanted to call it fucking but to his dismay the crudity felt blasphemous—was as close to paradise as he’d ever get.
One minute more. Surely his allotment of bliss could encompass another minute. Was that too much to ask?
Now that he resumed something approximating thought, he was aware his knees ached from digging into the unforgiving cot. Otherwise he was in heaven. His nose was buried in Sidonie’s shoulder and her scent surrounded him. Lemon. Female. A trace of sweat after he’d used her well, for all that she’d been a virgin.
He should be ashamed. He’d hated himself when she’d screamed. Then she’d started to purr and the world turned to fire.
Her arms circled his back and her hair clung like silk to the side of his face. He loved her hair. Hell, right now, he couldn’t think of one damned thing about her he didn’t love. He tried to blame his well-being on the awe-inspiring sex. Good sex always left a man in a fine mood. This was the best sex he’d ever had, in spite of Sidonie’s inexperience. In spite of that gut-wrenching moment when she’d cried out because he hurt her.
He’d almost stopped then.
Thank holy heaven she’d got into the business quickly after that. His heart leaped in delight as he recalled her squeezing him at the height of pleasure. A memory to illuminate an entire life.
She made a soft sound, perhaps of discomfort. Perhaps of exhaustion. He really should move. He tightened his arms, daring fate to steal her away. He didn’t trust fate. Fate and he had long shared an uneasy relationship.
She shifted. The glide of her body teased his cock and he hardened. He wasn’t a savage. He couldn’t tumble her again straightaway. Nor could he spend the night pinioning her to this bed because he feared losing her. Still it was only with utmost reluctance that he separated his body from hers and rolled aside.
He’d forgotten how narrow the bed was. “Hell’s bells!”
He only just saved himself from a humiliating slide to the floor. As he gingerly found his balance on the mattress edge, the impossibility of his situation struck with the force of thunder. He’d ruined her and relished every moment. He could well have made her pregnant. She intended to leave him in four days.
Breaking through the fog of self-disgust, he heard a sweet sound that returned him to the sunlit world he’d briefly inhabited. He glanced at Sidonie and amazement almost made him tumble from the bed again.
The woman whose maidenhead he’d just stolen was smiling. No, she was giggling. He’d expected tears and recriminations.
The shirt drooped from her shoulders as she leaned against the pillows. She looked ravishing. And ravished. His beard had chafed the delicate skin of her face and neck. The primitive within rejoiced to see her wearing his mark. Her hair was a wild mane about her shoulders. Candlelight illuminated a hundred colors in its darkness.
She’d raised the sheet over her lush breasts. Her modesty reminded him she was new to this. Unwelcome tenderness flooded his heart.
“This cot isn’t big enough for two, is it?” Amusement laced her voice like brandy laced a mug of coffee on a cold night.
“Are you laughing at me, baggage?”
Hitching the sheet, she settled against the wall behind the cot. “Yes.”
“What possessed you to seduce me here when there’s a perfectly comfortable bed down the hall?”
Pink touched her cheeks. It charmed him that she could still blush. Her innocence reflected the purity of her soul. He didn’t believe in much, but he’d come to believe in Sidonie’s goodness. Her enchanting smile faded and she cast him an uncertain glance. “I don’t like the mirrors.”
She must believe him the vainest dog in Christendom. He supposed he should explain the décor, but why spoil these luminous hours? He propped himself on one elbow, keeping a careful eye on the edge of the bed, and took her hand. “Are you all right?”
After a hesitation, she nodded. “Yes.”
He waited for more but she remained silent. For a woman, she was deucedly closemouthed. How he wished she’d confide in him, trust him.
Why should she?
Except she’d trusted him with her body. He didn’t underestimate what that meant. He wanted to thank her. He wanted to beg her to stay. He wanted to tell her she was the most marvelous being in creation. Emotion silenced him, made it impossible to express what lay in his heart. He raised her hand to his lips and kissed her palm with a veneration that sprang from his soul.
He wasn’t good enough for her. But by God, he meant to make her happy while he had her.
Chapter Sixteen
As Jonas whirled her into the bedroom from the corridor, Sidonie hid her face against his shoulder. Her belly twitched with nerves. Last night she hadn’t had to endure the mirrors. “Can we sleep in the other room?” she muttered into his shirt.
His laugh was a soft rumble under her ear and his arms tightened around her. “Courage, bella.”
“I can’t watch myself doing… that.”
All day, he’d kissed her and touched her but had taken the caresses no further. She supposed he was being considerate, letting her recover from last night, but she was past appreciating his thoughtfulness. Frustration had come near to driving her mad.
“Trust me.” He swung her up with an ease that made her breath catch. Curse her longing heart, she swallowed her protest and curled her arms around his neck. She should insist on walking, if only to confirm that his merest glance didn’t turn her knees to water.
As he gently settled her on the bed, she met her gaze in the oval mirror above. She sprawled across the sheets in her ruby silk dress. Under the glass’s stare, the connection between the man and woman was palpable. Jonas leaned over her with unmistakable intent, but an air of protectiveness for all that. Sidonie’s eyes glowed with uncontrollable excitement.
“You turn me into a sybarite.”
“A man lives in hope,” he said softly, drawing a sparkling pin from her hair. He dropped it onto the nightstand and sat on the bed beside her, his hip nudging hers.
She slid up to lean against the headboard, watching Jonas with a hunger she didn’t try to hide. His angular features showed the strain of long hours of self-denial. She hadn’t mistaken the urgency with which he’d rushed her away from dinner. “I didn’t thank you for my present.”
This evening when Sidonie came upstairs to change, the jeweler’s box had been waiting on the bed. She’d cringed to think Jonas proclaimed his conquest with some garish bauble. But as always, he was a man of surpassing subtlety. Inside the box, a dozen sparkling hairpins lay on white silk. Exquisite sprays of ferns and flowers. She’d never owned anything so pretty.
“I look forward to your gratitude,” he said as more pins joined their fellows on the nightstand.
“I’m sure.” She supposed she should be ashamed of what she meant to do with this man in this bed tonight. In spite of a lifetime of unsullied virtue, she couldn’t conjure a shred of compunction. Instead she felt… free.
Jonas removed the last pin, brushed aside her loosened hair, and kissed her neck. That same sensitive spot he’d found last night when he’d been inside her. A thrill rippled through her, spiced with memory and anticipation.
She curled a hand around one powerful arm. “I thought… I thought you might humiliate me with diamonds,” she said unsteadily as he nipped his way to the curve of shoulder uncovered by the scandalously low-cut gown.
She felt him smile against her. “Diamonds a humiliation, amore mio? Clearly I know the wrong women.”
“Clearly,” she said sourly, not wanting to think about his other lovers. Before or after her. Other lovers would feel him shaking with desire in their arms. Other lovers would hear that deep growl when he found release. Other lovers would lie in blessed satisfaction after he’d shown them paradise.
He raised his head and stared at her with a warmth that radiated to her toes. His arms loosely circled her waist. “Jealous, tesoro?”
“Madly,” she said sarcastically, hating those faceless women. She wanted to scratch out their eyes and pull their hair and warn them to stay away from what was hers. It would be amusing if it wasn’t tragic. Beyond the next few days Jonas wasn’t hers, no matter what fancies addled her mind.
His expression alerted her to a private joke. “What is it?” She paused and her grip on his sleeve tightened. “Oh, no. You didn’t. They are diamonds, aren’t they?”
“Only small ones, tesoro,” he said apologetically. His eyes glittered with what she tried not to interpret as delight.
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