“Well, that’s romantic. The chambermaids must swoon at your slightest word.”
“They collapse at the mere mention of my name. I’m always tripping over insensible domestics. It’s devilish tiresome.”
“I’m sure.” She hardly knew what she said. God help her when he finally laid those clever hands on her. “Shall we go upstairs?”
“Yes.”
She began to slide off the desk but he caught her waist, keeping her in place. Even through her dress, the shock of contact made her stomach lurch. Startled, she looked up. “Jonas?”
“Later.” From the adamant line of his jaw, she guessed he intended to use her here in the library.
“We can’t.” Her insouciance dissolved into fluster. “What if Mrs. Bevan comes in?”
He shot her a mocking look. “You don’t sound nearly as bold as you did a few minutes ago.”
She blushed. And cursed that she did. “Well, what if she does?”
“Believe me, Mrs. Bevan knows to wait for a summons.” To her surprise, he kissed her, a desperate ravishment that left her breathless. His voice lowered to a seductive murmur. “I love that I can still make you blush.”
“I still have a few morals left.”
“We’ll have those out of you in no time. Prepare yourself, bella. Your education continues.”
Ruthlessly he turned her so she bent across the desk with her feet resting on the floor between his. She placed her hands flat on the blotter to save herself from falling. He brushed aside the soft weight of her hair and pressed a sucking kiss into her nape. She trembled and her knees turned to water.
When he lifted her skirts above her waist, exposing her, she couldn’t restrain a nervous whimper. “What are you doing?”
“You’ll see.”
Actually she probably wouldn’t. She wasn’t blindfolded as she’d been every time he’d tumbled her in the bed upstairs, but he still turned her away from his face. How she longed to look into his eyes when they made love. Every time he denied her that privilege, her yearning became stronger.
“Let’s go upstairs.” She edged away. She guessed he meant to mount her like an animal. His earthy crudeness should disgust her. Instead her heart slammed against her ribs with flaring excitement.
“Not yet,” he said mildly, placing a commanding hand on her back as he gently but inexorably pushed her down. She trembled as air brushed her private places. She knew Jonas watched her… there. She was caught between piercing curiosity and the modesty she thought she’d abandoned with her virginity.
“How convenient that you’re not wearing drawers, la mia vita.” His voice vibrated with approval. And need.
“If you tell me to trust you, I’ll clout you with the inkwell,” she muttered, her hands fisting against the desk.
He laughed softly. “Have I led you astray yet?”
“You’ve done nothing but lead me astray,” she said drily, wondering how he expected her to string more than two words together.
“You’ll need something to hold onto.” His voice deepened to a growl.
“You?”
Another laugh. His hands shaped her hips and stroked her bottom. Under his caresses, she shifted restlessly. “Later.”
She stretched to curl her hands over the desk’s edge. As she rested her forehead on the blotter, her bottom tilted higher. “I feel ridiculous.”
“You have a beautiful arse, tesoro.” He bit one buttock and she started, even as heat pooled in her sex. She made an inarticulate protest and tried to sidle out of reach, but he slid one leg between hers, trapping her.
“Ah, Sidonie, Sidonie, Sidonie,” he sighed, the repetition of her name a paean of praise.
The slow glide of silk skirts higher up her back heightened response. This position was frightening and bordered on uncomfortable, but it was wildly stimulating to wait for Jonas to use her like a stallion used a mare. She pressed her face against her extended forearm, muffling a whimper.
When she felt his mouth against her leg, she jerked. Before he reached the top of her thigh, she was shaking as if she had a fever. He couldn’t kiss her there, not when she’d forbidden him, her horrified mind insisted.
He released her. The abrupt cessation of sensation left her wallowing. And feeling more than a little silly with her bare rump hitched under his nose.
“Do it,” she demanded, past pride.
“You’ll give me my way?” His voice was raw.
“As if you ever take anything else.” Her blood roiled with need, her pulse pounded like a thousand drums. If he didn’t touch her soon, she’d shatter into red-hot shards like overheated glass.
Those hard, ruthless hands ran up her legs with a sureness that made her burn. She heard him fall to his knees behind her. When he parted her, her belly knotted with agonizing anticipation. This was sinful, so sinful.
When he put his mouth between her legs, pleasure crashed through her. Before she came to terms with what happened, his tongue moved along her cleft.
“Jonas, that’s so wicked.” She slumped against the desk as her knees finally gave way.
His teeth grazed her and the pleasure focused. He explored her with his mouth, sucking, nipping, licking until she was dizzy. His tongue penetrated her in a slide of thick, wet heat. Through the storm, she heard a woman’s broken cry. Everything became blazing sensation. Her bones melted to hot honey.
It could have been terrifying careering along the edges of the sky. Except firm hands kept her anchored and a man’s whispered praise played bass counterpoint to the brazen tattoo of her heartbeat.
Chapter Nineteen
Jonas held Sidonie’s hips as she shuddered with pleasure.
Damn it, he should feel triumphant. She’d shattered as delightfully as he’d imagined she would. Instead he felt he should stay on his knees and say a prayer of thanks to a God he wasn’t sure he believed in. He placed a reverent kiss on each lush buttock.
He was damned glad she couldn’t see him. If she caught his expression, she might guess the unwelcome profundity of his reaction. Even as his mouth possessed her, she’d possessed him. He had a powerful premonition she’d possessed him for all time.
Sidonie started to straighten. She must think they’d finished here.
Not nearly.
“Don’t move.” Surprising how difficult it was to speak.
“I won’t.” The swift obedience was another sign of how high he’d taken her.
He drew a choked breath and rose on humiliatingly wobbly legs. He was hard as granite. Fumbling, he released himself from his breeches.
“Spread your legs,” he said brusquely. Gentleness was beyond him. Hunger pummeled him like one of the wild coastal squalls.
She didn’t seem to mind his gruffness. As she opened, her musky fragrance flooded his senses. He gripped his cock and tilted his hips until the thick head teased her glistening sex. She gave another of those luscious whimpers that always made him crazy to be inside her. She nudged back in encouragement. The slide of her cleft threatened to unman him. He bit back a curse.
Listening to her unsteady panting, he pressed forward. She was tight, wonderfully tight, swollen after her climax. Her whimper this time conveyed a trace of protest. He stopped, dragging in breath after breath as he strove for control. The urge to claim her tightened his balls and hollowed his gut.
She inched back and took him farther inside. The clench of her passage blasted him with heat. He was a barbarian to enjoy this so much when she wasn’t ready. Except the hot moisture bathing him told him she wanted him. When she bumped against him in unmistakable demand, he couldn’t resist. On a long groan, he buried himself deep. He resisted the impulse to move. He wanted to savor this perfection. The world that always seemed so discordant, so unwelcoming, turned right when he was inside Sidonie. He bent over her, his belly crushing her arse. She stretched under him with a soft moan and the change of position spurred him on.
He started slowly, withdrawing luxuriantly. But soon madness
set upon him. His balls had ached like the devil since he’d angled her over the desk an excruciating eon ago. He dipped one hand beneath her bodice and found one beaded nipple. He heard her breath change. He released her breast and grabbed her hips, slamming deeper and higher. Through the whirlpool in his blood, he felt her brace against the desk and push back.
His shaking hand found her beneath the froth of skirts. She jerked and released a hoarse exclamation. His world dissolved into delight.
After what felt like years wandering among the stars, Sidonie returned to find her cheek pressed against the blotter, the rim of the desk jabbing her belly, and Jonas’s body pinning her down. His face was buried in her hair. He sprawled across her, cutting circulation to one arm. She flexed her fingers to relieve pins and needles and bit back a grunt of discomfort. With a reluctance she could feel, he tensed before moving away.
“Not yet,” she protested sleepily, even though he was heavy and the blotter provided an unforgiving pillow.
“I must be squashing you.” His hoarse voice hinted the encounter had been earth-shattering for him, too.
“You are, but I like it.”
“You’re insane.”
She loved it when he lit her world with ecstasy. Perhaps more, she loved these quiet moments when she rejoiced in a closeness she’d never felt with anyone else. At such times, even the slight distance he maintained became almost transparent, so she could imagine more existed between them than just physical passion.
Jonas Merrick was unique. As a man. In her life.
There would be no other.
Her heart faltered. Her happiness rested on the frailest of foundations. Reality’s slightest breath would scatter it to the four winds.
The memory of that incendiary moment when he took Sidonie from behind clouded Jonas’s mind as he followed her upstairs after dinner. So clouded that he only caught her calculating expression after he’d removed his shirt.
His attention sharpened on the way she leaned with apparent artlessness against a gilt bedpost. Accidental or not, the effect was spectacular. Sidonie with tumbling dusky hair and wearing, or half-wearing, red silk.
Now that he thought about it, she’d been unusually quiet all evening. As if hatching some plot. Sexual satisfaction made him dozy. Not that right now he felt particularly satisfied. Hunger for her gnawed at him, hunger fueled by the grim knowledge that this was their last night.
Their last night…
Around him, the mirrors reflected a hundred Sidonies. One caused enough trouble. Which didn’t mean he was in a rush to say good-bye. He already knew her departure, damn it to hell and back, would feel like someone removed his liver slowly with a blunt spoon.
“What are you conniving?” he asked warily, standing in the middle of the room with his shirt bundled in one hand.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” She tried to look innocent. A few days ago, she wouldn’t have had to try. He’d loved her innocence, but even more he loved the richness of this woman she’d become. God help him, he’d never believed such a woman existed in this tired, bad old world.
At last at a visceral level, he understood his father’s outrage when he heard his beloved wife derided as a whore. Jonas had always believed himself incapable of experiencing the enduring love his father had felt for his mother. Because his life was bereft of close friends or lovers, he’d assumed he was a shallower, less steadfast man than the late viscount.
This past week made him wonder if perhaps he could want one woman alone. If she was the right woman.
Jonas struggled to banish the disturbing reflections. “Doing it too brown, amore mio. You’re scheming something.”
“Not I, sir,” she said without great force. A half-smile hovered around her lush red lips. Damn it, he didn’t trust that smile. Her gaze flickered to where his interest was visible and the smile intensified.
“I hope your evil plan involves two of us in that bed before much longer,” he grated out.
Her smile faded and she shot him a surprisingly searching look under long lashes. He was astonished to realize that beneath her teasing, she was nervous. Why the hell should she be nervous?
Before he could ask, she burst into speech. “Please take off your clothes and lie on the bed.”
Alertness tightened every muscle. Why should a request likely to elicit immediate cooperation make her skittish? He kept his voice neutral. Whatever this was about, he realized it was important. He needed to keep his wits about him. Difficult at the best of times with Sidonie.
“Let me blindfold you first.”
Her jaw firmed. “No.”
Ah. It seemed she finally rebelled. He should have expected this earlier. He wondered why he didn’t insist on his way as he had every other time she’d objected to the blindfold. Perhaps because his skin tightened with excitement at the prospect of temporarily surrendering control on this, their last night together. Perhaps because she’d demonstrated that she trusted him so many times, he owed her a return of the favor. His stomach curdled at the idea of making love to her face to face with no hindrances, but he stifled his qualms.
With any woman but Sidonie, he’d insist on his will prevailing. With Sidonie, he was willing to allow her some leeway. He wouldn’t let her go too far.
“As you wish.” Without shifting his attention from her, he dropped the shirt to the floor.
She sucked in a jagged breath and watched with blatant fascination as he shucked off his breeches. “Goodness me, you’re so big.”
Her unabashed admiration made him laugh. “You know just the right thing to say, tesoro.”
She blushed but didn’t look away. Her boldness sent heat spooling through him. “You haven’t let me see you before.”
“Eyes are overrated,” he said, lying through his teeth. Reflections of Sidonie proved sight a priceless gift. Fate could mete out no worse punishment than denying him sight of Sidonie after tomorrow.
Her mouth adopted a wry line at his asinine remark. When she folded her arms, her extravagant bosom plumped above her bodice. He muffled a groan of frustration. “You’re wearing too many clothes.”
“Later. Now I want you to lie down.”
Heaven help him, he was already hot as the sun and he hadn’t even touched her. Who knew a bossy woman would put him in such a lather? “Are you going to kiss me all over?”
“Possibly.” The spark in her eyes contradicted her primness.
His nerves jumping, Jonas padded toward the bed and stretched out upon the crisp white sheets. Sidonie hesitated before following. Sensual curiosity thundered in his head. What was her game?
“Thank you.” She leaned down, offering him a breathtaking view of her breasts under that deucedly loose bodice, and slanted her lips over his. The kiss ended swiftly, but even that fleeting contact made him swell hard and thick. Glancing at his cock with another of those secretive smiles, she lifted his arm and reached toward the headboard.
He tilted his head to watch her. Suspicion tempered his pounding need. “What are you doing, bella?”
She bit her lip. The way her small white teeth dug into that full pink flesh was always damnably arousing. “Don’t fight me.”
“Why would I fight?”
Quickly she slipped a cord from under the pillow and lashed his wrist to the bedpost. Damn his complacency. At this rate, he mightn’t have the chance to pull her back into line. Shocked, he jerked against the tie and started to sit up. “What the hell?”
“Don’t.” She placed one hand flat on his bare chest.
She didn’t exert much pressure. Even if she did, he was strong enough to throw her off. But the warmth of her palm on his skin made him stop as though turned to stone. He poised, balancing on the arm she hadn’t tied—the kingdom’s biggest blockhead could guess her intentions now—and regarded her with baffled anger.
“This is risky play, amore mio,” he said soberly.
He tugged on the cord, expecting it to loosen, but Sidonie tied an
efficient knot. He shouldn’t be surprised. She was efficient with most things. He admired that—except when she turned that damned efficiency against him.
The color deepened in her cheeks. “Humor me.”
Glancing past her, he saw them reflected over and over. Tethered naked like a beast, he looked confoundedly defenseless. Standing over him, Sidonie appeared distant, queenly, omnipotent. He loathed what he saw.
She shifted to the other side of the bed. “Give me your hand.”
“No.” He reached to undo the cord.
She caught his hand. “Please.”
Her request didn’t mollify him. Anger rose, a potent brew with ever-present desire. “We haven’t been at this long enough for you to tire of the usual variations,” he said snidely and suffered a stab of remorse when her eyes darkened with hurt.
“I’m too inexperienced to know the usual variations.” She lent the last two words scathing emphasis.
With her watching him with that plea in her gaze, he couldn’t quite bring himself to untie the cord. “Believe me, tesoro, what you’re doing now exceeds boundaries most wives permit.”
“I’m not a wife.” Her spirit revived. “I’m your mistress.”
His heart kicked in protest. A mistress implied a woman of impermanent status passed from keeper to keeper. He didn’t feel that way about Sidonie. “You hate the mirrors,” he said flatly, hoping to coax her back into cooperating with him.
“I hate the blindfold more.”
The telltale flicker in Jonas’s cheek told Sidonie that she pushed him to the edge. Her belly knotted with trepidation, but she couldn’t give up now. She hovered so close to shattering the final barriers between them. Their first night together had left her with a confusion of vivid impressions. Since then, Jonas had blindfolded her. This was her last chance to watch his expression as his body united with hers. She wanted to cherish that memory against the future. She meant Jonas to look into her eyes as he took her, so she didn’t remain some faceless, blindfolded woman he pleasured, but Sidonie, Sidonie, Sidonie. And that recognition would blast to ashes the tiny but distinct separation he maintained between them, even now.
Seven Nights in a Rogue's Bed Page 19
