Pressing his hands in, he compressed her waist even tighter. Grace drew in a ragged breath, and then let it go in a gusty exhale when the busk closure up the front of her corset popped open and the corset fell away. Another insubstantial garment remained underneath, a diaphanous layer of white chemise doing nothing to hide the pink peaks of her breasts and the shadowy shapes of them. Unable to resist, he brought his hands up to cup her. Eyes dropping closed, her head fell back. Gently, he massaged them, soft and supple after their daylong confinement in her steel-boned undergarments. When his thumbs scraped across her hardened nipples, she gasped.
“Have they been hard all this time, under your corset?” he asked near her ear.
“Yes,” she all but whimpered.
Bending his head to her again, he drew one hard peak into his mouth, through the fabric. Grace moaned raggedly, and might have collapsed had his arm not banded around her waist to hold her up.
“Julian,” she sighed. “Oh, that’s...”
“Yes, Grace,” he murmured against the damp fabric and warm flesh. “Tell me how it feels.”
“Good. So good it hurts. That doesn’t make sense.”
He chuckled and reached for her hand, bringing it to the front of his trousers where his cock ached, hard and so ready for her. “It makes perfect sense, love.”
Pressing her palm against him, he groaned and sucked her other nipple. Grace’s fingers slid over him, gripping him inexpertly though his trousers. He had to drag her hand away or else he’d explode like some green youth, and that was not how this encounter would end.
“Time for that later. You’re still wearing some clothes.”
“Barely.”
“Too many. Your boots,” he said.
Without a word, she bent and unbuttoned them, stepping out of them and sliding them out of the way.
When she stood, he untied the ribbons on her chemise and let it slip down her arms. He tugged at the ties of her bloomers. They were loose, and needed no urging to slither down her body. Holding his breath, he stopped, and just looked at her. Grace...standing naked before him but for her stockings, stopping half way up her thighs, the afternoon sun on her pale skin and her dark hair unbound.
“I’ve never seen a more beautiful sight than you,” he whispered raggedly, reaching for her. She was bare before him, and he could have touched her anywhere, her breasts, those tight, hard nipples, the dark triangle between her thighs and all the slick, soft parts it concealed. Instead, he laid his hand on her shoulder, so thin, the fragile bones belying the strength of the woman inside. Drawing his hand down over her collarbone, around the outside of her breast, down her torso, in to her waist and out to her hip. There, he gripped her, bringing her in close.
“So beautiful,” he said again, his other hand coming up to wrap around her ribcage.
“You’re still dressed,” she murmured, her fingers toying with the lapel of his coat.
With a smirk, he released her and took a step back, spreading his arms wide. “Then take it all off me. I’m yours to command.”
Grace bit her lip as she took in Julian’s elegant, perfectly groomed form with ravenous eyes. Standing utterly naked before a man was something she thought would have made her embarrassed or shy, but none of those emotions intruded in this moment. Because it wasn’t just any man, it was Julian, who had taken such time and exquisite care undressing her, as if she was something precious being unveiled just for him. And now he was inviting her to do the same to him.
Curiosity rampaged through her. In spite of their one, extremely intimate encounter, she’d seen very little of Julian, and nothing at all of other men. There wasn’t so much as a hint of hesitation as she reached for him.
His clothes were easier than hers. His finely tailored cutaway coat slid easily back off his shoulders and down his arms. The smile he gave her as he tossed it to the floor sparked a low, burning fire in her stomach. Lower. The heat was lower, making her press her thighs together in a futile attempt to alleviate it.
With shaky fingers, she went to work on the buttons of his waistcoat. Her trembling wasn’t from fear. Despite her lack of experience, she felt no fear and no shame. Just a quaking need only Julian could soothe.
His waistcoat hung open, and with a shrug, he sent it to the floor to join his coat. There was something mouth-wateringly appealing about Julian in his crisp white shirt, dark trousers, and nothing else, something stark and powerful. Something that, for now, belonged only to her.
With a smile, she reached for his tie, slowly working the silk foulard free of the neat, tight knot. He smiled at her, his hands coming to rest on her hips as she worked. The heat of them, the feel of his fingertips curling into the fullness of her flesh, made her breathing grow tight, each breath more of a needy little pant. Finally, the knot came free and she dragged the tie from around his neck. A small silver collar stud held his stiff collar in place. Dragging a finger along the top edge where it contrasted so starkly with his golden skin, she reveled in the darkening of his eyes, the way his brows drew in and his breathing grew labored.
“Always so starched and perfect,” she murmured, popping the collar stud free and tossing the hard collar away. “Let’s undo all of this.”
Next, she loosened the buttons down the front of his shirt, baring his chest a few inches at a time. It was hard, an expanse of smooth, gold skin over planes of tight muscles and sprinkled with a dusting of dark hair. She’d so rarely seen Julian less than flawlessly pressed. This... Julian in shirt-sleeves, his chest bared to her, changed everything about him. The fierce light in his eyes was less imperious, more hungry. The hard lines of his face less elegant, more savage. Everything about him transformed as she slowly stripped away his layers. The perfect earl disappeared and the real man asserted himself.
She raised his wrist to undo his cuffs. “Lovely cuff links.”
“A gift,” he said absently, his eyes not on her face, but on her breasts, just inches away. Who’d given him these, she wondered? She knew so much about his spirit and soul and so little about the details of his daily life. When the expensive silver and onyx cuff links were free of his shirt cuffs, she dropped them on the table by her bed. Maybe she’d ask him about them later. She wanted to know every small, insignificant detail about his life, while he was still here to tell her.
“Can I take this off you?” she asked, tugging on the open front of his shirt.
“I’m yours, Grace. Do what you will.”
Smirking, she stripped it off him and tossed it away, into some forgotten corner of the room, to find later. When she brought her eyes back to him, they snagged...and stayed. His torso was a marvel. So much smooth skin over such an elegant sweep of muscles, like a painting by an old master, one of Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel titans. No, not one of those hulking, Old Testament elders. He was David, long, lean, and so beautiful. Unable to resist, she reached for his wrists, and slowly, she drew her palms up, over his forearms, his biceps, his hard shoulders, and then down, over the taut planes of his chest. When her fingertips skated across his ribs, he shuddered and his body contracted.
“Grace,” he groaned, reaching for her wrist.
“Not yet,” she said, swatting him away. “I’m not done.”
Every breath he drew came in a labored inhale as her fingers went to work on the buttons of his trousers. The wool parted, revealing more smooth skin, and then, surprisingly, a trail of wiry hair, leading down, down...
Her fingers followed it, until she met with resistance, smooth, warm, and hard. So hard.
“Oh.”
Julian huffed out a strangled little laugh. “Yes. You see what you do to me.”
“It’s so...” And then her fingers found their way around it.
“My God, Grace,” he groaned again. When her eyes returned to his face, his eyes were closed and his face twisted
in some expression between pleasure and pain. Marveling in the power of it, seeing him so enthralled by her simple touch, the curl of her fingers around him, she squeezed just once. An animal groan ripped from his throat, threatening to drop her where she stood. Her whole body responded to the sound, her thighs clenching and her nipples tightening.
“Julian,” she whispered, releasing him and shoving his trousers down over his hips. His eyes snapped open. Then in a small flurry of movement, he’d stepped free of them, kicking them out of the way, along with his shoes and socks. Naked. Not a thing covered him, from the top of his ruffled dark hair to the tips of his bare feet.
Then his hands were on her hips and his mouth was coming down on hers.
“Grace, Grace,” he murmured between kisses. “You’re...I didn’t know I could need anyone this way.”
“Neither did I.”
His hand came around her bottom, pulling her in against him, until she could feel his hardness between them, against her belly. The need threatened to drown her.
“Please...” she whispered.
“My God, Grace,” he said, and then finally, he lowered her to the bed.
Even now, when they were both naked and he was lying atop her, he didn’t rush to complete the act. Instead, he slowed down, kissing her with an agonizing, sensual thoroughness, as his hand toyed with the lacy edge of her stockings, the only garments she still wore.
“I seemed to have missed these,” he said, rearing back onto his heels between her raised knees. Again, some part of her thought she should be embarrassed, a naked man crouched between her naked thighs, grinning down at her in anticipation of all the ways he intended to defile her. But no embarrassment was there to be found.
He rolled her stocking down her left leg, kissing her knee and teasing the sensitive skin in the hollow behind as he did. Unconsciously, she arched up on the bed. Julian chuckled and moved to the other leg, rolling down her stocking with the same slow precision, his fingertips touching every inch of her leg along the way.
When the stockings were gone, he ran his palm back up the length of her, from her toes, up her shin, over her thigh, to her hip.
“Oh, Grace,” he murmured, bending to kiss the inside of her knee, and then her thigh, and then...
She sucked in a sharp breath.
“Julian!”
“Relax,” he commanded against her most private, most sensitive flesh. There was no relaxing. Her body arched up of its own accord, her hands fisted in the quilt. She panted and moaned. It was... It was the most invasive, intimate, exquisite sensation she could possibly imagine. And that was before he began to use his fingers on her.
She cried out again, everything in her drawing up impossibly tight, ready for...something...a culmination which hovered just out of sight around the corner. Then he entered her, two fingers sliding in, possessing her. A low moan ripped from her throat.
Her body raged on, no longer listening to anything her mind had to say. Grace whimpered and arched, poised on the pinnacle between agony and bliss. And then she tipped over, sliding down into the abyss of pleasure, the hot, wicked wave of it washing up and over her, leaving her shaking and weak, gasping for breath.
While she still lay there, her body trembling with aftershocks of bliss, Julian moved up over her, pulling her thighs apart, making room for himself. Then, with one powerful thrust, he took her, deeply, buried to the hilt. The bliss, which had nearly abated, flared anew, and she groaned.
“Yes,” Julian hissed, an echo of her own thought, the only one she was capable of as he possessed her. Yes, yes. Please, more, yes. “Hang onto me, darling,” he whispered, kissing her temple and then her cheek, just in front of her ear. Grace wrapped her arms around his shoulders and her thighs around his hips. And then he took her. It was hard, fast, and relentless, one deep, powerful thrust after another. Her sensitive body couldn’t recover in between, every thrust driving her to some new peak she hadn’t known could exist.
“Ah, God, Grace,” he groaned. “Yes...”
The relentless pace forced her forward, her pliant body tensing to explode again. He stared down into her face with wild eyes, and she held his gaze until the last moment, until the sensations grew so acute, she had to shut her eyes to hold herself together. She whimpered as it happened, as the coil of need unwound, as pleasure once again flooded her limbs. Julian groaned, a deep, animal sound dredged from the depths of his soul, and he collapsed down onto her.
For many minutes, they lay just like that, too sated and weak to move. Grace stroked a hand across his shoulder as Julian breathed into her hair.
Over her, Julian moaned. “My God. We should have become lovers ages ago. Look what we’ve been missing.”
It was meant as a joke, and she received it as one, chuckling softly. But deep inside, his words were accompanied by a twinge—of regret? Sorrow? Indeed, they should have just become lovers from the start, perhaps the first night in Menton, when he’d kissed her in that alley. She’d run away from him to return to her respectable life, fool that she was, not realizing that such a life was out of her reach and always had been.
Banishing maudlin ruminations, she resolved to enjoy what she had and quit mourning what had been lost—or had never been hers in the first place. And right now, she had Julian, pressing her into the bed with his delicious weight, his beautiful body still encompassing hers. He was still inside her, and every twitch sent an aftermath of pleasurable shocks through her limbs.
This was bliss—the warm summer breeze, the afternoon sun, the scent of lavender and the man she loved—and she meant to enjoy her bliss for as long as it lasted.
“I’m crushing you,” he said, making to leave her.
“No, not yet. I like being crushed.”
Shifting his weight to his elbows, he withdrew from her body but retreated no further. Smoothing her tangled hair off her face, he smiled down at her.
“You’re lovely, Grace. So beautiful I can scarcely bear to look at you.”
“I was thinking precisely the same thing,” she said, raising a hand to touch his cheek. How wonderful, to be able to touch him this way at last. It was worth it, this freedom, no matter how or when it ended. She took his hand, still pressed to her face, and turned her head to kiss his palm. The softness, the emotion, in Julian’s eyes warmed her from her heart out through the rest of her body.
His knuckles were still red and slightly swollen from his encounter with Frederick. Gently, she kissed each one.
“What did he say to make you do this to him?”
“He insulted you. He needed to shut up, and when he wouldn’t, I did it for him.”
She laughed softly, caressing his fingers. “While that’s kind of you, it was unnecessary. People are going to say all sorts of things about me.”
“No, they won’t. Not if I’m there to stop them.”
“Julian, you can’t go around punching everyone.”
“Just the ones who disparage your reputation.”
“I haven’t got one left. It was shaky when I left London, and now it’s completely nonexistent.”
With a sigh, Julian shifted his weight to his side, propping himself on one elbow. He slipped his hand free of hers and rested it casually on her belly.
“Grace, it doesn’t have to—”
Pressing a finger to his lips, she silenced him. “I don’t want to talk about Frederick Musgrave right now, or anyone else in London. You might find this hard to believe, but I’m quite content right now.”
Julian grinned against her fingertip, a gleeful smile she hadn’t known him capable of. “I certainly hope so.”
“Smug man.” She gave his shoulder a shove and he laughed, rolling onto his back and bringing her up over him. “I didn’t mean it like that,” she said, her hair falling across his chest. “But yes, now you mention it, that�
�s made me quite content as well.”
With a frown, he traced a line up her arm and over her shoulder. “Content? What a dry, dispassionate word. I shall have to do better if all I’ve made you is content.”
“I can’t imagine it being better than what we’ve just done.”
Julian’s grin was positively lascivious. “Oh, Grace. For such an intelligent, passionate woman, your imagination is woefully limited.”
“Oh you think so, do you?”
His hand slipped around the back of her upper thigh, fingertips just brushing the most sensitive part of her. “I know so.”
Her words were nearly lost in her soft, breathless gasp. “Again?”
With a tug, he pulled her leg across him, until she straddled his thighs. “I tell you, Grace, your imagination requires expanding.”
He was already hard, pressed at the center of her. How could it be possible, to have been so sated only minutes ago, and already sparking back to life under his touch?
“Come, darling,” he murmured, nudging her into position over him. “We’re just getting started.”
“I don’t know how...”
“I’ll show you what to do. And soon, I won’t need to, because you’ll know exactly what you want.”
He was right about that.
* * *
It was late, Grace had no idea the hour. Outside her windows, Menton was dark, the streets silent. The moonlight filtering in from high overhead was the only light in the room.
They still hadn’t slept, too busy talking and touching and then joining yet again. A different kind of hunger had finally forced a pause. Grace had only meager provisions in her small kitchen. Most of a baguette left from the morning, a piece of cheese, some hard summer sausage, a few plums and some grapes. Julian ate without complaint, still naked, the sheet wrapped around his hips, his chest bare. She sat facing him, sheet covering her to the waist and her hair falling over her breasts, but the rest of her was naked, to Julian’s obvious delight. His eyes would roam down her body and then come back to her face, and he would smile, a new sort of smile. The sort of knowing smile shared by lovers, she supposed. The kind two people exchanged when they knew every intimate inch of each other. That was certainly true. No part of her remained unexplored by Julian’s hands and lips. Just thinking about some of the things they’d done brought a flush of color to her cheeks.
A Reluctant Betrothal (The Grantham Girls) Page 25
