Right on time, she thought when the knock sounded on the door.
“Come in,” she called and the door swung wide. Charlie stalked toward her, thrilling her a little.
Indecent to have this man in her bedchamber? Absolutely.
Welcome? Oh, yes.
“Charlie, I—”
“Wait. You must listen to me.”
The look of determination in his dark eyes made Frances doubt her course for a moment, but she quickly rallied her confidence. “No. You must listen to me first,” she said with as much conviction as she could muster.
Charlie snapped his mouth shut. He was obviously impatient to speak, but she’d insisted, and he was a gentleman.
“First, be a dear and help me with this.” She turned her back to him and presented the buttons of her gown.
“Wait. What?” His voice shook a bit.
“Unbutton me, please?” She was thankful she was turned away from him so he couldn’t see the look of pure glee that was surely pinned to her face, although she was also a bit disappointed that she couldn’t see the shocked expression on his.
“I can’t—”
Frances gave a showy sigh and tapped her foot impatiently. “I won’t argue that it’s not exactly proper for you to be in my bedchamber, Charlie, but you’ve come here, and I can’t very well call Mary to help me while you’re here, and my stays are pinching me something awful tonight.”
Charlie’s voice faltered. “But I—”
She still didn’t turn to face him but secretly smiled to herself. “Besides,” she added for good measure, “let’s not pretend. We both know this is hardly tempting to you, is it, Charlie?”
She could nearly hear his brain working. He was thinking, all right. Thinking about his options. He could either tell her immediately what he’d come here to say, in which case undressing her was out of the question, or he could play along with her little game and perhaps get an eyeful. A gentleman would tell the truth immediately. But an aroused, tempted gentleman? What would he do? She smiled to herself. She was about to find out.
Her answer came when Charlie’s warm, deft fingers began unbuttoning the back of her gown.
CHAPTER 24
Charlie tried to keep his hand from shaking as he slipped the satin-covered buttons through the loops on the back of Frances’s gown. He leaned in closer and breathed in the sweet honeysuckle scent of her hair. He shouldn’t be doing this. He’d come here to tell her the truth and instead he was undressing her. She believed he was completely uninterested in women; that’s why she was allowing this, as scandalous as it seemed, but something wicked inside him had been unable to resist the offer.
The last button came free and the gown fell away. Frances pushed it down over her hips and stood before him in her stays. She turned to face him, her spectacles gone, highlighting the pretty softness of her face. She looked different, but breathtakingly lovely just the same.
Then his gaze moved down.
The stays pushed up her breasts in a way that made him swallow. Hard. She had on her chemise, the barest wisp of fabric underneath the stays, but otherwise, she was completely naked.
“Care to help me with my stays?”
Now that was egregious. He couldn’t allow this to continue. Could he? “Frances, I don’t think—”
“I could always call Mary,” she replied. “She does have a bad memory, but it seems to me she might remember me half undressed with a man in my bedchamber. But if I call her you won’t get a chance to tell me whatever it is you came to say.”
Charlie closed his eyes. And swallowed. He was going straight to hell but could not refuse the offer. She was right. He still needed to tell her what he’d come here to say. What was that again?
He wiped sweat from his brow with the back of his hand. “Very well.”
She spun around, offering the laces of her stays to his fingers, and Charlie bit the inside of his cheek to keep from groaning. He tried to concentrate on the task, but her smooth porcelain skin and the scent of her, the little sighs she was making in the back of her throat as each lace pulled away, were his undoing.
When the stays came free, she shimmied them down her body and stepped deftly away from them. She turned, giving him a half-smile. The gossamer of her chemise glimmered in the light from the two candles that rested on either side of her bed. The shift was nearly transparent. The dusky pink of her nipples were outlined in silhouette against the candlelight. Charlie wiped his hand across his forehead again. “Frances,” he breathed.
She looked so beguiling and so innocent at the same time. “Yes, Charlie.” She stood only a pace away from him. His fingers ached to touch her, rip the chemise from her silken limbs, and—
“What is it you wanted to tell me?” she asked.
He took a deep breath. There was every chance she would scream and order him from her bedchamber the minute he revealed this particular secret, but despite the growing size of his cock, it was time.
“Frances, I—
He had the grace to look away. He kept his gaze focused on the thick carpet that rested under the bed.
“Yes, Charlie?”
“I came to tell you that I…” He couldn’t drag the words across his dry lips.
“Perhaps I should tell you something first,” she offered.
He nodded, clenching his jaw against the unholy throbbing in his trousers. “Very well.”
She took one step toward him. One small step. She reached up and traced his brow with a tapered fingernail. Sweat dripped from his brow.
“I have to admit something to you, Charlie. Something I’m not quite proud of.”
He nodded. “Go on.”
She splayed her hands against his chest, and he nearly groaned. Then she moved her hands up until they wrapped around his neck. What was she doing to him? His body shook from lust.
She pushed the sleeves of his evening coat over his shoulders. He helped her by shrugging it off and the jacket fell to the floor behind him. What in God’s name was happening?
She plucked at the tie to his cravat and began slowly unwinding it. When that garment also lay on the floor, she stood on tiptoes and whispered up into his ear. “I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you asking me to kiss you at the engagement party.”
Charlie closed his eyes. When and why had he ever got the impression that Frances was a scholarly little wallflower? Sweet Jesus this woman could tempt a saint.
“You want me to kiss you?” he asked on a groan.
She put a finger to the side of her mouth, sucking on it lightly, making Charlie want to come so hard he clenched his fist in agony. “Um hmm,” she answered. “If you can stand it.”
A slow smile spread across his face. He looked down into her bright blue eyes. “You know, don’t you?”
Her answering grin told him what he’d suspected was true.
“I know,” she answered, just before he tugged her into his arms and kissed her.
* * *
Charlie’s lips touched Frances’s, hungry, urgent. This was no simple kiss in the corner of a library where someone might walk in on them at any moment. No. This was a half-dressed-in-a-bedchamber-with-every-expectation-of-privacy kiss. His hot, wet mouth slanted across hers and he pulled her half-clad body up against him, hard. The fiery length of him pressed against her through the fabric of his trousers. She was still on tiptoes with her arms wrapped around his neck, and she never wanted the kiss to end.
He lifted her into his arms and carried her the few paces over to the bed. “Frances,” he whispered against her mouth. “Let me touch you.”
She replied with one word. “Yes.”
His entire body shook at that answer, and he set her lovingly on the bed before turning to shuck his boots. He was still wearing his trousers and his shirttails but nothing else.
He moved atop her, his mouth coming down to meet hers again and the welcome heat and weight of his body made Frances shudder. He fit so perfectly between her legs, the par
t of him that was hungry for her nudging at her most private spot.
She whimpered. “Charlie, touch me.”
He didn’t say a word. Didn’t have to. His mouth moved from her lips to her cheek, her ear, her neck, and then he moved down. Pulling the chemise away from her shoulder, he bared one of her breasts. She raised up on an elbow, gasping, just before his mouth covered her nipple. She fell back against the bed and he followed.
Frances had never felt such white hot desire in her entire life. Charlie’s firm mouth worked against her breast, sucking, pulling, tugging, driving her mad. Her breath came in fitful gasps, and she pushed her fingers through his short dark hair, holding his head to her breast, never wanting him to stop.
His other hand found her other nipple and flicked back and forth, pinching, teasing, tormenting until she forgot to breathe. Oh God, how did this man know how to touch her body like this? It left her hot and aching. His lips found her mouth again, and this time the kiss exploded, hot and wet, filled with desire. She dragged her fingers through his hair and whispered his name into his ear.
* * *
Charlie’s cock was about to explode. He hadn’t been so damned aroused since he’d been a lad of fifteen. What the hell was happening to him? Touching Frances’s soft warm body, letting her perfect breasts fill his hand and his mouth, it was the most ungodly torture he’d ever known. His hips were pushing against hers in an unconscious rhythm that he desperately wanted to repeat without his trousers, and her little groans and whimpers were driving him beyond the edge of sanity.
He couldn’t do this. Couldn’t make love to her. He repeated those words over and over in his desire-starved brain. But even as he knew it could only go so far, he also couldn’t drag his hands away from her luscious body. And it was indeed luscious. Beneath her innocent gowns, Frances had been hiding the body of a siren. He ran his hand up her smooth-as-silk leg, past the hem of her chemise. She gasped. He paused. He’d die before he did anything that she didn’t want. “We can stop—”
“No,” she whispered in a seductive voice against his lips. “Don’t stop.”
That’s all he needed to hear. Charlie let his hand slide up higher, higher until it rested on her smooth, bare hip. He shuddered then. Uncontrollably. God, he was about to come in his trousers. Such bad form. But he wanted her so badly, more badly than he’d ever wanted any woman.
“Touch me, Charlie,” she whispered again.
He pressed his forehead against hers and closed his eyes. Touching her might drive him mad, but he wasn’t about to refuse.
His fingers moved from her hip, closer, closer to the junction between her thighs. The heat of her radiated against his hand and his fingers trembled as he moved closer to her wet warmth.
She spread her legs then, and that was his undoing. Charlie moved his hand down to rest against her inner thigh. She gasped against his mouth. “Touch me,” she begged.
Charlie clenched his jaw. He could do this. Give her pleasure without taking his own. He could do this and he would. He braced his opposite elbow against the mattress and slowly dragged his finger between her legs. Frances shook as his finger moved into the cleft of her sex. He stroked there, once, twice, and her legs fell wider apart. She opened herself to him. Charlie clenched his jaw. He circled his finger around the opening to her body. When he dipped the one finger inside, slowly, her hips bucked and she cried out.
“Shh,” he whispered again her shining hair. “Don’t worry. I would never hurt you.”
Frances nodded. Her blue eyes filled with wonder and trust. He ran his opposite thumb across her lips before taking her mouth again in a passionate kiss and slowly sinking his finger into her wet warmth. His movements were deliberate. Designed to entice, seduce. He slowly moved his finger in and out, in and out, until Frances’s head tossed fitfully against the pillow and she sobbed against his mouth. “Charlie, please.”
Charlie knew exactly what she wanted, and he was going to give it to her. If it killed him. His cock aching, he continued the slow slide of his finger in and out, and then he moved his thumb up to touch the nub of pleasure centered between her legs.
Frances’s entire body bucked this time. He captured her moan by kissing her. “Let me touch you, love. I’ll make you feel so good.”
“You already have,” she whispered against his cheek. “If you made me feel any better, I think I’d die.”
Charlie smiled against her lips. “I think you can stand a bit more.”
* * *
Frances gasped at his words, his finger still driving her slowly mad with its unrelenting rhythm. She’d never felt anything like it. She wanted to scream, sob, kiss him forever. And there was more? She could barely believe that.
When his thumb came back to touch that spot between her legs, the one that made her hips arch off the bed, she gasped again. She’d been trying to concentrate on breathing, but she couldn’t. Charlie wasn’t kissing her any more. Instead, he was whispering things into her ear, sweet things, lovely things, things that made her thighs tremble.
“I’m going to make you come,” he whispered.
Frances didn’t even know what it meant, but some primal instinct inside her told her that she desperately wanted to find out.
“Yes, Charlie. Yes,” she murmured.
Her hand clutched his shoulder, the feel of the hard muscle beneath his smooth skin giving her a measure of reality. He pulled his finger away and Frances cried out.
“Shh,” he whispered against her cheek. “This is the best part.”
She would have to take his word for it, she thought with a smile, just before his finger came up to take the place where his thumb had been. Then she ceased thinking at all.
Frances wrapped both arms around Charlie’s neck and kissed him full on the mouth. She sobbed as his finger made unerring little circles against her tender flesh. Again. Again. Again. In a spot that made her toes curl and her back arch away from the mattress. “Charlie,” she gasped. “I can’t—”
“Yes, you can,” he whispered huskily into her ear.
She closed her eyes, riding a wave of feeling that was more perfect than anything she’d ever experienced before. Her heart pounding in her chest, her breathing ragged, Charlie’s finger guided her until she shattered into a thousand little pieces.
His mouth captured her cry, and their kiss exploded as she shuddered against him, her hips coming off the bed.
It took several moments for Frances to become aware of her surroundings again. Her body was tingling in places she’d barely known existed and her breath came in rapid pants. She looked up into Charlie’s warm, dark eyes. “I don’t know what to say,” she whispered against his mouth.
“You don’t have to say anything,” he answered, kissing her forehead.
It slowly penetrated Frances’s awareness that while she felt like she had no bones left in her body, Charlie remained stiff and tense. She touched his hip. He jerked. “Charlie?”
“Yes, love?” His voice was strained.
“Are you … are you all right?”
He clenched his eyes shut and pressed his forehead into the pillow. “I will be,” he assured her.
Frances lifted up on one elbow and watched him in wonder. Charlie was in pain. She’d received her pleasure but he was still … he was still lusting after her.
Her heart wrenched. “Tell me what to do,” she whispered into his ear. “How to touch you. How to make you feel like you made me feel.”
His laugh was a bit shaky. “Oh, love, no. I couldn’t stand it.”
She frowned at him. “You don’t want me to touch you?”
Another shaky laugh. “I think if you touched me, I’d … I’d explode.”
She bit her lip. So that was it. Charlie didn’t want to explode like he’d made her explode. Well, too bad. She’d read the pamphlet Secrets of a Wedding Night, despite Annie’s insistence not to. She’d just been too curious in the end. And she knew a little bit about what went on between a man and a woman
—who were properly married of course.
She and Charlie might not be married, but they certainly were engaging in some of the same activities as married folk, and she wasn’t about to allow him to suffer in unfulfilled agony while she drifted off into contented slumber. No. Not tonight.
He might not be willing to tell her how to touch him, but she’d just start with her instincts and go from there. And she could be ever-so-persuasive when she wanted to be.
She let her hands skim across his muscled shoulder, down his arm, and to his flat midriff.
The muscles in his abdomen flexed instinctively. She splayed her bare hand against his skin under his shirt. “Will you take off your shirt?” she asked shyly. “So I can see you?”
He sat up and obligingly pulled the shirt over his shoulders using both hands. Frances watched as the candlelight poured over his satiny golden skin. She couldn’t get enough of looking at him. She reached out and let her hand trace down the fine line of hair on his abdomen. The line that disappeared under his trousers. He lay back against the pillows, and she skimmed her fingers along his belly again. The muscles jumped again. When she moved her hand lower, he immediately clamped it down with his hand. “What do you think you’re doing?”
She experimented with touching her tongue to his ear to distract him. His hips bucked. Ooh, he liked that, did he? Well, he just might like the wicked things she had to say to him. “I want to touch you, Charlie,” she whispered. “Please.”
She kissed him then, not allowing him to speak, and the fierceness of his kiss was all the answer she needed. She tentatively moved her hand down his abdomen again, this time, rubbing against the bulge in his trousers once, twice. He groaned against her mouth. Now that was the reaction she’d hoped for. She moved her hand up slowly to the buttons on his trousers. She plucked one open. Charlie rested his hand against hers, flattening her palm against his bulge, stopping her. “I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
A Secret Affair Page 9
