“Straddle me,” he commanded softly.
She spread her thighs apart and felt his cock lie rigid and thick, pointing along her wet slit, parting her lips and pressing its thick head against her small, sensitive clitoris.
He put his big hands on her hips and held her still on him as he flexed his buttocks. Hard flesh slid across soft, slippery places. She gasped aloud at the sensation. Then he flexed back and pulled the length of his cock down again.
Pleasure. Hot, wet, slick bliss.
Tilting one big hand across her belly, he laid the tip of his thumb upon her clitoris and circled it ever so gently. Her body quivered in shock at the sensation but he was careful and very, very skilled.
Slide and circle, circle and slide. He did it again and again, sliding and rubbing and making her writhe and pant and beg, until she dug her fingers into the muscles of his chest to hold on, his big hands ruthlessly holding her in place as he rubbed and rubbed and—
She cried out, tossing her head back and panting out her orgasm in sharp, high cries.
He drew back very far then and, gripping her hips firmly, thrust into her, hard.
Her moans ended in a tight, pained shriek.
“I’m sorry.” He caught her quickly to his chest and held her there, cradling her as she trembled. “I’m so sorry, love, shh.” He pushed the hair back from her face, looking anxiously into her shocked eyes. “Shh. Just breathe. It was better quickly done, when you were at the height of pleasure and had not time to tighten in resistance.”
She curled upon his broad chest and blinked back tears. She still lay straddling him, impaled upon him, aching and tight and full inside—yet it was already easing, already dying back to a burning throb, then a painful twinge.
She lifted her head and blinked down at his face, seeing that his brow was creased in worry for her. “I don’t want to do this anymore.”
His jaw worked but he nodded. “That is your choice, always.”
He was so kind. How could any man be so large and strong and brave and yet so very gentle? “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I thought I’d like it.”
“I understand.” His green eyes were bright in the fire-light. “However, if you wish to stop, you will have to move first.”
She nodded, resignedly. “Right.” Lifting herself with her hands on his chest, she bit her lip against the oncoming pain and slowly began to rise off him.
Pleasure. Her eyes widened and she gasped, gazing down at him in surprise.
He broke out into a laugh, his eyes alight. “Oops. Did I forget to mention that it only hurts once?”
Her eyes narrowed and she drove herself back down on him. He caught his breath at the rush of sensation, but her trick only backfired on her as she gasped aloud at the wicked, deep pleasure.
Big hands roamed up her body, framing her waist, lifting and cupping her breasts, slipping into her hair. He looked deeply into her eyes, heat and pride and love flowing from his bright gaze. “Ride on, Lady Rogue,” he whispered.
She rode. Rising, she let him nearly withdraw until she ached for him, then falling, drove him into her until she nearly burst from him. Pressing her hands on his muscled chest for balance, she set the pace, filling herself again and again.
He cried out and arched his head back, straining beneath her, wild and wicked, the muscles of his torso rippling in the firelight, a great, untamed beast, leashed to her will.
Her pleasure was twofold. Her body loved the slippery, wonderful, wicked sensations. Her heart loved his freely offered abandon, his release of power to her hands. He gave himself to her, an instrument for her pleasure, holding himself back as she rode him to higher and higher peaks.
The moment came, the rippling, sparkling, shimmering moment and she threw her head back and cried out his name as she spasmed around his jutting cock.
Finally, she fell upon him, damp and weary and spent. Warm arms came about her, supporting her, holding her as she gasped and quivered and pulsed around his still rigid erection.
When she caught her breath, she lifted her head and kissed him softly. “I want your pleasure now.”
He shuddered, his self-control straining at the seams. “We . . . had better not. You are too new,” he gasped.
She slid her hands up his big body, feeling his vibrating need. “I want you to.”
“I . . . don’t think I can be gentle now. I don’t want to . . . hurt you.”
He wasn’t listening again, so she bit him, once, sharply on the chest.
With a throaty growl, he flipped her beneath him and plunged deep—oh, sweet heaven, she’d thought she’d done deep but it was nothing, nothing like this wild invasion! He groaned above her, her beautiful, wonderful, gentle man, as he drove into her again and again, the beast unleashed, the civilized man gone wild. He pulled her thighs high to grip his hips, opening her to his forceful penetration, his big body bucking and sweating and pounding into her as she hung desperately on with her arms about him and her head thrown back on the pillows, lost in the whirlwind of his naked, gasping need. It did hurt, a little, but his turbulent passion rewhetted her own, giving her body the slippery ease it needed to take on this powerful onslaught.
Then giving a guttural roar, his entire body went rigid and his arms held her so tightly she lost her breath and she felt him pulsating deep inside her.
It was the end, like when she’d taken him in her mouth and he’d throbbed his seed into her. Smoothing her hands up his back, she kissed his damp neck and whispered calming things as he trembled and gasped on top of her.
She’d wanted all of him. She’d certainly gotten her wish!
CHAPTER 39
After a long moment, Colin’s tight grasp on Pru eased and he slid his weight from her, going onto one elbow so he could peer into her face.
“I’m sorry,” he said softly. “That was . . . unforgivable. Are you all right?”
She smiled at his worry. “Me? Look at you. You can scarcely breathe and your heart is pounding like a coach team.” She touched one finger to the faint bite mark on his chest. “Oh, dear. Did I do that?” She shook her head regretfully. “I think I used you very ill.”
He blinked. “But I—that was not how I should have—”
She rolled her eyes. “Really, Sir Colin, I know you’re a man of honor and all things gentlemanly, but may I please have a bit of blame for my own aches and pains? You never stood a chance.”
The regret left his green eyes as his teasing grin reappeared. “I feel so cheap.”
Her mission accomplished, she shed her saucy mien and smiled shyly at him. “I did like it. I liked it very much.”
He raised a brow in doubt. “All of it?”
“Every moment but one, and that was necessary.” She wriggled closer into his big, warm body. With him at rest and her own urgency quenched, she let her fingertips explore his nakedness in tender curiosity. The thick planes of his muscular chest, the startling dips and swells of his biceps, the curious flatness of his nipples, like copper coins. “Men are so very different,” she mused.
“Men are very straightforward. We are like horses or cattle. Women are the strange beings. All those soft bits and secret places. So very sensitive.”
“What about this?” She let her hands roam down. He jerked and gasped slightly. “This seems entirely sensitive to me.”
He gently pried her fingers from his still tumescent cock. “This needs a few moments to recover.” He rolled away from her and tossed something into the fire. The sheath. Then he turned back and scooped her into the curve of his body. She hooked her knees over his bent thighs and used his brawny arm for her pillow. She was naked with a naked man. She ought to be horrified and shamed and weeping at her ruin.
No regrets. Not now. Not ever. No shame, not even embarrassment. She loved this man, all of this man. From his big, shapely feet to the oddly vulnerable curls at the nape of his neck. Being naked with him was the most natural thing in the world.
She toyed with the wiry
brown hair that filled his chest between his flat nipples. “So . . . how many is a few?”
He kissed her ear softly. “Hmm?”
She shivered as his deep murmur vibrated through her. “How many moments is ‘a few moments to recover’?”
His long fingers wrapped around her chin and tilted her face up to meet his kiss. “Not as many as you will need, my sweet.”
She brightened at that. “I’m fine! Right now!”
“Oh, really?” His wide palm slid down her body. She purred with pleasure at his touch—until he probed gently into her slit. “Ow!”
He stopped instantly and covered her mound soothingly with his warm hand. “Tender?”
She frowned, disgruntled. “I didn’t know—I thought—bloody hell!”
“Tut-tut.” He laughed softly. “Such language.”
Looking away, she blinked back abrupt tears. He saw and kissed her temple, pulling her closer still.
“What is it?”
Feeling like an idiot, she swiped at her face and blew out a disappointed breath. “I didn’t know I’d only have the once,” she whispered brokenly. “I thought we’d have all night.”
Once. Once to make love to him, to make memories that were supposed to last for her entire life. Once!
Colin’s heart ached at the sadness in her voice. One night was bad enough. Just once seemed so unfair. He sat up and pulled her limp body to sit in his lap, turning them both to face into the fire for warmth. He pushed back her beautiful hair and tenderly kissed her damp eyes, one then the other. “Don’t weep.”
“I’m not. I don’t weep. I’m just . . . leaking.”
He chuckled. “Then don’t leak.”
“But I ruined everything. You tried to warn me and I didn’t listen—”
“And you’re still not listening. Nothing is ruined. You are here, warm and sweet and naked in my arms. I lost myself in you the way I have never lost myself in anyone before. I am replete. Satisfied.”
She sniffled, just once. “Never? It isn’t always like that for you?”
He dropped his face into her neck and laughed, a short, broken noise. “No, my fiery Prudence, it has never been like that for me. No woman has ever made me lose my senses or turned me into a slavering, rutting beast.”
“Oh,” she said in a pleased and awed tone. “Well, all right then.” Exploring fingertips slid over his belly, testing the ridges. He sucked in a breath and she stopped. “Are you ticklish, Sir Colin?”
He knew that innocent voice. “Don’t you dare, Miss Filby, or I shall be forced to do this.” He rolled the tip of his tongue around the shell of her ear. She shivered in his arms but desisted in her restless play.
A contented silence fell. It was a full sort of quiet, with small kisses and gentle touches and soft, warm sweetness between them.
Colin felt the seconds ticking away like the threat of an enemy at his door. Time was against them. Morning would come.
Mourning would come.
He dropped his head and breathed her in. She smelled sweet and female, like some luxurious soap, but he missed the wild, sharp smell of mint.
She tilted her head back and gazed up at him. Her eyes were like silvery pools reflecting the firelight. “I love you,” she whispered. “Always.”
I love you. He tightened his hold and tried to make her feel the words she would not let him say. Always. His throat tightened until he thought he might stop breathing entirely. What was he to do without his outspoken dearest friend, his open and honest lover, his fierce and valiant cohort?
How am I to go on without my Pru?
His life before her seemed like time wasted, foolish spendthrift years squandered away without her. “Where were you when I was twenty?” he murmured.
After a moment of silence she turned to him with a frown. “I believe I was learning to spell ‘cat.’ ”
“What?” He drew back and gazed at her in horror. “How old are you?”
She blinked and gazed into the distance, a little crease between her brows. “You know, I’m not sure. Time sort of ran together. I was born in August. I was fifteen when my parents died and Evan was eight—”
Somewhere in his mind he must have been practicing his mathematics, for he suddenly went cold. “Oh, my god. You’re only nineteen!”
She tilted her head and quirked her lips. “You’re a quick’un, ain’t ye?”
Saucy Pru was back and he’d missed her terribly, but now was no time to reminisce. “I’ve ravaged a girl.” Dismay laced through him. Some men might pursue maidens fresh from the schoolroom, but he’d found the practice appalling.
“How tedious.” She rolled her eyes to the ceiling and sighed. “Am I obligated to make you feel better now, Sir Colin, or can we simply accept that I am mature for my years and continue on?”
He swallowed. She was right, of course. There was nothing to be done about it now and any histrionics on his part would be purely selfish. Still, he repressed a groan at what Aidan would have to say about it.
Aidan will never know. He will never meet Pru. She will never be friends with Madeleine. After tonight, she will never be with you again.
It was unimaginable. It was inevitable.
As if she knew what he was thinking—and she probably did—she turned and abruptly flung her arms about his neck, pressing her face into his chest and holding on as if invading pirates threatened to tear her away.
He lifted her to sit facing him, her legs wrapped about him, breast to chest, heart to heart, and he held her, simply held her while she sobbed, broken, dry-eyed, and trembling. He felt the same.
After several minutes she raised her eyes to look into his. “I have so much to say to you. We’ve had so little time. There is so much I want to ask.”
He kissed his way from her forehead to the end of her nose. “What do you wish to know?”
She blew out a breath that only hitched once. “Tell me about Sir Colin. Tell me how that came about.”
He shrugged. “I published something of my father’s. It was recognized as worthy work. I suppose since he was dead, Prinny thought he might as well knight me.”
She frowned. “That cannot be all. Tell me the truth.”
He looked away. “I don’t discuss my father.”
“Your father made you the way you are. You cannot ever leave him behind entirely. So tell me how it was your father managed to have you knighted with absolutely no effort from you. And then tell me the truth.”
He blew out a breath and slid his gaze to meet hers. “Miss Prudence Filby, grand inquisitor.”
“You’re stalling.”
“Yes, guv.” Colin tipped her head down onto his shoulder so he wouldn’t have to see himself in those moonlit eyes. He’d thought he was naked before!
“I didn’t truly know my father. He sent me away after my mother died and I was raised by my aunt.”
“With all the cousins. Yes, I know this part.”
“As a young man, I was a disappointment. Believe it or not, I was prone to causing trouble with my good friend Jack. My father did not approve of my lack of serious study and completely dismissed me from his mind. I stayed away from Tamsinwood and him and he did his best to pretend I had never existed.”
She squeezed him but said nothing.
Colin went on. “After my father died, I decided to shut the manor up for a while. I preferred the liveliness of London. The staff took care of everything else, but I thought I ought to handle his study myself. I gathered all his papers and research. I’d thought I might box them up and deliver them to the Bathgate Scholars, with whom my father associated. At least they would know what to do with them all. I was shoving it all into a trunk when I looked down at a page in my hand and saw my father’s handwriting, so perfect and precise yet sort of cramped and hurried, as if he couldn’t get his thoughts down fast enough . . .
“I began to read, and it was as though I could hear his voice in my mind. It struck me at last that he was never going to walk throu
gh that door again, that he would never sit at his desk, with his cold pipe held in his hand, arrested in thoughts that made him forget his tobacco, his dinner, and sometimes even his bed. I realized that he would never look at me the way he used to, with mystification and disappointment. Yet I held part of him in my hands. He might be dead and gone, but on those pages he still lived. I stayed in his study for nearly a month, reading every single word he’d written.”
He shook his head in wonder even now. “My father was a very interesting man. What a pity I didn’t realize it until it was too late.”
“What did the papers say?” Her voice was a whisper, her body a warm comfort.
“At first I simply read, without judgment or discernment. Then I began to sort out what I’d read, spreading the pages out all over the room, dividing them into factual records, or random thoughts, or discarded theories. When I ran out of room, I moved everything into the ballroom, with the staff banned from disturbing me on pain of death. As I sorted and read and sorted again, I began to see the pattern of my father’s thoughts, of what he’d been trying to prove with all that information.”
He dropped his face into her hair and breathed. “And then I saw where he went wrong.”
Her arms tightened about him.
“It wasn’t a dramatic error. He’d simply gone a bit to the left when he ought to have focused on the right. I was merely a fresh pair of eyes. It was something he likely would have realized had he lived long enough.”
He let out a long breath. “So I finished it. It wasn’t difficult, for my father had done all the work. Under his name, with mine only on the manuscript by way of explanation, I sent it to the Bathgate Scholars for review. The next thing I know, they’re clamoring to publish it and the Prince Regent is sending me congratulatory messages and suddenly I’m Sir Colin Lambert, knighted scholar!” His voice broke abruptly. “What an enormous cauldron of shite!”
She leaned her head back and looked at him, forcing him to meet her knowing gaze. “You don’t want to be a scholar.”
Rogue in My Arms: The Runaway Brides Page 27
