by Sara Portman
When he spoke, he barely recognized the rough and unsteady voice as his own. “We have yet to do anything that can’t be undone,” he told her. “You can still change your mind.” A little piece of him died to say it, but she had to know she had a choice—up until the deed was done, she would have a choice.
She lifted liquid pools of silver blue that threatened to unman him. Holding him with that gaze, she slowly shook her head. “I’m not afraid, and I’m not unsure.” Her words were soft but unwavering. She lifted her hand to his face and stroked his check with a featherlight trace of her fingertip. “Please don’t send me away.”
Oh, thank God.
He gathered her up and nearly lifted her from the floor in his desire to reach her. His mouth slashed over hers as all of his hunger and need were unshackled by her words. He felt her arms encircle his neck and she clung to him as fiercely as he plundered her mouth. He was overcome with the compulsion to experience her in every possible way, to consume her fully before the mistake of fate that put this woman within reach was corrected and she was stolen from him.
But no. He would not overtake her. He drew back, pulling his lips from hers, even when she involuntarily leaned toward him, chasing the contact he’d broken. He pulled her close, feeling the rise and fall of her chest, knowing she struggled to regain control just as he did. He placed a kiss on top of her soft hair. “We have hours, my angel. I don’t plan to spend a single minute in clumsy haste.” He splayed the fingers of both hands across her back and stroked them slowly downward, cupping her bottom and drawing her snugly into him. He closed his eyes and sighed at the feel of her softness pressed against his tight, straining need.
“You don’t have to offer me an escape. I don’t want to leave,” she said, her mouth moving against his chest. Then she pulled herself back and looked up at him, her delicate features set with firm resolve. “And you don’t have to offer reassurances of how it will be. I trust you. That’s why I asked you.”
She slid her hand to the nape of his neck and teased her fingers into the locks of his hair there. He sighed with the pleasure of it. She lay her forehead against his chin and whispered, “My life will be useful and respectable and sensible, but I don’t want to feel any of those things right now. I feel like there is a candle inside me that is melting everything into a tingling liquid. It’s moving everywhere and making every single place on my body beg to be touched. Please, give me that gift. Please don’t send me into my practical, predictable future without first knowing that touch—your touch—in every last place.” She pressed herself more tightly to him, and he felt the tension radiating from her.
Christ.
She was killing him and he could have wept with the sweetness of it. Who was seducing whom here?
He set her from him and looked down at her in that fire of a dress. “I promise,” he said huskily, his eyes boring into hers, “I will worship you. Not one single inch of you will want for attention when I am done.”
He felt the shiver run through her.
With the discipline of a Spartan warrior, Bex turned away from her. He stripped down to his shirtsleeves, draping his coat and waistcoat across the corner chair. He untied the collar of his shirt and pulled it over his head, tossing it atop the other clothing.
Then he returned to Lucy.
Sweet Lucy. She had taken off her slippers. He smiled.
He came up behind her this time. Burying his face in the crook below her pinned-up hair, he pressed kisses along the back of her neck, across her collarbone, and up to her ear. His hands slid around her pixie-sized waist to splay across her stomach and traveled upward. They closed over her breasts, pushing them upward until they nearly swelled out of the wickedly low-cut dress. He pulled her full length hard against the front of him and continued to knead her pert breasts until, through the fabric, he could feel her pebble in response to his touch.
“Here?” he asked, his lips and tongue teasing her earlobe. “Did you want me to touch you here?”
She nodded wordlessly and, with eyes closed, leaned her head back against his chest. Her hands reached back, and he felt her grip the sides of his thighs for support.
“Where else do you want me to touch you?”
“Everywhere,” she breathed. “Show me. Show me where I should want you to touch me.”
Slowly he spun her to face him and covered her mouth again with his, taking advantage as her lips parted to taste her and deepen the kiss. She mewled, and the sound made him so hard for her, he thought his skin might rend.
“My God, Lucy,” he said when he pulled his mouth from hers. “Do you have any idea what you are doing to me right now?”
She tentatively placed one hand, palm open, on his bare chest. It was warm and teasing. After a moment, the other hand followed and she began a bold exploration of his torso, from his stomach to his shoulders. Once she had satisfied herself, running her fingers nearly everywhere within reach, she slid them around his waist and spread warm palms across his lower back.
“Tell me,” she said, her lips moving against his naked chest, her breath teasing in his hair. “Tell me what I’m doing to you.”
She was sweetly invading every piece of his soul, but he could not tell her so.
Instead, he took her hand and guided it to where his erection strained against his breeches. “You are turning me into a green boy,” he said, nearly groaning at the pleasure of the contact.
She looked down where her hand touched him, not shying away from the moment, and he decided her bold curiosity was more seductive than the most skilled courtesan. She had asked him—begged him—to touch her and, God help him, he wanted it more than she did.
In one easy motion, Bex swept her into his arms, dress and all, and laid her gently back across his bed, a slash of pale skin and bold fabric against his drab bed linens. Her passion-filled eyes were alert, curious, as he’d known they would be. His inquisitive little angel.
She was not his—not truly—but she was his today. She had given him that, and in exchange he was determined she should be the recipient of the gift for which she had so sweetly asked. He vowed to show her passion so thoroughly that all of her curiosity would be satisfied. And from a dark, vain place inside his soul, he vowed that if another man ever made love to her, the act would not compare to the memory of this first perfect taste of passion.
He wanted everything for Lucy. He wanted a lifetime’s worth of adoration in one afternoon.
“Where shall I begin?” he asked softly, placing one knee on the bed to hover over where she lay. “Should I begin here?” He dipped his head to lick at her earlobe, worrying the tiny nib with his tongue and teeth. “You have tiny, perfect ears,” he whispered, feeling her shift beneath him as his warm breath tickled her neck. He moved his mouth to kiss that place where his breath had warmed her. She turned her head away, instinctively granting him greater access.
“Has anyone ever kissed your shoulder, sweetheart?” he asked, knowing the answer. He touched his lips to the base of her throat then pushed aside the band of fabric that formed the narrow sleeve of her gown. His lips lingered on the smooth round of her shoulder.
“You,” she said, breathless. “You’re the only one who’s kissed me there.”
“We cannot have you neglected.” He trailed a row of kisses across her collarbone toward the opposite shoulder, while his hand slipped the other sleeve of her gown over the smooth curve. He pressed his lips briefly to this newly exposed spot, but did not linger there. Without the support from her sleeves, the row of jet crystals at the hem of her bodice draped ever further down the curve of her breasts, sagging slightly, so the line of beads rose and fell over the peaks and valley.
He placed a soft, lingering kiss at the top of one creamy swell. She arched to press herself into the contact, and his lips curved into a smile against her skin. Still supporting himself above her on his knee and one hand, he
used the other hand to slip his finger inside her loosened bodice, cupping one warm and weighty breast and lifting it free of its red silk cage. He lowered his lips to it, kissing gently around the soft skin then closing his mouth over the tightened peak and suckling there.
She arched and mewled.
God, he loved that sound. He could spend the rest of his wasted life working to elicit that very sound from this woman.
She whispered his name and threaded her fingers into his hair, pressing him to her, pressing herself into his mouth.
Slowly, he released his hold, blowing gently over the dampened peak and watching the shiver course through her.
“Bex,” she whispered again. “Please.”
“There’s too much of you, sweetheart,” he whispered. “There’s so much more.” With those words, he pulled the ruby fabric down, revealing her other, equally perfect breast, and proceeded to apply the attention it deserved—she deserved.
Finally, he pulled his mouth from her, whispering against her flesh, “You are so beautiful.”
She pushed upward, trying to rise, but he halted her. “No, sweetheart, I am far from finished.” He took her mouth again, unable to resist the torture of pressing his bare chest against the peaks of her breasts. He felt her melt back into the mattress as she responded to his kiss, more feverishly this time. More urgently.
He teased and nipped at her lips, whispering to her in quiet breaths of her beauty, her seductiveness, and how her sweet, eager innocence was torture to him. His free hand slipped to the fabric of her skirt, drawing it inevitably upward. Feeling his way, he ran his hand along smooth stockings and thin drawers, warm from her building heat. His hand skimmed the place at the crest of her thighs and her hips shifted, responding to the tease.
At once impatient, Bex tore his mouth from hers and lowered his weight to stand next to the bed and roughly push her skirt fully up to her waist. Checking his desire for haste, he removed first one and then the other silk stocking, rolling each one down the creamy limb it covered with enough care to cradle porcelain. Then he smoothed his hands back up each naked leg to meet in the middle and remove her thin drawers.
He looked down at her then, spread across his bed, her breasts freed from her bodice and her skirt pushed up to her waist revealing her nakedness. With her eyes closed and her lips parted, she was both wanton and innocent, like a vision from the most sensual dream he could ever have conjured.
Her eyes fluttered open as he watched, and he grinned wickedly down at her. “Stay right where you are, angel.”
* * * *
Lucy was certain she could not have moved if the building were aflame. Given the heat building inside her, she could set an incinerating blaze herself.
And still she would not move.
She would not interrupt Bex’s sweet, thorough attentions for anything. The more he touched her, the more she knew she needed him to keep touching her—to never stop touching her until she grasped that elusive thing that her body seemed to crave with ever-greater urgency.
Bex would give it to her. She knew with more trust and certainty than she’d ever known anything that this need, this ache inside her, ached for him. He knew how to answer it, and in that moment nothing and no one mattered more than the answer—his answer—to the question her body asked.
“Please,” she asked again, knowing—not caring a whit—that she begged him as the starving begged for food. “Please, Bex.”
“You are so beautiful,” he whispered again, his breath tickling the sensitive flesh at the inside of her thighs.
Lucy didn’t feel beautiful. She felt sultry and free. If she only knew what to ask, she would find the air, despite her breathlessness, to ask for every wicked thing—to beg for every wicked touch.
“Bex…I…”
His hand stroked higher on her thigh, then covered the mound at her center. Involuntarily, she pressed herself upward into the touch. “Please…I…”
Just touch me. Show me what I want.
He lifted his hand from her, and she mourned the loss like a death. Her hips squirmed in protest. He placed a kiss at the very top of her thigh. His tongue darted out in a teasing stroke and a new course of shivers chased through her.
She spread her legs wider, shameless, no piece of her wanting to hide from him.
He rewarded her, trailing a finger along the place that cried most urgently for his touch. “You are the most perfectly sensual woman, sweet Lucy. You are so ready for me.”
“Please,” she urged again, wanting more of the same, more of the rest. “Take me,” she whispered. “I will die if you do not.”
“You will live a little longer, my angel. I cannot yet. Patience.” His finger stroked along her core again, then he lowered his head and his tongue licked along the same path. Lucy stilled, letting the heady sensation of this new touch wash over her.
Was he supposed to be doing that? Did people do that?
He licked again and, God save her, she didn’t care if it was supposed to be happening, she just hoped he would not stop. He kissed and teased and licked her until she gripped the bedsheets in tight fists and could not even call his name through the building urgency. He slid a finger into her heat as his mouth moved over her, and she gasped at the pleasure of it. He tortured her with pleasure until she could do nothing but crave it, even as it happened, letting the sensations consume her until she quaked with a final intensity and shouted his name.
He retreated slowly. When she had recovered enough to open her eyes and look at him, she found him hovering above, watching her. The intensity of his expression gripped her. It was full of so much naked truth—desire, possession, victory. She reveled in the heady sensation of bringing a man—this man—to a point past artifice where all that was left to feel was primitive and transparent.
“We can stop here,” he said, his voice thick and deep.
“No.” She answered without hesitation. There was more and she would have it. “You promised,” she whispered.
His gray eyes closed briefly then opened, darker and more primal.
“Show me the rest,” she instructed, emboldened by his response, and he did her bidding. He was gone only a moment to shed the last of his clothing, then he was over her again, taking the peak of one breast roughly in his mouth, dragging his teeth across the sensitive tip. Her hands threaded into his hair then clutched at his shoulders.
He lifted his head again and looked down at her. He inhaled and exhaled slowly. “Are you certain?”
At her nod, he positioned himself between her legs, and she felt the pressure of him at her opening. He slid one hand under her buttocks, lifting her as he entered, easing himself into her core. He stilled then, filling her while her body adjusted to the invasion, tensing first then relaxing.
She considered the sensation, feeling tight and full in a place she had never felt empty before. Instinctually, she knew she would feel empty when he retreated. Without thinking, she pushed against him, drawing him deeper to fill her more tightly, and she liked the feeling. She pushed again.
Bex groaned and buried his face in the crook of her neck. “I’m trying to be still and let you get used to me,” he said in the same thick voice as before.
Lucy didn’t think that sounded right. The need to move, to squirm under him, only grew as he remained inside her. “I don’t want to be still,” she whispered, and as though to give credence to her words, her hips moved involuntarily and her insides tightened.
He groaned again. This time he withdrew partway. Just as she opened her mouth to object, he filled her again and it was the movement she’d been seeking. Her hips rose to respond to it. He withdrew and returned again, in the same taunting motion, and she met the thrust again, drawing her hand around his back to hold him as they moved together.
He repeated the wicked pattern, slowly at first, then more quickly and more forcefully as
she clutched herself to him and felt her intensity building all over again.
He whispered every name he had for her with each escalating movement—Lucy, angel, sweetheart. His words, his movement, his scent all melded to one heady reality—him—that consumed her senses and drove her need ever higher before she clung to him and felt the quaking overtake her again.
“Lucy.” He called her name in astonishment and she knew, even as it happened, that he was feeling her body as it quaked and she didn’t care.
No. She did care. She wanted him to feel it. She held on and let the feelings shake them both.
“Oh, God, Lucy.”
He filled her with one final thrust, deep and satisfying, and then she was empty again and his weight fell on her, steadying her through the last of the shudders that coursed through her body. She felt a shiver run through him and he said her name again, a whisper this time.
Lucy released an uneven sigh, consciousness returning, unwelcome and comforting at the same time. She stroked her hands slowly up and down his back until she felt his weight lift from her.
The shock of air drew her attention to a spot of dampness on her abdomen and she realized he had spilled his seed there, after he had left her. He pushed himself off the bed and retrieved a cloth from next to his washbasin. He returned to her and wiped his seed from her skin.
Lucy was startled to realize he had considered the possibility that she be left with child. She was even more startled to realize that she had not. It was a significant detail, that.
He had shielded her.
Even in the heat of passion, he had safeguarded her from the consequences of their choice.
Bex stretched out beside her, pulling her skirt back down over her legs, and pulled her against him. She huddled, small and tight, in the cocoon of his arms and had the inexplicable feeling that he had rescued her from a greater danger than a child—a danger so fresh that she still clung to him from the fear that lingered.
