by Lara Archer
Oh, her heart was softening. Her body was throbbing. Her soul was rising up and offering itself to his. She would give herself to him, give everything to him, give more than she could possibly afford to give.
There was nothing she could do about it.
Her arms went around his neck and she pulled him tighter against her body. He groaned against her mouth.
His hand at her waist slid up under her dress, pushing it even further upwards, past her ribcage, seeking her breast. His palm fit around the small swell and squeezed, his thumb rubbing tantalizingly over her nipple.
She groaned as well.
That had him thrusting against her with new enthusiasm—hard, deep pressure that had her gasping. His other hand dropped to her bared hip, stroking it, kneading her flesh, and she shivered against him.
She was busy touching him as well, through his shirt, delighting in the remarkable firmness of his shoulders. His chest against hers was hard as granite, but so warm; his weight pressed her into the tree trunk in a way that should have hurt, but didn’t.
He pulled back for a moment, his eyes hot on hers, then reached down to his own waist and pulled his shirt up and over his head.
The fabric glowed with light as it whisked past his dark-gold curls and made a halo around him for a moment before he dropped it to the ground.
He was bared to the waist.
Oh, the glorious sight of him, his torso uncovered, his skin glowing with its own radiance in the sunshine. The muscles rippled across his shoulders, bunched hard at his chest. She’d seen engravings of Greek statues in books her father owned, and John Hollings, Viscount Parkhurst, put them all to shame.
And he was not cold marble, but living man.
She laid her hands to his chest and pushed him back gently so she might be able to take him in more fully with her gaze. Though he had the power to resist her with ease, he allowed it, and watched her face as she examined the beautiful length of his body.
His flesh was vivid with life, and the crisp golden hair of his chest tapered into a heavier, darker line as it dipped down the hard plane of his belly into the waistband of his trousers.
He was all mystery to her, and all temptation.
She wanted to dip her hand there, too, to touch the urgent press of flesh beneath the cloth, flesh that strained so hard, it seemed on the verge of ripping open his trousers.
He didn’t give her the chance, though. His patience had been stretched thin enough. He yanked her towards him, his fingers going to the buttons at the back of her dress. He made short work of them, pushed her back against the tree, and pulled the loosened bodice down in a few quick tugs, baring her completely to the waist.
The look in his eyes as he took in the sight of her was something she’d never seen before from her friend. Nothing of the polite gentleman remained in that gaze, none of the courteous self-control she was so used to. The look was dark and animal and commanding.
His chest heaved with the force of his breathing.
And then his mouth fell on her, drawing first one nipple and then the other against the wet heat of his tongue. He suckled her until she could barely hold her legs steady, and small whimpering noises were escaping her lips.
And then he gathered her in his arms again. Skin to skin.
She had never felt anything quite so wonderful, her flesh to his flesh, her exquisitely sensitized breasts against his chest, his crisp hair biting lightly into her even as the rest of him was the most extraordinary combination of silk and solid rock. His mouth still worked its magic against hers.
So much heat, everywhere.
He pressed his hips more firmly into hers, writhing against her until he forced her legs apart. The hard bulge of his cock rubbed up and down at the juncture of her thighs, sending shock waves through her. The fabric of his trousers seemed rough in contrast to the silken smoothness of his skin.
She needed to touch him. See him. There.
Her hand worked its way between their bellies, over the firm ridges of his muscled abdomen, lined with still more crisp hair, and then down into the waistband. She wriggled her fingers beneath the cloth, feeling his muscles flinch at her touch. And her fingers touched his shaft at long last, feeling it strain into her hand, hard and hot like fever, and yet velvety soft.
It seemed to jump into her palm, eager for more of her caress. John let out a groan so deep she thought it might rend him in two. His hands at her waist gripped her hard enough to bruise the skin, his whole body tensing as though he were preparing for battle.
His breath rasped as he broke the kiss and buried his mouth against her throat. He was beginning to tremble, seemingly reining himself in, letting her take her time exploring him.
With her fingertips, she stroked just the tip of his shaft at first. It was so big and round, it filled her palm, and seemed to swell more and more against her fingers. This was meant to go inside her? It seemed impossible that something so hard and massive could enter into such a tender part of her.
As she stroked along the silky-hard head, a spot of moisture appeared at the tip of it, wonderfully slick…she slid her palm across it, working the slickness around his flesh, discovering the intriguing ridges, the way the head of his cock angled outward then tapered back again to the main part of his shaft.
His body went rigid against her. He gasped and moaned, “Oh, Mary, please, Mary…”
She slipped her fingers downwards, grasped the thick, heavy shaft. Squeezed it.
That seemed to make him go weak in the knees. His weight pressed more heavily against her breasts. “Jesus,” he breathed. His hips seemed to move of their own accord, thrusting into her touch. “Please….”
She was making this happen to him. She was.
She felt…beautiful, suddenly. Desirable. Powerful.
The trousers were constricting her movements; she wanted to grasp him more firmly, more fully; she wanted to pump his cock into her hand the way she’d seen him do into his own.
John seemed to want exactly that. His hands were shaking now, but he undid his own buttons, and his shaft sprang free. She glanced down between their bodies again to get a look at it. It was thick and long—bigger even than Mr. Bassett’s. But the color was more bronzed, and the curls at the base gleamed golden in the sun. Veins ran along the sides, and the head glistened with another dot of pearly-white.
So strange. So masculine. And, somehow, despite its strangeness, enticingly beautiful.
She wanted it in her mouth. She wanted to taste that glistening cream.
A thrill went through her—a pure impulse of daring.
She would taste it.
Wriggling from his grip, she dropped to her knees, and took the shaft in her fingers again. He was swelling even harder than before, and she found she was unable to bring her fingertips together around its throbbing breadth.
She was face to face with this most intimate part of John.
His musk filled her nostrils—a shocking, mesmerizing scent that was every bit as strange as the sight of his cock, and every bit as tantalizing.
Not stopping to think, she brushed her lips over the head, opening wider as she followed the sensuous broadening, then closing slightly again as she took the whole top of the shaft inside her mouth and drew her lips tight.
Her tongue pressed against the silky hardness, tasting the strange, thrilling salt of him. She swirled her tongue, letting it slide around and around the smoothness of the head, her fingers squeezing and stroking the length of his shaft as it did.
This was perhaps not as personal as when he was kissing her, but it was even more intimate in many ways—to have this most private part of him inside her mouth.
John groaned and shuddered and strained, clearly fighting the urge to thrust hard down her throat. His thighs shook. The fingers of one hand raked her curls, gripping and releasing convulsively as though he could barely restrain himself from yanking her mouth harder against him and pumping violently inside her.
She glanced
up at him and saw that he had braced the palm of his other hand against the hawthorn trunk. His blue eyes were locked on her face, the gaze intent, his brow furrowed. The bulging muscles of his arms and even the ridges of his abdomen seemed to be clenched rock-hard.
He was trying to let her keep control, and she savored it.
She gave him a wicked smile even as her mouth still held his cock.
Inch by inch, she swallowed him deeper. The slick head moved against the roof of her mouth, and by instinct she began to suck him, to draw him against the slippery lining of her cheeks and to the entrance to her throat.
One of her hands slid beneath to caress the soft swell of his stones, while the other reached back behind him, yanking at his trousers so she could pull them farther down and stroke the magnificent muscles of his buttocks. Just as she’d predicted, he was as strong and sculpted as a racehorse.
She pressed against him there, urging him deeper and deeper into her mouth.
It was terrifying, thrilling, hard to breathe, and the frantic moaning sounds he was making fueled a fire inside her.
His member was a beautiful, powerful thing, and she began to yearn to feel it inside her, between her legs. Her womb blazed and clenched, turning to delicious liquid. She could do it if she wanted: she could let this powerful man with his huge shaft mount her. She could let him drive up hard inside of her, to where the desire tightened into a white-hot knot. The thought drove her wild. She wanted it. Wanted it desperately. She wanted him to thrust inside her as she’d seen the sexton do to Mrs. Trumbull. She wanted him to claim her entirely.
Every instinct cried out for it.
And John seemed to feel the same thing, because all at once his hands went under her arms and he was lifting her, pulling his cock from her mouth and pressing her back against the tree.
Her skirts were up around her waist again before she could think, and when he pressed his hips against her again, his bared cock was what pushed against her curls. A small shift in angle was all it would take for the rigid thickness of it to spear between her thighs and push up inside her wetness.
She was made for that—a sheath to his blade, a harbor for his seed.
The spring day seemed to cry out for it—the very sunlight and warm wind seemed to command that they join and mate.
His breathing was ragged, and so was hers. They both wanted it.
His mouth pressed to her ear, his voice ragged and urgent.
“I want to fuck you, Mary. Do you know what that means?” His tone was utterly unfamiliar. Uncivilized. His cock ground against her frantically. “I need to fuck you.”
But he hesitated. Why was he waiting?
She wanted him to thrust up inside her. Her blood was mad with her need for it.
She wriggled her hips against him, spread her thighs, urging him forward with her hands against his buttocks.
But he went still. Harder than stone.
And he pulled back from her. His eyes studied her face.
She heard herself whimper. “What, John? Why do you stop?”
His eyes were squeezed tight shut; his head was shaking side to side. The look of him was anguished, as though he fought a powerful internal battle.
Now it was her turn to beg. “Please. Please, John. Do it.” She ached. She burned. The pagan magic of the day hummed all around them. It seemed to very survival of the world depended on him…fucking her, like he’d said. “Take me now.”
But he didn’t.
His hands were on her hips, clutching spasmodically. Hungrily. His cock strained between them. But he didn’t thrust inside her.
His face was a portrait in agony. The muscles of his mouth moved, seeming to struggle for the coherence of speech. “You will…” He fought for every word. “You will marry me then, Mary?”
She could scarcely recall the meaning of the word.
Marry?
Oh, God, she couldn’t think. She just wanted, wanted. Needed.
He lay his forehead against hers, panting into her face. “Answer me. You have to answer me. Quickly.”
Marry?
Oh, Lord—the word’s meaning hovered at the edges of her consciousness. They weren’t supposed to do this unless they’d done that…other thing. It would…it would ruin her otherwise. Ruin.
That was an important word, she remembered that much.
It was supposed to be an important word.
But it was so very hard to care just now….
“Damn it, Mary.” His hands against her gave her a shake. “Answer.”
But how could she answer? And how could he think of such a thing, now, of all times?
She was supposed to say no to his offer, she knew that. For some reason. Marriage to her would not be good for him. It would hurt him.
He was John. Her friend. And she loved him.
She loved him.
She couldn’t hurt him—even if everything in her body screamed at her to do anything, say anything, to make him part her legs and push his cock inside her.
He…was…her…friend.
Her friend. And that had to matter more than anything.
She fought to gather enough breath, enough sense, to say the words she needed to say. “No. No, John.” It was painful to say it. She knew that no meant she was also saying no to everything else she so desperately wanted. But she had no other choice. “I can’t. I can’t marry you.”
The groan that ripped from his lips this time had no sign of pleasure in it. It was a groan of pure pain. “Damn you. Damn all this. How am I to stay away from you, then?”
With a mighty effort, he pushed himself back from her, stumbling unsteadily. He bent over, his hands bracing his weight on his knees. The breeze that ran between them felt suddenly, shockingly cold after the heat of his flesh.
She wanted him against her again, wanted his warmth, his strength. His desire. She felt frozen against the tree.
Long moments passed, the two of them breathing in harsh rasps, and he looked to be in as much pain as she felt.
“John, please…”
“You have to marry me,” he said. “We can’t go on like this.”
Oh, the reasons for her refusal poured back into her mind as she watched him. He was so beautiful. So perfect. And therefore not made for the likes of her.
He was made for a Lawton girl, the sort of lovely, elegant, blue-blooded girl who could make him happy, night and day, for a lifetime.
What was happening between him and her right now—this was just...lust. Just their animal natures. Like Mr. Bassett and Mrs. Trumbull. Not the basis for a life together. And not enough to save them from misery in the long run.
“I can’t,” she repeated wretchedly. “And you know I can’t.”
Pain was wrenching something loose inside her, something she thought might make her bleed. But she couldn’t let lust destroy him, this good man who was so precious to her. If she said yes to him now, he’d regret it soon afterwards, the moment their pleasure was done.
He told her exactly that himself that first day upon the hill, when those vines had caught her and he’d first put his mouth to her breast. She’d told him then that she didn’t care about virtue, that she wanted him to take her, and he’d said she was just…distracted by what they’d done, that it worked that way with bodies, that desire fogged the mind.
Indeed, lust was a form of madness….
John had straightened again, and he looked magnificent, torso bared, his flesh vivid with the heat of his blood, his cock still boldly erect and his trousers low around his hips. Like a satyr. Like a beautiful, golden-haired satyr.
At the sight, the rush of primitive energy roared through her again.
She was a nymph, a half-naked nymph, and nothing in the world could be more natural than to part her soft thighs for him and welcome that hard cock inside her.
For a moment, she teetered on the precipice. It would be so easy. To open her arms to him and let them both taste the magic of pure desire, pure elation.
> But the best part of her heart would not let her. She had to protect him from himself, from herself.
Hastily, she worked her bodice back up to cover her breasts, and straightened out her skirts so they fell completely over her legs. “You were right that first morning,” she told him. “When we climbed that hill together. We can’t do this; we simply can’t. We should both go home now. To our own homes. And forget this ever happened.”
“Mary!”
“I’m the wrong woman for you, John. We aren’t pagan creatures, you and I, not really. We must live in the civilized world, and in that world, a viscount and a vicar’s daughter do not marry.”
“Listen to me—“
“I have listened. I listened to you when you were in your right mind. I’m only recalling your own wisdom to you now. Please don’t make this more difficult than it already is.”
He shook his head slowly back and forth, a wild, desperate look in his eyes. His chest still heaved with frustrated desire. But he must have known on some level that she was right, because he remained enough of a gentleman to stay where he was and not grab for her by force, as a true satyr would.
She retrieved her basket from the ground and turned back towards the vicarage. Over her shoulder she spoke the words she knew she must: “Go and marry Annabel Lawton, Lord Parkhurst. She’s the one you really need.”
Chapter Eight
He was in love with Mary Wilkins.
There was simply no other word for it.
When he had her up against that tree this morning, so heated, so pliant, with her hair flaming around her shoulders and her breasts bared to the morning sunlight, he felt he would die if he didn’t claim her.
And when she fell to her knees and took him in her mouth…. He’d fantasized about her doing that, but the fantasy came nowhere near the reality of having her look up to meet his eyes and smile at him while her lips circled his throbbing cock—such a purely lascivious smile, so full of pagan delight, showing her pleasure at pleasuring him.
When he’d lifted her again, ready to take her fully, to finally consummate this strange and wonderful bond that had been building and building between them, she’d been willing, more than willing.
