His mouth let go of her nipple with a wet, sucking sound. “Gwen,” he said, his voice soft and rough.
Her foot froze. Traitorous foot. She kept her eyes closed, struggling to control the ragged pattern of her breathing. For some reason, it felt very important not to admit that she had moved of her own volition. Not yet. She wanted him to work for her attention.
His tongue flicked delicately over her nipple. She shuddered despite herself. He bit down very lightly, and her entire torso arched of its own volition toward his mouth.
His hand moved beneath her back, gathering her toward him as he suckled her. His free hand delved between her thighs, finding the hot, wet place between her legs and rubbing gently. Yes. Yes, this was what she had wanted. She opened her eyes. He was poised over her, the bulk of his weight supported by his arms, the rise of his biceps clearly delineated by the thin lawn of his white shirt. Take it off, she wanted to say.
He glanced up and met her eyes. “Open your legs,” he murmured.
A hot blush washed over her. She swallowed. She would have pretended not to hear him, but the pressure of his hand abruptly increased, causing her whole body to contract on a startled wave of pleasure. Her head fell back, and a soft noise filled her ears.
Oh, good Lord! The noise had come from her.
“Gwen,” he said, and there was a note of laughter in the word that disarmed her as nothing else could have. She looked back to him and he took her hand, lifting it to his mouth, planting a kiss in her palm before placing her fingers against his cheek.
The feel of his hot, rough skin fractured her control. She had no idea why she’d delayed, what her aim had been; everything she wanted was here, being offered to her with his smiles and body and the intent, burning focus of his eyes. She pushed herself up, groping for the buttons of his waistcoat, unclipping the suspenders, stripping away his shirt—freeing his chest of all encumbrances.
She rose on her knees to press her breasts to his bare chest—a full-bodied, electric shock; he made a noise deep in his throat, and she felt the vibration register through her flesh. She burrowed closer yet so their thighs touched; she put her arms around him and drew him close, closer, her grip so tight that it awoke a reflexive panic deep within her; one did not hold anybody so tight unless one feared he might try to get away. But, “Shh,” Alex was saying into her ear, “shh,” and now he was kissing his way down her body, his mouth hot against her belly, tracing a path downward. Without warning, he ran his tongue along her seam, and the breath hissed out of her; he tipped her back and she sank as limply as a deflating balloon.
His hands gripped her thighs firmly as he laid her bare. His mouth settled between her legs, and she almost could not—bear—the feeling of his tongue; it made her aware, too aware, of that part of her, her quim as he called it. He slowly licked her, delicately charting the outlines of parts of her that she did not even know or understand. The spot that had given her such pleasure the night before throbbed now, and he tongued it, again and again, until strange little noises slipped out of her, pleading noises; she would have thrashed had his hands not held her down so firmly. Again and again he abraded her, and then he released her thigh to press his thumb firmly against the spot as his tongue moved lower, pushed into her.
The pleasure did not creep up, this time; it crashed onto and through her so forcefully that a split second of fear accompanied it. As she gasped and seized, his fingers replaced his mouth. They pushed slowly and steadily into her, a slight, burning pressure that made her cry out and buck harder. She barely felt his kisses to her thigh; and then his mouth was working its way back up her body again; he was gathering her to him tightly, pulling her against his body as she calmed.
Shame and grudges and complicated designs and anxiety seemed like the languages of a foreign land now; the long, liquid, loose feeling in her had burned away everything but the most elemental and important knowledge. She curled her leg up over his and felt the solid jut of his erection; she rocked against it, and he gasped. Yes. She could make him cry out, too. She reached between them for his trousers; his hands brushed hers, but if he meant to stop her, she gave him no chance. She rolled on top of him and shoved his arms away, laying them out at his sides as he had done to hers. She met his eyes.
“Be still,” she whispered.
He was breathing hard, and a sheen of sweat showed on his forehead. But as he met her eyes, the barest whisper of a smile moved his lips. “Oui, mademoiselle.”
She unfastened his trousers and bared him completely. His hips were lean, his musculature cut as though by a blade. He looked like one of those Greek statues in the British Museum that she had always made such a show of ignoring—only he was hotter, and larger, and his eyes were watching her. She reached out to touch the line that started at his hip bone, a faint groove where the muscles of his upper and lower body met, and he made a faint sound, between a gasp and a hiss. She watched her finger trace the line toward his manhood. Oh, really, Gwen. Toward his cock, which was straight and large and far thicker than she had expected, and also . . . well, she supposed she had thought it would look like white marble. Her hand paused.
His breathing paused.
She cupped her hand around it and closed her fingers.
Soft, she thought with wonder. Soft but so hard, beneath. She bent to kiss it.
A hoarse oath came from him. He caught her beneath the arms and pulled her up. “Later,” he said breathlessly when she started to ask where she’d erred. A hard kiss silenced her. He rolled her onto her back and came on top of her. Oh, she thought, a silent and formless revelation that glittered through her like fireworks. He felt right atop her. He felt like he was hers. He was kissing her now with intention, with an enthusiasm so fierce and focused that it carried an edge of desperation, and this, too, seemed like a miracle—that her touch seemed as necessary to him as his did to her.
His hunger was contagious. It kindled hers again as well. She wrapped her arms around him and lifted her legs. Desire built low in her belly, a pressure that wanted puncturing, release. He broke away to reach down her body again, to touch her quim, but the pleasure he’d given her that way now seemed like a delay. She took his hand and brought it to her mouth, looking into his eyes as she kissed his palm as he’d done to hers. Then she lifted her hips against him, angling so his cock brushed against the place he’d wanted to touch.
He turned his hand in hers, lifting hers to his lips and taking her index finger into his mouth. Below, the head of his cock found her entrance. As he sucked her finger into his mouth, he gave a slow, smooth push below. The force of his exhalation washed down her hand, her forearm.
He pushed again, harder this time, and she caught her breath. The premonition of pain was suddenly upon her.
The sound made him go still. He took a deep breath. Then another.
She pulled her hand free of his mouth. If he was struggling with notions of honor, she had no tolerance for it. She was wicked. She grabbed his arse, so smooth and hard, and dug in her nails as she lifted her hips again.
His hand speared through her hair and tightened. “Be still,” he said through his teeth.
“Don’t stop,” she whispered.
“God save you if you think I would,” he said hoarsely. “Just a . . . moment.”
She waited, breathing hard. A shudder moved through him. And then he pushed again
She bit her lip. No, this definitely would not be comfortable.
“Gwen,” he murmured. He kissed her, harshly, his fingers tightening in her hair to a shade short of painful, and pushed again.
She inhaled in startlement.
He was inside her.
It did not hurt so much after all.
His lips molded hers as he settled into a slow, rocking movement. She kissed him back, too astonished to do much more, too rattled by this bizarre sensation, his tongue inside her mouth and his, yes, his cock inside her down below. The soreness was subsiding. It felt very queer; her fingers twitched atop
his back like startled birds as new sensations registered, the slide of his abdomen across hers, the jab of his hip bones into her stomach. This was more complicated than what had come before; it was very athletic, for him. She had no idea what to do. Was she meant to move? Would he mind if she simply lay here?
He slid his hand up her arm, and her startled attention flew to him. “Gwen,” he said softly, and ran a rough thumb over her mouth, pushing inside. She sucked it obediently, and then watched, wide-eyed, when he put it down between them. When he touched the space where they joined, she gasped and felt herself contract.
Inside her, he pulsed.
Her mouth went dry. She swallowed with an effort and tightened her legs around his hips. She wanted to lick him, devour him, wrap herself so closely around him that no inch of his skin was spared. But she had no idea of how to do it. “I don’t . . . what should I do?”
His finger probed gently, stroking, causing her to gasp again. “There is no way to do this wrong,” he murmured, his voice like banked coals, dark and hot. “Everything about you is right.”
The words struck her dumb. So simple, they were. But such a statement . . .
She seized his hair and pulled his mouth down to hers, and he began to move again. This time, it was different. This time, she tried not to hear her doubts, and his mouth and his hands did not permit her to dwell on them. His palm at the small of her back guided her so she was moving with him, and she found a way to rub against him that stroked the pleasure higher, so suddenly they were both moaning as they moved, together, as if they were in one skin, the sweat between them no barrier; she licked a bead off his chin and he sucked her earlobe as his thrusts quickened.
The final pleasure took her gradually this time, stealing up in bits and pieces; she imagined herself as a well, being filled to the brim—a drop here, a bucketful there, slowly, pleasure mounting so slowly—and then, all at once, too much, overflowing, pure bliss. She clung to him as she trembled, then felt him move hard into her, again and again, until his own climax took him with a groan.
He pulled her on top of him as he rolled to his back, keeping her joined to him, as close as their skins would allow.
She lay listening to the diminishment of their breathing, as beneath her cheek, his heartbeat began to slow.
Gradually the silence began to assume overtones. Someone needed to say something. The thought made her tense. She could think of nothing to say. Love me, Alex, and I will never cling too tightly to you: it was the only thing she might say that was remotely close to honest. But it was still a lie.
In the end, it was he who filled the silence. He smoothed the hair away from her eyes, and then combed his fingers through her hair, an idle, contemplative gesture. “The Christmas you were eighteen,” he said. “Just before your debut. You and Richard spent the holidays at Caroline’s. I was about to make my first trip to Argentina. Richard spilled my plan to do that trek through the Andes. Do you remember?”
“Yes,” she said absently. His eyelashes distracted her. They were long enough to grace a woman’s face. His eyes were purely beautiful. “The twins were furious.”
“Mm. They asked if you had any advice for their mad, suicidal brother. Do you recall what you said?”
She reached out, very tentatively, to touch his lashes. He did not flinch. He watched her, unblinking, as she ran the lightest finger across them. This is trust, she thought. “I said that I could have no opinion on such matters, as I was afraid of heights and knew nothing of mountains. And you made some irritating reply, of course—That is why ladies don’t climb mountains, or some such masculine nonsense.”
The lines bracketing his mouth creased in a smile. “Actually, your answer was slightly different. You never said you feared heights. You said, ‘I would be afraid to take some misstep and fall off.’”
“Oh.” She put her thumb to his brow now, tracing the rough arch, simply for the sheer pleasure of witnessing her entitlement. She could touch him as she liked.
His voice lowered. “And I said, ‘That is why you don’t climb mountains, Gwen.’ But now I wonder. You aren’t afraid of heights.”
“No,” she said. “Not particularly.”
“Only missteps.”
She paused midstroke. Did he mean to imply this had been a misstep? “I was afraid,” she said carefully. “For a very long time. But no longer.”
“So was I,” he said, and lifted her chin and kissed her.
The next morning, she woke twined around him, her face tucked into his shoulder, her leg between his, her arms wrapped around his torso. The hour was early; the ghostly glow of dawn barely lit the room. Alex was sleeping soundlessly, one arm thrown over his head, the other wrapped around her waist.
Disbelief moved through her, sweet as a strain of music. Her eyes fluttered shut, and she fell back asleep wondering how much she dared to dream.
When her eyes opened again, she found him sitting cross-legged beside her, fully dressed, his head bent over the maps she’d purloined from Barrington’s desk. His expression looked dark in thought.
Trepidation roused her to full alertness. “Alex,” she whispered, and he lifted his chin to meet her eyes, and smiled.
That smile was like the sunrise for her. She smiled back at him. Stubble darkened his angular jaw, and his brown hair was rumpled. She tentatively reached up to brush a stray lock from his forehead. Fully a wicked woman now, with license to do such shocking and unspeakable things as to lie around with a man not one’s husband, and handle his overlong hair with a tenderness too spiced by desire to be anything bordering on virtue.
“Good morning,” he said. He leaned forward to kiss her ear. His tongue curled around her lobe as he withdrew, sending a shiver through her. “Coffee?” he asked, and waved toward a small clay pot on the nearby table. “Madame Gauthier just delivered it.”
“No,” she said, and pushed herself up into a sitting position. The maps niggled at her.
He followed her look. “These seemed to alarm you last night. I can’t make heads or tails of them.”
“Oh?” She picked them up. She had not given them a long look the night before, but as she flipped through them now, her suspicions clarified. “They’re survey maps.”
“Yes,” he said. “I gathered that much. But why did you find them significant?”
She cleared her throat and selected two particular sheets. “This,” she said, lying the sheets out side by side.
He moved closer, his shoulder brushing hers. “Explain to me what I’m looking at. A map of some kind. Topographical?”
The proximity, the casual way he reached out to stroke the back of her neck, made her dizzy. She willed herself to focus. The map consisted of shaded lines and polymorphous shapes, colored variously to signify different qualities of land. “Yes,” she said, “it’s the typical surveyor’s map, the sort drawn up when assessing the value of a property, or proposing to alter it. They come in very useful when designing a parkland. You’ve got various pieces of information here: elevation, soil composition, water tables . . .” She pulled a desperate face. “Drainage and so on. Above all, drainage! After the first redesign of the gardens at Heaton Dale, the pond started draining into the Grecian folly. Put quite a damper on the classical feel. Athens as swampland.”
He laughed. “But there’s something amiss with these maps?”
“Not with the maps per se,” she said. “Only . . .” She spread out the maps in pairs, keeping aside the widowed seventh. “Do you see?”
He considered them row by row. “Only three properties here, with copies of each.”
“Yes. The same topography,” she said. “The same surveyor, as well—you see the name at the bottom, one Mr. Hopkins. But you see how certain of the shadings are different?”
His eyes narrowed. “Very good catch,” he said softly.
She smiled. “The swampland gave me a powerful motive to learn to read these things. Certainly I no longer trusted the contractors so blindly! At any rate,
one of these is false. Only I don’t know the key for the shadings, so I can’t guess which element has been falsified.”
An unpleasant smile twisted his lips. “I can,” he said. “Soil composition, you say? Would that comprise information on mineral deposits?”
“Of course,” she said. “Oh. You think—”
“I think land without significant mineral assets would sell more cheaply.” He paused. “Heverley End, for instance, sits on some very rich copper and tin deposits. One would think that Gerry would know that, but then, perhaps that’s why he’s so damned stubborn in his refusal to discuss the sale. If he were given altered survey data that obscured the mineral wealth . . . and he believed it . . . then the price of the estate would drop significantly.” His smile faded. “Still doesn’t explain why he sold it in the first place, of course.”
“Well.” She hesitated. “Heaven knows men do strange things. None of us are perfect.”
“Oh, Gerry offers ample evidence of imperfection. But not in matters like this.” He lifted her hair away from her neck, idly toying with a strand as he gazed past her toward some invisible thought. “Death before dishonorable profit,” he said lightly.
There was some curious emphasis in his tone, which all at once she divined. Gerry would not stoop to profit. That was Alex’s role.
“Oh, dear,” she said sardonically. “However will you play the black sheep now that Lord Weston is in on the game?”
He flashed her an impish grin and rose off the bed. “My point exactly. But let’s put aside such philosophical debates until we’re safely out of Nice. Barrington will be expecting us to head east for Marseilles, so I propose we go instead to Lake Como.”
Wicked Becomes You Page 25
