Her shoulders were dusted with plenty of golden freckles for him to kiss. They faded more and more as his gaze moved down, however, until by the edge of her corset, her skin was pure white. Harry traced his fingers across her bare shoulders, over her collarbone, and down her arms. The texture of her was like warm silk, and he wanted to linger, but arousal was already overtaking him, and he knew he’d have to come back for more of this sweetness later. He had more clothes to get rid of first.
He undid the buttons at the back of her skirt, and the heavy, sodden wool fell to the floor around her ankles in a heavy whoosh. “Step out of it,” he told her, and she did, shoving it out from under her feet as he lifted his hands to the edge of her corset, finding the first hook amid the ruched tucks. He unfastened hooks one by one as he pressed kisses along her shoulder.
Strands of her hair tickled his cheek as he turned his head to kiss the base of her throat. Her pulse was hammering against his mouth. Only a few more buttons to go, he thought with relief as the corset fell away and he began to unfasten her combination. Soon he’d be touching nothing but her bare skin.
Emma, however, as she was wont to do nowadays, confounded him. She grasped his wrists and pulled his hands down, stopping him. He lifted his head and looked at her.
“This isn’t fair,” she told him. “I mean…” Her voice trailed away, and she frowned, looking down. “Don’t I—” She stopped again.
Harry had a pretty clear notion of what she’d been about to ask, but he wanted her to say it. “Don’t you what?” he prompted.
She fingered the sash. “Don’t I get to undress you, too?” she whispered.
“Do you want to?”
She nodded, staring at his chest. “Yes. Yes, I do.”
He spread his arms wide. “Go on, then. Tonight’s all about what you want.” He grinned. “I’ll teach you all the things I want some other time.”
Emma untied the sash, then grasped the facings of his dressing gown. She slid the heavy silk back from his shoulders and it fell behind him to the floor. She stepped back a little and stared at his chest, but after a few moments he couldn’t stand it. “Touch me, Emma,” he said hoarsely. “Touch me.”
She pressed her palms flat against his chest. “I’ve never seen a man’s body before,” she said and spread her hands over his pectorals. “Other than statues, I mean.”
Harry inhaled a sharp breath and tilted his head back as she began to explore him. She ran her hands over his chest and across his shoulders, down his arms and back up again, over his ribs and down his abdomen. Her fingertips caressed his ribs and she leaned in, pressing a kiss to his collarbone. She laughed softly, blowing warm breath against his skin. “You’re beautiful.”
Something hot and tight twisted in his chest, something that had nothing to do with the lust in his body. Something in the naive wonder of her voice that hit him deep down and lifted him way up and made him feel as if he were king of the earth.
She rose on her toes and kissed him, her mouth soft and lush against his, and when she touched his tongue with her own as he had taught her, the contact sent shudders of pleasure through his body. Because of her inexperience, he’d taken the lead the other times they’d kissed, but she was taking it now, and Harry found this combination of her innocence and seduction incredibly erotic. Too erotic.
When she slid her hands inside the waistband of his trousers for more explorations, he knew he’d allowed her to take the lead long enough. If he let her go on, this would be over far too soon. Quick, hot copulation had its own rewards, but he’d introduce her to that delight some other time. He had no intention of letting it happen now. More than he’d ever wanted anything in his life, he wanted Emma’s first time to be beautiful, as beautiful as he could make it.
“Enough,” he said and grasped her wrists. He drew her hands away.
“But you said I could do what I wanted.” She dropped back onto her heels, looking so vexed he wanted to laugh.
“Exactly.” He let go of her hands and knelt down, then he lifted her foot to slide off her shoe. “You wanted me to do all those things I told you about, remember? I’ve got a few of them yet to do. Not to mention several other delicious things I didn’t get around to telling you before. So, don’t argue.”
He tossed her shoe aside and removed the other one. Then he pulled off her garters and slid off her stockings, just as slowly as he’d promised her. She liked having the backs of her knees touched, he realized, for when he stroked her there, she stirred with a little moan and wobbled a bit on her feet. “Oh, Harry. Oh, my.”
“One of these days,” he murmured, “I’m going to kiss my way up the backs of your legs and over your bottom. But right now…” He paused and began to unfasten her last piece of clothing. “Right now I have something else in mind.”
Still on his knees, he unfastened the buttons of her combination and slid the garment off her shoulders, baring her breasts. She lifted her arms as if to cover herself, but he couldn’t let her do that. He let go of her combination, and the soft lawn fabric caught at the flare of her hips as he grasped her wrists. “I told you I want to see your breasts,” he reminded. “Let me see.”
“They are too small,” she whispered as he spread her arms wide.
They were utterly lovely. He’d known they would be.
“Small? God, Emma, they’re perfect. Small, yes, and round and sweet and white, with these gorgeous pink nipples—” His throat went dry, and he just couldn’t say more.
He let go of her wrists and reached up to touch her breasts. He caressed them, shaped them. He toyed with her pretty nipples, brushing his thumbs back and forth across them and rolling them between his fingers. She began to moan soft and low, and he could feel the quivers run through her body. He leaned in, cupping one breast in his palm as he opened his mouth over the other.
She cried out, and her knees gave way. He wrapped an arm around her hips and held her upright, his tongue licking her nipple. “Like that, do you?”
“Hum…h…hum…”
He laughed, nipping playfully at her breast. “Was that a yes?”
She nodded, making a strangled sound that was definitely affirmative. Her hands slid into his hair, pulling as if she could draw him closer than he already was. His arm tightened around her hips, and he suckled her, just as he’d told her he would.
Her fingers worked convulsively in his hair, and she began to whimper. Agitated, she stirred in his hold, her hips instinctively trying to move, but he kept his arm firmly around her, holding her against his body to keep her still, wanting to increase her tension.
“Harry,” she moaned softly. “Oh, oh, oh.”
He suckled her a moment longer, then he relented. Easing back, he yanked the combination down around her ankles. She stepped out of it, and he shoved it aside, then he grasped her hips in his hands and pushed her back toward the foot of the bed. “Grab the footboard behind you,” he ordered, and she did, her fingers fumbling, then curling around the brass.
Pressing slow, hot kisses to her stomach, he touched the damp brown curls at the apex of her thighs. She sucked in a deep, strangled gasp of shock, and pressed her thighs tight together. She shook her head violently in refusal, but there was no way he was going to let her get away with depriving them both of this. Even though Emma Dove was the guiltiest damned woman he’d ever met, and even though his body was on fire and his cock was aching, and even though he was shaking with the effort of holding back, there was no way in hell he was going to skip this part. “Emma, I have to do this. I have to touch you here.”
“Harry, even I don’t touch me here!” she wailed, making him laugh even as he felt his control slipping. “Well, except to bathe! Oh, don’t!”
She jerked as he blew soft, warm breath against her curls. “Let me do this. I want it, Emma. I want it badly. I want to touch you and kiss you here. Let me.”
“All right,” she whispered, so softly he almost missed it. Her legs parted a little, and he moved his hand
between her thighs.
It was worth it all, just to touch her here. It was like touching heaven, and he groaned with the sheer pleasure of it. She was so soft and so slick, and the scent of her was driving him wild. He stroked the crease of her sex with his knuckle, and her body began to move in instinctive response. When he touched her clitoris with his tongue, she let out a shocked cry. Letting go of the footing she smothered the sound with her hands.
Reaching up, he pulled her hands away from her mouth and curled them back around the footboard, holding his own over them, refusing to let her smother the sounds of what she was feeling. If he taught her nothing else, he was bloody well going to teach her to enjoy being pleasured without letting any of that stupid respectability she’d been stuffed with get in the way.
“Emma, Emma, let it happen,” he coaxed, his lips brushing her curls. “Just feel it and let it happen.”
He kissed her and licked her, and after a moment or two, she gave a little sigh as something in her seemed to relax. She began to move her hips, and he took his cue from her, pleasuring her at the pace her body demanded, faster and faster, until she was trembling all over and arching into him, until she was moving with frantic little jerks and soft, primitive cries were coming from her throat. Until she made that sweet, long wail of feminine ecstasy and her body collapsed.
He rose, catching her before she could sink to the floor, and she clung to him, panting, her breaths hot against his chest. He lifted her into his arms and carried her to the side of the bed, then laid her on the mattress, and began to pull off his shoes.
She stared up at him, wordless. No one had ever told her anything about the relations between men and women, but she thought perhaps now she knew the reason for their reticence. How could anyone explain? No words in the world could describe what Harry had just done. That building sweetness, layer upon layer, higher and higher, and then an explosion of pure bliss and all that hot, dark hunger within her was assuaged.
That wasn’t all there was to it, though, for Harry was watching her, his gaze hot and intense, pinning her to the mattress of his bed. He began to unbutton his trousers, and when he pulled them down, Emma lowered her gaze and stared in utter shock.
“Good Lord,” she breathed and began to understand in a vague sort of way what was going to happen next. She felt a hint of panic. “Harry?”
He tossed his trousers aside and the mattress dipped with his weight as he joined her on the bed. He opened the envelope he’d placed on his pillow earlier and pulled something out, then he shoved the red velvet packet aside, and his body came over hers. She felt the hard shape of what she had seen, felt it pushing between her legs, and she swallowed down another gulp of panic. “Harry?” she said again, feeling a sudden frantic need for reassurance.
He rested his weight on one arm, suspended above her, and she felt his hand move between her thighs, along with that hard, extended part of himself. A lock of his hair had fallen over his forehead, and his mouth was grave. He looked like a sort of dark archangel. She didn’t find that very reassuring.
He touched her where he had before, just a brief caress of his fingers within the folds of her most private place as he lowered himself onto her.
“Emma, listen to me.”
His voice sounded strange, strangled and harsh somehow, his breathing heavy, and her panic rose another notch. But then his free hand touched her face, and her panic receded. She turned her head and kissed his palm.
“It’s going to hurt, Emma.” As he spoke, his hips began moving slowly against hers and his breathing quickened even more. “There’s no way around that.”
As he moved, she could feel the hard part of him rubbing the place where he had kissed her moments before, and that delicious pleasure washed over her again at this strange, extraordinary new caress. She arched into him as she had done before, and the pleasure grew stronger, hotter. She moaned.
“Emma, I can’t wait,” he said in a hoarse whisper. “I can’t hold back any longer. I just can’t.” He shifted his body to rest his weight on his forearms, buried his face against the side of her neck, and flexed his hips against her. That hard part of him pressed deeper onto her. Into her.
She wriggled beneath him, not quite liking this. He made a rough sound deep in his throat and turned his head to capture her mouth with his. He kissed her hard, and without warning, he gave a powerful thrust of his hips against hers that brought that large, stiff, jutting part of him fully inside her body.
Even though he’d warned her, Emma was shocked by the pain when only moments before there had been such pleasure. She gave a high, thin cry against his mouth, her arms tightening around him, everything in her suspended by this frozen moment of violence.
Then he was kissing her—her hair, her throat, her cheek, her mouth. His breath was warm against her skin. “Emma, Emma, it’ll be all right,” he said, moving on her, pushing into her the same way she had arched against his mouth earlier. “I promise it will.”
The pain was already receding. “I’m all right, Harry,” she whispered, moving beneath him, trying to accustom herself to this very odd thing he was doing.
His movements were quickening, his thrusts against her stronger and deeper. He seemed to go into himself, almost as if he’d forgotten about her, his eyes closed and his lips parted. She watched his face, and it made her smile, for it was clear that she was pleasing him as he had pleased her. She pushed upward, and he groaned, his arms sliding beneath her as if to pull her closer, and she smiled again, liking this more now. The pain had eased to a sort of soreness deep inside, but it was nothing like before. She pushed again, matching the way he was thrusting into her as if they were dancing.
His breathing was harsh and ragged against her hair, his hips pressing hers into the mattress with quick, urgent force, and Emma began to feel it again, that wonderful thickening pleasure that he’d given her before, building, growing hotter, stronger.
Then, suddenly, shudders rocked him, and he let out a hoarse cry. He thrust against her one last time and went still, his body covering hers, his face buried against her neck.
She stroked him, the hard, smooth muscles of his back and the thick, silky strands of his hair. When he kissed her hair and murmured her name, she felt an overpowering wave of tenderness for him like nothing she’d ever felt in her life before.
She was a fallen woman now, she realized, but she felt no regret, no shame. Just an incredible, overpowering happiness that opened and blossomed inside her like a flower turning upward toward the sun. This was what she’d hoped for, coming here to night. It was the happiness of being alive, of feeling vibrant and beautiful. Yes, she was a fallen woman now. Emma began to laugh out loud. How wonderful.
Chapter 19
Romance is a giddy thing. It makes one want to laugh for no reason at all. To my mind, there is nothing wrong with that.
Mrs. Bartleby
The Social Gazette, 1893
“Emma?” Harry lifted his head, listening in amazement to the sound of her laughter, the last thing in the world he would have expected. As the waves of his orgasm had faded, reality had begun to intrude. Even with his body still on top of hers, he’d started to have apprehensions. Based on his only previous experience with a virgin, he’d expected tears, recriminations, at least regret. Her completely contrary reaction was quite a surprise. He raised himself on his elbows, looking into her flushed, glowing face. “Why are you laughing?”
“I don’t know. I just feel happy.”
She looked it, too, smiling up at him as if he’d just handed her heaven on a plate. Relief flooded through him, relief and an overwhelming satisfaction.
She laughed again. “You look like a pirate in some operetta,” she told him. “As if you’ve just taken the ship, plundered it, and enjoyed the spoils of your villainy.”
“How apt a description.” He grinned, liking the comparison, loving the fact that she had been the one to make it. “How very apt.”
He kissed her, then lif
ted his body.
“Oh!” she murmured, clearly startled as he slipped his penis free of her. As he rolled to his back, she sat up, and though he tried to remove the condom quickly, she caught a glimpse. “What is that?” she asked.
He wadded up the bit of vulcanized rubber in his hand, not thinking a used condom at all worth seeing, especially with a virgin’s blood on it. But he appreciated her curiosity, and he reached over the side of the bed, feeling around on the floor for the red velvet packet. He handed it to her.
She opened it, pulled out one of the flattened rubber devices, and stared at it. “What is it for?”
“It’s to prevent you from becoming pregnant. It’s called a condom.”
“Oh!” Then, with a dawning awareness, “Ohhh.”
Color flooded her face, and she put the condom back in the packet. She handed it to him and ducked her head, plucking at the counterpane beneath them, frowning to herself.
He tossed the envelope back on the floor. “Your aunt never told you this is how babies are made, did she?”
When Emma shook her head, he felt a spark of anger. “God, why can’t people just tell their children about these things?” he muttered, and fell back into the pillows to stare at the ceiling.
“Did your father tell you, then?” she asked. “Oh, but he must have done. On your wedding day.”
“Wait ’til my wedding day? God, no! My father took me aside and told me the facts of life when I was eleven years old. Just the basic scientific facts, unfortunately. I wish he’d told me more about women.”
“My aunt told me nothing at all. No doubt she felt such discussions far too indelicate. I suppose you think that’s silly.”
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