Pulling her close, he raised their hands to his mouth and pressed a kiss to the soft flesh above her thumb. Closing his eyes Adrian inhaled the scent of them together—hers the clean, pure scent of lemon, and his, the warmth of eastern spice. Together, it was an erotic, heady scent that went straight to his head.
He pressed another kiss to her hand, and watched the line of her throat move up and down as she swallowed. He trailed his fingers along that smooth skin and felt how fast her heart was beating for him.
“Come to me, Emmy.” he pulled her closer. “Come to my bed. It’s been waiting a long time for you.”
Her breath caught, and the sound wrecked havoc within him. Nodding, she took a tentative step closer to him. He swore he could hear Emmy’s heart beating from deep within her chest. He could smell her—lemon and feminine arousal and his cock stirred.
“Come,” he whispered. “Come to my bed where I can spoil you.”
This was not a dream or an illicit fantasy while she was making beds and dusting furniture. This was real. His hands truly were on her flesh. It was really his breathing she heard, his lips she felt kissing her cheek. His soft sheets and feathery mattress she felt beneath her.
He followed her down, his body pressing hers into the bed. She saw his hot gaze travel over her face, then lower, to fix on the bounding pulse in her neck. Leaning toward her, he inhaled once, softly, almost imperceptibly, then again, deeper. Then his lips were pressing against the quivering pulse that leapt with his touch.
“You smell so good to me, Amelia. So right.”
Closing her eyes, Amelia tilted her head further back, her lips parting just enough to allow the barest movement of air between them. He groaned and she felt the smooth tip of his finger trace her mouth. “Innocent, perfect lips.” he whispered darkly, stroking his thumb along her mouth. “I want to feel them sliding along my body. I want them hard and soft, savoring and hungry.”
She couldn’t think, her mind was a whirlwind of thoughts and emotions, as if she were drugged, disembodied. She was conscious of the moan that escaped her when he slanted his mouth against hers, encouraging her to open for him. He parted her lips and slid his tongue deep into her mouth. He groaned and his hand left her face to cup her breast. Hungrily he kissed her, his mouth slanting over hers, faster and faster. His tongue drove into her, and she could do nothing but reach for him and wrap her arms around his neck and hold on as he swept her away.
He kissed her for what seemed like forever, before he moved his mouth from hers and whispered, “I need to touch you.”
His big hand, with its long, elegant fingers slid along her waist, curving over her hip and skating over to her belly where he kneaded her until her womb ached. When he sat up, she whimpered and forced her hands to lay limp at her sides. She wanted to reach out to him, to beg him to come back to her. He smiled, as if he could read her thoughts and reached for her, tugging her up from the mattress. When she was kneeling before him, he took the hem of her worn chemise and pulled it up over her head, letting it fall from his fingers to the floor. He sat back and surveyed her with his hands and his eyes.
Strong fingers gripped her thighs, pulling them apart with the barest of pressure. His fingers trailed up the inner facings. “Beautiful, Emmy,” he said as he came around behind her. His palms swept up her thighs to her bottom. He gripped her in his palms, stroking and kneading as he kissed his way up her spine. With his tongue, he licked a path down her spine at the same time his finger smoothed between the crease of her bottom and stroked her, his fingertip circling her slowly, teasingly, until he rested the pad of his thumb against her and pressed.
“Adrian,” she pleaded.
“Say my name again, in that same breathless way.”
“Adrian,” she whimpered.
His hands came around to cup her breasts and toy with her nipples. The sensation of his hands at her front, and his lips on her lower back made her feel boneless. He was cherishing her as if she were a fragile figurine he was terrified of breaking.
“With other women, it was only ever sex for me, Amelia. But now it is so much more. It has become about us. You have made me see beauty where none existed before. You have made me yearn, when I only ever had a need. I yearn for you, Amelia. I yearn—need to be inside you—everywhere.”
“I want this, Adrian. I want you.”
“Do you?” he asked. She heard the bedspring creak. Felt the mattress dip as he shifted behind her. Then she felt the warmth of his palms on her outer thighs, it was followed the slow, steady glide of his wet tongue along her inner thigh. He stopped just short of her sex and she groaned in expectation.
“You accused me of playing Master and Servant with you. I swear, Amelia, I never did. But I would give anything to play that with you now.”
Her unbound hair spilled down her back. She looked over her shoulder, watched him trail his tongue up her thigh once more, then he licked her slick sex, tasting her. His eyes closed as he made love to her with his mouth, and unable to resist, Amelia reached out and ran her fingers through his hair.
“Which you do want to be, Amelia? Master or servant?”
She waited until he looked up at her. From this distance, his was a bit foggy without her spectacles, but she could still make out the desire in his eyes. “Servant,” she said, watching as his pupils seemed to widen.
“Dutiful, little servant,” he said, reaching for her hands. But she brushed his hands aside, turned and reached for his trousers. Opening them, she slid them along his hips and reached for his erection. Bending to him, she took him in her mouth, closing her eyes as she listened to his sounds of pleasure.
Gathering her long hair in his hands, Adrian lifted it up from her neck so he could watch her working his cock. He adored the way she played with him, sucking and pulling him into her mouth until he could barely stay balanced on his knees.
He pulled out, grasping his shaft, milking it, tracing the wet tip around her swollen lips. “I like to watch, you know,” he said darkly. “It’s a compulsion of mine. Will you indulge me, Emmy? Will you let me watch you sucking my cock?”
Her eyes flared and he grunted in satisfaction as she made a great show of sliding her tongue along him. The pointed tip of her tongue slashed across the opening of his cock, and she put inside, tasting a drop of him. He brushed the tip along her mouth, dominating her with her his hand along her neck. He was beyond aroused, and heightening his pleasure, he gripped himself, masturbating before her, as she sucked and pulled him deep in her mouth.
“That’s it,” he hissed, “take all of me in.” She worked him hard, gripping him, and the sounds her mouth was making on him drove him wild. “Will you swallow it?” he asked, feeling it rushing upon him. “Will you take me inside you?”
She did, and he literally saw stars.
“Emmy,” he said, falling back on the bed, “come to me.”
He didn’t wait for her to answer, but pulled her on top of him. She placed her hand, palm up against his and they stayed like that, palm to palm for long seconds before he entwined his fingers through hers. “I thought I could wait. I thought I could make this the most beautiful hour of your life. But I can’t, Emmy.”
Flipping her over onto her back, he held their entwined fingers above her head. Catching her gaze, he thrust once, deeply inside her, feeling her body stretch to accommodate him.
“Fuck,” he growled, watching himself enter her. Slowly he retreated, then thrust forward, repeating each stroke with slow determination, deepening every thrust. Her body met his, undulating beneath him. He thought it was the most amazing, most erotic thing he’d ever seen, watching himself making love to her.
Amelia had never felt this—this oneness of mind, body and spirit. As they looked into each other’s eyes, Adrian’s hand gripped hers tightly while his body slid into hers. Amelia knew, as her body took him in, that that she would never, ever, feel this connection with anyone else.
He looked so beautiful, so peaceful as he made slow
love to her. Tears began to fill her eyes, and she closed her eyes, not understanding why she had started to cry.
He kissed her, nipping at her lips until she raised her lashes and looked into his eyes which were now unguarded. A tear crept out, dangling on the edge of her lash. She blinked, letting it slide down her lashes till it splashed onto her cheek. He took it between his lips, kissing the tear away before he whispered, “This won’t be the only time for us, Amelia.”
How did he know? How could he have seen through to her heart to know the fear she clutched inside?
“It is just us here in this bed, Amelia. No master or servant. Emmy,” he growled, nipping her neck, “come here.”
Lifting himself off her, he brought her up to her knees until she straddled his thighs. His arms came tightly around her, pulling her close to him until there was no space between their bodies. As he brushed the hair from Amelia’s dampened cheek, Adrian paused and looked down at her. He’d never before been struck by the beauty of lovemaking—the graceful movement of a female body in motion beneath him. He’d never taken the time to savor every sound, to watch as lips parted on a silent moan, or a plea for more. He’d never studied how lashes glittered in the candlelight or fluttered open and closed.
He’d never felt his heart fill with emotion, or his soul come alive when eyes, glazed with passion, met and held his. He had never made love until he reached for Amelia’s hips and set her back from him, encouraging her to watch him enter her body. She watched, wide eyed, as his cock filled her, and her body took him in and loved him.
When he could no longer fight off the desire to spill himself, he pulled her to sit atop him, wrapping her thighs around his hips while he buried his lips in her hair. His hands squeezed her lush bottom, forcing her up and down, driving her to take all of him.
He’d never experienced love until she clasped his head to her breasts and clung to his hair, her hips moving instinctively as she made love to him.
“What?” he asked, laughing as she looked up from where she was kissing his belly. Licking her lips, she smiled sheepishly.
“I think I ate the entire box.”
Together they looked at the empty pink box, the ruffled crème wrappers were strewn about the bed clothes. The black ribbon that had been tied around the box was still wrapped around her wrist.
“Did you enjoy them?”
Her blush grew, but she did not look away from him. “I did. I have never had chocolate before. The butter cream ones were my favourite.”
“I enjoyed watching you eat them, every last one. Now, what of my other gift?”
“The book,” she said flatly.
“The book.”
“Would you read it to me?”
“No. I will teach you to read it, and then you can read it to me while we are in bed, and I am eating expensive French chocolates off your naked body.”
She laughed and rolled off him, her long red hair trailing across his chest and belly. He watched her, laughing and rolling about the wrinkled white sheets, and thought about how he had wanted this all along. This easy contentment. The peace that came with being nothing more than a man.
“I’ve changed my mind,” he announced. “Hand me the book.”
He watched her rise from his bed and fetch the book he had brought from her room. When she handed it to him, he reached for her wrist and brought her down to him.
“What’s this?” she asked, pulling out the white strip of canvas he had tucked between the pages. When she saw what it was, she looked up at him with glassy eyes.
“This is…is this…” she swallowed, unable to finish.
“It is you, standing before the angel that morning I first saw you at Highgate.”
“You painted this for me?”
When he nodded, she began to cry in earnest. She looked away, flustered that he was witnessing her in such a vulnerable state. She busied herself by opening the book, to the page where he’d tucked the scrap of canvas.
He stayed her hand. “I know this passage off by heart, Amelia.”
When she looked up at him with her watery eyes, free of her spectacles, he needed to touch her. Trailing the backs of his fingers along her cheek he recited the poem. “I love you not only for what you are, but for what I am when I am with you. I love you not only for what you have made of yourself, but for what you are making of me. I love you for the part of me that you bring out.” His voice was broken by the time he finished. “Elizabeth Barrett Browning might have written it, Amelia, but I mean every damn word of it.”
ISBN: 978-1-4268-1982-7
Improper Pleasure
Copyright © 2008 by Charlotte Featherstone
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