Her hand was steady as she reached up and pulled at one of the negligee’s ties. The knot came free. With a slowness that made the breath hitch in his throat, the material sagged. It slipped softly down the slope of one breast to snag on a pebbled nipple.
He stopped breathing altogether.
His attention followed her hand as it rose to the second tie. And gave a short tug.
The soft white nightgown slid down. And down. And down.
A heart-stopping wiggle, then one delicate step to the right.
She was naked beneath the nightdress.
He’d known that. The sheer material didn’t hide much. But knowing and seeing were two totally different things.
His eyes feasted on her. Her breasts were breathtakingly lavish. Firm, white, tipped with tight rosy nipples. His brief glimpse in the darkness three nights ago had only hinted at their perfection.
The curves and indents at waist and hip and thigh. The long slender legs, smooth and pale like the rest of her. The delicate ankles and slender feet.
She was Eve. She was Venus. She was Diana.
She was every dream that had disturbed his lonely nights made flesh.
She was more than any of these. She was Grace.
And soon she’d be his.
Soon? Now!
With shaking hands, he fumbled at the fastening of his trousers. He was all thumbs and the material fought him. He bent and tore his short boots off, grappling for control. His hands still refused to obey when he returned to his trousers.
“Jesus!” he swore softly. With sudden ruthlessness, he ripped the garment off, so he too stood naked.
Her gaze dropped to his erection then fell away, but not before he caught the astonishment in her eyes. Astonishment and apprehension. Hectic color bloomed in her cheeks and she bit her lip, a sure sign of nervousness. She was slightly built and he was a large man.
He couldn’t wait or he risked humiliating himself. But the reminder of her relative innocence meant his touch was gentle as he tipped her back onto the mattress.
She edged up on the sheet, leaving him room to kneel between her legs. As she opened herself, he caught her musky essence. Jasmine and woman. Richer and earthier than her daytime scent. He’d remember the intoxicating combination the rest of his life.
Slowly, she stroked up his arms then curled her fingers around his shoulders. He shifted forward, taking his weight on his hands.
She was rain in the desert. She was a banquet to a starving man. She was Grace.
Her breasts fascinated him. Carefully he touched the furled bud of one nipple.
She gave a low sigh of pleasure and stretched her back against the mattress. She liked this. He glanced his finger across the tight peak, listening to her breath catch.
He skimmed his hand across her belly, down her ribs, along her arms. She moved into each touch as though asking for more.
Did that mean she was ready?
All he had to guide him were his school friends’ smutty speculations. And they were no help at all. Not when he had a real woman in his arms for the first time. Not when the woman was Grace Paget.
He lowered his body against hers and kissed her. But kissing was no longer enough. She moved restlessly as his tongue tangled with hers. Her smooth bare skin slid hot and damp upon his. Her hips tilted in invitation.
He raised himself on both arms and looked down into her face. Her eyes were dark and heavy, almost black.
Was she ready? He didn’t know. If she stopped him now, he didn’t think he’d survive.
He shifted his hips forward and probed at her entrance. The hot, seeking head of his cock met slick moisture. His heart lurched into a hard, heavy rhythm and every muscle in his body clenched.
He pushed.
She was tight, so tight. Her flesh resisted the invasion.
He pushed again.
She gave a soft moan.
He stopped, still poised at her opening. The desperate lungfuls of air he sucked in left him lightheaded and gasping. Jesus, don’t let her stop him now. Not now.
“Are you all right, Grace?” he scraped out in a voice he didn’t recognize as his own.
She shifted so her wet cleft stroked his straining shaft. Bright lights exploded behind his eyes and he almost lost himself.
“You’re too big,” she said unsteadily. “This isn’t going to work.”
Through the blood thundering in his ears, he hardly heard her. He gritted his teeth and battled for control. “Hold on to me,” he almost snarled.
What if he hurt her? What if she changed her mind? It would kill him, but he’d have to stop.
Christ, not yet. Don’t steal this away from me yet.
He bent his head and closed his eyes, his chest heaving, his cock nudging at her.
“Try again, Matthew,” she whispered, digging her fingers into his shoulders to anchor herself.
He raised his head and looked at her. Her eyes flickered with uncertainty and she was shaking. So was he. Every sinew ached with impossible tension.
He tightened his hips and pushed.
Still she remained closed.
His jaw tensed and he pushed again, more powerfully this time. Her fingers clutched hard on his shoulders to the point of pain.
Her flush had faded. Instead, her face was set and pale and her skin stretched tight against the fragile bones. She closed her eyes in a wince of discomfort. In her distended neck, the tendons stood out like ridges.
Dimly, from the back of his mind, the voice of conscience told him a man of honor would leave her be.
Damn honor. Damn conscience.
He braced on one hand, using the other to angle himself better. He surged forward.
Resistance. Resistance.
Then suddenly, a marvelous yielding.
He slid into her with a long, shuddering exhalation.
She cried out at the intrusion. Then muscles that had relaxed to allow his incursion clenched hard around him. The pressure was delicious, like nothing he’d ever felt before.
For a long time, he rested in her glorious heat, luxuriating in her tight wet clasp on his throbbing cock.
Nothing could snatch this moment from him.
Grace was his at last.
The feeling was indescribable. She’d become part of him and he’d become part of her.
“I’m hurting you, Grace,” he said hoarsely. She panted with distress and he read tension in her face.
“No,” she muttered, although she gripped his shoulders as if she clung to a rockface and she’d tumble into a chasm if she let go.
He shifted to relieve the pressure on her, pulled out slightly. The searing friction nearly blew the top of his head off. She whimpered at the movement and arched up so the tips of her breasts brushed his chest. Experimentally, he rocked, working himself in again. Grace was sleek and wet. This time he slid into her more easily.
He flung his head back and withdrew, then went in harder. His world shrank to Grace and the scalding whirlpool of pleasure inside him. In a ferment of need, he began to plunge in and out. With every thrust, his frenzy built. He lost all sense of time and place. There was just Grace and his overwhelming hunger for her.
He slammed into the hot, mysterious depths. A dark whirlwind roared in his ears, made him deaf to everything but the furious pounding of his heart.
He withdrew on a shuddering groan then claimed her again. Heat. Darkness. Pressure. Paradise.
He picked up his rhythm, moving faster, more ruthlessly. The crescendo built and built. Finally it hit a dazzling summit. He could hold back no longer.
He jerked once, twice, and came.
White hot rapture seared him. The world turned molten with ecstasy. For an endless time, his body shuddered as he filled her with his seed.
Through all the thundering, shaking, scorching release, his heart drummed one word over and over.
Mine. Mine. Mine.
Chapter 15
Grace lay unresponsive beneath Matthew whil
e he pounded into her. A hot liquid sensation flooded her womb. Her hands slid off his damp back to lie loosely at her sides.
Frustration chafed at her. She was jittery and feverish, as though someone had flung her high into a lightning-filled sky, then abandoned her on the edge of the storm.
Matthew groaned again. He’d left her behind long ago. She couldn’t doubt his enjoyment but she shared none of it. Instead she felt pummeled and squashed. A muffled whimper escaped her, but nothing indicated he heard.
How much longer could this go on? Surely he must soon finish.
He seemed to shudder over her endlessly.
His weight and the force of his release jammed her deep into the mattress. His eyes were closed and lines of ferocious concentration marked his expression. The smell of his sweat was sharp in her nostrils.
He’d moved into a world that held only his own pleasure. He was unaware of her except as a receptacle for a lifetime of pent-up lust.
She winced as rarely used muscles between her legs protested the hard invasion. Hoping to spur him to end sooner, she lifted her knees.
The fault for this disaster lay squarely with her.
It wasn’t fair to blame Matthew. He’d tried to cling to honor. She was the one who had lured him on, even when she should have guessed this acrid disappointment waited.
She’d wanted more. When clearly no more was to be had.
Black bitterness filled her soul.
She’d given up so much for this.
For nothing.
What else had she expected? She was such a fool. She knew what the sexual act was like. She’d had nine years to get used to a man grunting over her. It wasn’t like anything new happened tonight.
What made everything worse were those fleeting moments when she’d wondered if there might be more.
When he’d kissed her neck and an electric thrill had sizzled right to her toes. When he’d touched her breast and a profane part of her had longed for him to take her in his mouth. Most of all, when he’d first moved inside her and she’d felt the approach of…something.
Something miraculous.
The blazing instant had crumbled to dust.
Then it was just Grace Paget on her back while a man thudded into her. Exactly like those infrequent occasions when Josiah had asserted his marital rights.
She closed her eyes and prayed that the act would soon be over. Just as she’d prayed when Josiah took her. But the unshed tears behind her eyelids were new.
Eventually, finally, Matthew finished. With another deep groan, he slumped onto her. He buried his face in her shoulder so his sweat-soaked hair brushed her ear, her cheek, her neck. He trembled with exhaustion and his chest heaved as he struggled for air.
The smells of sex and well-exercised male swirled around them. She knew instinctively that he’d poured everything he had into her. The evocative thought made her raise her hands to embrace him. Then disappointment jabbed like a needle again and she let her hands fall back.
He was heavy, although not unbearably so. She sank down into the bedding. She was hot and sticky and felt uncomfortably stretched where he was joined to her.
He was a much…bigger man than Josiah. Her first glimpse of his nakedness had set her nerves buzzing with apprehension. She couldn’t imagine that huge member fitting inside her.
His commanding size had heightened her excitement. Then.
Now she felt suffocated.
She desperately wanted dominion over her own body again. Briefly, she touched his shoulder. His damp skin was hot under her palm. “Matthew, I can’t breathe.”
Slowly, he raised his head. His honey eyes were sleepy and his expression made her think of a well-fed lion. A well-fed, very satisfied lion.
“Grace, you are a marvelous woman,” he said thickly.
The compliment didn’t please her, although she couldn’t have said why.
“Even marvelous women need air,” she said with asperity.
Oh, Grace, that was unworthy of you.
She watched his dazed fog of pleasure recede. Guilt lacerated her. She had no right to spoil this occasion for him. She hadn’t expected him to demonstrate great skill. She’d wanted to make love to Matthew Lansdowne, not some practiced rakehell who knew how to touch her body but had no interest in her soul. Well, she’d got what she wanted. He was a man. He’d done what men do. Clearly he’d liked it.
Good for him.
She smothered the sour thought. She’d set out to give him pleasure. His delight should offer recompense. Perhaps it would have, if dissatisfaction didn’t gnaw at her like a hungry dog on a bone.
He lifted himself on his elbows and studied her with what she’d dubbed his botanical look. She resented feeling like a scientific specimen. She resented that those clever eyes might look closely enough to discern the unhappy, inadequate soul she hid beneath her sniping.
“You’re angry,” he said neutrally.
“No, I’m not!” she snapped then wished she’d kept quiet as one black brow arched in disbelief.
“My mistake,” he said in that same even voice. It sliced at her taut nerves like one of his grafting knives.
“Please get off me,” she choked out. If she stayed under him much longer, she’d start crying. Then he’d comfort her and she’d feel even more like a peevish witch than she did now. A peevish witch and a failure as a woman. Self-hatred knotted her stomach.
He pulled free and rolled over to lie on his back. She took her first full breath in what felt like hours. Her throat was tight with tears she refused to shed. Gingerly, she sat up, aware of aches in places she’d forgotten.
Face it, Grace. The deed is done, however disappointing it was.
She’d irrevocably lost any right to call herself a virtuous woman. Her father’s dire predictions when she married Josiah had finally come true. She’d given herself to a man who wasn’t her husband. She was now a daughter of sin.
If only sin had been slightly more…sinful.
She glanced across at Matthew, expecting him to look annoyed or triumphant. But he stared at the ceiling and frowned as though he worked on a horticultural problem. She’d seen that expression when he tried to resurrect a rose that wasn’t shooting with the vigor he expected. The memory was an unwelcome reminder that she genuinely liked the Marquess of Sheene. She liked his courage, his forbearance, his kindness, his curiosity, his honesty.
And heaven help her, even after what had just happened, she liked how he looked.
Lying against the pillows with a thoughtful expression on his striking face, he was every woman’s dream. Her gaze traveled down his lean chest and his flat stomach to his member lying loose on his thigh, to the long, straight athlete’s legs.
He shifted his regard from the ceiling to her. His organ wasn’t quite as flaccid as it had been.
She blushed. She couldn’t pretend she didn’t admire his body and he returned her interest with interest of his own.
Then she recalled he wasn’t the only naked person in this room. If she wasn’t careful, he’d have her on her back again. Hurriedly, she scooped the crumpled nightdress from the floor and clutched it in front of her.
“I have to wash,” she said nervously as he hardened before her eyes.
How could he recover so quickly? Apparently vigorous young men were less easily exhausted than tired old ones like Josiah.
“Then wash, Grace.” Unbelievably he smiled, a slow curve of his lips. That sweet smile tugged at her, made her recall why she’d done this in the first place.
No!
This was what had got her into trouble last time.
Never again. Never, never again.
She wished she could say she walked to the screen with a queen’s composure. But she knew she skittered for cover like an antelope sighting the lion she’d compared him to earlier.
She snatched the ewer of warm water and poured some into a bowl. Her hands trembled so badly that she splashed the wooden floor under her bare feet.
/> Calm, Grace, calm.
She picked up a flannel and soaped it with unnecessary violence.
Why had she imagined sex with Matthew would be better than sex with Josiah? Just because she wanted Lord Sheene in a way she’d never wanted her husband. Just because he was young and handsome and when he’d kissed her, the pleasure made her think she’d die.
Kissing must be where pleasure stopped for a woman.
A thorough wash removed the traces of copulation from her skin. Nothing removed the leaden weight from her heart, or soothed the ocean of thwarted desire churning in her belly.
She drew the flannel between her legs. She was tender there, although he hadn’t hurt her. It was a long time since she’d taken a man into her body, and never a man so well endowed. Aches she’d never felt before lingered.
With a stifled sigh, she rinsed the soap off and threw the dirty water into the slops jar.
“Are you going to hide all night, Grace?” he asked softly. She hadn’t heard him move so she guessed he still lounged on the bed like a sultan awaiting his favorite houri.
He was right. She couldn’t skulk behind the dressing screen the rest of her life. She had to face him sometime. She just wished she had something more substantial than the cobweb-thin nightdress to wear.
“Grace? Have you drowned in the wash basin? Should I rush to your rescue?”
The lovely undercurrent of amusement in his question sent a traitorous rustle up her spine. She’d have thought her unenthusiastic response to his lovemaking would wound his masculine vanity. But he seemed in high good humor.
“No, I’m coming.” Her voice was muffled in the folds of the nightdress as she dragged it over her head.
He’d just been inside her. Modesty was out of place. Still she folded her arms protectively across her front as she emerged from behind the screen. Thankfully, for her peace of mind, he’d drawn the sheet up to his waist. He’d heaped the pillows high and he lay on his back with his hands linked behind his head. Against her will, her eyes focused on his naked chest, tracing the subtle play of muscle and bone under the smooth, lightly furred skin.
That couldn’t be desire stirring, could it? Not after tonight’s fiasco, surely. That would be impossible.
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