The time for teasing games was over.
She presented her back and stood trembling as Ashcroft unlaced her. Then with shaking hands, she ripped the red gown off and pitched it unheeded into the corner. Beneath she only wore a shift. Undergarments seemed a coy lie.
Within seconds, she stood bare. The heavy air brushed her like heated satin. She’d never presented herself so shamelessly to a man. Although Lord Ashcroft had seen her before, it felt different when she displayed herself like a courtesan.
His eyes fixed unwaveringly upon her. She bore his intense regard for a few seconds before shielding her mound with unsteady hands.
“No,” he said softly, his gaze focusing there. Heat spread over her skin as if he touched her.
After a tremulous hesitation, she obeyed.
“Beautiful.” Ashcroft’s expression was sharp with yearning. He held his hand out.
A night bird called in the garden outside, and the spell shattered. God help her, she ran to Ashcroft as if more existed between them than betrayal. She leaned down toward him as if he held her heart in his keeping.
He surged up and grabbed her. The room became a dizzying whirl as he dragged her under him. She felt the crisp sheets against her naked back, then the hot pressure of his weight.
The sweet familiarity of his body on hers blasted her like honey lightning. New lovers shouldn’t fit perfectly with the merest touch. Her body molded to his in a harmony purer than any music. She arched, rubbing her belly against his pulsing hardness.
He hadn’t boasted about being ready. Such a wonderfully virile man was the Earl of Ashcroft.
He kissed her on the mouth, where his essence lingered. While tongues still dueled and teased, he lifted one of her legs. He hooked it over his arm, opening her wide.
Delicious tension filled her as she waited for his possession. Instead, he kissed an erratic, spine-tingling path downward. She was so lost in the mists of pleasure, he’d reached her navel before she guessed his intentions.
She tensed. “Ashcroft…”
“You promised to let me torture you.”
She had. She just hadn’t considered how he’d interpret that teasing offer. “But…”
He looked up, and his green eyes were so deep, she thought she saw into his soul. “Please, Diana.”
Ashcroft knew Diana didn’t want his mouth between her legs. From the beginning, the idea had frightened her.
Why was he so eager to push her into this intimacy?
Perhaps because if she let him do this, she ceded herself in a way she never had before. Perhaps because if this barrier against him dropped, others would.
Perhaps because he wanted her in every way a man could want a woman.
Although pleading didn’t come easily, he spoke again. “Please, Diana.”
He ached to taste her. When she’d taken him in her mouth, she’d shown him the bright light of heaven. He burned to return the favor. He burned to express his gratitude in the purest way he could.
“I can’t imagine why you want this,” she said in a choked voice.
Her expression was troubled, but her lips were dark red with his kisses and her cheeks flushed with desire. A woman who looked like that shouldn’t shy from relishing the full ration of delight.
“Because you’re beautiful everywhere,” he said softly, placing a kiss on the top of each thigh and feeling her quiver in response. She was so sensitive, he’d take her to paradise if only she’d let him. “Let me prove that.”
“It’s…wicked.”
His laugh emerged as a purr. “That sounds incongruous coming from a woman who just drained me to the lees.”
He watched the sequence of emotions cross her face. Shame, which he loathed to witness. Then more to his liking, recollected pleasure. Then, finally, a stoic acceptance.
“Yes,” she said on a thread of breath.
He placed a kiss on her belly, feeling her trembling. “You sound like a Christian facing the lions.”
A spark of spirit revived. “Can you blame me? You’re going to eat me.”
“Oh, I am indeed.”
He knew he gloated. But her surrender, even if not wholehearted, set him ablaze with excitement. He placed another kiss just above the feathery dark blond curls.
She studied him as if unsure whether he indeed prepared to rend her limb from limb like a lion. Foolish girl. He meant her to come apart, but never so drastically.
He still held her leg over his arm, opening her to his gaze. For a long time, he stared at the succulent pink folds. He drew deep of her scent. He felt more than lust, although lust was certainly part of what rushed through his veins. She reached into what he’d call his soul, if he hadn’t long ago lost his soul in dissipation.
Her breath emerged in jagged gasps, and the muscles under his hand were tight. He didn’t need to see her expression to know she was terrified.
In consideration of her uncertainty, he released her leg and slid back up her body to press a kiss that conveyed more tenderness than passion to her lips. Passion was present, but he reined it in, wanting to reassure. After a hesitation, she kissed him back. Predictably, passion broke its bonds, and the kiss turned fierce and hungry. By the time he drew away, he was breathing unsteadily, and his heart crashed like a drum.
For a shuddering moment, he buried his head in the smooth, damp skin at her shoulder. What was wrong with him? No other lover turned him so unrestrained and desperate.
“You won’t distract me,” he said unsteadily.
“You started it,” she said, equally breathlessly. Thank the Lord, she didn’t sound quite as frightened.
He raised his head and sent her a direct look. “And I’m going to finish it.”
He kissed a line across her collarbone and down to her breast. When he took her in his mouth, she cried out and raised her knees. He drew hard, and she trembled in immediate response.
How would she respond to a more intimate kiss? His blood seethed in expectation.
Before she could tense again, he kissed a path down the soft plain of her belly. She exhaled in a long, shuddering sigh.
Taking this as permission to continue, he nudged her legs farther apart and licked her long and luxuriously. Immediately, the heady taste of her, richer, stronger than the taste of her skin, filled his mouth.
Luscious.
She made a sound deep in her throat. Protest or encouragement? He didn’t know. But he couldn’t stop. He licked again, pausing to draw on the pulsing center. This time he had no trouble interpreting her moan as one of pleasure.
Elation filled him. He used his mouth and teeth and tongue, exploring the cleft, invading her, sipping the hot dew.
“Wicked…” she sighed.
Her hands curled in his hair, tugging in time with his depredations. She undulated under his mouth like the sea, and her sighs rose in a sweet crescendo. Tension filled her. Not the tension of fear. The tension of approaching climax.
He concentrated on bringing her to that ultimate peak. He loved the husky sounds she made, the writhing tension of her body. His senses closed in to contain nothing but him and this woman he pleasured.
Then, as he’d promised himself, she screamed with un-inhibited release. She convulsed under his mouth, pressing up into him so his tongue stabbed her, possessed her, stole her essence.
He didn’t stop. Even while she quivered, he built her response again. He wanted her world to change.
After this, she’d never forget him. His touch would be etched on her body forever.
Forever.
Because even as he sent her spiraling into ecstasy, he knew it was inevitable that she’d leave.
Diana stretched out in absolute exhaustion, her brain thick with languor. Her body throbbed with receding rapture. Ashcroft had battered her with bliss.
What a gift he’d given her. Her heart clenched hard as she struggled to lock him out. But the pleasure had cut too deep. The closeness had been too powerful.
God forgive her,
she could no longer deny he moved her emotions more profoundly than anyone she’d ever known.
Ashcroft sprawled over her, his head resting on her belly, his arms loose around her waist, his torso covering her legs. His face turned in profile, but she saw his satisfied smile. He looked remarkably innocent for a man who had just performed such a lascivious act. Unless one noted the sleek dampness of his lips. Damp with her, she recognized with a bone-deep thrill.
He must be proud of himself. He’d certainly been proven right. In spite of her misgivings, she’d adored what he’d done. Difficult to resent his triumph when he’d shown her such unearthly delight. Difficult to resent him at all when they lay like this, the memory of pleasure extending between them like a perfect gold chain.
Her fingers still curled in his thick dark hair. The air was hot and heavy. In the quiet moment, broken only by the soft susurration of their breathing, she felt a contentment she couldn’t remember before. Every muscle was as liquid as water. Her heart beat a slow, solemn song of happiness.
They might have slept. She didn’t know. She drifted in a world that held only her and Ashcroft and endless pleasure.
Awareness returned, to Ashcroft rising between her legs. When he angled her hips up, her belly cramped with excitement. She was wet and ready. Even so, the power of his thrust rocked her. She gasped sharply as she adjusted to the intrusion.
He raised himself on his elbows to study her face. His skin was tight against his bones, and his eyes were black with arousal. The perspiration on his skin shone in the candlelight.
“Am I hurting you?” The question emerged as a gruff exhalation.
“No,” she responded breathlessly. His unambiguous possession wasn’t precisely comfortable, but he didn’t hurt her.
She stroked his sweat-slicked back, feeling the subtle flexing of muscle. Her random exploration reached his buttocks. She squeezed that firm flesh. He shivered, and the movement tested her interior passage, scorched her with pleasure.
“Don’t stop,” she urged, tilting to take him deeper although surely he was as deep as he could go.
The sinews under her hands tautened, and he withdrew, then thrust again. Her hands opened and closed, keeping time with the delicious rhythm.
For a long time, she was lost in the wild music. His whispered praise, her incoherent murmurs of encouragement, the soft moans, the broken breathing, the slide of flesh on flesh, the creak of the bed.
Her climax built quickly. All night he’d primed her for this. If she were honest, she’d been primed since she’d last left his bed. The desperate but frustrating kisses in the museum had only fired her impatience. His mouth on her had been wonderful, astonishing. But this now was what she wanted from him. Him pounding into her body, making her his.
Pleasure seized her, spun her, flung her up into the sky and held her suspended in absolute delight. Like a greedy child at a birthday party, she snatched at the joy, luxuriating in the magic.
Too soon she returned to the real world. To a body quaking with satisfaction. To the warm, luxurious room. To the presence of her magnificent, ardent lover.
She opened her eyes and looked up at Ashcroft. “You didn’t…”
He shook his head, his sweat-dampened hair flopping over his forehead in utterly beguiling untidiness. “No.”
“Are you…”
“Yes.”
Strange they could communicate in these half sentences. She couldn’t remember being so in tune with another person. William certainly hadn’t understood her merest thought, for all he’d been a good, kind man.
Diana smiled and stretched, feeling Ashcroft’s hardness, reveling in the glide of his skin upon hers. Aftershocks rippled through her. She felt as though he’d combed every single nerve in her body out like silk ready for the weaver. She felt marvelous.
Still staring into her eyes, he began to move. This time it was different, as if he read her aching, hidden emotions and answered them with his body. He was slow, and at the end of every stroke, he paused, savoring how she felt closing tight around him.
In an agony of impatience, she waited for him to intensify the force, the passion. But he just moved in and out, like waves brushing a shore, ebbing, flowing forward again. Eternal. Repetitive. She felt as though she formed part of a huge, restless sea.
She shifted, changing his angle of penetration, but still he kept to that inhumanly constant motion. Still he stared into her face as if her features held the answers to every mystery.
Slowly, her urge to persuade him to a more urgent pace faded. The thrust and withdrawal lulled her into a suspended state of bliss.
For an interval beyond measuring, there were no seconds, no minutes. The deep, luxuriant seduction might have lasted for hours. She wouldn’t know. There was only his body claiming hers. Nothing else.
She was almost sorry when the pleasure inevitably altered, and her muscles tightened with the approach of climax.
She couldn’t delay the trembling onset. It moved toward her like a distant storm rumbling closer and closer, promising destruction, fury, a burst of new life.
Fierce sensation whipped her, like a violent wind shook the trees before a tempest.
Even as her response inexorably rose, she watched his face. The control finally cracked. His dark brows drew together as he struggled to hold back. Deep lines of strain ran from his nose to his mouth. His eyes glittered down at her although he must hardly see her, he was so far gone in arousal.
“Oh, Tarquin…” she whispered, reaching up and smoothing the tension from his face. His skin was hot and taut under her fingers. “Let go.”
Her touch broke some last thread of resistance. He sucked in a great shuddering breath, thrust ruthlessly, then on a huge groan, he poured himself into her.
Her climax crashed over her, with the force of thunder, the fire of lightning, the rush of a gale. It surpassed anything she’d felt earlier the way the sun outshone a candle.
For an endless time, she remained floating in the stars. There was no horizon. No limit. She tasted infinity. Ashcroft was with her. Somehow that was more important than the blinding pleasure streaking through her.
When Diana came back to earth, he slumped against her, pressing her into the mattress. The room was still and sweltering. Her arms twined around his back. She clutched him closer than a miser clutched his gold.
His heart pounded against her breast and his breath was a ragged symphony in her ears. She was too exhausted to move. Her body felt like it was made of straw. He remained joined to her, and her legs cradled him.
She sent up a futile prayer to a God who should have nothing to do with her.
Please, Lord, let this moment last forever.
Even as the silent plea trickled through her mind, she felt Ashcroft shift. He was so close, the tiniest movement registered. Automatically her arms tightened.
Don’t go. Not yet. Oh, no, not yet. I can’t bear it.
It was as if he heard the desperate cry. He buried his head in the crook of her shoulder and didn’t move for a long time.
She closed her eyes and let herself drift into a wonderful warm, sunlit space. Where there was no Lord Burnley. Where a rake could become a faithful lover. Where there was endless forgiveness and kindness and laughter.
Where there was no price to pay for sin.
After the pure perfection of what she’d just experienced, she risked a dream or two. She’d have few enough dreams to comfort her in the cold loneliness to come.
Gradually, the glory faded. Her body still glowed with satisfaction. Ashcroft still rested in her arms as though he had no wish to be anywhere else. But a prickling awareness of where she was chafed her contentment.
She became aware of a gentle patter of rain outside. She’d thought the storm totally contained within herself. It seemed the dry, unbearable summer at last offered respite.
The curtains didn’t move, and nothing in this extravagant room was in danger of getting wet. The fresh smell of rain on dusty
ground wafted in.
Ashcroft’s body was hot against hers, but even so, she felt a pleasant coolness in the air, a lessening of the oppressive humidity that had crushed her since she’d come to London.
Other details slowly impinged on her consciousness. The room smelled of sweat and sex and the sharp, smoky scent of guttering candles. She guessed it was late. She could have been in this extravagant cave of a room for an hour or a night.
This time when Ashcroft moved, she let him go.
He withdrew and rolled onto his back with a deep sigh. A loneliness bitter as aloes rushed through her. He lashed an arm around her and drew her against his side. Her heart began to beat again.
Oh, poor pathetic Diana, needing this man’s touch to keep you whole.
She shifted carefully, noting new aches. He’d used her well, and she was still unaccustomed to a lover of his dimensions. She was unaccustomed to a lover at all.
She closed her eyes and rested her head on his chest, listening to the steady beat of his heart. The intimacy was sweeter than sugar, for all that grim reality knocked relentlessly against the barred door of her awareness.
She waited for Ashcroft to speak, but he remained silent. What had just happened left her awed, astonished, moved, and with a heart tremulously, dangerously open.
She told herself she experienced these feelings in isolation. Only a fool would believe a man of Ashcroft’s experience found the sex nearly as world-altering. Perhaps all of his women caught that shining glimpse of eternity.
But when she lifted her head to stare into his face, he seemed as thunderstruck as she. He reached out to hold her chin steady so he could kiss her. An undemanding kiss that formed a fitting finale. His lips moved gently, and she read wonder and care in his salute.
“You called me Tarquin.” His voice was soft and warm like a fur cloak on a frosty day.
She crowded into his side to get as close as possible to that beautiful baritone. “Do you mind?”
It was odd how at that vivid, transforming moment, she’d spoken his Christian name. She certainly didn’t think of him as Tarquin. He was Ashcroft in her mind. From somewhere his given name had surged up, unstoppable, an expression of all she felt and couldn’t risk putting into words.
My Reckless Surrender Page 19
