“This is where you find your pleasure,” he signed with the hand that wasn’t busy.
She was having a hard time finding breath, let alone words as he circled and circled and circled in maddening consistency that had her just at the edge, but not quite over it.
“Yes,” she gasped. “Oh, yes. When you touch me there, when you grind yourself against it while we make love…some men even…”
She trailed off and a hot blush filled her cheeks. God’s teeth, it was difficult expressing these things. A lady wasn’t meant to do so—she’d been taught that all her life.
“What?” he signed, his movements jerky.
“Put their mouth against it,” she gasped as she gripped the edge of the tub with both hands.
His eyes went wide at that suggestion, and he slowly licked his lips. “I want to do that,” he signed.
She nodded, though she might have agreed to anything he suggested at present, her pleasure was so close to the edge. “Later,” she groaned. “Right now I want to—”
She didn’t get to finish. His slow, steady ministrations reached their peak in that moment. She jolted in pleasure, grinding against his fingers as wave after wave of her orgasm rocked her. She dipped her head back, crying out in the quiet of the room, not caring that water was sloshing from the tub as she ground against his fingers.
She was just coming down from the ultimate high of pleasure when he rose up and climbed over the tub edge. She opened her legs wider, creating a narrow space that he filled as he speared her trembling sheath in one heavy thrust. She lifted against him, waves crashing over them as his mouth found hers.
During her marriage, she had sometimes found herself fantasizing during sex. Picturing this man, of course, doing these things to her. It had helped her find her pleasure in the space of her marital bed.
But now Ewan was here. It was his big body rolling over her, his mouth dragging to her damp throat, his cock filling her, his hips swiveling against her to grind against her clitoris and set her on fire all over again. There was no need for fantasy anymore.
She wrapped her arms around him and surrendered to sensation instead. His weight against her, his lips tracing her shoulder, the tiny nip of his teeth against her flesh, his hands cradling her back. Every finger clenched against her skin, lifting her closer, as if they could merge as one entity. The water was still hot against her skin and he was hot against her skin. The boundaries between them blurred and then faded, and all they were was moving energy, seeking to make something beautiful.
The second orgasm hit her harder than the first and she rocked against him, her fingers digging into his wet flesh as she flew and flew into the oblivion of release. She only came down when he withdrew with a heavy sigh and his face strained with his own release.
She pulled him in, lifting to kiss him once more. She was shocked by the intensity of their connection, driven to never let it or him go. And knowing that in the end he might not allow her to keep him.
Ewan wrapped his arms around Charlotte, drawing her to lie back against his chest. After everything, somehow they’d managed to actually get clean in the tub, and now her wet hair curled around his chest and arms. He liked it that way.
“Thank you for your help. It was cold, hard work,” he signed.
She turned over so that her breasts flattened against his stomach and she rested her head on his chest as she smiled up at him. “I told you already, I was happy to do so. You have wonderful people on your estate, Ewan.”
He nodded as he lifted his hands away from her to sign, “The best.”
“And they have a great deal of respect for you,” she said slowly—carefully, he thought. Like she wasn’t certain of his response.
Not that he could blame her. Respect was a tender topic for him, thanks to the complications of both his past and the way others saw him due to his mutism.
“I feel their respect,” he signed each word in his response just as carefully. Not because he didn’t trust Charlotte’s response, but because he wanted to measure his own. “Here I am…home. It isn’t like in London when I’m with…others.”
She lifted her fingers up to trace his jaw gently. “Like me?” she whispered.
He shook his head. “I’ve always been comfortable with you. You would allow for nothing less.”
Her eyes crinkled with a hint of laughter, but he saw something deeper in her stare. Something he had always feared and shied away from when it came to her. Charlotte wanted to say more. She wanted to push. It was her nature.
“Charlotte,” he signed, interrupting whatever was on the tip of her tongue. “I want you. That is obvious. I’ve always wanted you, for as long as I can recall having that notion of a man and woman together.”
She nodded. “But?” she pressed.
“But you…you don’t understand the kind of future you would have with a man like me,” he finished.
She sat up fully, an awkward motion in the tight tub. Her eyes were snapping as she said, “You think I don’t? A life with a man like you—you mean a man I adore beyond reason? A man I count as my friend, a man who is the best lover I’ve ever had? That life? I know exactly what that life would be.”
He pursed his lips. Charlotte always wanted to pretend the damaged parts of him didn’t exist. That if she joined her life to his, it would somehow be a life free of the parts of him that were broken, missing.
He pushed to his feet and climbed out of the tub. As he wrapped a fluffy towel around his waist, with one hand, he signed, “No, you don’t! Damn it, Charlotte, you don’t know what my life is like.”
“Then tell me,” she insisted as she, too, rose from the water.
He was almost distracted by the rivulets of water cascading down her perfect flesh, but he pushed away the raw, animal desires she inspired and focused on what he had to express to her. Now.
“You don’t know what it’s like to have people talk about you when you’re standing right there, talk around you like they do to me,” he signed, aware that his hands were shaking as he did so and that he fumbled to find the signs for a letter or a word. “You don’t know what it’s like to have them ask if you are stupid as well as mute. Or just assume that you are touched because you cannot speak. Or scream at you when they talk because they think you can’t hear.”
Charlotte said nothing, but he saw her bottom lip tremble as she let him go on. And he did go on. Because he had to. Because he couldn’t stop. Because the words flew from his fingers with an urgency he couldn’t define or deny anymore.
And he could tell himself he signed these things to protect her, but in truth it was because he could no longer hold them in. Not with her.
“You don’t know what it’s like to need a pad of paper and a charcoal pencil in your pocket at all times,” he signed. “Or what kind of panic can rise up in you if, God forbid, that pad and pencil are lost or damaged. You don’t know what it’s like to have your father abandon you because you’re impaired and by your existence you are a slight on his very honor. Or what it’s like to find out, upon his death, that the same father put all kinds of barriers in place to make you look incapable of taking his title. To have to fight your own brothers and your mother for that inheritance while they spit on you every time they see you and call you an animal.”
He lowered his hands and turned away. His heart was pounding, for he’d never expressed any of those things all at once to one person before. A few friends knew things here and there, his uncle had witnessed a great deal, but no one knew the whole of it. The whole of him.
But now Charlotte did.
“Ewan, please look at me.”
Her soft voice was a siren song. He was a sailor steering toward the rocks. But that didn’t stop him from doing just as she asked. When he looked at her, she had climbed from the tub. Her damp blonde locks were now around her shoulders, her body wrapped only in a towel, her dark green eyes bright with unshed tears and emotions, he couldn’t turn a
way.
He didn’t even want to, despite knowing what was best.
She was quiet, calm, as she always was. “I’m sorry,” she said.
“It’s not your fault,” he signed, dropping his gaze.
She moved toward him a step, but stopped short of him. “Not for what happened, though I’m certainly sorry for that, as well. What I meant is that I’m sorry I said I knew your life. I don’t. When you say those things, I can’t imagine the pain that you must feel. The things you’ve endured are not something to be taken lightly. But—”
He moved on her now and reached out two fingers to press them to her full lips. “Please,” he signed. “The rain has begun to let up, the water will recede and the bridge maintained its integrity, so it may be only a day or two before the others come. We have very little time for this. Let it be this until it can’t be anymore. That is all I have to give.”
She pursed her lips and pressed a kiss to his fingers before he let them drop away so she could speak. He saw the pain on her face, he saw it in her eyes, and knowing he’d put it there…again…broke his heart.
But her voice was strong as she said, “Very well, Ewan. Just this. If this is all I can have, I won’t turn away from it.”
Chapter Seven
Ewan knew he should feel relief that Charlotte was acquiescing to his request. If she didn’t expect more, she wouldn’t be hurt when this was over. But that wasn’t what he felt. Instead, he couldn’t deny the disappointment that gripped him. He had to turn her away from the future he could see glittering in her stare. But once she accepted that, he knew from bitter experience that she would find someone else to give her a different future. She would marry again and then she would be lost to him forever.
This was all he had. And he so desperately wanted to make it good for them both.
He reached out and tucked a finger into the front of her towel, then tugged so that the fabric fell away and left her naked. She reached for him, lifting her mouth to his. He took it, driving his tongue between her lips, tasting her pain and her desire as they merged into one emotion that felt too powerful to deny.
With a groan, he swept his arms beneath her knees and carried her to the bed. As he settled her back against the pillows and took a place beside her, he looked her body up and down. He was going to memorize every inch of her in the time they had left. When memory was all he had left, he’d be glad he’d done it.
She kissed him again and her legs parted ever so slightly. When he pulled away, he looked down her body. In the tub, she’d spoken of a man putting his mouth on a woman. It was all Ewan had thought about since she’d said it. To taste Charlotte so intimately…
He wanted to know her flavor too, for reference in his future fantasies. He drew his mouth down her body, tasting the sweet, clean essence of her freshly washed skin. He swirled his tongue around one puckered nipple, and she arched beneath him.
He looked up her body at the ecstasy on her face and smiled. Oh yes, he wanted to know all her flavors. He licked, mimicking the way she liked to be touched by his fingers. It was so easy to learn her pleasure, because it was such an equal pleasure to him. When she groaned beneath him, her fingers coming into his wet hair, massaging his scalp and drawing him even closer, that was heaven. Pure heaven.
He suckled harder and she panted beneath him, her legs shaking wildly. His cock was already rock hard again, throbbing in time to the pulsing of his tongue around her flesh. But he ignored it. Ignored the part of him that told him to push her legs open, to plunder and take and claim and mark.
Right now he just wanted to pleasure. To learn. There would be plenty of time for the other. He pulled away from her nipple with a pop as her wet flesh left his lips. Slowly, he nibbled a trail to the opposite breast, tracing the curve of her with his mouth and then taking her nipple deep inside to swirl his tongue around and around.
She was lifting her hips now in time to his mouth and he let his hands drift lower as he continued to pleasure her breasts. He reveled in the smooth softness of her skin across her ribcage, the swell of her hip. His nails lightly abraded there and she made a cry of pleasure.
He smiled against her skin and repeated the action as she trembled beneath him. Her responsiveness drove his own and the ricochet of her pleasure hit him in his entire being.
He wanted to touch her intimately. He drew his fingers across her hip, down her thigh, and she opened to him with a shivering sigh. He continued to lick and suck her nipple as he parted her folds and found her entrance slick and ready. Slowly, he smoothed his fingers across her, testing the way her hips jolted when he dipped the tips into her sheath, or the way she shuddered when he grazed her clitoris.
He broke his mouth from her breasts as he teased her with his fingers and let his tongue continue down her body. He licked her, making her body jolt against his hand as he moved his mouth on the same path his hand had taken.
Finally, he settled between her legs, pushing them open wider as he looked at the sweet heaven of her wet sex. She glistened in the firelight, and he could scent her arousal, earthy and sweet. No wonder men did this. He hadn’t even begun yet and his mouth watered.
“Open me,” she murmured above him.
He glanced up to see her watching. Her face was lined with tension and flush with desire. He frowned and shook his head.
“Your way, is it?” she said with a laugh, reading his expression perfectly. “Very well, but know that you are likely going to kill me from waiting.”
He smiled as he returned his attention to her sex. He opened her wider, examining the flesh he revealed. Slowly, he leaned in and slid his tongue across her.
She was clean from her bath, slick from arousal. She cried out his name as he repeated the action, licking her from top to bottom in one swift swipe. Her flavor burst on his tongue, sweetness that was nothing he’d ever known. He dove into the act, stroking her with his tongue over and over as she writhed above him. He wanted to be lost in her, but fought to remain aware. To give her pleasure, he needed to mark every single reaction, to understand what made her moan and arch.
And he found it, after a long while of exploring every inch of her sheath. He found that nub of her clitoris and every time he sucked it, she let out a cry. He began to focus there, swirling his tongue around her, pushing hard with the flat of it, sucking it gently. Her legs began to shake and hands fisted in his hair as she lifted into him.
He felt the flutter of her orgasm just a fraction of a moment before she cried out, and licked her through it, never ceasing even as she thrashed and jolted and called out his name. Only when she collapsed back on the pillows, her glazed gaze unfocused, did he crawl up the length of her body.
She tugged him to her, crushing her mouth to his and grunting at the flavor of herself on his lips. She opened wider and he needed no further invitation. He sank into the wetness of her sex, shuddering as she gripped every inch of him. For a moment, he sat still that way, kissing her as her still-fluttering inner muscles massaged him lightly.
But it was too much and he could no longer hold back. He flexed his hips, rolling deep inside of her before he withdrew and repeated the action. She lifted beneath him, her breath short, her face twisting in pleasure all over again.
Their eyes were locked as he took her, and the intimacy revealed so much of her. He saw how deeply she cared for him, how much she wanted this to never end. He felt the same in himself, even if he knew it couldn’t be. That made these moments together even more powerful, more special. They couldn’t last and so he had to savor them.
He drove harder, sensation rushing up his cock, tightening his balls. He saw her inching toward release, too. He wanted to take her there, he wanted to give her that while their bodies were joined. He circled his hips and she gasped, her legs tightened around him, and she whispered, “Ewan, Ewan, I—”
He dropped his mouth to hers and her words were lost against his lips, as were her cries of release. Her body milked him
and he pounded harder and harder until his balls tightened and his vision blurred. Only then did he withdraw and pump his seed away from her.
He collapsed down on the bed beside her, gathering her against his naked chest. Her arms came around him and she burrowed her head against his shoulder. They lay like that for what felt like an eternity.
And Ewan could think of only one thing. He had silenced Charlotte a moment before because he knew her. He knew what she was going to say was that she loved him.
And he couldn’t let her say it. He didn’t want her to feel it. It could lead to nothing except pain and heartbreak for them both. Things had already changed between them, he couldn’t allow them to change even more.
Somehow he had to distance himself from her. But not in this moment. Not right now.
Charlotte walked the perimeter of Ewan’s library, staring up at all the books with a smile. How anyone could ever assume he was anything but brilliant was impossible for her to understand. There were well-read tomes on his shelves on every possible subject, from science to astronomy to current novels of the day. And she knew he’d read them all. They’d spent many an hour discussing books in the years they’d known each other.
Just one more way they connected to each other.
“It was a wonderful supper,” she said, turning toward him.
He was standing at the sideboard, pouring them drinks, and he lifted his gaze with a smile and a nod.
“Don’t tell my staff, but I think you might just have the best cook in England. Perhaps in the entire empire.”
He handed over her sherry and signed, “I agree, but we shall keep it between ourselves or the entire world will know and someone will steal her away from me.”
The Silent Duke Page 7
