He frowned at that realization. Oh yes, there was need here in her touch. But beneath it, he felt her desperation.
“Slow,” he murmured, smoothing his hands up her back gently. “Go slow.”
She shook her head. “No,” she gasped as she tried to loosen his robe tie. Her hands were shaking so hard, she couldn’t manage it. “Not slow.”
He reached down and caught her hands, holding them steady as he stared at her. “Stop, Felicity. Stop.”
She was trembling, her head bent. “You don’t want me?”
“On the contrary,” he said, shifting so the hardness of his cock brushed her belly. “I think it’s evident how much I want you. But this is madness.”
She drew a long breath and looked up at him at last. Her face was oddly calm, but he wouldn’t have called it serene. She pulled her hands from his and reached out to cup him through the fabric of his robe.
“If it’s madness, I want to be mad.”
She stroked him and his knees went weak. His body screamed at him to stop arguing, stop worrying and just let this happen. But he looked at her and saw her fear, her anger, her brokenness.
And he couldn’t let her use him. Not like this.
“Felicity,” he whispered.
She stopped stroking and her eyes filled with tears. “Why won’t you just let me do this?” she asked.
He shook his head. “Because you’re doing it for the wrong reasons.”
“I want you,” she snapped, turning away from him. “Everyone else gets who they want, why can’t I have you? Just for a moment, just for tonight?”
He swallowed hard. Her words were sharp and pointed, angry. But they revealed some deeper truth about Felicity’s mind, about her motivations and he understood her at last. She was here tonight just trying to grab something she wanted, something just for her. In the midst of pain and betrayal and fear, she needed that.
Only she didn’t know how to get it. She certainly didn’t know how to take it without controlling it. Because she was too afraid to let go.
He touched her arm and slowly she looked at him. He cupped her cheeks gently and lowered his lips to hers. She relaxed against him, surrendering for a brief second before she stiffened and her hands began to move again.
He stopped kissing her and backed up. “Felicity, you’re not going to control me through my cock, though God knows I want you to.”
She blinked. “If you want me to, why won’t you let me?”
“Because I think you need something else.”
Her jaw set and she lifted her chin in the forever defiance he truly admired. Only now he saw it for what it was: a shield against anyone getting too close. A barrier between Felicity and happiness.
“What do you think I need, Asher? After so many years apart, give me your hypothesis on the subject.”
He ignored her sharp tone and reached up to trace her jawline with the back of his hand. She shivered at the touch, even as she tried to maintain some level of restraint.
“You think you need to control something. But I think what you really need is to lose control.”
Felicity began to shake at Asher’s words and found herself backing up, away from his warm touch, away from his tempting body and frightening suggestion.
“No,” she whispered. “No, I’ve had control taken before, I don’t want that.”
His brow wrinkled. “I’m not taking about having control taken, Felicity. I would never do that to you. I’m talking about trusting me enough to give it.”
She shut her eyes. Once upon a time, she would have given this man anything. She would have trusted him with her heart and her future and her soul. But he’d walked away from all of that, and now the very idea of bending to his will even in the slightest was too terrifying.
“I can’t,” she whispered, and blushed at how her voice broke.
He touched her cheek again and she opened her eyes to find he had moved on her and how he was right before her again. His expression was gentle, his touch hypnotic, and she swayed toward him.
“Can’t you?” he whispered as he ducked his head to kiss her again.
His mouth moved over hers with feather-light gentleness, just brushing back and forth until she opened and allowed him in. Only then did he taste her, fill her. Her knees went weak and she clutched at his arms for support. He offered it immediately, wrapping those strong arms around her and keeping her upright when she was no longer capable of doing so.
She surrendered to his kiss for a moment, a blissful moment, before her mind began to spin again. She jerked and reached down, working toward touching him. But he held her closer, keeping her from cupping him or stroking him.
He drew his lips away and whispered, “Let me.”
She shivered at that quiet, charged order. Let him. Let him touch her. Let him dictate what would happen between them. Let him touch every part of her. Let him in where he might see how weak she was beneath the veneer of fortitude.
Right now, she would risk it. Because when he touched her, she felt alive again.
“Yes,” she murmured, almost on a sob.
He smiled and then swept his arms beneath her legs and carried her to his bed. He laid her across the pillows and stepped back. As she watched, he untied his robe and slipped it off.
She caught her breath. He was naked beneath. Utterly, totally naked. And oh, so beautiful. He was hard and male and muscular, from his broad shoulders to his rippled chest and stomach, to his narrow hips and strong thighs. But the thing she noticed most was the thick cock that was hard and ready, curled against his stomach.
She’d hardly ever seen her husband fully naked. Erasmus had mostly just flipped her over, unbuttoned his trousers and taken her in three or four stokes. It was a duty. Sometimes a punishment. But never a pleasure.
This was something else. She found herself wanting to touch Asher, to feel him, to taste him. To imprint him on her body like a brand that permanently marked her as his, even if she wouldn’t be for long.
He smiled down at her and then reached out to touch the tie of her dressing gown. She watched his long, tan fingers unloop the silken fabric and finally part it, opening the robe in what felt like painful slow motion.
She blushed as he looked at her, her own naked body on display. It was too intense and she moved to cover herself. But he shook his head. “Don’t. Please. I’ve wanted to look at you like this for so long, I can hardly remember a time before. Please let me.”
There were those words again. Let me. Let him.
Her mind revolted, but her body was seduced, and she slowly relaxed and stared up at the ceiling as he looked at her. He eased down beside her on the bed, laying on his side as he continued to stare at her.
“Will you look at me?” he whispered.
She caught her breath. He was testing her. Testing that control he said she had to release. She slowly forced herself to meet his eyes.
“I want to touch you,” he said.
She nodded, a jerky movement that felt unnatural as she did it. But God, how she wanted him to touch her. In that moment, she would have given anything for it.
She expected him to cup her sex or a breast, but instead he placed his hand on her shoulder, delicately teasing her skin with his fingertips. She stiffened at the intimacy, the gentleness, and his hand stopped moving. He left it resting on her shoulder as she gasped for breath.
“In and out,” he whispered, and took a few deep breaths.
She followed his suggestion, falling into the rhythm he set until her heart slowed and she stopped shaking. He moved his hand again, tracing her shoulder, her collarbone. She watched his hand move across her body, tension coiling in her. He smiled and leaned in to kiss her.
She whimpered in pleasure, sinking into the kiss as his hypnotic fingers moved back and forth, lower and lower, and finally he brushed the pad of his thumb against her left nipple.
Vast currents of electric pleasure jolted through her unexpectedly at that gentle touch. There was
no pinch, no cruelty, just increasing need and warmth and pleasure. She arched as he dragged his hand to the opposite breast. Back and forth, slow and steady, never rushed, never hard, he seduced her into relaxing, seduced her mind into quiet, seduced her body to let go. When she did, the pleasure multiplied and she shut her eyes and did as he’d asked.
She let him.
Sensation took over her in waves, a flurry of warm fingers and then warm breath as he leaned over her, murmuring her name gently. His lips brushed one hard nipple, his tongue tracing the shape of it before he sucked.
She arched, gripping the coverlet as the tug of his mouth joined with the tug of her pleasure. He was drawing her toward an edge. She’d found it with her fingers before but never with the help of another person. It felt more intense as he suckled her breast, then switched to the opposite one and repeated his action. Like the fall would be harder, the flight higher.
She wanted it.
And he didn’t disappoint. She felt him smile against her skin as he dragged his mouth down her stomach, rubbing his whiskers against her exquisitely sensitive skin and eliciting a gasp from her lips. He teased his tongue along her flesh, his fingers curling into her hips, and then he was gone.
She opened her eyes to find him shifting to a spot between her legs. He placed a hand on each thigh and opened her. She gripped back against him, fighting it. He looked up at her, ceasing the push, and met her eyes.
“Let me,” he whispered.
She held her breath. He was inches from her sex. If she unclamped her thighs, he’d be looking right at her. No one had ever been so intimate with her. She had no idea what in the world he thought to do in such a position.
“Please,” he added.
Slowly she parted her legs, bending her knees to support herself. She watched, flame-cheeked, as he looked at her. But then he smiled and all her fear dissolved. He looked…wicked when he peered at her most private place. So very wicked and so very handsome and so very hers.
She opened wider and he smiled up at her again, his eyes bright with need and desire and promises of pleasure. Their gazes locked and he held there, even as he leaned in. Even as his warm breath steamed over her, even as he parted her lips and then stroked his tongue over her sex.
She gasped at the pleasure that heated, forbidden act created. She’d felt nothing like it before. He bent his head, repeating the action again and again as he gently rubbed his fingers across her entrance. His tongue swirled, tracing erotic patterns across her flesh even as he pressed one thick finger inside of her.
She jerked at the sensation, her eyes going wide as he pumped inside of her, slow and steady. His tongue didn’t slow, stroking over her, but pausing ever longer and longer on her clitoris. Finally, he only licked her there, sucking gently, tracing the sensitive nub of nerves, drawing her pleasure higher and higher until she bucked beneath him. She clawed at the sheets, at his shoulders, she arched against him and away from him. Her whole world was starbursts and fireworks and she never wanted it to stop.
Ultimately, the tremors subsided and Asher gently withdrew his finger and slid his mouth back up the apex of her body. He braced himself over her, kissing her deeply so she could taste her release on his tongue. She was ready for him to replace his finger, his mouth, with his cock, but to her surprise he didn’t. Instead, he retook his place on his side, his arms around her as he gently kissed her lips, her cheeks, her neck.
“That was amazing,” he whispered, his voice dark and rough in the air around them.
She nodded. “I’ve never felt anything like it. But…”
She trailed off, turning her face with a blush. He traced her jawline with his finger, turning her back toward him.
“What?” he asked.
She swallowed hard. Being so close to him made her feel exposed. But also more open, more free. Like she could tell him anything. Everything.
She didn’t. Instead, she said, “But what about you?”
He smiled and a dimple popped in his cheek from his wide grin. “You mean this?”
He motioned his head toward the rock-hard cock that rested between them.
She licked her lips at the sight of it and nodded slowly. “Yes, that.”
“Oh Felicity,” he said, his eyes dark and his pupils dilated as he met her stare. “There is nothing more I’d like to do than make love to you all night long.”
“Then why aren’t you?” she asked, leaning toward him, aching to have him inside of her as she dreamed of so many times.
He made a low growl in his throat. “Not easily, I assure you. Tonight was about you. Only you.” He kissed her again until she sighed in pleasure. “Now you should go back to your bed. Tomorrow is sure to be a long one for all of us.”
She blinked at him. He wasn’t going to take her? After all that? After she had found pleasure and left him alone without any? Could he truly be that…giving?
“Go ahead,” he whispered.
She slowly got up, staring at him as she tied her robe around her. She backed toward his door, utterly uncertain of what to do or say or think or feel in this moment. Finally, she shook her head as she reached for his door.
“I—thank you,” she whispered.
He smiled. “The pleasure wasn’t entirely mine, I hope. But I assure you a great deal of it was.”
She nodded as she slipped from the room and staggered her way up the hall toward her own bed. She wasn’t sure what had just happened. But one thing felt certain.
Nothing was ever going to be the same again.
Chapter Eight
Asher stepped into the breakfast room before nine the next morning. He fully expected to be alone, for he knew most men and women of rank didn’t drag themselves from bed until much later in the day. He was too restless to sleep, too restless from memories of Felicity and her sweetest surrender to him.
God, how he’d wanted to claim her at last. To mark her with his body. No amount of self-pleasure after she left could match what he would have felt like finally doing that.
And yet he hadn’t. Because he knew even though she said she wanted that, she might regret it when it was over. Right now she needed tenderness, care, to be given to and never taken from. Somehow he would have to keep doing that.
“Good morning, Mr. Seyton.”
He turned, yanked from his thoughts as Rosalinde Danford and Celia Dane entered the breakfast room, their arms linked. He smiled, for the two women couldn’t look more alike. No one would ever believe they weren’t sisters with their dark hair, porcelain skin and bright blue eyes.
“Good morning, Mrs. Dane, Mrs. Danford,” he said.
“Celia and Rosalinde, please. With all you’re doing for our family, we really couldn’t bear it if you were so formal,” Celia said, her smile wide.
He inclined his head. “And you shall call me Asher,” he said. “Would you like something to eat or drink?”
“Allow me,” Rosalinde said, going to pour coffee and gather a few breakfast pastries on a plate. She brought it to the table bit by bit and then took a place next to her sister and across from where Asher sat at last.
“It’s nice we get a moment,” Celia said. “You are always spoken of so highly by the family.”
He wrinkled his brow. “Was I spoken of?”
Rosalinde nodded. “Gray mentioned you a few times when we speak of his childhood.”
“In passing, I’m sure,” Asher said, pushing aside his plate. “I was a servant’s son, allowed to join in their fun sometimes, not always. But I always knew my place.”
“And what was your place?” Celia asked, leaning forward.
Asher flashed to an image of Felicity arching beneath him. He shook it away. “Outside,” he croaked out.
Celia tilted her head. “Because of your birth, you mean.”
He nodded. “There is always going to be a wall between those born of servants and those born of gentlemen. They may pretend they don’t see it, but I know it’s there. I have to know.”
/> Rosalinde smiled at her sister, a little knowing smile that Asher didn’t fully understand. “Well, this family has never stood much on the ceremony of who someone was born to. My experience has been that they see the person, not the past. And clearly, they all care for you deeply.”
Asher pursed his lips. This woman was kind, but she didn’t understand. She was a gentleman’s daughter, a gentleman’s granddaughter. But there was no use arguing.
“I care for them,” he said.
“Of course you do,” Celia said softly, smiling at him.
He couldn’t help but return the smile. He did like these two women. And they still felt so familiar to him, their kindness made them seem like old friends.
“Felicity seems easier with you here,” Rosalinde said, yanking him from his thoughts.
He stared. “Does she? I feel like my presence only makes her more uncomfortable.”
Celia shifted in her seat and there was true concern on her face, as well as on Rosalinde’s. Yet another reason to like them, for Felicity needed as many loyal friends as she could have.
“I’m not saying she’s off without a care,” Celia said. “But some tension goes out of her shoulders whenever you come into a room.”
“I also see the difference,” Rosalinde agreed. “But you know, we haven’t known Felicity long. Only in the past year or so.”
He frowned as he thought of the Felicity he’d known years before that. Before her marriage. “She wasn’t always so…”
“Sad?” Celia finished when he didn’t.
He shook his head. “Broken,” he whispered, and felt the pain of how true that was keenly. “She is broken and I have no idea how to help her.”
Celia caught her breath. “I know a little something about broken,” she said. “My best advice to you is to be patient with her. Obviously your history with this family is…complicated. But Rosalinde and I are here to help you any way we can.”
Asher looked back and forth between the women in surprise. Help him? They barely knew him. “Why?” he asked.
Rosalinde took her sister’s hand. “We have lost family,” she said softly. “We know its value.”
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