“Healing.” He made short work of the next few buttons. “I find myself with more than enough strength for the task. And it’s Julian, little dove. No more formality if you please. After today, there will be no other man you know better.”
The notion thrilled her. A fresh wave of heat bloomed from the very core of her, stretching out across her body like the ripples from a pebble in a still body of water. All he required was words and a molten stare to transform her. She wanted to become familiar with every inch of his hard, masculine form. The urge to see him stripped of his dressing robe seized her.
Something inside her broke. Her hands rose to frame his face, and she watched as if they belonged to another. Only the tantalizing abrasion of the whiskers shading his jaw told her the hands were hers. She touched him freely, as she’d wanted to do even before she’d ever spoken a word to him.
Her fingers traveled everywhere, all over his handsome face, from his high cheekbones to his angular jaw, lingering over his sculpted mouth and perfectly defined philtrum. Such raw magnetism, such undeniable beauty confined in one man. She touched him as though she could absorb him, understand him somehow with this tactile familiarity.
Her inner resolve bordered perilously on the razor’s edge of surrender. One smoldering look from him, one more undone button, a ghost of a kiss, and she’d shatter. But the devil of it was that she wanted to. He made her want to experience the impossible, the forbidden. Yes, all of it. All of him.
Her index finger lingered over that faultless indentation on his upper lip, almost as though she sought to quiet him. “Julian.”
His mouth quirked into a knowing, wicked grin that she felt first with her finger before it echoed through the rest of her. That dark, intense gaze of his was upon her, refusing to allow her to look anywhere else. Not that she would. There was no other sight in the world that she currently wanted to see.
He licked her. Slowly and deliberately. Up and down, firm and wanton, his tongue teased the pad of her finger. Strange how her entire body could center on the smallest point of contact. Just a finger. Barely a connection. And yet, she felt his tongue as though he plied it upon the most intimate of all her flesh.
That tongue told her what he could do to the rest of her. What he would do, as long as she remained precisely where she was, trapped in the web of desire and his penetrating stare.
Merciful heavens.
What had she done, agreeing to this? He wasn’t a mere man. He was a force. A wicked seducer. A man who had dedicated his life to giving pleasure. A sybarite. A rake. A rattler. The man who had betrayed her trust.
And yet he was also himself. The man who made her feel what she’d never imagined existed. A man who listened when she spoke. A man who respected her and wanted her. He was not Ravenscroft in this moment. No, he was her own. Purely, completely, hers.
“Julian,” she said again, and she wasn’t certain if she uttered his name as a protest or as an encouragement. For she was equally torn between wanting him and fearing the power he had over her.
“Clara. I want you more than I ever imagined possible. Today, I’m your servant. Anything you wish, I’ll do it.” He kissed her fingertip with a reverence that hit her square in the chest. The last of her defenses against him crumbled. Nothing remained but her deep, abiding need for him.
Of course, she should have told him all she wanted was to leave his chamber. To flee him and the unwanted complications wrought by the things he did to her. But the truth of it was that she didn’t want to leave him. Didn’t want to leave his chamber. If he was well enough—and he certainly seemed so as she eyed him now—then she wanted him to take her. Though the prospect simultaneously thrilled and terrified her, it was what she longed for most.
Perhaps the time had come to be brutally honest with herself. She’d found her weakness at long last, and it was a beautiful, dark-haired, blue-eyed, silver-tongued English rake who viewed the world as his private amusement and could make her body weak with a mere look.
He caught her right hand and lowered it to his hard chest, slipping it beneath his dressing gown so that her bare flesh connected with his. He didn’t stop until her palm flattened over his thumping heart.
Beat. Beat. Beat.
So steady, so reassuring. The skin beneath hers, however, was anything but reassuring. His crisp chest hairs teased her senses. His scent, masculine and spiced with his fine French cologne—a blend that was innately his—enveloped her. The slab of muscle beneath her touch flexed. His heat seared her. She never wanted to let go.
“Tell me,” he said, his tone maddening, another delicious assault on her senses. “Tell me what you want.”
She didn’t even know. Didn’t know how to give voice to the pulsing, aching need he’d brought to life within her. He was the experienced one. Shouldn’t he know what she wanted? “I…” she faltered, not knowing what to say. All the suggestions that clamored to mind seemed far too improper. Far too unwise. “My lord, please.”
But he was determined to be wicked, it seemed. He found her waist, caressing her there when she would have preferred his attention elsewhere. Of course he must know it, rake that he was.
His face hovered close, so beautiful and arresting, his mouth perilously near to hers. “Where do you ache, darling?”
She went crimson, her cheeks as hot as if they’d been touched with live coals. “You know.”
“I want to hear it from you, little dove.” He leaned into her, pressing the length of his body to hers. The protrusion of his arousal, obvious beneath the thin layer of his dressing gown, sank into her skirts. She could almost feel him prodding her center, and it took her breath. “Tell me where.”
Did she dare? He was her husband. It was all very proper. She’d agreed to be his wife, fool that she was, even after he’d misled her. She’d agreed to all this, to everything. And worse, she longed for it. Yes, of course she dared, for she was just as wild and dark, as brazen and roguish on the inside as he was on the outside. It was only that she realized the wickedness of her own nature now for the first time. Perhaps he had well and truly debauched her. Perhaps she’d always been so flawed. She couldn’t be sure.
Clara took the palm that wasn’t flattened to the sinful lure of his broad chest and snagged his hand. Without sparing a thought for consequence, she slid that large, warm hand straight past the buttons on her bodice that he’d undone. Farther, even, beneath her corset cover, corset, and finally her shift. Until his hand curved around the fullness of her breast. Her nipple hardened into his palm.
She arched into him, never breaking his gaze. “There.”
He caught the sensitized nub between his thumb and finger, not wasting a breath of time. Leisurely, he rolled and pinched. “An excellent place to begin, love.”
And then his mouth lowered over hers. He fitted his lower lip between hers perfectly, the kiss slow and delicious, as though he had forever to savor her, as though he drank her like a rare wine. She kissed him back then, as if prodded into action for the first time. She didn’t want slow and languorous. She wanted fast and steady, a determined claiming, a fierce joining. She wanted him to make her his in every way possible.
Clara caught his lip between her teeth. She felt suddenly ravenous, as untamed and unpredictable as the man whose heart thudded beneath her inquisitive palm. She reached behind her to capture his other hand, tugging it from her hair. Dragging it between their straining bodies, she pressed it to the part of her that begged for him the most. They were separated by her crinoline and layers of fabric, but it was a mimicry of the way he’d touched her in the brougham the morning of their wedding. Perhaps he would appreciate the significance.
“And here,” she said into his mouth.
* * *
Good God.
He was nearly out of his skin. Her scent wrapped around him, orange and musk and everything delicious. Everything that was wonderfully, innately her. Clara. Wife. His. She was all those things encompassed in the finest, loveliest form
he’d ever seen.
Julian had fucked more women in his life than he could count or remember. No one had ever made him feel the way he did now with her lush, beautiful innocence within his reach. Every part of her was perfection, from the sweet curve of her breast in his palm, to the fullness of her lips opening beneath his, to the sharp nip of her teeth. Her palm remained flattened to his chest, absorbing the frantic beats of his heart. She undid him, and he was helpless to stop the power she wielded.
Hell, he didn’t want to. She unleashed a savage side of him, a side he hadn’t realized until this moment that he possessed. He’d always been in control. He’d been the detached seducer, his skills honed from years of plying his trade. He knew how to make a woman come. He knew how to make her whimper and writhe beneath him, to prolong her pleasure and build her inevitable release into a shattering, beautiful thing.
But Clara was different. She stripped away every artifice, everything he’d believed about himself. All the games he would have played with her fled him. The blood rushed to his cock, lust roaring through him. This would not be the unhurried, controlled lovemaking he’d imagined the many times he’d envisioned in his debauched mind.
No.
This would be unrestrained fucking.
He would lose himself inside her, and he would relish the claiming.
But he would not hurt her, nor would he make her first time anything but as pleasurable as he knew how. He reminded himself that she was an untried virgin as he ground the heel of his palm into her skirts at her urging, seeking the very heart of her that he so longed to possess. Her dress was an unwanted impediment. He longed for nothing more than her naked and spread out before him, no fabric, boning, caging, or padding between them.
He kissed her again, full and deep and plundering, a mimicry of the way he would take her. And then he broke away, gazing down on the sheer loveliness of her rounded face. Her golden hair may as well have been a halo surrounding her goodness, her blue eyes heavy-lidded with desire, her rosebud lips swelled and darkened berry-red with his kiss. She flushed a pretty pink to rival the most glorious summer rose. Even the freckles dotting her nose entranced him.
“Here?” he asked, pressing deeper into the billowing contours of her gown, wanting hot, wet flesh rather than silk. He would run his tongue over every last bit of her delectable body once he had her out of these blasted trappings.
“Yes.” The single-word response hissed from her lips, telling him just how much he affected her.
Good, for she made him feel like a callow youth about to spend on the petticoats of the first woman he’d ever kissed. Those freckles of hers would drive him mad. His head had begun to pound, and he couldn’t be sure if it was from pent-up desire or the remnants of his injury, but he didn’t give a damn. He wasn’t about to allow anything to come between him and the fiery woman who’d haunted him since she’d first appeared in his study, asking him to marry her.
Her boldness, her fearlessness, had drawn him to her then. And it was those twin attributes that drew him to her now. She didn’t retreat from him. Though her flaming cheeks gave her away for the innocent she was, she didn’t hesitate. She wanted this joining every bit as much as he.
Julian kissed her again, plucking at her responsive nipple and pressing ever deeper into her skirts before he withdrew entirely, standing back to survey her. She was as beautiful as he’d ever seen her in a lush creation of silk, her expression glazed with passion, bodice deliciously askew. It occurred to him that he was scarcely clothed while she was as properly dressed as though she awaited a bevy of callers during her receiving hours. Most unfair, that.
A dark urge rose up within him. He’d never wanted another woman with the all-consuming hunger that spurred him now. As undeniably lovely as she was in her French gown, he wanted it off her. “Disrobe for me, little dove.”
Her eyes widened, a hand fluttering to her throat, the only evidence of her unease. “My lord?”
“Julian.” He wanted to hear his name on her lips, in the mellifluous drawl she didn’t bother to mask in his presence. It soothed his soul and made his cock ache at the same time. The devil of a thing. “You heard me, love. Remove your dress.”
She hesitated, looking adorably uncertain. “Julian then. I’m…unaccustomed to disrobing myself, and this dress is rather complicated in construction. Perhaps we ought to wait until later. The evening? Another day? I do believe I saw you wince as though your head—”
“Come now,” he interrupted, equal parts charmed and amused by her nervous attempt to procrastinate. “A Virginia lady such as yourself, one who can shoot and bluster, one who can infiltrate the study of an earl at midnight, one who tramps about London on her own wielding a pistol in her reticule, surely a lady such as this can manage to remove a mere gown on her own. Yes?”
He was testing her and the spark in her eyes said she knew it. Her gaze clung to his, her chin tipping up in her trademark show of defiance. “Of course I can. But your injury. It’s too soon. You did seem to be in some pain.”
“My injury is almost fully healed, fully recovered.” A lie, but he didn’t particularly give a damn about such a minor falsehood at the moment. “Perhaps I mistook your daring, then.”
If he’d learned anything about his new wife, it was that she never wanted to be seen as weak. Long ago, he’d mastered the art of using a woman’s weaknesses against her. It was how he’d managed to carry on for so long as he had. One of the many roles he’d been forced to play.
Only, he wasn’t playing a role now. He was hers. She was his.
“Take it off me.”
Her demand, as sudden and unexpected as it was arousing, took him aback. He stared at her, just narrowly refraining from catching her up in his arms and tearing her dress away like a ravaging beast. Gentle, he reminded himself. He would be gentle. He would take the greatest care with her. For she deserved that and so much more.
But the moment he touched the remainder of the buttons fastening her bodice, his good intentions shattered. He caught the gaping vee of her dismantled décolletage in both his hands and yanked. A shower of buttons rained to the carpet, mingling with her startled gasp.
“As you wish, little dove.” Her beautiful dress hung limply apart, revealing her embroidered corset cover. The sleeves were damned tight, clinging to her shoulders in an impediment he grew impatient to banish. He pulled again, and this time the sound of rending fabric filled the air. The sleeves went down at last, revealing soft porcelain flesh. Jesus, even her arms were beautiful, curved and feminine. He fought back the absurd desire to kiss the hinge of her elbow, to lick a path all the way to her shoulder. Her scent, bright and musky, filled his senses, even more potent now that so much of her gorgeous skin was revealed to him.
He wondered if she tasted as sweet as she smelled everywhere. Behind her knee? Her belly? The roundness of her thighs? Fuck, he had to know. Blood roared through his head, a river of lust pouring over his body, threatening to engulf him.
Dimly, he registered her protest.
“Lord Ravenscroft, you’ve ruined my new gown.”
What an intriguing moment for her to once again revert to polite formality. She was nervous, his little dove, her eyes wide. Perhaps she feared he’d take her as roughly as he’d stripped away half of her dress. He ought to reassure her, but any civility he pretended to possess had utterly fled him.
“You required me to take it off you.” The damn thing was still fastened tightly at her waist. He ripped a few more buttons and hooks, locating the ties of her crinoline and undoing them with scarcely more finesse. Down went her skirts, bodice, and dress shaper, landing in a muted swoosh around her feet. But it wasn’t enough. More fabric fell to the floor until she stood before him in only her corset, chemise, drawers, and stockings. He pulled her to him, cupping her face as gently as he could manage. “And so I obliged.”
She sputtered. “I didn’t tell you to ruin it, my lord.”
Even her dudgeon sent another arrow of
heat directly to his cock. “No more ‘my lord,’ love.”
He kissed her then because he couldn’t go another second without feeling her sweet, yielding mouth beneath his. She opened. He raked his teeth over the fullness of her bottom lip before sinking his tongue inside. So sweet. Sweeter than he deserved.
Every part of him hungered to take her. To tear off her drawers, drag her chemise to her waist, take her to the carpet, and sink inside her. But he wrangled his wayward impulses. His reputation and indeed his living had been built upon bed sport. His prowess was unparalleled. He took his time, made his lover’s body sing with pleasure, relished in giving her what she’d paid for—the release no man before him had known or dared to give.
What was it about Clara that dragged him to the edge? What was it that made him want to rend and tear, to rut like a beast? To fill her with his cock and after that, with his seed? In an elemental sense she was no different than any other before her. She too had bought and paid for his services, after all, with her dowry and soon her virginity.
The thought cooled some of his ardor. He dragged his mouth from hers, kissed her jaw, her ear, ran his tongue over the defined whorl that nestled against her hair. An anomalous crudeness surged to life within him then, a need to shock her and perhaps shock even himself.
“Clara, sweet, innocent Clara,” he whispered into her ear. “I’m going to fuck you. I’m going to strip every last bit of covering away from you. And then I’m going to taste you everywhere. I’m going to make you spend all over my tongue first. Then all over my cock.”
His words should have sent her spinning away from him in retreat. Should have made her run, flee the chamber through the adjoining door to the safety of her own space. She was a maid, after all. Untried and pure aside from his own attempts to sway her to the darker side.
But instead she did something he least expected, his little dove. Her busy fingers, the fingers he’d watched on countless occasions fretting on the folds of her gown, discovered the knot keeping his dressing gown in place. And undid it. Then those fingers skated beneath the plackets of his robe, gliding over his bare chest with pure, unadulterated fire. Her nails grazed one of his nipples.
Heart’s Temptation Series Books 4-6 Page 43