Cecilia Grant - [Blackshear Family 03]

by A Woman Entangled

  Her eyes went wide even as she let him prop her on the pillows in the middle of the bed. “Proceed with what? What are you meaning to do?”

  “Worship you.” He swung his body over hers, hands to either side of her, one knee between her legs. “The way the first woman’s husband surely worshipped her.”

  “What way is that?” Shock or shyness or maybe even lust squeezed her voice down to something near a whisper.

  “I wasn’t there at the time so I can only guess.” He kissed her, sweeping his tongue over the seam of her lips. “But I feel certain it involved the tasting of forbidden fruit.”

  SHE WOULD have liked to tell him, as he sank his head to her breast and sucked her nipple brazenly into his mouth, how comically unfitting was his choice of image. Far from being forbidden, her breasts seemed to fancy themselves a kind of fruit that ripened expressly for him. From the moment he’d stopped her removing her gloves and pulled her into that kiss, her nipples had gone hard against her layers of linen, making a faintly embarrassing proof of how much she wanted him—how much she wanted him to do this in particular, to flick his tongue against her in the most exquisite fashion and then to suck her with punishing strength.

  Those were the things she might have liked to tell him, had she been capable of forming words.

  She put a hand on the back of his head, and one on his broad shoulder. To watch him felt inexpressibly sinful, but that must have been his intention in propping her up this way, and if it pleased him to be watched then that was what she would do. As he saw to her pleasure, so would she see to his. He would know how she wanted him, even if nothing could come of it.

  He switched to the other breast and her thoughts went spinning into disorder again. She squirmed, her body wanting to lie flat, and wanting him to lie down on top of her. Two nights ago he’d done so and it had been that pressure, against a secret, sensitive place, that had combined with this fiery bliss to build and build until culminating in that apoplexy of pleasure. Did he not mean to do that now? Was it too risky, perhaps, for his naked manhood to be so near her naked maidenhead? She squirmed again, this time curling her fingers for a tighter grip on his shoulder.

  He let go her nipple and raised his head just enough to meet her eyes. Now was when she ought to speak; to ask whether he couldn’t do what he’d done last time, if they were very careful and perhaps even put a sheet between them, but something in his eyes stopped her words before they were halfway formed. He lowered his head and kissed her again, this time between her breasts, where she was not particularly sensitive, and from there in a steady trail toward her navel.

  An image formed of what he might mean to do and her breath froze, half in and half out. To watch his downward progress was more than she could dare, so she closed her eyes and followed with desperately acute other senses; the flat of his palms pushing her thighs apart, the creak and shift of the mattress as he brought his second knee between her legs, the warmth—oh, God, the warmth of his breath against her most private parts just before he followed with his hot, wet tongue.

  She filled her lungs on a gasp that must surely have been audible from two floors away, and clapped both hands over her mouth. The sensations forked through her body with lightning-strike precision and a devastation to match. She jerked, as someone struck by lightning would, and took one hand from her mouth to scrabble behind her for a grip on the top of the headboard. Ecstasy was beginning its furious approach, much more rapidly than it had done on the sofa two nights before, with no mercy for her sensibilities or decorum.

  Then all at once it was gone. His mouth had left her; his tongue had abandoned its worship; and in the time it took her to blink her eyes open and feel the first stirrings of outrage, he’d moved up the bed to where he knelt, straddling her half-propped-up form, his male member stiff and adamant before her.

  “I warned you I’m not selfless.” He caressed the side of her head, his thumb tracing the shell of her ear. His eyes were so dark with appetite that he might have been a different man. “There’s something I’d like you to do. Perhaps you can guess it.”

  Even a day ago, if someone had told her men and women did such things, she would have recoiled at the thought. But he’d roused her hungers to an unruly pitch. And from the very core of her being she felt a need to please him, to see him driven wild, and to know she’d been the one to do it. “I can guess, generally.” She took her hand off the headboard and found a place to settle it on his hip. “But I’ll need direction. I don’t know precisely what to do.”

  “Kissing makes an excellent beginning.” Again his thumb went round her ear. “In particular the kind of kissing that employs the tongue.”

  Audacity flashed through all her nerves. If she was going to do this, she wasn’t going to do it by halves. “What if I wished to skip the beginning, and go directly to what will drive you out of your senses?”

  “Take it in your mouth, as far as it will go.” He was speaking almost before she’d stopped. “Be careful not to scrape me with your teeth. Make use of your tongue, and don’t worry about being gentle.” He’d been so ready with that answer, he must have been hoping against hope she’d ask.

  He loomed over her, up on his knees, not nearly as shy about watching as she’d been. With the hand that wasn’t at her ear he took hold of his member, bunching back some of the skin and steadying it to receive her attentions.

  She took it in gradually, because it felt so strange and because she needed a few seconds to work out how to protect him from her teeth. Part of it fit. Not all. She was fairly certain those lovers who’d remarked on its size had been telling the truth.

  An inconvenient despondency woke, at the thought of his other lovers. But she had no right whatsoever to be jealous, when he’d been willing once to give her his heart. So she wouldn’t allow jealousy, or the despondency under whose cloak it stole in. Every bit of her attention would go to his pleasure, and most particularly to the exercise of her tongue.

  “God, that’s good.” The path of his voice told her he was looking down at her, though she kept her own eyes closed. “Keep doing it just like that.” His hand left her ear and she heard it grip the headboard. His hips started moving, slowly, drawing his manhood most of the way out and then easing it back in. The hand that still gripped his bunched skin was moving as well, bringing pleasure to as much of him as wasn’t in her mouth. She couldn’t say Let me do that with her mouth full, but she put her hand over his until he understood and gave way.

  He swore, in a whisper. His breath was coming in pants and his hips had begun to move a bit harder, faster. “Wait.” His whole body shuddered with effort. “Wait. Stop. Just for a minute.”

  She’d heard these commands before, but she knew, this time, he wasn’t going to say they oughtn’t to be doing this. She parted her lips and let him draw himself out.

  “I’m going to lie down. Then you can start again.”

  His eyes gleamed with urgent purpose. “I want you on hands and knees above me.”

  She moved over to give him room, and moved down the bed to where he wanted her.

  “No.” He caught her arm. “The other way. Hands down there, knees up here.”

  She ought to have left blushing behind by now, but her face went furnace-hot as she grasped his intent. He must have forgotten his promise to make this easy and comfortable for her. Only the most shameless women would be capable of … what he proposed.

  No, that wasn’t true. A woman determined to please a man, to lose herself and forget herself as thoroughly as was in her power, could be capable of it, too. She took a deep breath and turned herself, easing one hand across and then one knee, letting him guide her hips to where he wanted them.

  “Listen.” He paused in his adjustment of her position to address her. “There will come a point when I’ll tell you to stop. And you must take your mouth off me at once. Yes?”

  “Yes.” She had a vague idea of why. In any case, this wasn’t the moment for discussion.

&nbs
p; “Good. Now return to driving me out of my senses, if you please. You’ve made an excellent start.”

  To be atop him this way, naked and splayed and so dreadfully exposed to him, felt shocking and frankly wrong. If she paused to reflect on her position, she’d grow too mortified to continue. She must marshal all her thoughts on the task before her, and concentrate her attention on his body until she forgot the existence of her own.

  That proved easier said than done. In fact it proved impossible. From the instant he brought her private parts into contact with his mouth, she was deeply, ferociously aware of her body and of each diabolical thing he did to it.

  And strangely, the shame receded. She bent down and took his male organ into her mouth, using her hand to slide back the skin as she’d seen him do, and all she wanted in the world was to be able to match him for wickedness. As crudely, lasciviously as he tasted her, just that crude and lascivious would she be with him. She took more and then less of him into her mouth, mimicking the rhythm of his hips from before, and she squeezed and stroked with her hand, that every inch of him might be gratified.

  He groaned, thrillingly, arching underneath her. His tongue worked faster and she twisted against him, whether to escape the torment or to demand more she couldn’t say. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered anymore but the advance of pleasure, gaining speed and power like a cart hurtling down a steep grade, and all at once it had her in spasms, gasping around his flesh, haphazard in her attentions, in such a state of divine distraction that she almost missed hearing his command to stop.

  He rolled onto his side, as she brought away her mouth, and had his release. With the hand that still grasped him she could feel the pulsing that would have delivered his seed into her womb, had he been inside her. He hadn’t wanted to inconvenience her mouth with that. Though now he’d have to launder his counterpane.

  Thus came back the real world, one mundane concern at a time. If only it wouldn’t. If only she could stay in their delirious little world for two, past shame, past sorrow, hiding away from all the reasons they could not be together.

  A clock chimed in one of his outer rooms as the pulsing in her hand slowed and ended. She let go and eased herself away from him, off him, slipping free of the hands that, after tightening on her hips with his onslaught of pleasure, had finally relaxed their grip.

  She knelt on her side of the bed. He lay with his back to her, breaths expanding his ribs at a pace that suggested he needed more time to recover.

  So did she. In fact it seemed possible, kneeling here naked, her privates still tender from his attentions, the taste of him lingering on her tongue, that she might never recover at all.

  “KATE.” HE lay on his side, still in the place where he’d ended when he’d twisted away from her at the moment of climax. Probably he ought to turn and face her, but he didn’t. “We’ve told each other reasons why we cannot be married.”

  “I remember them.” She hadn’t lain down. From her voice he knew she was sitting or kneeling, and facing him.

  “We’ve never spoken of the strongest.” He closed his finger and his thumb on a wrinkle in the counterpane.

  “Nick. You don’t have to speak of it.”

  “I know. And I know that you’ve known for some time. But I want to have it said, out loud, between us.”

  “I’ll listen.” The mattress shifted as she lay down.

  He took a breath. “I have a connection that would discredit you and your family.” He couldn’t stop there. He had to own the details. “My brother married a Cyprian. A gentleman’s mistress. A woman who made a profession of lying with men. Not a year ago, he did this.”

  Her hand fell light as a snowflake on his arm, settling in the place above his bicep. “When did you last speak to your brother?”

  That wasn’t the question he’d expected, but he was ready to answer. “Last spring. The day he told us of his plans. I know the marriage did take place because one of my sisters continued to know him. Also because I’ve seen his wife.” The next set of words jostled about on his tongue, waiting to be spoken or swallowed back. But why shouldn’t he say anything he wanted on this occasion, knowing it would be the last of its kind? “There are days I wish I’d continued to know him, too. More such days, as time goes on.”

  The mattress shifted again and she pressed herself to him from behind, her arm slipping over his waist, her breath on the back of his neck. “Would he welcome a reconciliation? Would he be willing to speak to you?”

  “I think he might.” He turned over to face her, resting a hand on her hip. She looked remarkably serene and unashamed, for an innocent who’d just been drawn into an act of gross debauchery. “Are you encouraging me to speak to him? I’d always imagined you’d be put off by the scandal.”

  “I was, when I learned of it. I fully approved of your action in cutting him off. Only …” She frowned at his bare shoulder as she pieced together her plea. “Having so recently seen a family estrangement carried to the grave, I cannot help thinking that, if one or both of you would like to mend things, then perhaps you ought to try.” Again she met his eyes. “I want you to be happy. All else seems secondary to that.”

  He kissed the tip of her nose. “I want you to be happy, too.” That was why he would only watch, and wish her well, when in a little while she got up and left his bed forever. Never mind how profoundly right she looked here, naked but for the stockings, hair tumbling over the disarranged pillows, her whole body limp and supple with satisfaction. “What do you mean to do, hereafter? Do you have hopes of an offer from any of the gentlemen you’ve met?” He needed to speak of this, to remind himself of what her future would be. Or more to the point, what it wouldn’t be. “Lord Barclay certainly seems to think highly of you.”

  She sighed and sank her forehead against his shoulder. “I don’t know what to do. I doubt myself in everything. I wish …” She went silent, as though she’d only now realized she didn’t know what words should follow. “I wish things could be different.”

  So do I, Kate. He wrapped her in his arms and kissed her. For mute comfort, at first, because he had no words that could make anything better for either of them. He kissed her face, kissed her ears, lingered at her mouth.

  She was going to leave. When they finished kissing, or when she grew concerned about how long she’d been gone from home, she was going to get up and ask for his help with her stays, and she was going to put on her many layers of clothing and go home. And he was going to let her go, because he wanted her to be happy and her happiness wasn’t here.

  “Kate,” he whispered. He couldn’t stop kissing her. He couldn’t let her leave yet. “I’m so glad you came to me today.” He rolled her onto her back and eased on top of her. He was hard again. It was as if his body knew she’d be going, and had to plead for another chance with her while she was still here.

  “I’m glad, too.” She clung to him, her arms lashed tight around his back. “Do you remember when you said I’d wish another man had been the first to kiss me?”

  “I think so.” He kissed his way down her neck. His arousal was demanding attention and he was losing his ability to converse.

  “I never will. I’ll never be sorry for what we’ve done. I’ll always be glad I did these things first with you.” She squirmed under him, and suddenly the head of his cock met with her soft, wet privates.

  “Sweetheart, be careful.” He started to shift himself away, and only when she caught his shaft in her hand did he realize she’d meant for that contact to happen.

  “Nick.” She looked him in the eye. “Please.”

  His breath caught and for a moment his lungs forgot how to work. Outside the closed window and two stories down, indistinct laughter sounded as people passed by in the Middle Temple Lane. Her hand tightened gently, encouraging him. Her eyes were dark with need.

  A part of him wanted nothing more than to bury himself in her that instant. Another, more conscientious, part spoke up. “We can’t. I can’t ruin you. I c
an’t ruin your prospects.”

  “You’ve ruined me already in every way that matters. You know you have.”

  He closed his eyes. He couldn’t … “It’s not that simple. You’ll have a husband …” But even he didn’t believe her eventual husband had greater rights to her body than she did herself. “It wouldn’t be pleasant.” That was a better argument. He opened his eyes. “It’s not comfortable the first time, for a woman. It hurts. You may bleed.”

  “I know. I’ve heard of that. I don’t mind.” The hand that wasn’t on his cock stroked up and down his back. “I told you there will be pain in any case. I’m not afraid.”

  “It might be worse than you expect. I don’t want you to remember that, when you remember this day.”

  “Please,” she said again. “I’ll have to do this for the first time with someone. If it’s wonderful, I want it to be with you. If it hurts and I need care and comforting, I want it to be with you.”

  Damn her barrister blood. If there was ever an occasion on which he needed to not be out-argued, it was surely this one. But he had no answer for her, besides the answer his body could give.

  He drew in a big breath. “Stop me if it’s too uncomfortable, or if you have a change of heart for any reason.” He waited for her to nod her assent, and then he set himself at her entrance and pushed, slowly.

  He’d never done this with a virgin. He wasn’t sure what sort of resistance there would be. He braced himself for something blocking his way, for something tearing, but it felt rather more as if he was stretching her, gradually, to accommodate him.

  She’d sunk her teeth into her lower lip. The skin had gone white all around her mouth.