“Pearl, you are so lovely.” He spoke the words in a hush, and his sincerity warmed her throughout her entire body. “I don’t know that I would think you so lovely if I didn’t appreciate you.” His face fell. “Wait. Was that not a compliment? I find you beautiful, Pearl.” He looked abashed, and Pearl rushed to reassure him, raising herself up off the sofa to kneel on the cushions and reach for his face.
“It’s the best compliment I have ever received.” She smirked as she caught his eye. “Since mostly the compliments I get are that I am not as obnoxious as my sister, not as pedantic as another, and not as poor-sighted as yet another.” She tilted her head as she sat back down. “So I have replied to your sort of compliment with something equally hamstrung.”
“It seems we are perfect for one another.”
And then they both froze. They had not discussed this beyond this moment.
Did he mean—?
“Do you mean—?” she began, only to stop as he suddenly knelt on the floor, placing his large, warm palms on her shins and beginning to slide them up to her knees and down to her ankles.
“No stockings,” he murmured. “I like feeling your bare skin, Pearl. I like feeling you.”
“I like you feeling me as well,” Pearl replied, not surprised to hear how breathy she sounded. Since she could feel her breath hitching in her chest. Her entire focus was on his fingers, stroking her skin, stopping right where her gown began.
She tugged at the fabric, raising the gown up over her knees and to her hips, just barely covering there where she was entirely naked.
“Pearl.” He spoke in a serious tone as his fingers trembled against her skin. “Are you certain?”
She raised her head and met his gaze. “This is my adventure, Owen. I want to have it. All of it. I want to have you.”
His eyelids lowered, and she saw an intensity in his expression she hadn’t seen before. An expression that promised she would definitely have all the adventure she craved.
“I’m going to slide my hands on your legs. Tell me if you wish me to stop.”
He took a deep breath, and began the excruciatingly slow slide up her shins, over her knees, onto her thighs until his fingers were just barely inside the crook of her thigh. So close to that spot, the one that throbbed.
“Touch me,” she said.
One corner of his mouth tilted up and he met her gaze. “I want you to touch yourself, Pearl. Show me how you want to be touched.”
Her cheeks grew immediately hot, and she felt herself start to prickle all over. “Touch myself?” She sounded curious, but unsure.
“Where do you ache, Pearl?” he asked, moving his fingers a tiny bit closer to there.
She swallowed. “You know where.”
“Show me.”
Still keeping her eyes on his, she reached down and plucked the fabric of her gown so it rested on her hips, revealing her most private place. He didn’t look down there, however, at least not right away, which made her more confident of her next actions.
She placed one finger on top, right where she burned, and immediately groaned. He clenched his jaw and made a strangled noise deep in his throat. His fingers grew tighter on her thighs. She’d have marks after. A tangible reminder of this adventure.
“And—?” he urged. “What is it you want to do? Tell me. I need to hear you tell me, Pearl.”
The need in his voice was palpable. “I want to put two fingers there,” she said, suiting her actions to her words. “I want to rub that spot with my two fingers. It feels as though I need to touch that spot.” She moistened her lips. “And I want you to touch my breasts while I touch myself.”
He didn’t reply, but got up to walk to the end of the sofa, pushing on her shoulders so she scooted down the couch, her gown ruching up even higher. He slid in behind her, drawing her to lie against his chest, wrapping his arms around her, his palms resting flat on her belly.
Owen was so hard it was painful. Her desire for an adventure, her desire for him, was far more alluring than anything his imagination had ever conjured. His cock throbbed with the need to be inside her, but he reminded himself to be patient. Just like shearing a sheep, one had to be thorough to get all the wool.
Not the metaphor anybody else would have thought of, of course. And rather awkward, come to think about it.
He needed to stop thinking about it. And just do.
He began to slide his palm toward her breast. He could feel her breath coming short and fast. And then she put her hand on his and dragged it swiftly on top of her full roundness, pushing his hand into the soft flesh. “They’re aching to be touched, Owen. Touch me.”
He squeezed her, and then his index finger found her nipple, dragging his fingertip back and forth across the taut peak.
“Don’t forget to keep your end of the bargain,” he said, nodding toward where her hands lay on her thighs. “Touch your pretty pussy for me, Pearl. Show me what it looks like when you climax.”
Her breath shuddered, and he held his own, wondering if he had gone too far, had frightened her somehow.
“I might just climax if you keep talking to me like that,” she said in a low, sensual voice. “It feels so good. Me leaning against you, feeling how . . . excited you are, you touching me as I touch myself.”
So she wasn’t scared. She was excited. He couldn’t resist pressing his iron-hard cock a little harder in a vain attempt to ease his own ache.
“We’ll have to do something about that later,” she said, her words sounding like a promise.
“How does it feel, Pearl? When you rub your fingers?”
She arched her back so that her face was beside his. “It feels wonderful. As though there is something to be finished, some sort of urgency to the action, but all of the action is pleasurable.”
“And when I touch your pretty breasts? Not that I know that they are pretty, but I am assuming so, since they are yours.”
“Do you want to see?”
Owen’s cock twitched. “I do. More than you could possibly imagine. But I want to see you claim your pleasure first.”
“Oooh,” she moaned. The rhythm of her fingers was growing faster. Owen pinched her nipple, then petted it. “Owen, is it supposed to feel this good?”
“Yes.” He couldn’t keep his eyes from down there, where her fingers were rubbing and stroking, her hips shifting in response.
And then—“Ooooh!” she cried out as she shook against him, her eyes closed, her lips parted.
He’d never seen anything so lovely in his life.
He kept his palms on her breasts, feeling how her chest was rising and falling rapidly as she breathed.
“My goodness,” she said at last, turning to look at him with a sated expression. “That was incredible.”
“It was. And I am honored to see it. I didn’t know I would be receiving this rare and gorgeous a Christmas gift. To see your passion.”
“And yours?” she said, twisting her body to press her side against his chest. She placed her hand on his trousers, just on top of his cock, and trailed her fingers up and down his rigidity. “You’ll tell me if I’m doing this wrong?”
“You couldn’t do it wrong,” he replied. “There’s no wrong when it comes to pleasure, Pearl. If it doesn’t feel as good as something else could, I’ll tell you. But there are no wrongs here. Not between us, not now.”
“Oh,” she replied on a sigh. “Can I—?” And she put her palm on the placket of his trousers. “I want to touch it. Directly.”
Owen had never wanted his trousers off as much as he did now. He pushed himself up off the sofa as she undid his trouser fall, and then she slid them off so they were tangled about his ankles. He wriggled his feet to get them entirely off, then flung the trousers onto the floor.
“Oh, your legs,” she said in a hushed tone.
Right. He’d forgotten about the injury, which was still an angry red bruise on his left knee. “I’m sorry, I should have warned you.”
“Warned me about what? H
ow strong and gorgeous your legs are?”
“No, the aftermath of the groundhog incident. It’s ugly.”
“It’s not ugly,” she retorted. “It is the reason you are here in London in the first place, so I cannot dislike it. I am grateful to it. And to that groundhog.”
“Don’t go too far. That groundhog deserves nothing more than banishment.”
“Fine. The groundhog is culpable.” Her tone was laughing. “But your legs truly are gorgeous, Owen. All muscular and strong and hairy.”
“I have to admit that doesn’t sound gorgeous to me.”
“That’s because you’re not me,” she asserted. “But meanwhile, I have something I wanted to see. Can I?” she asked, sliding her hand down his belly toward where his shaft was tenting his smallclothes. “I didn’t realize you wore all those things on the bottom half.”
He took his smallclothes off just as speedily as he had his trousers, tossing them onto the floor as well. He would not spend time pondering how ridiculous he looked, a shirt on his upper half, nothing on his lower half, lying on a sofa that barely fit his height.
And then could not spend time pondering anything at all, since she curled her hand into a fist around his cock and began to slide it up and down.
“God, Pearl,” he groaned.
“I take it this is not wrong?” she said, a wry tone to her voice.
“You are correct.”
He put his palm over hers and demonstrated how to work him best, then let go so she could keep stroking his penis.
And then he felt the start of his climax as it started to build from somewhere down in the soles of his feet, up through his legs, spreading throughout his entire body until he groaned and ejaculated onto his lower belly, narrowly missing her legs and the sofa.
He lay panting in the immediate aftermath as she petted his chest underneath his shirt. “That was tremendous,” he said after a while.
“Good, because I didn’t manage to purchase you anything for Christmas,” she shot back in a cheeky voice.
He cleaned off the mess with his shirt, then dumped it on a pile on the floor.
“Vixen,” he said, rolling over to gather her into his arms, then carefully picking her up to deposit her directly in front of the fireplace.
“I am hardly a vixen,” she said demurely, but her eyes were humorous.
“You’re my vixen,” he replied, burying his nose in the tendrils of her hair. He wished he could stay lost like this forever. Long past Christmas, when the days were just filled with January gray, when he was walking normally again, but his heart now held a bruise.
He didn’t want this adventure to end, that was for certain. But he didn’t know how she felt about it, and he didn’t want to force her into something that she didn’t want.
She’d tell you if she didn’t want it, a voice reminded him. But if her family discovered what had happened, she’d be forced into it. And the only way for them not to find out about it was for them to seem to be complete strangers, as though they’d never met.
It was unlikely that his sisters, buried in Wales as they were, would ever come into contact with anybody who would know her. A secret part of him wished they would, so he could get what he wanted, which was her. But that would be as unfair to her as it was for his family to constantly pressure him about marriage—something he was going to have a discussion with them about soon.
“What are you thinking about?” she asked in a hesitant tone. “You’ve been making all kinds of noises, and not all of them seem as though they are blissful ones.”
He kissed her hair, then drew back to stare into her face. “Just thinking about how perfect this has been. I have had a Christmas I will remember for the rest of my life.” He could feel the pain beginning, a slow ache just below his heart, constricting his breath and making his life seem that much duller. Without her.
“I have too. And it’s all due to you. And Mr. Shorty, of course.” She smiled at him, then placed a soft kiss on his lips. “Is there—is there more we could do?”
He shook his head, filled with more regret than he’d ever had in his life. “Not without running certain risks, which I won’t subject you to.” Besides which, he wasn’t certain he would be up to the task so quickly, given what a tremendous climax he’d had. But he wouldn’t share that with her.
“We should curl in and go to sleep. Tomorrow it’s Christmas Day!” she exclaimed.
“I’ve already gotten my Christmas present,” he said in a soft voice, squeezing her tightly.
She smiled up at him, nodding her head. “Me too. I lo—I am so glad you were part of my adventure. Even if I didn’t get hot chocolate after all.”
What had she been about to say? Was it the same thing he wanted to say to her? And what would it mean if they admitted it?
He’d have to think it through. Would he dare to ask her to leave London, a place she seemed to know and like, for a remote sheep farm in Wales where she’d be living with his mother and his as yet unmarried sisters?
Would this magical dream of their not-so-instant connection fade away when faced with the reality of everyday life?
He knew it wouldn’t for him. With her, he could be himself: someone who loved puns and doing work not normally done by an earl. She wouldn’t ask what he could do for her, but would insist upon doing things for him.
He’d known her for what, two or three days, and already he knew she was the wife for him.
But he wouldn’t demand that her adventure turn into the rest of her life. Not without her wanting that too.
He just had to figure out how to ask that.
Chapter Twelve
On the twelfth day of Christmas my true love gave to me
Twelve words that delighted me
Goodness. That interlude was certainly enlightening. Her body still pulsed with the aftereffects of pleasure, and she felt her cheeks heat at recalling what they’d done.
It was early, so early the dawn had barely just begun. She glanced over at the window, which revealed a clear sky. The snow must have stopped then.
Which meant her adventure was nearly over.
She rolled over, flinging her hand out to touch him.
But he wasn’t there.
And she felt her heart sink. Had he slunk off because she’d embarrassed herself?
No, he was just as pleased as she was at what had happened.
Had he left to check on Mr. Shorty?
No, because he’d specifically mentioned that Mr. Shorty wouldn’t need to go out until hours from now.
Because he didn’t want to be caught. Because he didn’t want to be forced into marriage with her, despite what had happened between them.
“Well,” she said in a determined voice, “I didn’t want that either. We told one another this was only an interlude. An adventure.” Which was also why he hadn’t pressed the opportunity to thoroughly compromise her.
It was all so clear. And she knew that, she had said it herself, for goodness’ sake! But there had been a part of her that had secretly wondered if he might want to make this interlude permanent.
But she had to forget that silly idea. It was Christmas morning, her mother would be coming to fetch her soon, and she’d return to being the not sister.
And he had seen her, for a time.
She pulled on her gown, twisting it to do up the buttons at the bottom before stretching her arms to take care of the ones at the top. There were only a few in between she couldn’t reach. She wouldn’t have even thought of trying before all this started, so at least something good had happened.
Plus she had met him. And he had given her food, and warmth, and companionship, and passion.
What else could she possibly want?
She would be fine. She would.
She roused herself at the sound of knocking on the door, her heart immediately racing to imagine it was him.
Likely it was her mother. Not him.
But when she opened the door, it was him. And h
e looked as awkward and uncomfortable and nearly grumpy as when she had first met him.
“Good morning, my lady,” he said, glancing behind him.
Some of his family were behind him, placing various packages into a large coach.
“You’re going.”
“No. I mean, yes, but—”
“Thank you for coming to say good-bye,” she interrupted, the sting of tears in her eyes.
“I didn’t—”
“Well, then,” she said, beginning to shut the door.
He stuck his foot in to prevent her closing it. “Wait a minute. I haven’t said what I came to say.” He pulled something out of his waistcoat pocket. “I have something for you. If you want it.”
It was the dragon ornament.
“But that’s yours. That’s from your father, you can’t give it to me.”
“I want to.” He pointed to where the eye had been missing. In its place was a tiny perfect pearl. It didn’t match the other eye, of course, but it was there. “I want you to have it, no matter what.”
She gave him a confused look. “No matter—?”
“What if I don’t want to go back?” he blurted.
Pearl’s eyes widened. “What, you want to stay here?”
He took a deep breath. “I want to stay with you. Forever, if you’ll agree to it.”
“What?” Her eyes got even wider.
“Pearl, I don’t want to force you into anything you don’t want to do. It’s clear what your mother wants for you, from what you’ve said. And my mother wants the same thing for me. But these past few days I’ve—I’ve never felt so relaxed. Do you know how it feels for me to be able to say what I want without constantly thinking about how the person hearing it will react? If I say, ‘I don’t feel well,’ to immediately hear how that means I won’t be able to do something for somebody? You don’t want me to do anything for you.”
She opened her mouth to retort that there were things, thank you very much, but she didn’t even have to speak the words before he was chuckling in response.
“Well, except for that, which I will gladly do.
“But I want you to consider, after the magic of Christmas is over, and our tree has gone up in smoke when one of our queen’s beloved candles has set off the conflagration, that we might belong together. That I think we belong together because—” and she saw him take a deep breath and swallow “—because I think I might be falling in love with you.” He gestured to the ornament. “I put a pearl in the dragon’s eye because you I want you to be a part of my life. My memories. My home.”
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