He smiled and began tugging at her shift, trying to work it up over her head.
“Let me.” Julia stopped him. She stared him straight in the eye, daring him to touch her, to worship her with his gaze as she sat up and slowly rolled the light garment up over her head. With a smile of instinctive mischief, she tossed it after her slippers into the beleaguered corner of the bedchamber. She sat before him on the bed, calmly nude except for her stockings and garters, as he gaped at her in wonder.
“Interesting,” she said. “I thought I might feel self-conscious, but I don’t. Is that strange?”
He shook his head dumbly. “You’re so beautiful,” he told her, his voice almost cracked with strain. “You have nothing to be self-conscious about.”
She smiled and began to toy with the collar of his shirt, relishing his groans of protest as she swatted his eager hands away from her breasts. “It’s my turn to fumble around and be completely unable to unfasten your clothes,” she teased.
She reached for the front placket of his trousers, enjoying the moans he was unable to hold back as she searched out the shape of his body with her fingers. “This is interesting, too,” she said, feeling gently up the length of his hardness. “It’s very big. How does it all fit in your clothing?”
“It doesn’t, right now,” he choked. He tried to seize her hand. “Julia, please, you don’t know what you’re doing to me.”
“True,” she admitted. “But I want to learn.”
Her hands lightly explored his body, roaming not just over the bulge in his trousers, but also up under the fine linen of his shirt, across the smooth, strong planes of his chest. She found his nipples, and remembering how much pleasure he had granted her, she lightly stroked them.
His muscles twitched under her fingers. Quickly, he lifted his shirt over his head and faced her again, his breathing unsteady.
She squealed with delight. “I made you jump! I made you strip!” She touched his nipples again with the softest graze possible.
This was too much for James, who seized both of her small wrists in one of his larger hands and again pressed her back onto the bed. Leaning over her, he said with voice husky and warm, “It’s my turn again.”
“But I want to keep touching you,” she said.
“I want to touch you, too,” he replied, tugging off her garters one by one and, with infinite slowness, rolling her stockings down her legs. His touch was a whisper against her skin, promising gratification of a kind she had never known.
“How do you do that?” she wondered. “How can you make me feel so good with your hands?”
“This is nothing,” James said, parting her knees and settling between them. “I still haven’t shown you what I can do with my tongue.” His smile was positively wicked.
“Yes, you di—oh!” The words were surprised right out of her as James’s hot tongue licked her there. She was shocked, as if she had been shaken awake by the sheer force of the pleasure of it. “James, are you allowed to do that?”
“If you allow it, I’ll do it,” he murmured, and his delicious, devilish tongue dipped into her core to taste the very heat and heart of her womanhood.
No one else had ever, ever touched her there. But somehow it seemed right and fitting that James should be her first. Her only. She could never imagine being so vulnerable for anyone else, or permitting anyone else to see her so exposed or touch her so intimately.
And then she stopped thinking, and just let the pleasure wash over her.
His tongue lapped and tasted her, his lips kissed her, his warm breath heated her through. Those clever, strong hands found her breasts, her nipples, and stroked them even as he continued to lick at her delicate folds. She clutched for his shoulders, seeking to release the pleasurable pressure building in her, but as he continued the play of his fingers and tongue, she gave up and let her arms fall to her sides, boneless.
She moaned and shivered under his touch, feeling as if she were being drawn inevitably toward something, but she had no idea what it was. And then he moved his tongue just a bit, there. The intimate stroke was all she needed to push her over the brink, and she simply shattered, shuddering and crying out from the intense, unaccustomed joy of it.
As the shivers of pleasure subsided, she felt herself drawn back to the present as if from a long distance. Tingling, vibrant life came back into her limbs, and the space between her legs was warm, sensitive, and eager.
“Oh, James,” she breathed. “That was the loveliest thing I’ve ever felt.”
He smiled, this time with tenderness and none of the mischief of before. “I’m so glad, my love,” he said simply.
His love; that was much, much better than having him call her “my dear.” She felt the difference in her heart; she knew the truth of it.
He kissed his way up her stomach, her collarbone, her neck before again kissing her lips. “My love,” he said again. “We can stop now, or we can go on.”
“There’s more?” she asked, amazed.
“Yes, so much,” he said, and now there was a bit of a laugh in his eyes. “My darling, we haven’t even . . .”
“Ah. Coupled?” she again suggested helpfully, laughing at his growl of mock annoyance that she quickly stifled with a kiss. As she lifted his head from hers to look into his eyes, a smile spread across her face, a smile that was more knowing than that of only a few minutes before. Now she understood the pleasure that could happen between men and women, and she wanted more of it. She wanted to feel it, with him.
“I’m ready,” she told him, gazing deeply into those green eyes. She felt as if she could fall into them, as if she was falling now.
Eagerly, James stripped off his remaining clothes. As he stood before her, naked, Julia’s eyes widened; she thought she had known what to expect, but this was simply unbelievable. His male parts were just so . . . large.
“Um, actually, maybe I’m not ready,” she admitted.
James looked so disappointed, she at once regretted her words. “I take it back. I might be ready.”
“No, no, tell me the truth,” he said, through teeth gritted with physical tension. “I don’t want to do anything you aren’t completely comfortable with.”
“Well, I thought I was ready for . . . the rest. But you look so big, I just don’t believe it’ll fit. I don’t even know if it will fit in my hand.”
To prove her point, she gently wrapped her hand around his shaft. “Oh, I guess it can fit.” She gently stroked him, intrigued at his responsive shudder.
“Let’s wait a while on that,” James said through an increasingly tight voice. “I’m not made of stone, you know.”
“I know exactly what you’re made of,” Julia teased, eyeing his nude body up and down. Her voice softened, and she added, “Inside and out, I know.”
She relaxed back, and reached for his shoulders. Blue eyes to green, their gazes met and held. His eyes searched hers intently, and she felt as if he saw all of her, her eagerness and her love. “I really am ready, for everything.”
Finally, James needed no more encouragement. He climbed onto the bed and covered her body with his own, clasping his arms around her. He gently nudged her knees apart, and with one swift thrust, he pressed into her slickness, drawing a shocked breath from her.
“Are you all right?” he asked at once, raising himself onto his forearms to look at her face.
She nodded, an undecided look on her face, and wriggled. “I feel very full, but it doesn’t hurt.”
“That’s because you were so ready for me,” James said thickly, holding himself very still.
“I like it,” Julia decided. “How long do we stay like this?”
“We don’t,” James said. His words were a promise immediately fulfilled, as he began to thrust with slow, gentle strokes that raised the heat between Julia’s legs again.
It felt different this time; more intimate, less fervid, as hands clasped, lips pressed, and bodies met in the deepest of embraces. With each thrust, Ju
lia felt James enter farther into her passage. The gentle friction was unaccustomed and fascinating to her. She savored every sensation, parting her legs wider to welcome him deeper and deeper.
He was part of her now. They were one.
Just as she was beginning to settle into a warm, loving glow, James’s thrusts began to grow faster and even deeper. Julia’s body knew intuitively how to respond, her hips rocking to match his increasing urgency. This was a whole new sensation, still deeply intimate but now with a flickering heat of . . . was this what passion was? She felt such longing, it was almost unbearable, and she grasped at James’s hips to hold and pull him more closely into her.
He responded electrically to her touch, stroking with deep, quick measured movements, playing his hands over her face and breasts.
“I can’t touch you enough,” he gasped.
“I’m all yours,” she replied, smiling for a second before a faster stroke, a gentle kiss on the sensitive skin of her nipples stole all thought from her. The feeling of longing and need was building to such a pitch, she wrapped her arms tightly around James and let him carry her away with the force of his body.
And when they both reached the wild joy of a shuddering, moaning climax, she held on to him afterward just as tightly, and she knew that she never wanted to let him go.
Chapter 27
In Which Things Aren’t Strange, Then Are
“I don’t feel a bit awkward around you now,” Julia mused as the two lay lazily entwined in James’s bedsheets.
“Good,” James said, drawing a finger along the line of her chin. “That’s the way I would certainly prefer things.”
“No, I mean it, James. I feel as comfortable around you as ever, even though we have no clothes on and I’m in your house. In your bedchamber.”
“Well,” he replied, dropping a kiss onto her nose, “if we didn’t feel extraordinarily comfortable around each other to begin with, I don’t think we’d be in this type of situation.” He nuzzled her hair and wrapped her in a hug, but she barely noticed, still trying to puzzle through a train of thought.
“Shouldn’t I feel somehow strange, or different? Since what we did was so strange—well, not precisely strange in the sense that it’s never been done before by others. Actually, I wouldn’t really know. Did we do anything very unusual?”
“Not especially,” James answered, amused. “Though I’d like to think we did it particularly well.”
“All right, so we did something that in itself wasn’t strange or unusual, at least not on a global scale. But on a personal scale, for me, it was very strange. I mean, I’ve never done anything like that before, and it was rather significant. As you know. Since you practically tried to talk me out of it.”
“I’m very glad I didn’t succeed,” he said, his hands now beginning to wander her body again.
Despite the distraction of her mind, her body began to respond to his touch, and her thoughts grew fragmented. “I am, too—that is, I didn’t know what it would be like. But now that it’s over”—she paused and shook her foggy head to clear it, as he circled her breasts with one teasing fingertip—“I know what it’s like, obviously, and I realize that it was more significant even than I thought.”
“You’re babbling,” he mumbled, kissing her neck. “I like it.”
“Oh. Well. Anyway, it was amazing, and I just feel right about it,” she finished in a rush. She let her head loll back, relaxed and enjoying his touch.
“That’s wonderful,” he said, his fingertips now brushing against her nipples and raising them to peaks. “Because we’ll be doing a lot more of this when we’re married.”
He brought his lips to hers for a kiss, but she pressed him back to look questioningly at him.
“Was that a proposal?”
He raised his head, glassy-eyed, and looked confused for a second. Then his expression became chagrined. “Yes, of sorts. Not a very good one, though, apparently. Sorry.”
“But did you mean it?” she insisted.
“Of course I meant it. You can’t think I would do this”—he gestured widely at their bodies, the bed, the heap of discarded clothing in the corner—“and not intend to marry you.”
Now she was embarrassed. “You aren’t just proposing to me because of what we did, are you?”
Her face grew hot. Blasted face, always showing her feelings so easily. She felt suddenly conscious of her nakedness and of the enormity of what she had just done. “My God, James, I gave myself to you. I can never marry anyone else.”
“You wouldn’t want to, would you?” He sounded hurt.
“No, of course not,” Julia hastily replied. “I love you and I would never want to marry anyone else.” The words were true, she knew they were true, but they tumbled out in a hurry and sounded awkward on her lips.
They lapsed into a self-conscious silence, the budding passion of a moment before now cooled into caution.
“I believe you,” James said carefully, “but you don’t sound very glad about it.”
“I am,” Julia insisted. Then she corrected herself. “Well, right now I guess I am not quite glad about it, since I’m embarrassed and I sort of feel like you are bringing up marriage out of a sense of obligation.”
James looked indignant. “How can you say that? Don’t you remember what we said to each other last night, and just a while ago? You knew I wanted to be with you if I were ever free. I didn’t think that would happen, even after I got Louisa’s letter this morning—but then you came, and it was the greatest gift of my life.”
Julia was mollified somewhat by this speech, until she dissected its full meaning. “Wait—you weren’t going to pursue me even after you got the letter?”
“I didn’t think I had the right. I knew it would be a huge scandal. And after what Gloria’s already been through in the last year, I didn’t want to add to my family’s notoriety.”
“And now?” Her voice was accusing.
“It will still be a scandal, of course. But now we have to marry, and I’m glad for that because it’s what I wanted.” His voice was defensive, belying his loving words, and now Julia felt stung.
“I didn’t try to manipulate you, you know,” she retorted.
“I didn’t think you did,” he replied, brows knit as he searched for the right explanation. “I’m used to young women throwing themselves at me because of my title, but I can certainly tell the difference between that and the way you’ve always treated me.”
“Oh, that’s right,” Julia said, a chill in her voice. “I had forgotten I was with a viscount.”
James blew out his breath between exasperated lips. “Maybe I didn’t put that very well. But please understand my intention, which is honorable. Lawful marriage. It may be the right thing to do, but it’s also what I want to do.”
Julia watched him carefully for a few seconds, but his expression was neutral and waiting. “Well,” she replied. “All right.”
He blinked. “So you’ll marry me?”
“No,” Julia replied without thinking. James looked shocked, and she hastily explained. “I mean, I might. Probably. Yes. But what I was really answering was your statement about understanding your intention. And I meant, all right, I understand your intention.”
“So you’ll only probably marry me?” he said in disbelief.
“I think I need not to talk about this right now,” Julia answered. “I know I love you and you love me, and it makes sense for us to get married, especially now, et cetera.”
“‘Et cetera’?” James repeated, his voice yet more incredulous. That haughty eyebrow was cocked again, as if what Julia was saying was the stupidest thing anyone had ever said since the dawn of the English language. Which it probably was, since her thoughts were in such a tangle that she hardly knew what she was going on about.
“Right, well, anyway,” she hastened to finish, “I need some time to think and let all this settle in. Since I woke this morning, I’ve had two proposals, helped my sister break
her engagement, and lost my virginity. It’s been quite a day.”
James laughed at her recital. “When you put it that way, it is rather a lot to think about all at once. Fair enough.”
Julia smiled back at him, relieved. “We’ll talk about this again later?” she asked, sliding off the bed to retrieve her clothes from the corner of the room.
He slid after her and began to help her sort out her clothing. “Yes, of course we will. You’ll never be able to get rid of me. I’ll propose over and over again. I’ll harass you about it every time I see you.”
He handed Julia a stocking. “By the way, when will that be next? I assume I’m no longer invited over to dine with you and your family tonight.”
“Oh. Yes, probably it would be best if you didn’t come, for Louisa’s sake. She’d find it very awkward.” Julia considered. “What if I send you a note when I know of our next plans? I don’t know what Louisa will want to do, or what my aunt will consider proper under the circumstances.”
“Well, don’t wait too long,” James said, a twinkle in his eye as he helped her roll her second stocking back onto her leg. “Otherwise I’ll come after your aunt myself and tell her about how very improper we’ve been, to force your hand so you’ll have to marry me.”
“Ha.” Julia acknowledged his joke with an affectionate roll of her eyes, standing up and shaking her rumpled garments into place. “Don’t worry; I’ll write as soon as possible. I want that as much as you do.”
She twisted to look over her shoulder. “Is it completely obvious just what I’ve been doing?”
“Not at all,” James assured her. “That is, not if you wear that big cloak again.”
She wrinkled her nose at him and gave a wry smile, comfortable again now that she was dressed and had earned some time to think.
Well, she wasn’t entirely comfortable; he was still disconcertingly, unabashedly nude. It was quite distracting.
She averted her eyes and kissed him on the cheek. “I’d better go.”
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