He gazed up at her and seemed to come to some sort of conclusion. “Not necessary, no. How would you like to proceed?”
“I thought I would lie on the bed, then you would…” She waved a hand. “And then we cuddle for a bit while you nap.”
Sycamore rose and took the place beside her, which meant Jeanette pitched against his side. He wrapped an arm around her waist when she would have risen to pace. The concept of becoming his lover had been alluring. The reality was damnably awkward.
“I’m to climb the Matterhorn while you stare at the ceiling and wonder how much longer I will need to reach the summit?” he asked, taking her hand. “Then we make a mess of the sheets, I become a snoring heap atop your person, and you wish copulation wasn’t such an undignified way to earn some cuddling?”
“You make it sound so…” So selfish and tawdry. Jeanette rested her forehead against his shoulder. “Some women are not cut out for frolicking. I am one of them, and I apologize for leading you to believe otherwise.”
The perfect man and the perfect moment had finally arrived. She could raise a fist at all the sour memories her husband had left her and take up the mantle of the independent widow at last. She could have some pleasure, maybe gain some insight into why straying wives and friendly widows invariably seemed to be such happy creatures.
And yet, all Jeanette wanted to do was get dressed and forget this day had ever happened.
And maybe cry a little. In private. For no reason.
Sycamore kissed her cheek. “I adore a challenge, and I agree you are not cut out for frolicking. Let’s get me out of these damned breeches, shall we?”
He rose and stood before her.
“I don’t understand.”
“My breeches, Jeanette. That’s the next step, and you decide whether to take it.”
She did want to see him, to lay eyes on the male body part that occasioned such pride in its owners and such mischief in society generally. The marquess would have scolded Jeanette for unladylike curiosity.
She undid the buttons of Sycamore’s waistband, then worked her way down both rows of buttons holding the flap of his breeches closed.
He stepped free of the last of his clothing, took a handkerchief from the pocket, and stuffed it under the pillow, then stood idly in the center of the carpet, scratching his chest and resembling an adult male lion rather than a harmless fellow preparing for a nap.
“Let’s to bed, shall we, Jeanette?”
He was letting her look at him and trying to be casual about it. Maybe hoping she’d look at him? “Come here, Sycamore.” She’d delivered an order, not a request, and that gave her a small, guilty thrill.
He stood directly before her, his hand cradling her cheek. “You are not made for frolicking, but you are made for loving. We do this however you choose, Jeanette.”
That he could be coherent while his male member was in such a state… and such a member. His arousal put the marquess’s endowments to shame and angled straight up along a flat belly crosshatched with muscle.
The idea that copulation could be more than rutting, that it could be loving, did something odd to Jeanette’s breathing. She traced a single finger up his length, and a muscle in his belly leaped.
“There’s a lot of you, Sycamore Dorning.”
“And for the next hour, all of me is yours. What do you want, Jeanette? What do you truly, truly want? What have you denied yourself or not known how to ask for?”
She had been denied freedom, independence, privacy, and control of her own body. But that was all behind her now.
“I want…”
He waited, while Jeanette struggled to articulate feelings too raw and intimate for words.
“I want too much. Let’s test your climbing skills, shall we?” She scooted under the covers, knowing she had just been either prudent or cowardly, but the day was not going as planned. Her daydreams about Sycamore Dorning had never progressed to well-lit bedrooms and spread knees.
Not quite.
He joined Jeanette on the bed, lying on his back and threading an arm under her neck. “The sheets are chilly. I could use some cuddling.”
Sycamore was as warm as a toasted brick and much more interesting. Jeanette curled up against his side, resenting the thin cotton of her chemise. She wanted closeness with him. Maybe that was what she did not know how to ask for.
He wrapped his arms around her and rested his chin against her temple. “Was it awful, being married to the marquess?”
That was not a lover’s question. “Yes. He was demanding, bad-tempered, and determined to get a child on me, six children, all of them sons would have been better, and if I’d died delivering the last of the lot, that would have been acceptable too. It took me years to notice that other husbands were at least polite to their wives. Other husbands used endearments as if they meant them. Other husbands… but this is not why you joined me in this bed.”
Sycamore kissed her brow. “Right, I dragged you up the steps to have my wicked way with you, but I’ve changed my mind.”
A bolt of real disappointment went through her. “Truly?”
“Yes, truly. I think instead that you should have your wicked way with me. I am eager to be plundered, and you must lead the raiding party.”
“I wouldn’t know—”
He hoisted her over him, his strength as implacable as it was careful. “The Matterhorn awaits, Jeanette. I promise you the view is worth the climb.”
Dear… gracious… glorious… She’d ended up straddling him as he lay beneath her on his back, his arousal only inches from its intended destination.
“I could, for example,” he said, brushing aside her chemise to stroke her thighs, “caress your breasts, if you like. I could revel in your kisses. I could join my body to yours while you controlled the depth, speed, and—”
She kissed him to silence him, also because he was filling her body with longing and her head with something other than memories.
“Better,” he murmured, his hands trailing up her sides. His kisses were lazy and teasing, also powerfully distracting. Jeanette’s braid came loose from its chignon—how had that happened?—and her chemise was soon rucked up about her waist.
While she was marveling over those developments, Sycamore glossed his palms over her breasts.
“Do that again.”
He obliged, slowly, then added gentle tugs on her nipples. “Like that?” He curled up and used his lips and teeth through the fabric of her chemise. “Or like that? Say what pleases you, Jeanette.”
She liked hearing him use her name, she liked that he knew how to go on. She could barely think for awareness of his arousal, seated along the crease of her sex.
“I like when you use my name.”
“I like to use your name,” he said, returning to the first breast. “Perhaps the time has arrived to take off this chemise?”
He’d made her ache, and he asked her rather than simply dragged her clothing over her head. But to be naked, utterly naked, intimately exposed… Every instinct Jeanette had shrieked at her to keep the garment, to keep a symbolic barrier if nothing else, a cloak for her dignity should she abruptly leave the bed over some offense or slight.
Sycamore lay beneath her, saying nothing. In his patience, she sensed safety and, more than that, a haven. Keeping her chemise on would protect nothing—he could rip it from her should the whim strike him—but taking it off would be a step in the direction of a trust he deserved and she hoped to give him.
Trust, and something even more complicated. Hope perhaps?
Jeanette untied the bow at her décolletage. “If you would assist me?”
Sycamore drew her chemise over her head and tossed it in the direction of the chair. He frankly stared at her breasts, which were a trifle larger than fashion preferred.
“How you honor me,” he said, gathering her in an embrace. “How you delight and honor me.”
He delighted her too, with exquisite caresses and an even more inve
ntive use of his mouth on her breasts. Jeanette began to move on him, to glide her sex over the rigid length of his cock, seeking relief of an intimate ache and succeeding only in stirring herself to more frustrated desire.
“Time to climb, Jeanette?” Sycamore asked, smiling crookedly, and pushing her braid back over her shoulder. “Eager doesn’t begin to describe my willingness to be climbed.”
Jeanette’s body clamored for her to accept Sycamore’s invitation, and yet, she hesitated, though not out of uncertainty. She paused to marvel at the tenderness assailing her, the gratitude to this man who’d turned rutting into lovemaking.
The view was already breathtaking.
“I will withdraw,” he said. “I promise.”
And Sycamore Dorning’s word was trustworthy. That was what made this encounter possible. Not the liking, the desire, the old ghosts, or even the promise of pleasure, but the trust.
She braced herself on one hand and used the other to seat his cock against her body. “Slowly please,” she said. “Some pleasures should be savored.”
He turned slowly into excruciating self-control, allowing Jeanette to remain poised above him while he thrust, feinted, paused, and generally drove her mad.
“Yield, Jeanette,” he whispered, gathering her close. “Please, yield.”
She was yielding as far as she knew how, riding him with increasing abandon, taking his hand and placing it over her breast.
“I don’t… I can’t…”
The wanting and heat inside her built, then built some more, then flared yet higher. The frustration was unbearable, enraging, and fascinating all at once.
Sycamore did something, shifted the angle, drove deeper—she hardly knew what—but then she could and she did.
Cataclysms of pleasure shook her from within. Her passion became an avalanche of tumbling sensation, reverberating shock, and breathless satisfaction. All the while, Sycamore plied her with slow, hard thrusts that became too much and then more than too much, but still she clung to him and endured.
When he at last went still, she collapsed on his chest, and his arms came around her. She was joy and satisfaction and a few unshed tears, while his hand on her hair was gentleness itself.
“You are a revelation,” Jeanette said, a thought that had decided on its own to be spoken aloud. She rode the rise and fall of his chest like eiderdown on a summer breeze, her mind a place of peace, warmth, and light.
So that was passion.
That was lovemaking. Finally. At last. That was the uninhibited sharing of pleasure about which so many had rhapsodized so eloquently, and Jeanette could rhapsodize now too, if only in the privacy of her thoughts.
“And you are a treasure,” Sycamore replied, stroking her shoulders and back through the covers. His touch was completely relaxed, while inside Jeanette, he was as hard as he’d been when he’d climbed into the bed.
“I should move,” she said. “Give you some room.”
“I’d like to spend on your belly,” he said. “I want you wrapped around me when I die of too much pleasure.”
Jeanette raised herself up again to peer at him. “On my back?”
He nodded. “Only if you’d enjoy it.”
Sycamore Dorning had showered Jeanette with pleasure so far beyond mere enjoyment… she could tolerate a few moments on her back in the name of reciprocity.
“I’ll manage.”
Before she could climb off of him, he caught her by the hand. “Don’t manage with me, Jeanette. Demand, ask, state terms, parlay, listen, as our bodies do when we make love. I am so randy right now, I could close my eyes and finish without moving. You don’t owe me a penance because you finally enjoyed yourself in bed for once.”
“If you smother me, I will pinch your bum,” she said, extricating herself from him and sliding to the mattress at his side.
“I would like for you to pinch my bum,” he said, easing his body over hers. “I’d like it a lot.”
He braced himself over her on his elbows, while Jeanette waited for a familiar sense of distaste to cloud the moment. When she expected Sycamore to crowd closer, he instead kissed her cheek.
“Get comfy, Jeanette, but you needn’t pinch me. ‘Sycamore, I need air,’ or ‘Get off me, you oaf,’ will suffice.”
Sycamore was a sizable man, much more substantial than the marquess had been, and yet, when he slid his cock over Jeanette’s damp sex, she was too fascinated with the resulting sensation to be much bothered by the position they were in.
“That is almost like having you inside me.”
“No, it is not. Not nearly.” He pressed closer and kept moving. “This is heaven’s front terrace, I grant you, but not the celestial hall itself. Don’t let me crush you.”
Jeanette shifted lower, seeking a better fit, a tighter fit. “Hush. I like this.” The sensations were different, but rather than crush her, Sycamore took his own weight while enveloping her in his presence. She lashed her legs around his flanks and began to move with him.
“When you do that…” he muttered, lips near her ear. “God, Jeanette.”
She’d sought to arouse him, but the result was greater sensation for her. Without him even inside her, her body was preparing for another flight into pleasure. Such a thing should not be possible, but it most certainly was, until Jeanette was clinging to Sycamore, and wet heat spread in the tight seal of their bodies.
“I am…” Sycamore panted, crouched above her. “I am… I don’t know what I am. You steal my wits, Jeanette, and please don’t ever give them back.”
Tucked beneath him, she felt safe and sweet, and utterly baffled. “I’ll keep yours if you’ll keep mine.”
He kissed her nose and rolled with her. “A bargain, dear heart. We will document the agreement if we ever find the strength to leave this bed.”
Jeanette lay atop him for another moment, then bestirred herself to fish the handkerchief from beneath the pillow. She sat up and mopped at her belly, then scrubbed him off too. While he watched, she refolded the linen so the soiled portion was inside and set it on the bedside table.
“You are rosy,” Sycamore said, brushing a finger over her breasts. “A good loving leaves a lady rosy. I am rosy too, though in different parts.”
She glanced at his softening member. “Isn’t that part of you always rosy?”
“Metaphorically speaking, perhaps, and physically, but I referred to my heart, Jeanette. Right now, my heart is very rosy. May I hold you?”
“Yes.” She longed to be held, to be cuddled and cosseted, and Sycamore was sparing her that admission.
When she lay down beside him, and he took her in his arms, she was surprised to realize that she also wanted to hold him, to caress him at leisure, to learn the contours of his muscle and bone, and the rhythm of his breathing. This longing was different from sexual hunger, having more of tenderness and loneliness about it.
She would memorize him against the day when he was no longer her lover. Then she would torment herself with recollections of when he had been hers for a magnificent hour here or there.
Chapter Seven
If Sycamore lived to be a hundred, he’d never forget the sight of Jeanette finding her pleasure in his arms. She’d seized her courage in one hand and Sycamore’s heart in the other and surrendered to passion.
For him to hold back should have been difficult, nearly impossible in fact, but he’d been so fascinated with Jeanette’s responses, that he’d entered into a sort of meditative state. He had both shared every delight with her and been the awed observer, enthralled with her reactions.
Lovemaking had never gone in that direction before, and he feared it never could again. This encounter had been unprecedented, and the end, when it had come, had obliterated any distance between him and his lover—physical or mental.
Considering that he hadn’t even been intimately joined to her at the time, he had much to ponder.
Jeanette, poor lamb, had fallen asleep against his side. Sycamore savored t
hat gift while his mind drifted idly to the rise and fall of her breathing. He felt when she awoke, though she did not open her eyes.
Was she stealing a few more minutes in his arms or plotting an escape? Did she want another round—please, heaven, let him be equal to that challenge—or would she take her clothes behind the privacy screen and leave without sharing a meal with him?
His heart would break if she abandoned him now.
“You are awake,” he said, kissing her temple. “What have you to say to your lover, Jeanette?” He would not allow himself the insecure questions new bed partners were prone to: Was I good enough? Did I satisfy you? Or, the easiest dodge of all: One more before we part?
He did not know how another encounter with Jeanette could live up to the initial experience, and that required thought. First times were full of excitement, but usually a little hurried and gauche too. Sycamore spared a regret for all the ladies he’d left after a first time with a cavalier bow and a smile. Had they wanted a few more minutes of conversation? Would it have been asking too much of him to rebraid their hair for them?
Might he have thanked them a little more effusively?
“That I have a lover astounds me,” Jeanette said. “I feel all over again as I did the day after my wedding, as if everybody will know I’m different simply by looking at me.”
Only Jeanette… “Would it be so bad for others to notice you are no longer that bewildered bride?”
“I have spent every day since my wedding trying not to be that bride. Who knew the solution to my dilemma was hidden in your smile?”
That sounded almost fanciful, and Jeanette was not a fanciful woman. “Or in my breeches?”
She climbed over him and tucked herself against his chest. “No, Sycamore. What’s in your breeches is lovely—astoundingly so—but that’s not the whole of it. Do not interrogate me on this point, for I lack the wits to understand it myself at present.”
That makes two of us. “You are lovely too, Jeanette. Astoundingly so.” He left it at that, the bald truth, rather than lapse into flattery or inane analogies. For another few minutes, she rested against him, and he indulged in caresses to her hair, her back, and her shoulders.
The Last True Gentleman: The True Gentlemen — Book 12 Page 12