“Mon bijou,” he murmured and a thousand words more as he savaged her mouth countless times.
He stroked her breasts, round the bottom, along the tops, and bent to suck one nipple into his mouth and make her gasp. He cupped her other breast, his thumb rubbing her nipple until she bucked and cried his name.
Grinning, he rose and winked at her, then took the other nipple into his mouth with a ravenous pull.
She was lost.
He sat back on his haunches and whirled his palms over her breasts and her ribs. Bending over her prominent hip bone, he kissed his way down to the juncture of her thighs. He placed his mouth at the hollow of her groin and dropped a brief kiss there. She gasped in anticipation of his journey to her core, but he surprised her and ran one hand down her thigh to the garter of her stocking.
He sat back, a wicked crook to his mouth. With a sound of satisfaction, he lifted her leg in mid-air, flipped off her slipper, then toyed with her garter. He pushed her leg farther back and kissed the back of her knee.
She groaned, laughing.
He unwound her garter with one twist and peeled down her stocking. The next moment, his mouth was to the arch of her foot and then the fiend bit her.
She yelped.
He chuckled and reached for her other shoe, her other garter, undid it with practiced ease and stretched himself out atop her. His body was frightfully heavy as he pinned her to the mattress. “Before the dawn, I will taste each inch of you.”
She grinned, her desire at once ravenous. “I will permit it.”
“Will you now?” he teased. “Thought of it, have you?”
She pulled at a lock of his hair. “Every night. But know, I will have the same.”
“I demand it.”
She tipped up her hips, opened her thighs and his cock fell along her seam. He was so massive and rigid, so very hot, she quivered. He clasped her more tightly.
She clamped her arms around him. He considered her, his eyes narrowed, his brows knit. And then he moved against her.
In that second, everything she knew of a man with a woman was tested by this man, his tenderness. She’d lived for years hoping such gentleness existed in a man. Having waited so very long, she had been ready to abandon the dream.
No need to run now.
He curled against her, his lips against her cheek, the corner of her mouth. He fought for air, maybe sanity too, and flowed his cock against her, seeking, finding the opening to her core. He paused, took her lips in a tremulous kiss and slowly sank inside her.
And oh, he was huge. His girth stretched her. His heat blazed within her. She undulated, taking him deep, deep, deeper still. She gasped at the fullness of him. She saw the stars, the moon. But she closed her eyes, trusting that she could discover a new universe in his arms.
He moved inside her and she had her proof. With measured precision, he delved inside her. His movements smooth, his rhythm sure, he drove her up into a frenzy for some elusive goal.
Her breath stuttered. The rapture he brought her, the objective he dangled before her with each arch of his body, enflamed her. He picked up his pace, her heartbeat did too.
And then he slowed, hooked his arms beneath her knees and brought her legs up to drape around his hips. Smiling down at her, he began a deliberate joining of their cores as he gazed at her and lured her with a smile.
Until she could no longer look at him, no longer count or measure how he pleased her, until she tensed and he caressed her with his talented fingers and she burst apart, gasping and joyous. Calling his name.
He cradled her close, her shaking body seeking more of his, as he whispered words of delight and lost himself in the bliss they had created.
He drew away from her, loathe to stay lest he frighten her by how fiercely he wished to bind her to him.
Running a hand through his hair, he fought with his instinct to roar like a savage that he’d finally claimed her. Yet the past months’ experience had taught him that to keep her, he’d need not brawn, but wits.
He found a blanket and draped it over her. She lay upon the sheets, her ivory skin more satin than any marble he’d ever polished, her lithe form so much more supple than he’d ever sampled. Her ardent response to him, so much more spontaneous than he had predicted.
That shocked him. But gratified him. She could make love to him eagerly. That she trusted him so much meant he had less work to do to keep her by his side.
He made to go.
She caught his arm, her exquisite face aglow with drowsy satisfaction.
“I return. I have a few things for you.”
“Hurry.”
He grinned, triumphant. Naked, he padded away. In the kitchen, he grabbed the elegantly wrapped paper tent, his purchase from the patisserie, and strode back upstairs.
“Sit up,” he said to her when he was beside the bed.
Her brows wiggling in glee, she pushed herself back against the pillows, gathered the blanket to cover her breasts and stretched up to see his offering. “You baked!”
“As I do each day!”
She laughed. “Certainement! You have so much time for that.”
Sitting beside her, he placed the package in her lap. “I’ll get the champagne. You tear it open.”
“Ohhh, thith is scrumthous,” she said, her mouth full of chocolate mille-feuille.
Chuckling, he left then quickly returned to her with the wine and her mug in hand. He took a drink, thirsty for all the night had to give. “I’m happy to humor you.”
“Messy.” She put a finger to the corner of her mouth to gather cream.
Inspired, hungry himself, he put the champagne and mug aside. He took her hand, lifted it away and licked chocolate from her finger and then from her lips. When he pulled away, her eyes were closed, her mouth open.
He loved her.
The reality dawned on him, gentle as the silent starry night. But he’d known. He’d known months ago.
He’d been patient for good reason. The reward was this. Luscious Marianne Roland in his bed gloriously naked at last was now his enchanting amour. He tore his gaze away and poured more champagne into the mug. With satisfaction, he took a drink of the wine and watched her devour the pastry.
“What is that one?” She pointed to a crusty tart.
“Tarte Tatin. Apple. Try it.”
She widened her eyes and picked it up to bite in. “Mmmm. You know how to please me.”
In pastries. In bed. He arched his brows. “I have macarons in the kitchen. Would you like them now or—?”
She went up on her knees to cup his neck and kiss him on the lips. “For now, I’m content with these and you.”
His body shot through with ferocious need. He wanted her again, now, so soon.
Her humor died. She met his silence with her own.
He held his breath.
She put the pastry to the floor and turned toward him. Still up on her knees, the sheets rumpled around her, she resembled a mermaid rising from a frothy sea. Her breasts were full, her nipples hard rosy mounds. She panted as she scrambled toward him, sank her fingers into his hair and kissed him with all the ardor he’d sought from her for months.
Ravenous, he seized her and brought her across his lap. Her body lay before him like a pagan’s prize, her elegant throat, her full breasts, the slope of her stomach, the point of her hip bones, the golden thatch of hair over her mons. The crevice, the long dark line that led to the part of her he needed again, was a thin dark valley he longed to savor with his cock and his mouth.
He opened his hand and caressed all of her offered up to him. The chords of her neck, the sweet points of her round breasts, the succulent heat of her folds, the lush wet cream that coated her sex.
At his tender touch, she arched, her whole torso a gift. That she could allow him to satisfy his appetite for her astonished him. She was new to rendezvous. New to him and love. He could conclude only that she did indeed trust him. Implicitly.
She was his to pleasure.
He gently pushed her thighs apart, his fingers tracing the line of her chat. She made a little noise of contentment, her face nuzzling his chest. He watched his hand caress her, what he felt so much more electrifying now that he could see what he caressed. Her legs fell open. He caught his breath, proud in his conquest. Humbled in his hunger for her, he found her center and sent two fingers up inside her. She arched up off his lap, moaning. He gentled her with deft strokes, a massage to enchant her, an invasion to possess her. She whimpered, her lips upon his skin. He slid his fingers from her core to find her swollen nub. He pinched her and she bucked. He swirled his fingers around and round, her cries louder, her nails digging into his hips, her lips parting, frantic.
His body screamed for him to bury himself inside her. Yet he wanted to imprint himself on her in indelible ways.
He slid from beneath her so that she lay flat upon the bed. Bending down to her, he licked her lovely breasts, kissed her belly and opened her fragrant folds to lick her and kiss her. Her lips had tasted of wine and chocolate. Her breasts had tasted of eau de camellias. Her creamy chat tasted of thick passion and of him. And she let him have all of her, every bit he desired, unrestrained. She lay quivering, panting, crying to have him. And when she pulsed in completion, he pivoted around and sank his cock inside her to revel in the last throes of her climax. And then he gave her his own.
The moon was high, the stars merrily twinkling when she rose from their bed.
She’d slept a little, enough to sate her.
Andre snored. The manly abandoned sounds amused her.
She tiptoed behind a Chinese screen searching for a basin and towels to wash. Smiling, she saw what she needed. He’d prepared so well, charming her with every need fulfilled. She washed in the fresh warm water and picked up the robe draped across the nearby chair. It was of heavy ebony satin, lined in white wool. His, it was so large she had to roll back the sleeves and pick up the hem as she strolled around the room.
The heavens above had greeted her in his haven. But what drew her now, here on his earth, was the wealth of his work before her.
Much like the shelves she’d seen in the gallery in the Rue Dauphine last February, his studio was a treasury of his efforts. Large, small, clay, plaster, paint, brushes, pens, ink, lay hither and yon upon wooden or granite topped tables. The figures were scattered among them about the huge room. And much like the exhibition in the Rue Dauphine, in the center stood a monolith of white marble upon a massive plinth. This however had little shape.
Intrigued, she marched around it.
Across the room, she saw him push back to the headboard and smooth back his long hair.
“Do you know yet what this will be?”
“I have a few ideas.”
“Do you have sketches?”
“Of this? Oui.”
“Do you ever show them to anyone?” she asked, her hands sliding over the thin yellow veins in the Carrara, evoking images of what might emerge under his vision.
“Not usually, no.”
She would not ask. She understood his need to privacy. She only ever showed anyone her best work.
She strolled away and on the top of his bureau, she spied his hair brush. Picking it up, she approached him and brandished it. “You first.”
He rose from the bed, naked like a glorious Neptune, snatched the blanket from the bed and twirled it around his hips. He sat in one of the two chairs and pointed to his head. “Do your best.”
It was a tangled mess. Knowledge that it was their romp in bed that made it so had her grinning as she drew the brush through his hair from crown to nape. The rhythm of it soothed her, the satin of his hair upon her fingertips arousing her hunger for him once more.
“Do you still draw me?” he asked.
“I do. Whenever I have a free moment. I get better. Seeing you each day affords me the chance I may one day get you right.”
“Would you show them to me?” he asked.
“I could.” But when? That made her pause. Had she made a hideous mistake to ask for only one night with him?
“Tomorrow night.” He rose up, took the brush from her and put it down, then marched to the bed. There, he flung the blanket to the floor and sat. “Bring them.”
If she came, what would she risk? If she brought them, what would she gain?
In the moonlight, she detected compassion in his smile.
“Come here, ma cherie.” He beckoned her with waggling fingers.
She drifted across the room on her bare feet, the cold of the concrete floor chilling her dreadfully.
He reached out.
At once, she shrugged out of his robe. The heavy silk slid away and took with it her old resolve to find a lover who was temporary.
She put a knee to the bed and his hand stroked up her thigh, around to her core where his talented fingers drove up inside her. She melted to him.
“You must come tomorrow night.”
She was floating in the wonder he created, his fingers beseeching her to surrender to the intimacy, the relationship. Agreeing with him should be the last thing she should do. “You persuade me unfairly.”
Against her skin, he laughed lightly. “Don’t object.”
She hung in his arms, seduced. “I can’t.”
He laved her nipple. Nipped her, licked her to quietude. “Say you’ll come, ma cherie.”
“I think I do already.”
He laughed at her double entendre, but the hilarity died. He massaged her feminine folds with a frenzy that drove her higher, made her needier. “We are not finished, you and I.”
She burrowed into him, her nails digging into his shoulder.
“Well you know it.” He kissed her between her breasts while his fingers did their magic. “First there is the matter that I have not brushed your hair.”
Her lips curved in a grin. Her body vibrated with the first pulse of an orgasm.
“And then there is that matter that I have not yet kissed each inch of you.” He tipped up her chin, laid her down beneath him and flowed inside her. “Nor you me.”
She grabbed his hair, her need to have him finish their joining so primal that she groaned. He obliged her and brought her up to a strangled cry as she fell over the edge to quake in his arms. Within the next minute, he followed with a long moan.
As they lay there, he stroked her hair.
She’d acted boldly tonight and flourished. She could do it again—and perhaps grow. Conceding was not difficult. “I want to know what that marble will become.”
“Bring your sketches. I will tell you.”
She slid her head back into the crook of his arm. He was strong man, charming, romantic and a formidable opponent. “You lure me with prizes I cannot resist.”
“May I be so wise as to find more of them.”
Chapter 9
The sun rose rapidly as she scampered around the house to the kitchen entrance. Valmont had been at the reins waiting for her for much too long. Andre dressed, insisting to go with her. Lips against her temple, he’d wrapped her close for their journey from the heights of Montmartre butte down to the City proper and the Hannifords’ house on Rue Haussmann.
Painful to leave him with her body so deliciously tender, she’d kissed him deeply and stepped down from the coach. Valmont assisted her out, and waited until she turned at the corner of the block and gave him the signal that she was in sight of the kitchen door.
As she pushed it open, she imagined the coachman was still there. He and his master took no chances that harm would come to her.
Inside the back entry, she heard voices in the kitchen. All the servants were awake and to their duties by now. Most, she expected, were taking their breakfast in the kitchen and she tiptoed to the back stairs. Up she flew, light as air, proud of herself, delighted with her night, her lover and her future.
At the second floor, she breezed down the hall toward her suite.
Her uncle’s door opened and she froze, afraid his valet or som
e other servant might discover her.
But her uncle stepped out, securing the belt of his dressing robe around him. His silver gaze flashed over her. “You’re well.”
“I am,” she said, hearing in his tone not a question so much as relief that she was indeed well.
“That’s all I wanted to know. Good morning.” Pivoting, he returned to his bedroom.
Inside her suite, she ran to the sitting room window and threw back the drapes. She twirled the latch and pushed open the double casement. In rushed the morning breezes, fragrant with springtime and rebirth.
She undid her cloak, letting it drop to the settee. She pulled open her desk drawer, fishing for her most recent sketchbook. It was lodged in the back and she tugged at it. Out flew two bound notebooks.
They dropped to the floor and she went down to pick them up. Then froze. Both had fallen open. One was her newest book, the other older. Frayed. She recognized it and shuddered.
Why had she saved it?
Her mind reeled backward to months, years, a decade ago. The drawings were old. Sixteen years old. She’d kept them purposely for many years to remind her of all she was determined to forget. But most of those from the period of the war and immediately afterward, she’d burned. Ashes to ashes.
This book she had saved.
She clenched her jaw. The man who stared up at her, his black eyes small, his nose thin, the nostrils pinched, his mouth wide, capable of lies and deceptions. Nothing like Andre.
She snatched it up and marched to the fireplace. Late July and there was no need for a fire. She looked for tinder, a match. No, no, there was nothing.
She ripped it, tore it like a determined, angry animal. Thousands of pieces, as small as her fingers could render, destroying his image. Innumerable bits of a man she’d not thought worthy of a moment’s notice. Not for months had she recalled his sneers, his insults, his cruelty.
She marched to her waist basket, opened her fingers like fans, the bits of him discarded, floating away.
Pacing, she fumed at herself that she’d found him amid the fabulous drawings of Andre. Why had she not destroyed them? Him? Why bring him to Paris? He didn’t deserve it. He was buried in Gettysburg. That was where his body laid, in the last place he took breath, the last place he’d failed others.
Daring Widow: Those Notorious Americans, Book 2 Page 15