Lady Sophie's Christmas Wish tdd-1

by Grace Burrowes

  Sophie caught his hand in hers and brought it around her waist. “And you’re worried about them now, worried you’ve left them too long alone.”

  “Yes.” She said it better than he could have. Vim wrapped her close and just held her for a long, thoughtful moment. He could visit and discuss and flirt the night away, or he could gather his courage in both hands and do the woman the courtesy of asking her a simple question.

  “Shall I pleasure you, Sophie?”

  Nine

  There was a vocabulary between men and women, one Sophie had never needed to understand. It included glances, sly innuendo, subtle movements of the fan, and even particular flowers combined into bouquets and presented at certain angles. It was a different and darker vocabulary than she’d learned in the drawing rooms and ballrooms, one more fraught with meaning and emotion.

  So the precise implication of a single, quiet question—“Shall I pleasure you, Sophie?”—was not entirely obvious to her mind, but her body was clear enough on its meaning.

  That velvet baritone promised he would kiss her, hold her, and very likely join his body to hers.

  “We shall pleasure each other,” she said, lying in the circle of his arm. She’d made her decision not in the heat of their passionate kisses but rather in quiet moments, watching him tickle the baby, listening to him read poetry, or watching him shovel a walkway to the privy in the freezing wind and snow.

  “Then the nightgown will have to go.” He set his hand on her shoulder, and Sophie’s heart started hammering in her chest. It was dark behind the bed curtains, cozy, and warm, but she covered his hand with her own.

  His fingers trailed down her arm. “Eventually,” he said. “It can go eventually. Let me hold you.”

  Not a question this time, and yet Sophie was certain if she announced she’d changed her mind and decided to excuse Vim from the bed, he’d sigh, flop the covers back—likely kiss her nose—and leave for his own room.

  In the morning, he’d be pleasant and considerate, affectionate even, and then he’d be gone.

  Gone.

  Sophie rearranged herself on her back. She couldn’t ask questions, lest he fathom the degree of her ignorance, so she kissed him. Leaned up and pressed her lips to his, cradling his jaw with her hand.

  A man’s jaw at the end of the day was a rough, scratchy thing. She reveled in this realization, a little detail that was the stuff of adult intimacy. He’d used his tooth powder too, and probably washed off with bergamot-scented soap.

  He turned his face into her palm. “You must tell me what pleases you, Sophie.”

  “Such words are not always easy to say.” Particularly when the feel of him—his jaw, his lips, his nose, his hair, the exact shape of the back of his skull against her palm—was so absorbing.

  “Then show me. Put my hands where you want them to go, touch me where it pleases you to touch me.”

  “All over. I want to touch you all over.”

  He might have chuckled a little, or growled with pleasure at her words, though she’d spoken only the simple truth. Vim was a healthy, naked male in his prime, and she wished she’d had the courage to leave a candle burning and the curtains drawn back.

  But no matter, she’d see him with her hands. While he lay quietly beside her, she explored the terrain of his chest, a warm, smooth plane of bone, muscle, and beating heart. When she grazed her palm over one small male nipple, she heard him inhale.

  “It’s the same for me as for you,” he said, moving his hand to cover one breast. “There’s sensitivity in certain places. Marvelous sensitivity.”

  Marvelous, indeed. Through the fabric of her nightgown, the weight of his hand covering her breast spread a lovely warmth through her middle. Her back arched into the contact without Sophie’s volition, and when he closed his fingers gently over her nipple, her breath caught in her throat.

  “The same, you see.” Vim stroked her breast through the fabric then lowered his head and used his teeth to apply the same gentle, arousing pressure.

  She had to do something, lest his attentions destroy her reason, so she found his nipple and emulated his caress.

  “Like that,” he said, barely lifting his mouth from her. He’d wet the fabric of her nightgown with his mouth, a maddening, frustrating, altogether pleasurable sensation that had heat coursing out through Sophie’s body.

  Did he want her mouth on him in the same way?

  “Stop trying to think, Sophie.” He lifted his head from her breast and shifted to fuse his mouth to hers.

  Marvelous, lovely, spectacular… She winnowed her hand through his hair and gave herself up to the sheer glory of being kissed by a man who knew exactly what he was about. His onslaught was delicate and voracious at once, tasting her, enticing her tongue with his own, and inspiring Sophie to hike her leg over his hips in a bid to draw him closer.

  Ah, God, she wanted this to go on forever. She wanted him to show her all there was to know and then forge new ground with her, ground unique to the two of them. And God bless the man, while he was storming her very reason with his kisses, his hand, his wonderful, warm hand, settled back over her breast.

  “Vim…”

  “Tell me if you like it.” He closed his hand around her breast, drawing a little on her nipple. “I like it. I like the feel of you in my arms, Sophie. I like the way you taste, I like how your hands feel on my naked body.”

  “Naked.” Naked was wonderful too. She slid her hand down over his flank to grab him by his derriere and try to pull him closer. “I like that you’re naked. I like it a lot.”

  He closed his mouth over hers, and Sophie just barely registered the sensation of her nightgown being slowly, slowly eased up her thigh.

  Naked was wonderful, and she wanted to be naked too. This burning, searing closeness was another part of what she’d wished for, lighting bonfires in all the places her mind and body had been growing steadily colder for years. She put her hand over his where it was stealing up her leg.

  “Let me take this off.” She said the words right against his mouth and was thus able to feel him smile. He shifted back just a few inches.

  “Be quick about it, lest I aid you and shred the thing to bits.”

  And that had her smiling too, to think of him literally tearing her clothes off. She wrestled the nightgown over her head and tossed it to the foot of the bed.

  “I’m naked.” It didn’t seem like a foolish thing to say; it seemed like the most brave, delightful sentence ever uttered. She was naked, he was naked in the same bed, and her body was humming and tapping its figurative toe to the tune of some lovely new music.

  “And now what shall I do with you in your naked state?” he mused. “What shall you do with me?”

  He settled on his back, leaving Sophie momentarily puzzled.

  “You were doing quite nicely a moment ago,” she said, drawing the covers up around her.

  “And I could kiss and pet you forever, love, but we must indulge your desires if I’m to consider myself properly acquitted in this bed.”

  “How can you sound so damnably composed?” The question came out all of its own, leaving Sophie to realize that parting with her clothes was creating other vulnerabilities and exposures completely beyond her experience.

  His shifted so his hands could close on her shoulders. “Iron self-discipline alone keeps me from tossing the covers aside and rutting on you like a satyr.”

  A thread of darkness in his declaration suggested he was telling the truth.

  “Satyrs seem like such happy creatures.” Sophie made this observation as Vim shifted her over him, until she realized he wanted her to straddle him.

  Good God, was this why ladies never rode astride? The very position, with him laid out beneath her like a banquet, her knees pressed to his hips, left her feeling naughty and bold.

  “The satyrs likely expired from an excess of pleasure. Come here, Sophie, and kiss me.”

  With the shift in position, Vim had changed the ga
me. Sophie perceived this at the level of instinct, but it took gazing down at him for a moment before she understood the nature of the change.

  “You want me to make love to you.” She trailed her hand over his chest. “When I was on my back, you were making love to me.”

  His hand closed over hers on his chest, and he brought her fingers to his lips. “We make love to each other, Sophie.” No teasing, no flirting, but rather a quiet gravity infused his voice. “I am here for the sole purpose of giving you pleasure, and that will give me pleasure long after this night has passed.”

  She folded down onto his chest, abruptly needing to hide her face against his throat. His arms closed around her, and the game changed yet again.

  It was no longer a game at all. He’d leave in the morning, and Sophie would let him go. That was how matters would conclude, no matter what joy or pleasure they wrung from the night.

  She spent a long, sweet moment curled against him, his hands making slow patterns on her back. Against her belly, she felt the length of his erection—firm, warm, and undeniable, but passive.

  “I will miss you, Vim Charpentier.”

  “This comforts me a little, Sophie, though I’d never want to cause you upset. I will miss you too.”

  They’d said the same words just a few hours ago, but here in the dark, nothing between them at all, the sentiments took on a different, more poignant weight. Sophie pushed his hair off his forehead, and with her hand on his crown, set her lips to his.

  She put as much longing and wishing into her kiss as she knew how, but as he tasted her in return, she felt Vim shift the kiss to something deeper, closer. His hand moved slowly on her bare back, mapping bone, muscle, and sinew.

  Sophie had the sense he was memorizing the feel of her even as his tongue traced the shape of her lips.

  “Go easy, Sophie.” He murmured the words against her neck. Sophie felt his nose grazing her ear, then he was levering her up so she hung over him. That same nose nuzzled at her breast.

  “Vim… I want…”

  “Yes.” He closed his mouth over her nipple, drawing in a slow, wicked rhythm that ignited all manner of need deep in Sophie’s body.

  In her womb. She cradled the back of his head in her palm, holding him to her as she tried to adjust to what cascaded through her.

  Tenderness certainly, unbearable tenderness for the man giving her such pleasure, but also desire. Hot, needy, unfamiliar, and for the first time, welcome.

  “Move on me, Sophie. Pleasure yourself.”

  He arched up, snugging the length of his erection right against her sex.

  Move on me, Sophie.

  She wanted to move; she wanted to grind herself down on him, to consume him bodily, to have him—to have him—deep inside her body.

  “Like this.” Vim’s hands settled on her hips, and he guided her along his length, a slow, wet sweep and return that had Sophie groaning softly.

  It wasn’t tidy, but it was… God in heaven… It was beyond words.

  When she’d found a rhythm, his hands glided away, one to her breast, one to wrap around her lower back. He guided her, and yet he exerted no demands at all.

  “Take your time.” The words were just above a whisper, sinking into Sophie’s brain through a haze of pleasure and growing bewilderment. “Take all night if you need to.”

  This was not copulation. Sophie had been raised with five brothers, she’d spent plenty of time in the barns and stables and mews at her family’s various holdings. This was not copulation.

  She could not think beyond that, for her body was beginning to throb with a low, hot want that connected Vim’s fingers on her nipples with his mouth on hers and with the hard length of his arousal tight against her sex.

  She desperately tried to keep the sensations separate, to be catalogued and savored one body part and memory at a time, but her boundaries were collapsing.

  “Vim, I can’t… I’m not…” She couldn’t think, couldn’t seize words from the maelstrom Vim’s male body was brewing in hers.

  “Let go, Sophie. Fly, soar—I’ll catch you.”

  He touched her, used his thumb on a part of her Sophie did not know what to call, a small scrap of flesh at the apex of her sex that abruptly commanded every bit of her attention.

  “What are you…?”

  “Hush, Sophie, my love. I’ll catch you…”

  That simple, knowing caress of his thumb had Sophie catapulting right out of her body into a cataclysm of pleasure and wonder and light that went on and on. She heard herself making some sort of sound—a sigh, a groan, a wordless plea—but Vim did not cease his attentions until she was panting and limp where she hung above him, braced on her arms.

  “My… Goodness. Oh, my goodness.”

  She had flown, she had soared; in his arms she had broken free of every earthly weight—sorrow, loneliness, propriety, familial expectations, her own body. Past, present, and future had all dissolved in the blinding pleasure of his embrace.

  “Hold me tight, Sophie.” The words were a hoarse whisper against her throat.

  She mustered wits enough to anchor her arm under his neck, abruptly aware that while she had endured unimaginable pleasure, he had not.

  This was still not copulation, but he moved against her as if it were, used the slick friction of her sex on his rigid length to pelt her body with aftershocks of sensation that made clinging to him not merely possible, but as necessary as breath. She felt the same blinding pleasure gathering again even as Vim’s hand at the base of her spine anchored her tightly to him.

  “God in heaven, Sophie…”

  Damp heat spread between them as Sophie was again seized with convulsions low in her body—shorter, sharper, and if anything, more intense than the previous bout. He kept their bodies seamed tightly until Sophie was panting against his neck, reeling and dizzy even as a part of her still floated in a cloud of pleasure.

  “You.” Vim kissed her cheek, leaving Sophie to wonder what exactly she’d heard in his voice: Affection, most definitely, a little wonder, and maybe something else—regret?

  She snuggled in closer, wanting nothing except to hold him to her and be held by him.

  “You soared for me, Sophie Windham. Soared high, if I’m not mistaken.”

  “So high I could no longer see the earth.”

  “Good.” His hand trailed over her hair. “That’s good.”

  He fell silent, his hand moving on her in a languid caress that had Sophie’s eyes drifting closed.

  She did not want to fall asleep. She wanted to treasure these moments, this lovely, warm, undreamt of intimacy with a man who tickled a foundling baby just to see the child smile.

  A man who would be leaving in the morning.

  * * *

  Vim’s mind fractured in the haze of sexual satiety, impressions coming to him piecemeal and yet with a certain immediacy: The weight of Sophie’s body pressed to his chest as she fought sleep.

  The softening length of his cock amid the heat and carnal mess he’d created between their bellies.

  The sheer, sensual pleasure of stroking her hair.

  From the morass of emotion and sensory information stewing in his brain, he discerned three reasons why he had not taken fullest advantage of the pleasures Sophie had offered.

  First, to assure himself there had been no permanent consequences of such an act necessitating his having to stay in touch with her.

  She was different from other women in several regards: he wanted to spend time with her, not just in bed, but in the parlor, in the kitchen, in the stables. He liked simply to watch her, whether she was tending the baby, puttering with her baking, or braiding up her hair by the light of the dying fire. This difference might have borne potential for a broader relationship, except Sophie wasn’t looking for marriage.

  And while Vim had to admit marriage to Sophie would be highly problematic—she would want to dwell here in the south, among her family, when just visiting in Kent was a rare act of wi
ll for him—her indifference in this regard still rankled.

  When a man was best advised to forget a woman, staying in touch with her was not wise.

  The second reason he’d denied them both the pleasure of intimate joining had to do with the first: it was going to be hard enough to put these days with Sophie in a memory box without adding to the list the recollection of spending his seed in her sweet female heat. The third reason was purely practical, and the most compelling: if he made love to her truly, fully, without restraint, he was nearly certain leaving her would be impossible.

  He’d made a colossal fool of himself over a woman once before, and once was more than enough.

  Sophie lifted her head and pushed the remains of her braid over her shoulder. “I should check on the baby.”

  “I’ll do that. I need to tidy up, in any case.”

  She frowned at him. “I don’t know what comes now with you. Do we roll over and go to sleep? Will you seek your own bed?”

  He could sense her trying to make her brain function on the strength of mental determination, but he could also hear the vulnerability lurking in her question.

  “I’ll fetch you a cloth and check on Kit, and then we’ll talk.”

  Relief registered in the way her mouth curved up. God in heaven, did she think he’d just wander off down the freezing hall and drift away to sleep when she was here, warm and cozy, his seed still scenting her flesh?

  He fished at the foot of the bed for his dressing gown but didn’t belt it, letting the cold air blow some sense into his befogged brain. For a woman intent on casual pleasures, Sophie Windham had a certain artlessness, as if it had been a long time between frolics, or as if her previous liaisons hadn’t done much for her confidence.

  He knew from experience all it took was a little bad fortune, and confidence could be hard to restore. Man, woman, old, young, it made no difference. Part of him wanted to ask her about it, and part of him refused to entertain the idea lest she pry reciprocal confidences from him.