One Kiss From You

by Christina Dodd

  “There might have been two,” she allowed as she ascended the stairs, leaning hard on him all the way. “Or seven. It was some derivative of five. Do you know I’m actually very good at math?”

  “I had no idea.” He knew the way to her bedchamber, of course. He’d stood outside it every night since she’d arrived in his house, fingering the key, weighing the odds…enjoying the anticipation.

  “Very good. Math and languages—which came in handy in our travels, I can tell you that. And riding. I’m a magnificent horsewoman. Everyone says so.” Her voice deepened and grew husky. “And swiving. I’m good at swiving.”

  He stopped so short that she almost fell backward.

  “Whoa,” she said. “Raise a flag before you change course like that, sailor.”

  In a falsely gentle tone, he asked, “Who taught you about swiving?”

  “Those women.”

  He stared at her hard, half-convinced she was pulling his leg, yet sure that, in her condition, she couldn’t manage comedy.

  Solemnly, she stared back at him. Lifting her hand, she patted his cheek. “Do you know how handsome you are? Oh, yes. It’s a fact! Tonight, when Horatia was pouring me a glass, she told me the ladies giggle about wanting to unbutton your breeches and unwrap what’s inside like an early Twelfth Night present. Or late, I can’t remember.”

  “Flattering.” He had to discover what she meant by I’m good at swiving. He didn’t believe it. He couldn’t. For God’s sake, she lacked the most elementary skills of kissing. Sliding his arm around her waist, he steered her into an alcove and pushed her down on the cushioned window seat. Snatching a single candle from a wall sconce, he placed it in a glass bowl. “What women?”

  “The ones at the party tonight.”

  “No. What women taught you about swiving?” His heart had developed a funny rhythm, quite unlike its usual, leisurely beat. With vicious motions, he freed the velvet drapes from their ties and twitched them over the opening, enclosing the two of them in a dim, small, private recess ideal for an interrogation.

  “I wish you’d pay attention. I already told you. The ones in the harem.”

  A harem? Had she lived in a harem?

  Had she slept with a man?

  Standing directly in front of her, he used his strongest tone to get her attention. “What harem?”

  She seemed not at all impressed by his severity. “Haven’t you heard that story?” She tilted her head back to see him and tumbled back to the cushions propped against the wall. Curtains covered the windows, shutting out the draft that made its way through the frame, but the wind groaned as it made its way around London street corners. “It’s really quite amusing, now that it’s over.”

  Amusing? He doubted that. Anxiety rose in him. Anxiety for her. “Tell me.”

  “We wanted to go to see Constantinople, my cousin and I—that was my idea, actually, and it turned out so badly it was the last idea I suggested—but when we got there, there was this man. A lot of men, actually, and almost no women. Odd place. This man, he was all black-haired and black-eyed, and he was rich. Powerful!” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “A bey. He thought we were twins—you know, sisters born at the same time—”

  A vase of roses sat on the small table in the corner. Their fragrance reminded Remington of yesterday in Green Park: of her riding, of her valiance, of her splendor in the sunshine….In Constantinople, had she been hurt, in fear? He grew furious at the thought, but he kept his voice low and coaxing. “I know what twins are. Tell me about the harem.”

  “You would know, wouldn’t you?” She petted his waistcoat, her fingers lingering on the embroidered silk. “You’re a very smart man.”

  Not a smart man. A stupid man, to be flattered by the praise of an owly-eyed drunk. “I’m glad you think so.”

  “I don’t understand why you haven’t figured this whole thing out. I’d be so relieved if you did.”

  What whole thing? What did she mean? “I’m doing my best.”

  “I suppose you are, and I can hardly tell you the truth, can I?” She gestured extravagantly.

  “You could.” Catching her fingers, he stroked them and coaxed, “I’m going to be your husband. You can trust me.”

  “I think I can.” She sounded as if she marveled. Then she added, “But that would be a betrayal of everything I believe in. No. Can’t tell you all about me, but you can guess.”

  She stared at him, as if expecting him to know her secrets, when in fact he didn’t care. Not right now. Not when she’d told him she knew about copulation. “Why did the bey care if you’d been twins?”

  “He fancied our pale skin, thought he’d like to tousle us both together, so he stuck us in his harem. Just like that.” She tried to snap her fingers. Nothing happened. She stared at her fingers and tried again. Nothing.

  Trapped in a nightmare of fury and compassion, Remington demanded, “What did you do?”

  She smacked the wooden windowsill, and the impact seemed to satisfy her. “We tried to complain to the authorities, but there’re no laws against that sort of thing there. Such barbarity!”

  “Tell me what happened to you.” Tell me if you’ve been violated. Tell me what I’m going to have to do to soothe your fears.

  “We didn’t want to be in the harem. The other females there thought we were funny, because they liked it. Sweets all the time and baths with no modesty whatsoever, all these women bathing together, washing each other, if you can imagine—”

  He could imagine only too well.

  “—All they talked about was taking a man inside of them, and how it felt, and what a woman could do to prolong the pleasure. It was quite outrageous when the concubines practiced on each other.” She sat straight up, her eyes wide with remembered disbelief. “I hadn’t known such a thing was possible.”

  “My God.” He would have said nothing could shock him, but this did. She’d been imprisoned with women who lived to please a man, and that man himself had…had wanted her. Of course. No man alive could resist her. After all, she’d been in a harem.

  She wasn’t a virgin. And he wasn’t angry that she was experienced, only that she’d been forced.

  He’d lost his mind.

  “Yes!” She waggled her head. “Of course, we listened and we watched. We couldn’t not. We were aghast!” Her horrified expression collapsed, and she giggled. “And curious.”

  He wanted to smash something. The wall. The vase. Instead, with gentle fingers, he smoothed a lock of hair from her cheek. “Did the bey hurt you?”

  “The things those concubines said men and women perform on each other! Did you know that men like to have their private parts bathed in a woman’s mouth?”

  “I did know that.” He liked that. He couldn’t think about it now.

  “You knew?” She looked straight at his privates as if she could see through the cloth. “Really? Have you had it done? Is it true that your parts grow and swell? What makes them do that?”

  Grasping her by the shoulders, he crouched down and looked into her eyes. “What did the bey do to you?”

  “The bey?” She sounded incredulous. “He placed us in his harem, and then left town.”

  Leaning his palm against the wall, Remington closed his eyes in relief.

  “I wish you’d pay attention,” she complained. “If you paid attention, you’d know that.”

  He stared up at her. “So you’re still a virgin.”

  “Sir! Yes, of course I am!” Her disarrayed hair looked as it might after a good tumble. Her bosom fit into her bodice, but with a creamy show of cleavage that made him want to kiss each breast. Her eyes were heavy with weariness and drink, and for the first time since he’d met her, she smiled without moderation. She lavished smiles on him, her soft, red lips slightly open, her white teeth glistening. She had been taunting him all evening—hell, ever since he’d met her—with her long limbs and her strong arms and those big, blue eyes.

  She was an innocent, but an innocent with t
he knowledge of a courtesan. She knew he wanted her, he’d made sure of that, but more important—she wanted him, and she didn’t know how to deal with her desire. He had woven a very satisfactory web around his affianced wife, and now he found she had woven an equally strong web around him. He could think of nothing but possessing her. He could think of nothing but their wedding night. Even his plans for revenge took second place to the need for her that clawed at his gut.

  She was still talking, and all of a sudden, his attention snapped back to her.

  “If I took your manhood out and bathed it in my mouth, I wouldn’t really be compromising my purity.” Spreading her arms across the cushions in an attitude of abandon, she stared up at him speculatively. “Would I?”

  It took all of his considerable strength of will not to agree with her, for the male part involved grew and pressed so hard against the flap in his breeches he feared the buttons would pop. Slowly, he stood to ease the pressure. “You would.”

  With the pugnaciousness of a drunk, she argued, “But it doesn’t involve you putting any male parts into my body.”

  He didn’t know what to say to that, but if she didn’t soon stop talking about the act she would find out the truth.

  Then her face fell. “But…I suppose it does. You would put your—”

  “Yes!” He suffered a disreputable agony.

  Her hand lifted, and with his lust-impaired vision he saw her reaching toward him to once again twitch his clothing out of place. Instead, she brushed her fingers against the bulge in his breeches. “Is this it?” She giggled. “I suppose it is, or else you’ve got a nightstick in your pocket.”

  He wanted to tell her it wasn’t appropriate to laugh when she was holding his genitals, but he relished her touch so much he found he didn’t care. She could laugh all she wanted, as long as her fingers searched out the length and breadth of him.

  She grew appropriately solemn as she explored him. “It’s very long and thick. It seems as if the act between a man and a woman is impossible. I don’t understand the mechanics. The positions seem so awkward, and the sizes don’t match at all.”

  “It works.” If she didn’t stop caressing him, he was going to show her how well it worked.

  He had to remember his strategy. He planned to do this with appropriate ceremony. To bring his duchess to the church, and that night sacrifice her virginity on the altar of his revenge.

  Her family owed his family, and she was going to pay. Or at least—she would make the first payment.

  Yet she fiddled with his buttons, and each accidental touch sent jolts of bliss—or was it agony?—through his body. “Can I take it out?” she asked. “Can I see it?”

  Her eagerness was the greatest aphrodisiac he’d ever imagined. “On our wedding night.”

  Pausing, she pouted, her lower lip charmingly full. “No. Not then. Now.” She began to unbutton him.

  He stopped her with his hand on hers. “If you do that, more would happen than is…proper.”

  She wasn’t so tipsy, after all, for she giggled. “I can’t believe any of this is proper. Not even in America.” Her fingers wiggled beneath his as she tried to reach for him again. “We shouldn’t be here alone. I shouldn’t be living in your house. So why not—”

  “Because I wouldn’t be in—” Control. No, he couldn’t admit that to her.

  But he could turn the tables. In a knowledgeable, coaxing tone, he said, “A man can also bathe a woman’s private parts with his mouth.”

  Her eyes widened and lost a little of their clarity. “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “Are you sure?” she asked suspiciously. “The concubines never mentioned that.”

  “It’s something a man does for a woman when he wants to teach her desire.” More than desire. It was what a man did for a woman when he wanted to give her satisfaction, but his duchess didn’t need to know everything. Some things were better performed as a surprise.

  “But such a practice seems very…”

  “Very?”

  She chose her words cautiously. “Letting a man do that would involve a great deal of trust on the woman’s part.”

  “It would. But when the man does it right, it feels wonderful…so I’m told. A man’s mouth explores and kisses each part, tastes and licks, sucks ever so gently…”

  She pressed her knees together, and the faint sound she made was not a rebuttal but a moan.

  Tossing one of the cushions on the floor, he knelt on it. He stretched his face toward her lips. “I’m going to kiss you. We’ve kissed before, remember?” Pitching his tone to be low and seductive, he asked, “You liked it, didn’t you?”

  Her voice wobbled. “Very much.”

  She was so trusting. So damnably, beautifully honest. “I put my tongue in your mouth, explored and tasted. Like this.” He brushed her lips, his mind anticipating the shy blossom of her mouth beneath his. He loved the little catch of breath she gave as he slid his tongue inside, loved the flavor of brandy, loved that she couldn’t resist putting her arms around his shoulders and twining her fingers in his hair. The liquor had loosened her inhibitions; she touched his tongue with hers, then when his tongue fell back, she followed, delving into his mouth, touching his teeth, ringing his lips. Her diffident exterior hid a siren of uncommon power and boldness, and he would show her everything her instincts only suspected. Gently, he sucked at her tongue, rasping the end with his own. When she fell back, out of breath, he slid her one glove down her arm. “Can you imagine me doing that to you…down there?” Ever-so-gently, he kissed the soft, pale skin at her elbow. “Can you imagine that?”

  “Yes,” she said faintly.

  Removing the glove completely, he kissed each of her fingers, then nuzzled her palm with open mouth. “This marriage wasn’t your choice. I can allay only a few of your fears, but I do promise your every womanly yearning will be fulfilled—even before you know what it is. Do you trust me?”

  Without taking a moment to think, she said, “No.”

  Looking up at her, he saw her wide-eyed dismay, her trembling mouth, the flush on her cheeks. “To pleasure you with my mouth?”

  Her indrawn breath betrayed how very tempted she was. If she wasn’t intoxicated, she would have been screaming and running, but her hidden, hesitant desires made her malleable as clay in his hands.

  Stretching out her arms, he placed her hands on the cushions. “I’m the man you’ve been waiting for all your life.” He put his hands on her thighs.

  She started.

  Moving his palms gently up and down, he warmed her flesh with his touch…and stealthily moved between her knees. “Trust me to pleasure you.” Grasping her hem, he lifted the slippery silk up to her waist.

  In a panic, she shoved at his shoulders. She tried to close her legs.

  He was between them, on his knees before her, and even in this dim light, he was privileged to see…everything. Her legs were long and well formed, her calves clad in white silk stockings with a garter at her knee. Her thighs were pale and strong, the kind that could ride a horse, or a man, and control every movement. The thatch of hair between her legs was black and curly, and beneath that he could see her slit, pink and beckoning. “Perfect.” He looked up at her. “Beautiful.”

  She watched him with a scandalized gaze, and yet…he saw fragments of hope and excitement sparkling in her eyes. She wanted him. She sought knowledge. She wanted to experience this iniquitous bliss.

  And he wanted to give it to her. When he was done with her, she wouldn’t remember anything except him and what he had taught her.

  He saw a mark on the pale skin of her knee, and gently slid his thumb over it. “Poor knee! How did this happen?”

  “When I…rescued Lizzie, I fell.”

  “You must promise never to do something so madcap again.” He kissed her bruise, his lips lingering. “Poor knee. Do you promise?”

  “Can’t.” Her toes curled. “Not even for you.”

  “You’re a stubbor
n woman.”

  “I didn’t used to be. I used to be…pliable.”

  He chuckled. “You’re changing before my very eyes. But if you would be pliable one more time, and put your hands back on the cushions, I would be most grateful.”

  She swallowed. “I don’t think…”

  “You can’t push me away. You don’t even want to. Put your hands back, and relax.”

  Gradually, she stretched her arms out across the pillows and settled back. “But I wanted to…to pleasure you.”

  She was totally open to him. She had no defenses. She did trust him or, virgin that she was, she would never have allowed herself to yield herself so thoroughly.

  He smiled at her, lavishing charm while trailing his fingers up her inner thighs. “Not tonight. Tonight is yours.” He held her gaze with his, calming her while he neared his goal. The closer he got, the warmer she was, her body a stove to wrap him in heat. As the moments progressed, as his heart beat harder, he grew as intoxicated as she, but he was intoxicated with passion…and power. “On our wedding night, when I finally put myself inside you, we’re going to burn into cinders.”

  She sat up straight. “Please…we shouldn’t…”

  He was so randy, his cock knocked at his buttons. At the same time, the wickedness of hiding in a darkened alcove, of holding his affianced wife captive with dissipation, drove him on to ignore his own condition and concentrate on hers. He smoothed his palm over the tips of her hair. “Sit back. I won’t take you tonight, I promise.”

  “It’s not that. We shouldn’t be doing this at all.”

  “That is one of the charms.” He slid one finger down her folds, scarcely touching skin, yet he saw the way her eyes blurred. “Sit back. I am going to do what I want, and you are going to like it.”

  “I shouldn’t.”

  He chuckled, and in his most agreeable tone, said, “If you resist me, I’ll use the curtain ties to tie you up and do whatever I like with you.” On her dismayed gasp, he thrust his finger inside her.

  She was hot and wet from desire, and she went rigid, not in rejection, but with passion woven of words and deeds.