After the Scandal

by Elizabeth Essex

  Ah, but he wanted to.

  He wanted to hold her, to wrap his arms around her, and hold her tight against his naked skin. He wanted it with a hunger that felt as if it might eat him alive if he did not give in, and grip the delicate rounds of her shoulders, and take her nipples with his mouth.

  Lightly. Lightly. Just enough to show he that wanted this slow death by delight, this slow teasing march toward orgasm, as much as she. That he wanted this excoriating brush of her peaked nipples against the bare skin of his chest. That he wanted her with every breath of his body, and every fragmented thought left in his mind.

  She wanted, too. “Tanner. Tanner, please. Again.” Her voice slid away into irregular breathing. “Tell me.”

  Ah. Words. He would give her those, too.

  He told her. “Yes. You want what I want, too. I can tell. You want to feel the pleasure.”

  His words were terse, blunt even. Spoken as if he were having as much trouble breathing as she.

  “Yes.” She breathed her urgent agreement into his ear. “I want to feel— I want to feel it all.”

  He would give her it all. Every bit of it. Every last piece of pulsating bliss he could wring for them.

  “Are you a virgin?” He thought he knew for a fact that she was—the signs were there for him to read. Had been there for him to read.

  But life was messy, and stranger than fiction, and the analytic part of his mind needed confirmation of all the facts, so that he could proceed correctly.

  “Yes.” Her voice was hesitant, as if she were unsure of why he asked.

  “It matters.”

  “Oh.” That was disappointment in her voice now. And she pushed away, separating them, moving just out of his reach.

  “No. Not to me.” He tried to make her understand. “It matters to you. It matters as to how we proceed.”

  His words sounded stupid and stilted to his own ears. He had to do better. “In how I touch you. In how I ask you to touch me.”

  “I can ask?” There was careful hope in her voice—the return of physical excitement, building in her breathlessness, and she proved her point by kneading the taut muscles at his shoulders. “May I do this?”

  He felt himself stretch and move wantonly unto the sweet pressure of her hands. “Yes. Like that. And like this.”

  He led her by the wrists, so her palms brushed across his chest, teasing his flat nipples into their own tightly furled peaks.

  She needed no more encouragement, and immediately raked the backs of her fingertips across the sensitized tips, and he thought he would come out of his skin.

  “Yes. Just like that.” He reciprocated by thumbing her glorious pink nipples into tight, needy peaks.

  She drew her breath in through her teeth, a long suggestive sound of urgency and provocation. “Yes. Show me more.”

  “I should like nothing more. I shall show you,” he promised her on a whisper that had gone dark and hungry, “all the ways to give pleasure. I will show you the places on your body that are made for the giving and taking of pleasure. I will show you the places on my body, for they are different from yours.”

  “Yes.” It was her turn for quick agreement now. “Please. Please.” She could not abandon her exquisite manners even now, when she was in the throes of needy, unthinking bliss.

  And he loved her even more for it.

  “Do you want us to have sex?”

  Her eyes widened at the bluntness of his question, but he wanted—he needed to be sure. He wasn’t one for couching his words, or obscuring his actions in confusing or misleading euphemisms. They were not yet married. They were in the throes of a sexual excitement. They would be having sex—messy, wet, exhilarating, pleasurable, physically draining, blissful sex. With the woman he loved.

  But he was not blind or stupid enough to think he knew everything about her, despite the way she sighed her encouragement into his ear. Despite the way she looked at him now—half hope, half fear, and all physical excitement.

  “Do you?” she asked.

  He felt his mouth curve into a crooked smile.

  “Oh, yes. Very much. But I want to make sure you want it, too. I want to make sure that you don’t feel forced, or pressured or coerced in any way. It’s important for you to choose.”

  Her face softened, and her head tipped to the side, as if she thought him even more buffle-headed than he felt. But he had to make sure she understood. “And what ever you choose—yes or no—I will abide by your wishes. I won’t force you. Or try to coerce you. No matter how much I want to have relations with you, or how disappointed I might be.”

  She set her delicate fingers against the pulse in his neck, and asked softly, “How disappointed might you be?”

  “Enormously.” His straining cock was proof enough of that. “Make no mistake. I want you, Claire. But I also want you to want me.”

  She smiled. That warm, open guileless smile that slayed him, and shot him clean through with heat and need and torturous bliss.

  “I do want you.”

  His heart slammed against the cage of his ribs, straining to be let loose. “What do you want most?”

  Her answer was as sure as it was satisfying. “I want to kiss you again.”

  He closed the distance between them directly, but not at such speed as to overwhelm her, and set his mouth to hers.

  It leapt between them, the attraction, like an arc of electricity jumping between poles, the moment her lips touched hers. He was jack-knifed back into arousal by nothing but the plush push of her lips against his, and the soft breath of her satisfied sigh whispering against his cheek.

  And her hands were everywhere upon him, already circling around his neck so she might pull him close.

  He allowed himself the satisfaction of letting his hands grip her by the waist, but he resisted the urge to pull her against him. He forced himself to wait for her to lay her body flush against him, to press her breasts into his chest.

  Only then did he allow himself the pleasure of opening his mouth to her kiss, to tasting her heady sweetness, of exploring the plush tartness of her tongue and mouth.

  “Yes,” she whispered, and he took that encouragement for the permission it was, to draw up her skirts as they kissed, teasing her with his tongue and his teeth, nipping and sucking and tantalizing her with new sensations. With more delight, if only she chose to come and follow his lead.

  She did. She pushed forward as he leaned into the cushions at his back, never breaking their contact. Never letting her lips part from his for more than the time it took to change his angle of approach, or take her lower lip delicately between his teeth, and sweetly bite down with just enough force to send a jolt of unholy arousal careering through his gut.

  “Claire.”

  Her name was both a groan of entreaty and a plea. A plea for more of the wickedly divine caresses that spanned the divide between pleasure and pain so neatly, he was nearly poleaxed by the force of his response. By the force of his need.

  His need for more of her.

  He widened his knees, and pulled her closer, so that the delicate heat of her body would press directly against his arousal.

  But she was moving faster than he. She spread her knees wider on either side of his legs, and moved against him, while her hands speared through his hair, fisting and tugging the disordered strands.

  He leaded his head into her palm, and let her roll his head in her hands, trying desperately to exhaust the itchy need for skin to be against skin.

  She kissed him again, filling him full of urgent, insistent need. “Tanner. Tanner, please.”

  His name was like a spur to his own hunger, urging him on. Her clothing was a bunched impediment between them, but he could not bear to set her away from him, even to bare her white, white skin to his touch, and to his greedy gaze.

  He crumpled up her gown, and drew it up, up the length of her body, taking his time, dragging the soft muslin slowly across her skin in a precursor to his touch.

 
The action broke the kiss, but Claire didn’t seem to object. Her head fell back, and she groaned her approval to the air over their heads, and helping him draw the material over her head. She flung it aside as he reached for the tapes of her petticoat, pulling it free of her waist and following the same torturous path up her torso.

  “Tanner,” she hissed at him, her breath full of insistence.

  Her stays had already been cast aside, so there was only the thin lawn of her chemise left, and he tortured them both by drawing the neckline up in his fist, so the thin material pressed tight against her skin. So he could tongue her breasts again through the veil of the fabric, kissing and sucking and laving her harder, showing her his hunger and need.

  She was the one to pull the chemise off, to yank it over her head, and collapse against him, so that at last they were flush against each other, skin to skin, heart beating against heart.

  He plied his lips to the hollow under her ear, kissing and nipping his long way down the sensitive side of her neck, teaching her that a wealth of sensation could be evoked from thorough attention to this lovely swath of skin above her collarbone.

  All the while his hands were stroking up and down the curve of her waist, his fingers fanning across the sweet curve of her back, and his thumbs making light sweeps against the side of her belly.

  He urged her closer, rounding his palms over the taut flesh of her bottom, cupping her sweet arse, and pressing her against his achingly erect cock, still held in check by the thick cotton of his breeches.

  But he did nothing to appease his fingers’ need to touch her sweet cunny, or rake his hands through the soft blonde curls at the entrance to her body.

  Not yet. Not until she said so.

  She had to be the one to ask, or take the initiative. Each step of their physical intimacy needed to be made without any kind of force.

  He did not want the ghost of Lord Peter Rosing between him and his exquisite girl—he wanted her all to himself.

  All his to worship.

  All his to tease and delight. All his to satisfy.

  He kissed his way along the line of her collarbone, across the hollow at the base of her neck, and out again along the straight line of delicate bone, until she arched her back, and scored his chest with the soft pebbled peaks of her breasts.

  His own heart was hammering away like an anvil inside his chest.

  He felt, more than he heard, the deep sound of satisfaction sighing out of her, before she pushed away. Not with any great force, but just enough so he, who was trying to be vigilant to any such move, felt it instantly, and let her go.

  But she only pushed away enough so that she could duck her head down to kiss him on the mouth again. A long slippery slide of a kiss that made him long to make her slippery and ready beneath him.

  Except that that wasn’t how it was going to go. He wouldn’t put her beneath him. He wouldn’t press his hunger into her, and succumb to the weight of his desire, and stretch his body over her.

  Not this time. Maybe even never.

  It did not matter. She would be worth any price.

  The price of his sanity seemed an easy thing to pay, when her hand scrubbed down the soft skin of her belly, telling him with her articulate instinct what it was that she wanted.

  She wanted him to touch her.

  “I am going to touch you, my Claire. I’m going to touch you, and finger your lush little cunny.”

  He couldn’t tell if the sound that flew from her lips was excitement, or distress. But she didn’t pull away—she tightened her grip on his shoulders.

  He spread his legs wider, pushing her open, laying her bare and vulnerable before him.

  He concentrated on the sweet slide of her body, combing his fingers through the soft hair that covered her mons, and shielded the delicate pink flesh of her sex.

  He cupped her, pressing the heel of his palm against the edge of her cleft, rubbing just enough so she gasped, and pulled herself tight against him, and just as quickly levered back, so he could continue to touch her so intimately.

  She was light, and heat, and soft slippery need, encouraging him with her breathy sounds of frustrated delight.

  He eased his fingertip along her delicate folds, and was rewarded for his patience with the slick feel of her body preparing itself for him.

  He slid his finger into her tight sheath, exploring her, watching her face for her reaction, but she closed her eyes, and buried her head against his shoulder, but made not a sound.

  “Look at me.” He needed to see her face—to see what she was thinking. “Look at me while I finger your lush little cunny.”

  Her answer was a gasp, and the tight grip of her hand around his neck.

  He could not tell if it was pleasure, or disgust that drove her. “Do you like that? Do you want me to stop?”

  “No.” Heat was blazing across her cheeks. “Yes. You shouldn’t say that,” she whispered.

  “Why not? It is a crude, dirty word. But I’m a dirty man, Claire. I’m the Tanner.”

  “You’re my Tanner.” She kissed the edge of his ear, softly gently, and then with more force as his fingers played upon her, and her body began to understand its rhythm.

  She began to rock against the insistent pressure of his hand, enough that her body pressed itself forward, grazing against his cock, straining within his breeches.

  “You’re almost ready for me, my Claire. You’re almost wet and lush enough to take me. Almost.”

  He slid another finger inside her, exploring her, stretching her tight cunny, all the while, letting his thumb graze the nubbin of her clitoris to heighten her gratification.

  And gratified she was. “Yes, yes, Tanner. Tanner please.”

  He wrapped his other arm around her nape, and pulled her mouth down to his, kissing her with all the heat and urgency and need he no longer wanted to hide.

  “Open my breeches,” he urged against her lips, as he stroked her, and stoked the fires of her passion.

  She worked with focused energy, quickly dispensing with his buttons, and shoving the flap down, out of the way, and his arousal sprang free of his breeches.

  “Take me.” He could hear his voice slipping into the old way, tumbling into the rough, guttural intonation he had tried for years to train out of himself.

  But it was no use. He could be no more than he was. “Take me in your hand. Show me where you want me—”

  She already was, grasping the long length of him, to press his cock against her mons, to show him unequivocally that she wanted them joined.

  “Yes.” The word was an exhalation through his teeth, but he could barely hear it for the sound of his heart in his ears.

  She was there, open and pink and bare and his. Waiting for him.

  He slid his hand out of her and grasped her as gently as possible by the waist, because he didn’t feel gentle. He felt tense and taut, and on the very very edge of something bigger and more powerful than desire. He felt as if he couldn’t breath, and didn’t need to, because his cock was pushing against the lush, slippery warmth of her entrance, and easing into her sweetly tight body.

  He made himself take a lungful of air, and then another, and he could hear the harsh cadence of his breath, and he tried, tried to go slowly, and ease the way.

  But he was going mad with the need for her, with the need for the tight friction of her cunny gripping him, and the sweet bliss of the joining of their bodies, that he could no longer think.

  He could no longer watch her carefully, or touch her gently, or take his time. There was no more time.

  There was only now, and the pleasure that ripped him in two when she rocked her hips to seat his cock inside her.

  She gasped, and went still and tense, holding herself tight against him, as if she could keep him from moving again.

  “Oh, God. Claire. Claire. Are you all right? Are you—” He kissed her open, gasping mouth, and kissed her tightly shut eyes, and pressed his care and concern and love against her pleated li
ps. “It will get better. The pain will go away. It will leave us, and leave the pleasure behind. I promise you.”

  He was babbling again, crooning the soft words into the delicate shell of her ear, kissing and stroking her to ease away her pain, and stoke the embers of her pleasure back into flame.

  But it was working. She drew in a deep shaky breath, and then another, and kissed him back, just a little. And then a little more.

  And then more still when his hands stroked up her sides to cup and fondle her breasts.

  He pushed her away from him so he could see—see everything from her flushed face, all the way down the pale, pinked slide of her body to the triangle of golden blonde hair that hid the joining of their bodies. So he could see her crush her lower lip between her teeth. So he could see her nipples crest into tight, pink peaks. So he could see the softening of her belly when she finally relaxed, and began to move against him.

  And then he wanted to see it all, and feel it all, as she slowly began to undulate in a sweet, sinuous motion, sliding her body against his, sending him rocking against the hard edge of his pleasure, over and over, and over again.

  He grasped the glorious round globes of her tight little arse, and quickened her pace, helping her move, adding force and strength to the dance of her body upon his. “Yes, Claire, yes. Just like that. Just like—”

  Like that.

  Heat and light and pleasure and pain and bliss burst behind his eyes, and blinded him with the bright force of her love.

  And he was gone.

  Chapter 24

  Claire had never felt so alive. And so very exhausted. And so very, very happy.

  She was sure she ought to be embarrassed to find herself naked but for her garters and stockings, draped across Tanner’s equally naked chest. But she didn’t seem to care.

  It seemed the very nicest place to be.

  She rolled her head to the side to look at him.

  His eyes were closed, and his mouth was open, slowly drawing in air as if it were an elixir.

  But he was the elixir. Quite magical.

  “Claire.” His voice was full of a slow wonder—as if he had just discovered her, naked and draped all over him—for the very first time.