“If there were consequences to that night, you must know I am the only one who paid them,” she said with a shrug. “Yes, of course Hodgend was sent away to the continent for a few months, but he returned with a rich, beautiful French wife who sniffs at me whenever I am found in a room with her. His father’s money and title erased any ill feelings anyone had toward him. Especially when they could be directed toward me with such ease.”
“But why didn’t your father insist on having you…” Jason shook his head. “I’m sorry to be indelicate, but examined? You must have bled after you were deflowered, and that would have proved Hodgend wrong.”
She squeezed her eyes shut. “I didn’t know until much later that such a thing was possible,” she whispered. “But even if I had asked, my father wouldn’t have agreed. He was determined to believe the worst of me. He called me a whore and practically set me out on the street. It was only at the last moment that he sent me to Aunt Cordelia in order to save some kind of face. My brother, my sister and my father turned their backs on me to distance themselves from the scandal that followed. And it did follow.”
She sighed. “But eventually it passed. And I am here, and that is all.”
He frowned. “I’m so sorry, Jacinda. I’m so bitterly sorry that you were so ill-used and abandoned. I was no longer close to your brother when it all happened, but perhaps if I had been older, if I had been more aware of anyone but myself—”
She laughed as she cut him off. “What would you have done? Married me?”
The moment she said it, she wished she could take it back, for he paled and actually took a step backward. She shook her head, cursing her foolishness.
“You couldn’t have done anything, Jason. It was an inescapable circumstance that I allowed to happen by not denying the earl more strenuously.”
“Don’t blame yourself,” Jason said, his voice sharp. “Ever. It is that bastard’s fault. He used you and did not do what was right when he was caught at it. He deserved to be quartered.”
She shook her head. “And yet so few get what they deserve.”
He locked eyes with her, his gaze suddenly powerful, intense. “You will. You will, Jacinda, if I can do anything about it.”
Chapter Ten
“There is nothing so decadent as making a powerful man lose control.”—The Ladies Book of Pleasures
Anger pulsed through Jason as he made his declaration to Jacinda, anger at how she had been treated by virtually everyone around her. Empathy for what she had suffered. It might not have been the physical torment that had plagued his own early years, but it was abuse nonetheless. And even worse, she had no resources to escape it when she came of age.
“Thank you,” she whispered, moving toward him. “Even if you can’t help me, I appreciate you trying. It is more than most people have done for me in so long I can’t recall it.”
She said simple words and she did a simple action, but he was moved in far more than a simple way. Her hair was down and swung around her shoulders. Her night shift was thin, and when she stepped forward, the firelight caught behind it and outlined the slender curves of her body and stoked a raging fire inside of him.
Tonight he would give her pleasure, which she most definitely deserved, and the rest would follow.
He caught her hand as she neared him and drew her forward, cupping her backside as he molded her curves to him. He breathed in her scent, felt her heat, and he was lost to anything else but having her.
He wanted to give more than take, even if that meant fighting his body’s baser urges. He stepped back and glided his fingers beneath her nightgown straps, feeling the satin of her skin in stark contrast to the roughhewn cotton. She lifted her gaze to him, no longer questioning what he would do, but ready for it.
He lowered the straps, first one, then the other, baring her body from the waist up. What he uncovered there made him catch his breath. Circumstance had forced him to keep her partially covered both times he had been intimate with her.
Now he had the glorious benefit of seeing her naked as the rest of her gown fell around her feet. She was nothing short of spectacular.
Her breasts were fuller than one would think if one only saw her in the ugly gowns her aunt foisted upon her. Those awful fabrics were meant to cover her, to be worn as a reminder of her sin and in atonement for it. Her body didn’t deserve such punishment. Her nipples were dusky rose, the pebbled tips already hard and begging to be caressed. Her waist tapered in toward a flat stomach and then flared into beautifully rounded hips that could tempt even a saintly man to sin.
He wanted to devour her, to worship her, to keep her naked in his bed where he could tease and torment her for days. He wanted to mark her, and he could not recall the last woman who had inspired that kind of intense need.
She shifted beneath his focused regard and the questions returned to her gaze.
“Are you wondering if I like what I see?” he asked.
She fought to gather herself and then nodded silently.
He cupped her chin and tilted her face, lowering his lips to claim hers. Just before he did, he murmured, “I am in awe of what I see, Jacinda. I am in ache. I am undone.”
Then he devoured her lips and dragged all that naked beauty against him. She groaned as their bodies molded, the sound lost in his mouth, and he smiled. Already she craved his touch. After what she had endured at the groping, selfish hands of Hodgend, he could only be delighted that she would still respond so easily, so passionately to him.
He rewarded her by sweeping her into his arms without breaking the tangled contact of their lips and carrying her to her uncomfortable bed. He set her down against her pillows and then stepped back, reluctantly parting with her to undress.
She bit her lip as he began to do so, and he could help his broader grin. The little minx looked torn between lingering fear and like a woman who had just entered a sweet shop. And he wasn’t beneath putting on a show for her. He tugged his half-unbuttoned shirt over his head and tossed it aside.
She sat up with a gasp and stared at him, her eyes darting over the defined muscles of his chest and stomach, tracking the line of dusty hair that disappeared into his trouser waistband. He toed off his boots next and kicked them aside.
She was still staring, licking her lips, waiting and he growled beneath his breath with needy possessiveness. Slowly, he unfastened his breeches and took his time to glide them down over his hips to gather at his ankles.
He straightened up, and she sucked in her breath with a soft cry as she saw him fully naked for the first time. In fact, he realized he was probably the first man she’d ever seen in such a state of undress.
So even though he wanted to hurtle himself into the bed with her, he let her stare. She sat up slowly and leaned forward, her eyes wide and her fingers reaching. But before she could touch his already hard cock, she drew back with a blush.
“I’m sorry,” she muttered, looking away.
He shook his head, always pained by the uncertainty that had been forced into her over the years by the cruelty of both Society and her family. Without a word, he caught the hand she’d snatched away and pressed it to his cock. The touch of her soft hand on him made his knees buckle a fraction, but he managed to maintain some control.
“Don’t apologize,” he said through clenched teeth as she peeked over at her hand against his hardness. “I am here for your pleasure. This is here for your pleasure.”
“And my education,” she said, looking up at him with an expression he was certain wasn’t meant to be alluring, but was devastatingly so.
“Yes,” he murmured. “So educate yourself in whatever manner you choose.”
Her blush grew darker, but her fingers curled around him, squeezing him with just the right amount of pressure. She began to stroke him, examining his reactions, and Jason was forced to grip the edge of the bed for a moment to maintain his upright position.
He had been with many women in his time. Most knew exactly what they we
re doing. They teased and pouted and demanded and took and none of them had ever moved him the way Jacinda’s uncertain exploration did.
“Remarkable,” he murmured, his voice hoarse from the control he was exerting. Every damn stroke of her hand was like liquid fire through his loins, his nerves.
“What is?” she asked, her fingers gently teasing his balls before they returned to the smooth strokes over his shaft.
“You,” he growled and grasped her wrist suddenly. “But if you continue that, I will spend, and that will be the end of your education.”
She stared at his fingers around her wrist and then looked up at him. “Wouldn’t an understanding of a man’s pleasure, the mechanics of it, be useful to me?”
Jason squeezed his eyes shut. How could she be so innocent and yet so ready and responsive? And how could no one have ever noticed the sensual goddess they had shunned?
Actually, he didn’t want to know the answer to that. If anyone else had taken note of Jacinda, tucked into the corner of the room, hiding from judgment, he wouldn’t be here with her now.
And that would have been nothing short of a tragedy.
“You will certainly understand the mechanics of my pleasure,” he managed to groan, “because they are little different than yours. But while I could bring you to orgasm—”
“Orgasm?” she asked.
He shook his head. “Release. That pleasurable explosion between your legs that seems to transport you for a time.”
She smiled with understanding, her face lighting with memories of recent pleasures, and nearly unmanned him yet again.
“And I could bring you that orgasm with my hands, my tongue, my cock—” He motioned to his member so she would understand that term as well. “I could do it over and over in one night, dragging you from one release to the next until you were spent and begging for respite.”
Her smile faded. “You could?”
Now his grin grew. “Oh yes. If only I had the time. But once I spend my seed, my body requires time to recover. Although with you looking at me as you are, I cannot imagine it would be very long for me to do so.”
She turned her face in embarrassment, but he caught the hint of her smile as she did so. Good, let her find pleasure in everything they did, not just the moments when he was joined with her.
“Since our time is limited,” he continued. “I would like to spend it readying you for…” He stopped, for suddenly what he was about to say felt very unpleasant.
“You are readying me for my future,” she finished when he didn’t. “Whether it is the one you envision for me or the option Carnthorn suggested might be best.”
“Yes,” he said, his tone darker whenever he thought of the duke.
She settled back against the pillows. “Then ready me,” she said. “I will not resist.”
He stared at her, laying on her bed, utterly naked, offering him her body as a classroom in sin. Oh, she had no idea how powerful that was. How much he wanted to take her offer.
Instead, he grasped her hand and pulled her to her feet.
“Oh no, you have been the passive recipient of my attentions for too long. You will not lay back and allow pleasure. Tonight I want you to be an active participant.”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
He smiled. After what she had just told him about her past, he knew what she needed, probably more than she did. Control.
“You, my dear, will ride me.”
Shakespeare had once written something about the worm turning, and as Jacinda stood naked at the edge of the bed, looking down at Jason in all his fully erect glory, she wondered if a change of fortune was really on its way for her.
Or would she simply disappoint him when she was asked to take charge?
The second option seemed more likely, but she refused to let him see her anxiety. She gritted her teeth and whispered, “What do I do?”
He arched a brow and tucked his hands beneath his head as if this was nothing but normal to him. Of course it would be. He probably had a harem of women back at his home who took him regularly.
She scowled.
“Well, first, stop looking at me as if you wish to murder me,” he said with a laugh. “That could be very disconcerting to a lover.”
She tried to make her expression more relaxed and natural, but from the way Jason continued laughing, it was clear she had not achieved that goal. And yet he didn’t make her feel mocked, but rather that they were sharing an intimate joke.
And yet that joviality faded when he sat up and caught her hand to draw her even nearer.
“Jacinda, you have instincts and womanly desires. Our short time together has more than proven that. Use them. Do what makes you feel good and it will likely do the same for me.”
She swallowed hard. He made it sound easy, but it still felt so difficult to her. Then he cupped her neck and drew her down.
“Just kiss me,” he whispered against her mouth.
She didn’t have to be asked twice. She dropped her lips to his and he immediately opened to her. In the past he had driven the kiss, but now he was more passive, allowing her to explore with her tongue as her anxiety faded and was replaced by the strange, terrifying, undeniable passion he inspired.
She tasted him, at first tentatively, but as the desire began to rise in her, warming her sex and making her hyper-aware of her entire body, instinct took over.
She drove her tongue deep into his mouth, shuddering as she lost herself in him. Soon, though, her body warned her that it wanted more. The shift came with a flood of wetness between her legs and an ache that nearly had her moaning into his mouth.
Drawing back slightly, she looked down at him. His face was entirely open, encouraging, though his eyes had a dark, feral quality in them that reminded her at any moment he could flip her onto her back and steal whatever false control he allowed her to pretend she had.
But, for now, he wasn’t doing so. She pressed a hand to his bare chest and hissed out a breath at the feel of his hard muscles beneath her palm. He was chiseled from granite and yet still so warm and real to the touch. With a sigh, she urged him to lie back onto the bed and pressed a knee into the mattress beside him.
She moved in for another kiss, but at the last moment, she didn’t touch her lips to his, but to his throat. He growled but didn’t force her to change her actions. She tasted his skin, warm, slightly salty, very male in a way she couldn’t have explained. She kissed lower, exploring the ridges of his collarbone, the flat expanse of his chest, and finally she dragged her tongue over his nipple.
It was already distended and he grunted as she lapped him, his hand coming up to tangle in her hair, angle her so she could suck harder. She did so, laving one nipple and then switching to the other until his hips flexed up.
“Damn, woman,” he grunted. “Your mouth…”
He didn’t finish the sentence and she laughed as she dragged her lips down to his stomach. He had muscles even here, where most other men seemed so soft. But then, this was Jason, unlike any other man she’d ever known. A man she’d liked and—yes, she could admit it now—desired for as long as she had known him.
And here he was, hers, at least for a while. Offering himself as an experiment and a pleasure tool.
What fool would turn that down?
Not her. She took full advantage as she nuzzled lower, her gaze slipping down to the cock that now rested, hard and ready, against his abdomen. She knew what touching it brought—he had already explained that her hand gave him pleasure. But he had licked her so intimately. Would he like the same?
She stared at the big expanse of hardness laid out before her. He seemed rather large to fit into her mouth, just as he felt large when fitting into her sheath. She stroked him with her cheek as she thought about a strategy to test these uncharted waters.
He jolted at the contact, his shoulders coming up off the pillows.
“Jacinda,” he said, his tone rough. She supposed it was meant as a warning, but sh
e saw the heat in his eyes. The plea. He did want this.
Which made her all the bolder. She captured his cock—that was what he’d called it, and she liked that term—in her hand and lightly licked it, watching his strained face for a reaction.
His eyes drew shut, his breath came short and he gripped the sheets with both hands. “Jacinda,” he repeated, but said nothing more than her name.
It seemed she had some power, indeed, to steal his ability to form coherent sentences. She licked him a second time, enjoying the bittersweet flavor of the tip of his cock, the softness of the flesh wrapped around steely hardness. Gently she took just the head of him between her lips and swept her tongue around his girth.
Now he sat up fully, his eyes glazed as he caught her arms and dragged her up his body.
“Not yet,” he growled, his tone broken.
She arched a brow. “I thought I was to be in control here, Jason.”
He shook his head. “If you do that, there will be no control for anyone.”
“But I want to—”
He moaned, the sound like he was in pain, and covered her mouth with his hand. “Please don’t tell me what you want or I shall flip you on your stomach and take you until I cannot control myself.”
Her eyes widened at a punishment that sounded very pleasant indeed.
“Instead, why don’t you take some pleasure yourself?” he continued, his voice still strained, but more certain as he pulled her into his lap.
“How?” she asked, looking down and trying to find a way to be on top of him and still have their bodies fit together.
“Open your legs and ride me as you would a stallion, were you allowed to ride astride,” he suggested, but his face was very red now.
He wanted her. In that moment, nothing was more clear. This wasn’t pretended or born from pity. He truly desired her. Her. Her body’s response to that truth was a gush of readying wetness and uncontrollable need.
She met his gaze and held it as she swung one leg over him and lifted herself over his hard cock. He cursed as he cupped his erection and maneuvered it so that she was poised just above him. Slowly, she lowered herself, gasping as the tip of his member nudged her sheath and then disappeared inside of her, followed, inch by tantalizing inch, by the rest of him.
A Moment of Passion (The Ladies Book of Pleasures) Page 10