As he closed the door with the heel of his boot, it struck him that surely she was not as good as she seemed. It was almost a relief to think this. His father had thought his mother good and kind, and been proven more than wrong.
“Come here, Sophia.” His voice was more of a growl than anything. She swallowed hard but, to her credit, came across the room and stood directly in front of him. When she glanced up, he blinked at how angelic she looked with her hair curling in soft, dark ringlets around her neck.
He reached out and wrapped a silky strand around his finger. “I see your lady’s maid cut your hair.”
Sophia nodded. “Do you like it?”
He tensed at the question. His mother used to ask him such trick questions. If he answered yes, she would demand to know exactly why he felt as he did, and then proceed to scream at him that his reasons were not good enough. And if he answered no... Well, it served no good purpose to remember her raging fits on the few occasions he dared to answer in the negative to one of those questions. “It’s very becoming,” he offered.
She beamed up at him, and his heart did a sort of skip in his chest. With obvious hesitation, she placed her hand on his chest and his muscles jumped to full awareness of the heat of her palms seeping through his shirt. “I’m going to let it grow out again, and I promise I’ll look better then.”
The eagerness to please him that he saw in her eyes touched him, and softness he hadn’t thought himself able to feel any longer slammed into him like a wave. He laced one hand into her soft hair and trailed the other to the feminine curve where her buttocks and back met. Just one kiss, he promised himself. One kiss and he would be satisfied. He didn’t need more. He didn’t need anything from anyone. Slowly, he slid his fingers back and forth over the slight dip and rise of her body until her eyes darkened and her lids lowered to half-mast.
“I shouldn’t be in here,” he whispered in her ear before he nipped the irresistible thing with his teeth and then flicked his tongue over the sensitive flesh.
She moaned and leaned closer to him, until her lips were near his ear. “If it’s not proper, why are you here?”
He paused for a moment, struggling to put words to emotions he barely understood. “To tell you that you are the bravest woman I’ve ever met,” he said, trailing kisses across her neck all the way to her other ear, which he traced slowly with the tip of his tongue. She shivered beneath his touch, and though she clung to his arms, she leaned back and gazed up at him.
“What is that unexpected compliment for?”
“For the beatings you took to protect your brother,” he replied. “I admire you. It’s as simple as that.”
But was it?
Before he could say more, she touched her mouth to his with a sweet, urgent fumbling of a kiss. “Just one kiss,” she rasped as she pulled away to press her lips to the pulse of his neck.
“Of course,” he agreed huskily, his body responding wildly to the pressure of her lips against his neck.
“Maybe a bit more,” she moaned. “I― Well, this feels quite good.”
Their one kiss was spiraling out of control fast, but as her hands slid to his shoulders and she tugged on him, he could not have stopped his reaction if he wanted to, and he did not want to.
“Maybe we could kiss on the bed?” she suggested in a throaty voice while he kissed the steady pulse at the juncture between her collarbones.
He nodded and wrapped his arms around her waist, lifted her, and carried her to the bed. He laid her down gently near the edge, so that her bottom was almost hanging off, and then he kneeled before her and kissed her in long caresses meant to rob her of her senses. But soon he felt as if what he had actually done was rob himself of control.
He needed to feel her. All of her.
He gazed at her eyes as they burned with desire, and her lips, swollen and red from his touch. “Sophia,” he began, his tone coming out low and gravelly. He placed his hands on her slender thighs. “I want to touch you. May I?”
She nodded.
Slowly, he pushed up the material covering her legs and her feminine parts, and with the care cultivated from years of experience, he gently spread her legs. When she froze and her legs pushed back against his hands, he paused and locked his gaze with hers. “Do you want to wait until we’re married?”
It was reasonable. It was understandable. It was proper. He’d never been proper, but he’d wait for her if it was what she wanted.
“No, but I’ve never done anything like this,” she whispered in a trembling voice filled with unmistakable longing.
Soft, foreign feelings surged through him. “I swear to God I’ll go slow, and if you want me to stop, I will.”
She nodded and pressed her hand over his for moment before releasing it with a soft sigh.
Swallowing, he slid his hands up the insides of her thighs, curved them over her taut belly, and ran them over her sharp hip bones. He reveled in the quivering answer of her body. Fierce possessiveness gripped him as his fingers brushed her unmentionables, and he drew them down her lithe legs and threw them behind him.
He traced a light path with his palms and fingers over her legs and back to her inner thighs, where he once again parted her legs, never breaking eye contact with her. He watched as her eyes widened and she bit her lip, but she didn’t fight him.
“Lay back, Sophia.” He wanted to introduce her to pleasure beyond anything she could have ever imagined before he caused her the unavoidable pain of taking her maidenhead.
She slowly lowered her body until all he could see was the gentle slope of her small, proud breasts outlined under the thin gown. His body throbbed with the need to be inside her, but he pushed his need down and moved his fingers into the dark hair that covered her sex, exploring her. He knew the moment he found the spot that would bring her the most pleasure by the bucking of her body and the low, throaty moan that came from her. He rubbed her first in languishing circles, basking in the way she squirmed and how her head thrashed back and forth on the bed. The more pleasure he brought her, the greater his own need grew until it was almost painful, and he combated his own desire with faster strokes against her swollen flesh.
Whimpers came from her and her hands clenched the coverlet of the bed, making it bunch in her tiny fists. “Oh, please,” she moaned. “Please, please. I can’t take it.”
He chuckled as he lowered himself all the way between her legs and kissed one silken thigh and then the other. “This is a prelude, my dear.”
“To what?” she asked in a breathless voice.
“To something extraordinary,” he answered before parting her folds and drawing his tongue slowly down her hot, moist flesh. As she cried out, his blood pounded through his veins. The need to taste her, please her, and possess her overcame him, and he slid his hands under her buttocks and lifted her so he could be closer to her, so he could bring her exquisite pleasure. He answered every cry and whimper with another slow slide of his tongue over her throbbing sex, and when she began to beg him again, he responded by circling his tongue around the spot that he knew would take her to the edge and drop her into perfect, fatigued oblivion.
His heart thundered in his ears as he kissed her, stroked her, and made her his, and when she screamed that she could take no more, he suckled her in long pulls as he moved his hands to her breasts and rubbed the hard peaks of her nipples. Suddenly, her back arched and her hands twined in his hair and drew his face closer to her. Her hips surged upward and her warmth invaded his mouth. She shook for a long moment, and then her body went slack in his hands. Gently, he lowered her to the bed, kneeled, and looked down at her.
In that moment, she was the most beautiful creature he had ever seen―guileless, trusting, and seductively innocent. The trust she had placed in him to do with her body what he pleased obliterated some of the cynicism inside him and made him want to try to trust her as she had just trusted him. Leaning down, he stroked a hand through her short locks, and her eyes came slowly open, heavy
with the drug of sexual sedation.
“I want to be inside you, Sophia, but I can wait.”
“If having you in me feels anything like the pleasure I just experienced, then I can’t wait,” she said, blushing furiously. “I love you, Nathan, and I want you to give me your love.”
Her confession struck a need in him he had buried long ago. And the love shining in her eyes scared the hell out of him. He didn’t want to be responsible for making her miserable, but he couldn’t turn away from her, either. Looking down at her, he traced his finger over her delicate collarbone before speaking. “Making love will hurt the first time.”
“For both of us?” she asked with wide-eyed naïveté.
He shook his head. “Only you.”
“Oh good,” she said on a sigh. “I wouldn’t want to hurt you.”
“Christ, Sophia.” Her words crumbled something in him. He bent down and brushed his lips to hers. “I’m protecting you now, understand? You don’t need to protect me.”
It was on the tip of her tongue to argue with him that they would be watching out for each other, but she sensed that he needed her to relent in this. She nodded, and as she did, his mouth slanted over hers in a fierce, hungry kiss. Gone was the tenderness he had shown moments before, and in its place were fierce need and passion. He’d been holding back for her; it was clear when he growled low in his throat and gave her drugging kiss after drugging kiss.
Her senses reeled, and she felt as if she were in a daze. When cool air hit her skin and she realized her chemise had been slipped off her body, she had utterly no idea how it had come to pass. Her instinct was to cross her arms over her breasts, but Nathan stopped her hands and uncrossed her arms. “Never hide yourself from me. Never be ashamed of who you are.”
She swallowed the lump in her throat. “That’s easy for you to say,” she whispered as she glanced at his perfect body.
His hands cupped her breasts and then his thumbs came to her sensitive buds and rubbed over the flesh that peaked to greet him. “It’s not,” he replied. “The picture you see on the outside may be pretty, but the inside is ugly.”
She reached a shaking hand up to his sculpted face. “I doubt that.”
His eyes became hooded, and she knew he would not reveal more. She trailed her fingers over his strong jawline. She would reveal some of her fear in hopes that one day he would reveal some of his. “You’re like Michelangelo’s David. I’m afraid one day you will wake up and wonder who the stray puppy is that you married.”
He stood so abruptly she feared he was about to agree with her and then walk out of this room and her life. He looked down at her from his towering stance, reached behind him to tug off his shirt, and revealed a rippling abdomen and muscled chest. She stared in awe and wistfulness; his body―marred only at his shoulder by the bandage covering his healing wound―was every bit as beautiful as his face.
“I’m no statue, Sophia,” he growled as he yanked his boots off, then his pants and undergarments. She gaped at the size and power of his body that could not be denied now that he stood there without a stich of clothing.
“You are perfect,” she whispered, ashamed that she was so far from it, so very unmatched to him.
His gaze grew hard. “Expecting perfection from me will hurt us both. I like that you’re not perfect. Do you understand?”
She understood that he’d been hurt deeply and that he was trying to tell her how without saying it explicitly. “I do.”
He lowered himself over her, and something fierce glittered in his eyes. “I’ll hurt you and I’ll fail you, and then you’ll see. You won’t think me perfect. You won’t want to love me then.”
“Come to me, Nathan,” she replied, knowing arguing was futile. “Show me your imperfections.” She wanted to offer him the kind of love neither of them had ever had, and she prayed that in doing so, he would eventually want to give her that same love in return.
Her breasts ached as his fingers once again grazed her flesh. He lowered his head, so that all she could see were his broad, powerful shoulders and his thick, curling dark hair. His tongue flicked her nipple and all thoughts of what she’d planned to do fled, pushed out by need and the desire to meet him in a place she’d never gone. Shivers of delight ravaged her body as he trailed kisses down her belly and back up to claim her mouth in a luxurious kiss.
Then he was parting her legs and her body was so hungry to know him that she could not have resisted even if she had wanted to. He hovered above her, sweat dampening his brow and the muscles of his arms bulging with the effort to take things slow for her. She was deeply touched that he would make such an obviously painful attempt to hold himself back. She gripped his arms, which was like holding on to steel and tugged at him until he came closer and kissed her once more. His heartbeat pulsed against her chest for one moment before his intense gaze locked with hers.
“Sophia?”
Her name was an aching question and a request for permission from this man who was so powerful, virile, and kind. Tears burned her eyes as she nodded and moved her hands to grip his back as he slid all the way between her thighs and the hard, hot length of him pressed into her folds, making her wince.
Before the hiss fully left her mouth, he covered her lips with his as if to take her pain from her, and then he was inside of her. It was tight at first, pinching. He moved in and out with long, careful strokes that created a friction that made her groin tighten around him. Deep within her belly, an ache blossomed. Each stroke from his tip all the way down his shaft built a pressure inside of her until she thought she would scream with a need she could not name. It wasn’t quite the same as before when he’d kissed her down there. This felt more urgent, more sensitive, more pleasurably painful.
“Nathan,” she finally whimpered, unable to explain what she wanted him to do.
He answered by plunging deep within her and then withdrawing very slowly, only to do it again. And again. The pressure continued to build, and inside of her everything constricted in an effort to keep her from coming apart. And then she did come apart in wave after pulsating wave that started at her core and washed over her entire body. As she spun out of control, her body contracting around his, he moved faster, withdrawing and plunging until she released a final scream of pleasure he caught with his mouth. Underneath her clinging fingertips, his muscles jumped and coiled as he buried himself to the hilt before shuddering. A flood of warm liquid filled her while his muffled groan caressed her ear.
He lay on top of her, heavy and crushing, as their hearts beat as one, fast and furious. She didn’t move and she prayed he wouldn’t, either. The moment was perfect, and she didn’t want it to end, even though in the recesses of her mind she knew that it must. He rolled off her and pulled her to him so that she was pressed against the full length of his body as he cradled her to his chest. Her head rested against his arm. She stared at his noble profile, wondering when he would speak and what he might say. After a bit, he turned to look at her, a frown creasing his brow. “Did I hurt you?”
“No.” His eyes held a world of skepticism, so she decided to try to be as truthful as possible. “It hurt for the briefest of moments, but it was wonderful. You are wonderful. I very much like kissing and all that goes with it.”
“We shall see if you still think that after we’re married.”
“Why would marriage change how I think?”
“It seems to have that effect on women,” he said.
“Well, it will not have that effect on me. There is nothing you can ever do that will make me not love you.”
Something strange flickered in his gaze. “What if I took a mistress?”
Blast him. She would hate him for that, but... She stared at his face, at once calculating and contemplating, and she barely held in a shocked gasp. She’d stumbled upon his fear quite by accident. She was sure of it.
She licked her lips nervously, aware he was waiting for her to answer. “That would most definitely make me hate you.”
He nodded, as if he’d expected her to say her love was not strong and would not be steadfast. She laid her hand on his cheek and felt his muscles twitch under her fingertips. “I would hate you for that. It’s true. I would despise you because it would mean you did not love me enough to be faithful to me, to want only me. But I wasn’t even considering that you would ever be unfaithful, Nathan. I was speaking of the normal everyday life we will have.” She swallowed the large lump of fear lodged in her throat. “Will you be faithful to me?”
“Of course,” he said, but he withdrew his arm from underneath her head and then got out of bed. She watched him retrieve his clothes in tense silence, all the while wondering if he would say any more. Sitting up, she clutched the sheet to her breasts as Nathan moved to a chair and paused in pulling on his boots to look at her once again. “I’m sorry if I seem cold.”
She plucked at the sheet, wishing she could take the words back and hold them until later, so they could have had a bit more time with his guard down as he held her. “I suppose you think me foolish,” she said, trying to imagine how he must picture her.
“I don’t think you foolish at all. I think you are full of eternal optimism for life, despite the hand life has dealt you. I wish I could share in that hope.”
She scrambled out of bed and gathered the sheet around her as she did. Padding across the floor to Nathan, she knelt in front of him. “You can. Start with me. Hope in me. Give me your heart and I’ll fill it up.”
“Ah, Sophia.” He ran a finger along her jawbone. “I am going to give you my name, my protection, and my fidelity, but you don’t really want my heart. It’s a black thing.”
“Stop saying that,” she scolded. “I’ve seen the good in you.”
His hand dropped away from her face, but his gaze bore into her. “You see an illusion. I’m not good. If you knew what I’d done in my life―”
“Tell me,” she interrupted. “Tell me your worst.” She was going to show him that his past would not make her turn away from him.
My Seductive Innocent Page 14