by Rose Lerner
She jerked again and again and cried out against his hand, until finally she slumped back in his arms and he caught her around the waist and then eased his hand away from her mouth.
“So good,” she breathed, shaking her hair out of her face and looking back at him. “Thank you.”
“Thank you,” he breathed and softly kissed her lips. She shifted in his arms, turning so the hard length of his dick was pressed tight against her belly. He hissed in a heady mix of terrible pain and terrible pleasure.
And then, because he was stupid with lack of blood flowing to his brain, her nimble fingers were making quick work of the buttons on his pants before he fully realized it.
“Helen,” he gasped when her fingers found him through the warm cotton, and then his brain was nothing. It was silent. All thought vanished. He was blissfully present inside his body, every inch of it. Not one part of him occupied with regret or doubt.
Her smile made his heart trip in his chest and his cock leap to her touch. “There you are,” she whispered, looking into his eyes before leaning forward to kiss him.
Her eyes stayed open as her lips pressed to his, softly. Sweetly.
In direct contrast to the work of her thumb over the head of his erection.
His eyes stayed open as he breathed her in, as he turned to water in her hand. Into mud. Air. Something insensate, something she could mold to her will. Her command.
She leaned forward and kissed him with an open mouth. With intent and heat and all the force of her spectacular power behind it.
There was simply no way he could resist.
With fumbling hands he tore at the laces of her corset, and it fell from her body with a small thump at their feet. She pulled away from him and sucked back deep breaths and then, looking at him, she laughed.
He pulled her up in his arms, holding the perfect round globes of her ass in his hands. She locked her arms around his neck, her legs around his waist, and still kissed him as he walked them to the settee.
There were a thousand ways he wanted to touch her body. A hundred ways he wanted to bring her pleasure. But she cut him off at the knees, pulling his pants to his ankles, his drawers with them.
She sat up, leaned forward and kissed the tip of his erection. She laid her tongue flat against the underside and licked him from stem to tip.
He swore and grabbed her head, his fingers in her hair, holding her still.
“I’ve spent a lot of time in whorehouses,” she said. “This…” She kissed him again, tracing the edge of the vein with her tongue. “Seems to be a popular service.”
It had been years since he’d been touched like this, and even that had been a sad event. The whore he’d paid to try and make him feel alive again in some capacity had been empty-eyed herself.
The war a recent wound for both of them.
But this—Jesus, this was lightning, fire, and smoke, and explosions that tilted him off his feet.
She slipped him into her mouth and he was done. Finished.
There was awkward moist suction, a low thrumming moan from her throat, and he felt as if the back of his head was about to be blown off.
“Helen,” he breathed, his hand at her shoulder, pushing her away, giving her the consideration of not coming in her mouth. But she was unmovable, or he did not try that hard. Either way, he came in great jerking spurts.
He bit his lip until he tasted blood. Behind his eyes were wild kaleidoscopes of color.
Never in his life had anything felt like this. Not ever. Not even close.
Perhaps this is a stroke.
“James?” Helen’s soft voice, laced with equal parts laughter and uncertainty, forced him back into his body.
He glanced down at her, wide-eyed and mussed, wiping swollen lips with the tips of her fingers. A chagrined shame pricked him.
What a beast.
“Are you all right?” he asked, pulling up his pants, searching for some decency.
“I am…just fine. What about you?”
“I…” He sat on the edge of the settee a few feet from her. “I have not felt this good in years. Maybe all my years.”
“Well,” she said with a wicked smile. “The whores were right. Men do seem to get a little stupid for that.”
“I am stupid for you,” he said.
She reached forward and brushed a sweaty clump of hair off his forehead. “And I for you.”
“It’s late,” he said after a moment. Unbelievably, he felt his body responding to her again.
“It is,” she said, and then to his great delight she stood and pulled her chemise up over her head. Her body in the firelight was perfection. She was Helen of Troy, and he would launch everything in his arsenal to have her by his side. “And I am still a virgin.”
Chapter 18
* * *
She meant to be done with this tonight. She meant to have all of him right now, on this lumpy settee in front of this glorious fire. She knew he was thinking about honor and the right thing to do—all of which was terribly unromantic.
And boring.
He looked up at her with such dumbstruck eyes. She could tell he was barely able to put together a sentence, much less a coherent reason that he should not take what she was offering.
But he was trying.
Because he was a gentleman, down deep where it mattered. Where the only things that mattered lived.
He was a gentleman.
And he would marry her, with her destroyed reputation. Maybe because of it.
Yes, he was that much of a gentleman that he would marry her because he thought she needed him.
But she was rich now. Very rich. And she did not need him like that. In a hundred other ways, yes, but not like that.
The reality, Helen’s reality, was that she’d never known anyone in her position. What kind of life did a woman create for herself when she’d been kept as a drugged pet by the man who murdered her mother?
What rules of polite society could possibly apply to her when she had more money than most men?
None. Absolutely none.
She would forge her own way. Make her own rules.
Her mother would applaud.
“The only thing I need from you right now is this,” she whispered as if he’d said it out loud. She grabbed his hand from his knee and set it on the edge of her hip bone.
She was thin, she could feel her thinness, but he looked at her like she was beautiful. Like she was Venus arriving on waves.
“You’re really a virgin.”
“If I say yes, will you stop?”
He shook his head, color high in his cheeks. “I am past stopping.”
“Excellent.”
“But if you are a virgin, I…well, we’ll go slow.”
She sighed, once again feeling the hard edges of perception about her. The world loved to think women were weak. He should know better by now.
His pants were still undone, the length of him hard again against his belly. It was fascinating, that bit of male anatomy.
“I don’t need slow,” she said, remembering what he’d done to her against the desk. She’d liked that. It matched a certain storm inside of her.
She bent forward, one hand against the back of the settee, the other reaching down between his legs.
He leapt against her, his nose bumping hers as she leaned down to kiss him.
She’d spent the last eighteen months in whorehouses. And her worldly mother had explained the way of the world, and moreover the power and pleasure that women held if they were bold enough to demand it.
And she was ready to demand it.
She was a virgin, but not really.
She licked at him and could feel him fighting her, wanting to hold onto his perception that she was a thing he needed to take care of.
She bit his lip.
He growled, and wrapped his arms around her, pulling her into his body. She opened her legs and straddled his thighs. The rough fabric of his pants abraded her skin and she felt i
t up her spine, all along her body.
His wide hands, his warm palms covered her back, slipped across her sides, over her breasts. She gasped at the touch, leaning into him, looking for more.
“What if I need slow?” he whispered against her cheek, his deft doctor’s fingers on her nipples. “What if I need careful?”
She leaned back, searching his eyes to see if this was one of his jokes. But she couldn’t tell. He was all heat and intent. And beneath that a vulnerability that split her open. Changed her heart.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
He glanced away, kissing the inside of her wrist, and she waited for his answer.
“Ignore me,” he finally said. “Sex makes me stupid.”
She’d been thinking the same thing about him just moments before. Oh, that wasn’t kind.
“Nothing could make you stupid.”
“You do,” he said. “This does.”
His fingers touched her between her splayed thighs and she jumped.
“Are you sore?”
She shook her head, biting her lips.
She closed her eyes too, because that was easier. That was…better. To feel him but not see him.
His fingers played over her, slid inside of her, teased her and worshiped her, and within seconds she could not stand it. She reached between them too, grabbing onto him with shaking fingers.
He hissed at the contact, and she liked that so much she squeezed him just to hear him hiss again and then, because it was as powerful as the laudanum, she shuffled off his lap to take him back into her mouth.
“No,” he said, stopping her with his hands on her arms. “I can’t…” He shook his head with a rueful smile. “It’s too much.”
She understood, everything they were doing flirted with their boundaries. Their comfort level. Everything between them was both pleasure and torture.
“Come here,” he whispered, pulling her back into his arms. He reached between them and positioned himself, so that when she eased toward him, he glided inside of her.
Inside. Of. Her.
There was a moment of discomfort, like pushing a foot into a new boot, but then it was over.
She gasped, stunned and exhilarated. It was so new. So different. So impossibly good she could only gape at him. Eyes and mouth wide open, her hands fisting into his hair.
“Shhhh,” he whispered. “If it hurts you, stop.”
“It doesn’t…” She gulped air. “It doesn’t hurt. I can feel you…everywhere.”
His jaw was stone, and a muscle flexed near his ear. She touched it, just to feel it. To feel more of him.
“Are you okay?” she asked him, whimpered because he was thick and hard and she was nearly cross-eyed with pleasure.
Oh, that smile of his. That wicked, wicked smile.
She stopped sliding down. She was seated fully against him. Stomach to stomach. Chest to chest. Eye to eye.
It was very nearly too much. The intimacy of his gaze. The hard reality of him inside of her. She almost stood up—so much for Mother’s brave words about pleasure and power.
She never mentioned how vulnerable it was. How she would stare into the man she was making love to and feel his soul.
“Shhhhh,” he whispered again, as if he saw her panic. Her fear. And then his finger came between them, his thumb pressed lightly on that hard knot between her legs. She jerked and he groaned.
He touched her again and the same thing happened. He touched her and she rocked against him and realized that felt good to him. The rocking. As good as his fingers against her.
“Oh, God,” she breathed.
This was together. This was unity. He touched her, she rocked, over and over until she felt her vision get blurry.
“Yes,” he breathed. “Yes, Helen.”
She worked harder against him, used her own hand against his to show him the pressure she needed. It made him groan. It made him lean forward and whisper such words of dark praise that she felt her whole body swell, her whole being reach out for the world.
And then, just when she couldn’t take it, just when she could have sobbed with the pleasure-pain of it, she shattered.
She broke around him, jerking and clutching at him. Squeezing the pleasure so it wouldn’t ebb away, holding on to it as much as she could.
“Oh God…” she moaned. “God, James.”
His hands were frantic against her back, up and down as if trying to soothe her, but there was nothing soothing about his touch.
“James,” she sighed and shook her sweaty hair out of her eyes.
He took one look at her face and swore. His hands lifted her easily off his lap, and she got a glimpse of his cock, ramrod hard and glistening, before he used his hand, much like she had, but harder, faster.
He curled over himself and cried out through clenched teeth.
She found herself on her knees, arms out as if to catch him.
It was…alarming.
“James?”
He slumped, reached for his shirt and used it to wipe off his hands, the pink length of his cock.
“Helen,” he said, his voice a rasp. “Are you all right?”
“Are you?”
He laughed and flopped back against the settee. “I am…amazing.”
His hair had fallen forward into his eyes, and he looked alarmingly boyish. Alarmingly innocent. It was James before everything changed him.
James as he might have been if his family had loved him. Supported him.
James as he might have been if the war had not happened. The chloroform.
Her heart positively ached with affection.
I adore you, she wanted to say, but just managed to bite her tongue.
“So?” he asked, idly stroking her leg with this knuckle. “Did it work?”
“Ummm…” she lifted her eyebrows, unsure of what he was talking about. “What?”
“Did you stop thinking?”
She laughed. “Yes. I may never think again.”
He stood, grabbed her chemise from the floor and handed it to her. “Would you care for a drink? I have whiskey. Or Annie has wine in the other room.”
“I’m…I’m fine,” she said. Mentioning Annie sent a chill through her happy warmth. They should not have done this here… It seemed disrespectful.
She put her chemise back on and then stood and found the rest of her clothing.
“What’s happened?” he asked, touching her chin so she would look up at him. “Why have you stopped smiling?”
“I just…I fear I’d grown used to feeling as little as possible. And now I’m…well, I’m thrown open a bit.”
“Thrown open,” he murmured, toying with the edge of her hair before slipping it behind her neck. “That’s how I feel too, like I’ve been ransacked. You ransacked me.”
“I kind of like the sound of that.”
There was a thump upstairs, the reminder that they were not alone. A reminder that they were in another person’s house.
“I need to go,” she whispered. It was one thing to be the queen of her own castle, it was quite another to do it in another woman’s home. She suddenly realized she had the means to leave. How lucky she was. So many women could not say the same.
“I have to leave this house.”
His eyebrows rose. “Now?”
“No. But tomorrow. I…I will move out. To the Inter-Ocean.”
He shook his head, like his brain could not handle all of this new information. “Why?”
“You know why,” she whispered.
He stepped closer, his eyes hot on her body, and she stepped back. “Because of what happened tonight?”
She nodded.
“Because you fear if we are to stay in the same house it would happen again?”
“You know it will. You’ll sneak up to my room, or I will sneak down to yours, and sooner or later your friends-”
“They are your friends too.”
“Fine…our friends will catch us. Like children wh
o should know better. They have opened their home to me, and I won’t have them gossiped about, because you and I can’t keep our hands to ourselves.”
A foot from her he stopped, his breath heaving in his chest as if he’d run miles. To her.
And she was breathing hard too. If he were to touch her, she would fall into his arms.
“We could get married,” he said.
“We could.”
“Is that an answer?”
“I don’t know, was that a proposal?” She was waspish and he was stung. He pulled his hair off his face, bracing his hands on his head. All wrists and frustration. It was a very good look for the doctor.
“Helen,” he said. “I have done this wrong. My feelings for you are very real.”
“We both have done this wrong, and my feelings for you…” She took a deep breath and felt as if she were stepping off a cliff. It was hard and it was terrifying and she knew she risked pushing him away forever. But she didn’t know what else to do. “My feelings for you, if I’m totally honest, I don’t know if they’re real.” Oh, that wounded him, terribly but she pressed on, because these things had to be said. “I’ve been free of Park for little over a week. Free of the morphine for less than that. Making promises to you seems…hasty.”
That logic pulled something in him, she saw it in his eyes. And he lost that angry, confused look and became accepting, and that more than anything softened her to him.
“Of course,” he said.
She’d hurt him, and it hurt her to do so, but she could not force herself to feel any other way. Not even to make him smile.
“I don’t do this to hurt you,” she breathed.
He turned his face aside and began to get dressed, jerking his pants up his fine legs. Over his lovely body.
“You should go,” he said.
“Are we…?” She couldn’t quite finish the sentence.
He laughed silently and without humor—the worst laugh ever laughed. “I have no idea what we are,” he said. “Friends. Lovers. I don’t know.”
“I was going to ask if we’re all right. You and I. Or if I’ve ruined this before we’ve even started.”
He cupped her face in his hands and she closed her eyes at the sensation. “To my great consternation, I am whatever you want me to be, Helen. If you want us to be fine, then we are. Because you’re the captain of my ship. I only do your bidding.”