by Lara Archer
Damn again.
His mouth was positioned just above where her nipple must be.
He writhed to free himself, but that just resulted in him rubbing his lips over the fabric hard enough that he thought he fancied he could feel the nub of that nipple harden to a peak.
He thought Mary might scream then, as well she should have.
But she didn’t scream.
Instead, she exhaled audibly, a long, low sigh.
And then she did something entirely remarkable: she took her left hand and cradled the side of his head, pushing it more firmly into that little, soft, sweet-scented mound of flesh.
“John,” she breathed, and this time her tone was very definitely sensuous—throaty and deep and needy—something he’d never in a million years have expected from his childhood friend. “Kiss me there, John. Please.”
He could not possibly have heard her right. “Mary?”
“Please, John,” she begged, and the nervous quaver in her voice told him more surely than anything that she was quite serious.
Her breathing was fast and shallow, and though he couldn’t lift his head to see her face, he fancied he felt the pleading force of her gaze upon him.
“Kiss me there,” she insisted, her fingers spearing into his hair, urging him closer. “If you don’t, no one ever will. And I want to know what it feels like, just once.”
“But—but, Mary—”
“Please!” Her voice broke on the word. “I won’t ask anything more of you, I swear it. Just this one thing.”
He was painfully conscious of how hard her pulse was beating—he was close enough to her chest to hear it. And his heart was pounding just as hard.
Not to mention that his cock was throbbing.
He tried again to move his head, but he wasn’t going anywhere, not without ripping out half his hair.
Trying to think, he drew a deep breath—and that sweet, womanly scent of Mary’s flesh filled his nostrils and fogged his already baffled brain.
Everything rational in him urged him to find some way to get his mouth away from her breast.
He intended to do that, truly. Immediately, in fact.
Without question.
Because he was a gentleman.
An all-but-affianced gentleman.
And yet what he found himself doing instead was hooking the fingers of his free hand into the neckline of Mary’s frock and chemise and pulling the drab layers of fabric down. Her flesh against his knuckles was warm and surprisingly fine and silken, and the moment he felt the tight nub of her nipple pop free, and he fitted his mouth over it hungrily. He gave it a flick with his tongue, then suckled her.
She moaned, and it was the most erotic sound he’d ever heard.
All she’d asked for was a kiss, but he had to give her more. He found himself wondering about the color of that nipple in his mouth. He couldn’t lift his head enough to see it properly, so he pulled the neck of her gown down beneath her other breast, and looked his fill sideways even as he continued sucking the first breast he’d bared.
Lord. Her skin where the sun never touched it was pearl-white, and her nipple was as pink as a rosebud.
And surely just as sweet.
If he could lift his head enough to see her face, and have incontrovertible evidence he was doing this with Mary Wilkins of all people, he would never be able to do it.
But all he could see was a graceful small swell of womanly flesh and a pretty pink teat, so he strained against the thorns that bound his hair, palmed that soft mound towards his mouth, and kissed it, just as she’d asked, before drawing the rosy peak between his lips.
She liked what he was doing, clearly. Her fingers were in his hair, at least where it was free of thorns, and urged him closer, nearly clawing him in her enthusiasm.
He licked and sucked and swirled his tongue around her teats, moving from one to the other and back again as best he could with his head pinioned, feasting on her, making her gasp, making her push her hips towards him.
His cock was hot and straining, and his balls had grown heavy as true stones. If he hadn’t had most of the left side of his body hooked by those damnable vines, he’d have done exactly as she seemed to be wanting and pulled her hips tight against his and pressed his throbbing erection into her belly.
Heat rose from between her breasts, with the subtle, intoxicating scent of arousal.
She was trembling now, still pulling his mouth against her and crying, “John, oh, John, please, John!”
Without another thought, his hand was at the buttons of his fall, fumbling to free his aching cock. No thinking was involved, just desperate, red-tinged visions of hiking up her skirts and finding her hot, wet slit, and somehow angling their bodies so he could push hard inside her.
“John,” she gasped again. “Sweet John.”
And that was the phrase that stopped him. Sweet John.
Dear Lord, he was supposed to be her friend.
She was an innocent, a virgin, a decent girl.
Whatever momentary madness had gripped them just now, it could only be momentary. And he wasn’t such a cad that he would consider ruining her.
No.
He let her nipple drop from his lips, and did his best to draw the bodice of her dress back up to cover her. The buttons of his fall were difficult to manage with his cock swollen so hugely, but he got one side closed again.
She went painfully still. “Why are you stopping?”
His voice wouldn’t quite seem to work. His brain was still fuming with the thought of getting his hands under her skirts and his cock between her legs. With a tremendous effort, he cleared his throat and said, “We have to stop, Mary….Miss Wilkins.” He was glad just at the moment that his hair was caught in the vines and he couldn’t possibly be expected to look her in the eye. Though he was, of course, still staring at the upper swell of her breasts. “You know how utterly inappropriate this is.”
She let out a long sigh. “Yes, I know.”
“On the count of three, we are both going to jump with all our strength and rip our way clear of these vines, do you understand? Even if it hurts. Even if we tear half our clothing off.” He squelched that thought hastily—the image it brought into his mind wasn’t going to help him tame his raging erection. He tried again. “We cannot afford to stay together like this even one minute longer, not if your chastity means anything to you. Do you understand?”
“What if it doesn’t mean anything to me?”
“What?”
“My chastity. What if I…want to be wicked?”
The solid ground of his universe gave a disconcerting lurch. His cock pushed more insistently against his half-unbuttoned trousers. He had to master both sensations by sheer force of will. “No. Don’t say that. You’re not—you’re not wicked, for heaven’s sake. You’re just—distracted by what we’ve just done. It works like that. You would regret it the moment we….the moment we went too far.”
“I don’t think so, John.”
He blinked rapidly. Why did she sound so blasted rational?
How was he supposed to save her from herself if she was so very eager to be ruined? With his head mashed against her bosom, it was difficult enough to be the voice of reason, and her attitude wasn’t helping. Certainly, the parts of him below his waist were attending to her words with the greatest eagerness, sending clamoring messages to his brain to stuff the whole notion of gentlemanly honor and get on with the business of rogering the girl.
To make matters worse, her fingers were stroking his hair in a remarkably sensual manner, and he felt the caressing pressure straight down to his balls.
“I’ve been thinking very hard about this, for weeks now,” she said. Her voice sounded calm, very much as it did when she told him of her plans for vegetable gardens and wells. “A woman in my position has almost no hope of ever marrying, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have the same needs as any other female.”
“Mary, stop talking.” He tugged against the v
ines. “Stop talking right now.”
“Just once, just once, I want to lay in a man’s arms. I want him to touch me, there, and put his—”
With a strangled yell, John heaved his body to the right, using all his muscle and weight to pull the two of them free. There was noise of branches cracking and fabric shredding and both his and Mary’s yelps as thorns scraped them and far too many strands of hair were violently wrenched from their scalps.
But to his relief, their bodies came loose from the vines.
And tumbled right down to the ground. With Mary sprawling half on top of him, with his hand firmly planted on one cheek of her really-rather-delightfully-soft buttocks.
He pushed her away, rather more forcefully than he meant to, and scrambled backwards like a crab, before he could give in to the temptation to gather her in his arms.
Mary fell back on her arse, her skirts wild around her knees, most of the length of her legs bared, her thorn-mussed hair half still in its coil, half in a wild, brandy-colored halo around her head.
She was flushed and vivid and brilliant-eyed and outraged and aroused, and all of a sudden she was the most gorgeous, desirable vision he’d ever seen.
Both of them were panting.
His cock swelled harder, painfully large, nearly strangled by the remaining constraints of his trousers.
But he couldn’t have her. He couldn’t.
Yet she was looking at him with such longing, such desperation.
She wanted a little taste of pleasure. The sort of pleasure a gentleman was always free to indulge in, and which would likely be denied her forever.
His heart sank.
How could he abandon his friend to that?
And so he did the only thing he could think of that would give her release and still leave her virginity intact: he crawled over to her on his knees, ran his palms up her bare legs, urged her onto her back, and pushed her skirts up to her hips.
With a groan, he set his mouth to her sweetly musky, glistening slit.
Chapter Three
Mary couldn’t believe what was happening to her. She was stretched out flat on the forest floor, her skirts up around her waist, her bare legs spread wide.
And in between her legs, his bronze head shifting with the astonishing movements his mouth was making, was Viscount Parkhurst. John.
His tongue moved against her intimate flesh in the most astonishing ways, his thumbs caressing and spreading her most private folds as he licked along them, between them, and up, up to a place at the very top of that juncture that seemed to be pure sensation. Her hips bucked as his tongue swirled there, around and around. She thought she might burst from the pleasure of it.
When she’d watched the couple in the storage shed and had touched herself between her legs, she’d felt sensations like this, but this was heightened, a thousand times more wondrous. Where before she had felt frustration, here the pleasure only built and built. John seemed to know how to touch her, how to lift her from one sensation to the next, how to make her body thrum with delight.
At first, she feared John could not possibly be enjoying what he was doing to her, but the enthusiasm of his movements, and the wonderful groaning noises he made, told her he was quite happy to be doing it. For a time, he held both her hips in his hands, as if to lift her more tightly against his tongue. Then his hands went between her legs again, pleasuring her further. One palm pressed to her nest of curls, and pushed her mons gently up towards her belly so that shocking bit of flesh at the front of her stood up more exposed. He licked and bit and sucked and rubbed.
She writhed beneath him, her fingers instinctively reaching into his hair, gripping him. Surely he must want to do more—surely he must want to do what she’d seen the sexton do to Mrs. Trumbull. And she wanted him to do it. She wanted him to put his fingers inside her, his member inside her, but she knew he was trying to preserve her virginity. And what he was doing felt so remarkably, miraculously good, she couldn’t really ask for more…
At one point, he stopped and looked up at her, his eyes as dazed and unfocused as a sleepwalker’s. He gasped the word “Mary” before settling between her thighs again.
He got up on his knees then, and one of his hands left her to go between his own legs. He seemed to be fumbling with his buttons and loosing his member. She wished she could see it, but the sight of his elbow off to the side, beginning to pump forward and back, was enough to drive her arousal to a new peak.
The hand on his shaft came back between her legs for a moment, skimming some of her juices onto his fingertips then returning to between his own legs to pump with renewed vigor. His groans became more fervent. The idea that he was using her wetness to pleasure himself sent a jolt of new sensation through her—almost as if he had put himself inside her.
His tongue did push hard inside her, matching the rhythm of the hand he had on himself, and the fingers of his free hand continued their dizzying swirl on her sensitive nub.
The spring breeze licked over her exposed skin. Above her, the green tree branches swayed, the clouds glided through the jewel-blue sky, birds swung in quick arcs of flight between the leaves, chattering bright melodies—and all of it seemed to rush and swell along with the pleasure of her flesh, until it shifted and swirled into a mad pinwheel of color and sound.
She had to squeeze shut her eyes, or she would have fallen straight into the sky.
The image of the couple she’d seen taking their pleasure in the shed came back to her—the way they’d seemed to move towards a crescendo of pleasure…and she understood now what they had been feeling.
Her hips bucked. She was rising, rising higher and higher, her body tensing as it arched upwards. Her thighs were trembling. Some deep primal rhythm deep within her seemed to take control of her blood.
The pressure within her coiled tighter, tighter, narrowing to one tight, blazing point of sensation, gathering where John’s tongue laved her.
Then all at once everything exploded. Heat roared outwards, a fierce, hot wave, racing past every boundary, shattering all barriers between him and her.
They cried out together and their bodies jerked. His hands and her hands seemed to be everywhere at once, pressing into one another’s flesh—though she knew she touched nothing but his hair—and she felt one more slow, deep wash of pleasure, and a sort of glow all through her flesh.
The tension all drained out of her, and she fell back against the earth, utterly languid, utterly spent. Her legs were still open, her eyes closed, and the sunlight on her face had never felt so golden and pure.
“Mary.” It was John’s voice. Almost a sigh.
And then again: “Mary.” Not so soft this time.
She opened her eyes to look at him. He’d risen up off his knees into a tense crouch. The trancelike look on his face began to clear, giving way to a look of something more like shock.
Horror, even.
“Good God, Mary,” he said, and this time his voice had an unmistakable edge of anguish. “What have we done?”
Her brain was still whirling, and all she could say was the truth: “It was wonderful.”
“Yes.” John shook his head while hastily stuffing his member back inside his trousers and rebuttoning his fall. “No. No, it was… Oh, Lord. I lost my head entirely.”
“It was wonderful.”
“I’m so sorry. I just…. Oh, Lord, we—we must get away from here.”
Mary managed to raise herself back to a sitting position, though her sense of stupor remained. Why exactly must they get away? This spot was Paradise.
John pulled her skirts peremptorily down to her ankles then hauled her to her feet. The blood rushed from her head. She swayed a little; her legs felt sore and rubbery and not entirely up to the task of keeping her upright.
“We’ll go home,” he said, sounding rather thick-tongued, like a man who’d had too much ale, or who’d been abruptly roused from deep slumber. “To our own homes.” His hands ran fretfully through his golden hair,
trying to smooth it, but only mussing it further. “We’ll just—we’ll—oh, hell, I’m so sorry. I don’t know what we’ll do.”
He turned and set off walking in front of her, faster than was wise down the steep rocky slope, stumbling a little as he went. It occurred to her fuzzily that they’d abandoned his walking stick by the blackberries, but urgently as he was moving homeward, she doubted he’d appreciate her calling him back for it.
It was a silent walk down the hill, and the springtime air seemed suddenly to have turned very chilly indeed.
Chapter Four
Late that evening, Mary stood in her kitchen, drying the last of the supper dishes, trying to go about her domestic routine as always, though her mind was still in a daze. One moment, visions of what she’d done with the viscount in the woods that morning sent her stomach swooping with elation. The next, their cold parting twisted it into a hard knot.
He wouldn’t even look at her when he said goodbye.
He’d mumbled vague apologies, eyes darting in distress, unable to complete a sentence. Just “We can…” or “We’ll just….” or “Of course we shouldn’t have….”
She couldn’t help feeling that she’d wronged him in some terrible way.
And she had no idea how she’d ever put it right.
At least she had the house to herself for a few hours—the town drunkard, Donald Evans, had got deep in his cups again and was fighting with Mrs. Evans, and one of the Evans boys had come running for the vicar to calm the man down before he turned vicious as he sometimes had in the past.
She was just reaching up to slide the last of the plates onto its shelf when a series of hard, urgent knocks sounded at the vicarage’s front door.
She wiped her hands hastily on her apron. People came to the vicarage at all hours in need of her brother’s services, and one of her duties was to greet them. She felt rather grateful for the interruption tonight—if nothing else, a small emergency would take her mind off the viscount for a few minutes.