For a long moment he said nothing, the gown draped over his forearm in a fall of satin and lace. He looked at her for a long, quiet moment in which Rosalie’s imagination had the chance to torment her with what he might be thinking.
Round as an apple.
“Beautiful,” he said, instead. And then the corner of his mouth lifted and his warm amber eyes smiled, and he reached out to untie her petticoats and let them drop to the floor.
Rosalie stepped out of them, clad now in nothing but her chemise and stockings.
“And even more beautiful,” he murmured, the smile growing. He put the gown onto the chair. “I can’t wait to see the rest of you.”
He shaped the flare of her waist with both hands, molding the thin, gauzy chemise to her body and not recoiling from her curves, but gazing at her like a starving man as he moved from ribcage to hips and then down around to the small of her back.
“I have to say, Kieran, that I’m a bit shy about your seeing the rest of me. I’m not exactly—”
“You’re perfect,” he said, cutting her off. “And I’ve spent most of the past fortnight envisioning you lying naked beneath—” he leaned down to bury his face in the curve of her neck, to press his lips against the skin there and to trail kisses from her ear down to the base of her throat—“atop, and beside me. I’ve wondered what your skin feels like, how soft it will be, how good it would smell and how it would taste. I’ve wondered if the freckles that I find so endearing on your cheeks and nose are elsewhere on your body, and I’ve craved the day when I could hold you in my arms and feel our hearts beating together as one.”
The day was fading rapidly beyond the windows, the sky streaked orange, mauve and gray, a soft breeze off the Chesapeake wafting in from outside and carrying with it the scent of the sea.
“Now,” he added, “let’s get us both naked the rest of the way.”
He stepped back and began to unbutton his waistcoat, but Rosalie reached out and caught his hands. She raised herself on tiptoe and sought his lips even as her own fingers, trembling now, took over the task that he’d begun. His tongue came out to seek her own, tasting like sugared lemonade. She felt his breath against her skin as the kiss deepened. She felt her own exiting her nostrils, bouncing off his cheek, coming back to her in hot, feathery little waves against her face. His heartbeat thumped against her chest, its tempo matching her own. Her hands stilled, caught between their bodies, the waistcoat half-unbuttoned. She pressed closer to him and his hand pushed into her hair, loosening the pins that held the heavy, wiry masses of it, freeing it until it tumbled down around her shoulders in wild, frizzy abandon.
Suddenly even the breeze pushing through the open window could not cool her.
He pulled back, looking at her hair, reaching out to capture a heavy, wildly curling hank of it in his fingers. He stroked it, pulling at the length of the curl and letting it go to bounce back into shape before taking hold of it once again.
“So what’s your favorite color?” he asked, still looking at the heavy curl he held in his hand.
“What?” she asked, slightly taken aback.
“Your favorite color.”
“I don’t have one. Well, maybe I do. Lilac, I guess, because it reminds me of the flower, which I love.”
He smiled.
“And yours?”
“Blue, because it’s the color of the sea. Orange, because it’s the color of a perfect sunset. Yellow, because it’s happy. Green, because it reminds me of summertime. Purple, because nobody ever says purple is their favorite color and I feel rather bad for it.” He pulled at the curl, his fingertips brushing the top of her breast as he stretched the spiral out and let it spring back again. “But tonight, my favorite color is red, because it’s the color of your hair.”
“My hair is the color of a root vegetable.”
“Your hair is the color of winter sunsets and Baltimore orioles and a hot, crackling fire on a cold January night.”
She let out a snort of laughter. “You are a romantic, Kieran.”
“Aye, but don’t tell anyone.” He let go of the curl and gently traced the line of her jaw. “’Twouldn’t be good for my reputation now, would it?”
“I was just joking about your poetry.”
“I know.”
“I suspect you can probably write very good poetry when you’re so inclined.”
“Perhaps, but the bad got you laughing and so it has a value all its own. As for your hair,” he murmured, pulling at another spiraling curl, “I think I could spend the night just playing with it.”
“You don’t think the color is garish?”
“Gorgeous. Not garish.”
Rosalie sighed as he stretched the long, spiraling curl out yet again, this time letting his fingers trail down her arm as he released it.
“You should probably make peace with its color, Rosalie,” he said, brushing the back of his knuckles over the swell of one breasts as he tugged at another long curl. He lifted it to his lips and kissed it. Sensation flared from between her legs and her nipples tightened with longing. “My grandfather Ephraim had red hair in his youth. He passed it on to my Uncle Matt, who passed it down to his son Toby, in turn. My sister’s hair is the color of autumn chestnuts, as was my father’s. With it in both of our families, our children are likely to be redheads.”
“Children.”
“Children,” he repeated. “Lots of them. Girls that look like you and boys to sail the seas.”
“Girls can sail the seas, too.”
“And thank God for that, or I’d never have met you.”
Children. There was only way to make them, and that reality lay unexplored in front of them, becoming more and more pressing as the light faded and the sky beyond the open window began to go purple and gray.
He turned then to light a candle, setting it on the highboy where it would be shielded from the breeze coming in through the windows, and turned back to her, his vest half-unbuttoned.
“So I guess we’d better finish undressing each other, Kieran Merrick.”
“I guess we’d better.”
She undid the final buttons of his vest, opened it, and sliding her hands beneath it, pushed it off and over his shoulders. Untied his cravat, unbuttoned his cuffs and pulled his shirt out from the waistband of his trousers until it hung loosely down around his thighs.
In turn, he unclasped her choker, closing his hand around it as though to treasure its warmth, its lucky proximity to her skin, before gently setting it down in the same chair that held the growing pile of their clothing. He paused for a moment, looking down at her and smiling, his eyes warming. His hands skated down her upper arms, down the curve of her waist and hips, and down her thighs, finally pulling up and grasping the hem of the chemise. He pulled the garment up and over her head, slowly exposing her. Her trim ankles and curvy calves, her white thighs and the burnished triangle of hair between them. Her pale belly and tiny navel, her full breasts, tipped with pale pink nipples that stood high and firm and waiting.
She stood before him in nothing but her stockings. She expected him to pull her to the bed and get about the business of making children, but he didn’t.
Instead, he just stood there, looking at her.
His face remained still, and sudden thoughts invaded her head. I stand here before him, naked. Me, with my curves. Me, quite an armful. She lifted her chin in proud defiance. And I will not be ashamed.
She saw him swallow hard, his eyes darkening.
“You,” he murmured, reaching out to capture a curl that dangled enticingly against the curve of her breast, “are the best and most wonderful thing that has ever happened to me. My God, you’re lovely.”
And then he looked into her eyes, the radiant smile that lit up his entire face when he chose to display it causing everything inside her to melt.
She went into his embrace. His arms closed fiercely around her and with a little moan she pressed herself against him, feeling the delicious sensation of
skin against skin…his hard muscles against her soft, pliant flesh…her breasts crushed against that splendid torso…the press of his arousal through his trousers, hard and rigid and pushing insistently against her, sending answering heat pulsing through her belly with every beat of her heart. The kiss deepened and grew desperate, his tongue coming out to tangle with her own and plumb the depths of her mouth, his hands cupping, shaping, gripping her bottom to pull her close, his fingertips drifting toward her most private areas as he got the feel of her flesh.
She found it suddenly hard to stand. He must have sensed it for in the next moment, she was swung up and into his arms. She clung to his neck as he carried her easily to the bed.
“Kieran, you’re going to break your back!”
“Hush.”
She wanted to say more, but the sensation of being lifted up and carried in a strong man’s arms was deliciously novel and indeed, the effort didn’t seem to cost him, for he cradled her against him with one hand while with the other, turned the covers back. Then and only then did he gently lower her down to the crisp, cool sheets, smiling as he arranged her curls, now frizzing in the humid air, in long, wiry skeins across the pillow. She looked up at him, her nipples tingling in response to his nearness, her breasts seeming to arch toward him of their own accord and her very skin on fire.
For a moment he was content to look down at her, not saying a word as his dark hair hung in disarray around his face. His gaze roved over her body, taking in the bountiful globes of her breasts with their pale coral nipples, the slight convex dip in her abdomen and the generous curve of her hips, her legs and yes, the bright rusty hair that triangled her sex, as though she were a dessert laid out on a plate.
“Don’t,” she said simply.
“Don’t what?”
“Quote me any poetry.”
He looked at her, all seriousness. “My mind is incapable of fashioning anything resembling or slaughtering poetry in the face of such overwhelming beauty, Rosalie.”
She blushed, and in the next moment the bed was sinking under his weight as he climbed up beside her, drawing the veils of muslin shut against any mosquitoes that would soon find them.
Beyond his shoulders, she could see the candle flickering orange through the gauzy fabric, and then he was stretching out beside her, blocking her view of it. He propped his head on the heel of one hand and with the other, reached out to play with her hair, running his fingers through the thick coils, stretching them down across the top of one breast, pulling at the hopeless spirals and watching in fascination as they bounced defiantly back into shape.
His gaze lifted and found hers.
She adjusted her position to face him and thought about the parts of him she had yet to see.
The parts of him she couldn’t wait to see. And touch.
And feel against her flesh, within her flesh, expanding her flesh and filling it with him.
She reached out across the few inches that separated them to touch his chest. The hair there was wiry and straight, sparse and dark. The nipples were small and flat. No scars. No blemishes. No moles and no imperfections, just a faint, lingering bruise against his ribs which must have come from his fight against the pirates. It was a fine, broad, well-formed chest that her husband had. A splendid one.
Again, she wondered if the parts of him she hadn’t yet seen were equally impressive.
“Are you going to take your trousers off?” she asked.
“I thought to let you take them off. When, of course, you’re ready.”
He caressed her jaw, running his fingers down her cheekbone and letting them linger at the corner of her mouth. There he paused and drew his finger slowly over her bottom lip, causing a little shiver to go through her.
“Touch your tongue to my finger,” he said softly.
Holding his gaze, Rosalie slipped her tongue out to taste his fingertip; she saw his irises darken with desire, the little smile that crinkled the corners of his kind, warm eyes. She drew the finger into her mouth, saw the smile fade and hunger grow in its place. He withdrew, and she reached out and touched his mouth in turn, feeling its pliant firmness, the smile that grew beneath the pad of her finger, his teeth beneath. Heat swelled in her belly.
He grasped her forefinger and gently pulled it between his lips. Against his teeth. He said nothing, only watching her reaction, and then sucked her fingertip deeper into his mouth, holding it between his teeth. A twinkle came into his eyes. She felt the warm, wet lining of the inside of his lip, his cheek. She felt his tongue begin to swirl around her finger—and a thunderbolt of feeling went straight to the pit of her stomach and centered itself between the junction of her legs. Unbidden, an image of him sucking on other parts of her body found its way into her imagination and she suddenly found it hard to breathe.
He slowly removed her finger from his mouth and, still holding her hand, guided it down to his trousers, placed it against his arousal, and held it there.
Rosalie’s breath caught in her throat.
“Now, you can either unfasten my trousers, dear Rosalie, or they are going to split apart under the pressure. And given that they’re the ones I’ll have to walk out of here with tomorrow, I think you’d best undo them.”
His erection strained against the fabric, hot and rock-hard beneath the linen, beneath her fingers, and she gently rubbed her hand over it, marveling at his size, at his restraint, at how content he was to make the act special and gentle and lasting, whereas James had—
No. I will not think of James.
I will not think of James ever again.
He groaned softly and shut his eyes and Rosalie managed, somehow, to slip the buttons through their holes, freeing him. He sprang forth into her hand, filling it.
More than filling it.
Dwarfing it.
“Oh, my,” she breathed, turning her head to look at him and yes, oh, yes, this part of him was as splendid as every other part of him. She pushed the flap of his trousers further open. It was no surprise that he was so endowed when the rest of him was equally favored. And he was hers. Every thick, long, hot, glorious inch of him.
“Keep rubbing me like that and I won’t be able to make this last, Rosalie.”
She paused, her thumb resting on the blunted head, her fingers wrapped around the rigid, veined length of him. Soft, wiry hair was warm against the edge of her hand. She passed her thumb a final time over the head, raising a pearly drop of moisture, and instead, let her fingers drift toward the base of him, gently touching his sac, cupping his testicles in her hand, weighing him.
He shuddered and rolled slightly, one hand lowering to push down the gaping trousers, exposing the bony prominence of one hip and a long, muscled thigh sparsely clad in dark hair. She sat up and pulled them the rest of the way off, tossing them to the nearby chair.
“And now, Kieran Merrick, we are both naked. And if I thought I was the luckiest woman in the world when we exchanged vows this morning, I now know that I am.”
They lay side-by-side gazing into each other’s eyes. She smoothed her hand over his hipbone, down his thigh and over the hard muscle beneath, and he reached out to brush a calloused thumb over her nipple, already stiff and engorged in response to him.
“But you’re wrong, Rosalie.” He leaned forward and touched his forehead to hers, his eyes very close. “You’re not quite naked.”
“My stockings. I’d forgotten them.”
“I haven’t.” And with that he hooked a finger around one stocking and gently pulled it down, his fingers grazing her kneecap, her shin, her ankle, and exposing the sweet, curved length of her calf. “You have beautiful legs, dearest.” He sat up a bit, moved his position on the bed and kissed her instep and then each toe in turn, his hands warm around her ankle and heel as he turned her foot back and forth to look at it. “And very pretty feet.”
“That’s the silliest thing I’ve ever heard, Kieran.”
“I didn’t think it came even close to my bad poetry.”
“You’re right. Nothing comes close.”
He peeled off the other stocking, his warm, loving hands against her skin, cupping this foot as he had the last and brushing his lips over her ankle. His hair fell over her foot.
“That tickles!”
“I want to kiss every part of you, Rosalie.”
“But…my feet?”
“And other parts as well.”
He moved up over her and lowered his head to her breastbone, cupping the outsides of her breasts, crushing them against his face.
“I could die here and go to heaven,” he said. And then he raised his head, pushed one of the generous swells toward his lips, and fastened his mouth over the nipple.
“I think you’re sending me to heaven,” Rosalie managed, gasping as his tongue began to swirl around the nipple, writhing as he drew it up into his mouth and gently at first, and then with increasing pressure, began to suckle her as he had her finger. She felt moisture flooding between her thighs and heat suffusing every cell in her body. She felt his breath against her skin, warm and pulsing through his nostrils, felt the warmth of his hand closing around her other breast and the thumb and forefinger now rolling the nipple between them until she thought she truly was dying.
But no, that wasn’t dying.
Dying was yet to come.
Dying was when he shifted slightly, his hands now warm against her ribs, her abdomen, his mouth following. Dying was when he trailed kisses down to her navel and circled it with his tongue until her body clenched with need. Dying was when his mouth drifted to the edge of her moist, feminine curls, his breath now hot against the satiny skin as he grasped first one thigh, then the other in his hands and eased them apart. Dying was when—
And then his mouth was there, there, between her legs.
His mouth.
Rosalie arched upward on the bed, held in place now by the hard bar of his forearm across her pelvis as his mouth opened against her and she felt his tongue, oh dear God, his tongue, slipping out and dipping into her hot folds, licking her, stroking her as he held her open like a piece of ripe fruit.
The ache between her legs built and in that moment, he found a hidden part of her, a taut, swollen, pit of desire that he drew into his mouth and began to stroke with his tongue, up and down, around and around, until Rosalie let out a guttural cry and convulsing upward, cried out under his rough, licking caresses, her flailing hand caught by his own, held down against the mattress as he kept licking her, suckling her, until she climaxed a second time, shuddering with the fierce and ruthless joy of it.
Heir To The Sea Page 22