by Lacy Danes
Claire stood, her face flushed and intent and, as though hearing his desire, used both hands to open his breeches. Teasingly, slowly, she pushed them down his hips, hesitating for an eon, until finally, with a sudden rapid motion of her wrists, they fell to the floor.
For a moment, she just looked at his straining erection, and he began to tremble, a pulse travelling the length of his engorged flesh. Claire made a soft sound in the back of her throat and licked her lips. His trembles turned to shudders, and Xavier thought he would explode right then and there.
A wicked little smile playing about her lips, she whispered, “How long has it been, since you have been with a woman?”
“Almost two years.”
The smile widened into a grin. “Ah, Xavier, I will make it up to you for the lack.” She grew serious for a moment, her gaze locking with his as she asked, “Will you trust me? Let me show you prolonging the pleasure can only make it better?” She rested her hands on his stomach, fingers lightly stroking, down and around, making his skin shiver as though each separate inch had developed a thousand more nerve endings. “There may come a moment when you want me to stop what I am doing, when all you want is for me to let you have your climax, but bear it, just this once. If it is not to your taste, we will never do it again. But tonight…” she rested her head on his chest, fitting into his arms as though made just for them, “…tonight I want to have you, in my mouth, for as long as possible.”
Those softly spoken words drove a shock of desire through every vein and sinew in his body.
“Do what you will, Claire.” He could hardly speak through the need clawing at his chest. “I surrender to your desires.”
The shudder wracking her at his words took Claire by surprise. Power, potent and sweet, leapt in her belly and increased her own arousal. All she had learned, all she had experienced, seemed suddenly to have meaning. If for this one night she could give this one man pleasure, everything, everything, would be worthwhile.
Sinking to her knees, Claire reached for Xavier’s straining cock, marvelling at its perfection, lightly skimming her fingers over the velvet hardness. It pointed straight up towards his belly, the veins standing out in bold relief, the end mushroomed into a darker knob, and the sensitive little tendon just below the slit begged for special attention. His ballocks, already tight, waited to pump his release.
It had been a long time since she had felt like this, eager and needy, yet also wanting to give. For two years she had been without a man, two years during which fantasies had sustained her. But dreams, no matter how graphic they might be, could not compare with reality.
She lowered her head, hands caressing up and down his thighs, savouring the sensation of firm musculature, hair-roughened skin so completely different from her own. He was trembling, and the sensation seemed to travel through his flesh and into hers, until they were joined by the same aching desire.
Lowering her head further, she touched his testicles lightly, using just the tip of her tongue, running it from side to side, barely letting him feel the contact. Gently she increasing the pressure until, suddenly, she curled her entire tongue under the sac to explore the soft, firm skin behind. As he gasped, she withdrew slowly, letting his flesh slide off her tongue.
Looking up, she shuddered at the raw passion on his face. His eyes were closed and his neck arched back. Strong hands clutched the wall as though for support. Her heart ached for him, this passionate man whose passion had been squelched until he doubted its veracity. She bent back to her task, determined to make this a night he would remember until his dying day.
Sucking slowly on one side of his sac brought a heartfelt groan, and the sound drove her on. She let it almost slip free before increasing the pressure and drawing it back in, swirling her tongue over the tight flesh constantly. An abrupt switch to the other side, and he jerked in reaction. Reaching up to take his cock in her right hand, she found the tip wet, moaned into his flesh as she spread the moisture and used it to lubricate a slow, steady pumping. His ballocks contracted even more and she raised herself up onto her toes, releasing him from her hand, from her mouth, waiting without touching.
One lord. One lady. One scandalous mistake. Can it all add up to love?
Sins of the Heart
© 2008 Delle Jacobs
The icy Lord Edenstorm is the very man Lady Juliette hoped never to see again, for only he knows her true identity. One word from him to her brother and she will be locked away, hidden forever in an asylum. All for one foolish, scandalous mistake.
Still stinging from her deceitful betrayal years before and wounded by the horrors of war, Edenstorm offers to keep her secret, if she helps him catch the traitors who smuggle English gold to Napoleon.
Juliette is incensed. Her Cornish friends may be smugglers, but never traitors, and his snooping and accusations could destroy them. Furious at his blackmail, Juliette vows to risk her own life and freedom to protect the friends she trusts by leading his search astray.
But Edenstorm is not the unfeeling man she thought she knew. Nor is Juliette the faithless woman he believed her to be. As passion flares, deceit gives way to truth, and truth unleashes dangers they never suspected.
Only by turning truth into trust—and trust into love—can they hope to survive.
Warning: Warning, this title contains scandalously unmentionable conduct, including unseemly romantic encounters on which doors ought to be closed, as well as shockingly lawless adventure, risks, perils and unruly emotions in which proper ladies and gentlemen ought not to engage.
Enjoy the following excerpt for Sins of the Heart:
There was a tall Cheval glass standing in the corner of the bedchamber, its glass crinkled with black spots and lines that gave a mottled pewter cast to the rosy glow from the fireplace.
Jane stood nude before the mirror, clutching a man’s plain brown muslin dressing gown. Her eyes were pinched as tight as a miser’s purse, and she couldn’t make them open. She should look at herself. She must. But the minute her own image would appear in the mirror’s dull haze, her eyes would close it out.
She had never felt so dirty. So ugly. She had leaned over the side of the little slipper tub and lathered and washed the salt and grime from her hair, scrubbing until she worried that her hair might come out. Then she had sat in the tiny tub, her legs hanging spider-like on either side, and scoured her skin until the bruises, scrapes and scratches hurt worse than they had with the salt imbedded in them. Then she had scrubbed herself again.
If only she could make her eyes open, she could surely see the dirt was gone. But they would not. This was the kind of dirt that could not be washed away. Once, four years before, she had scrubbed her skin until it was raw. She had thought she was beyond that.
Jane touched the deep bruise on her wrist where Cyril had clamped his hand when he’d dragged her to his coach. Funny, though. It was not the bruise that hurt. She had thought there was nothing Cyril could do to hurt her again.
Tears welled up in her pinched-tight eyes and seeped through the cracks, and she couldn’t make them stop. Jane never cried. Never, ever cried. But she couldn’t keep the tears from pouring out. She could only stand there in all her ugliness, trying to make herself look at what her eyes couldn’t bear to see.
All she had ever wanted was to be loved.
A door squeaked behind her and she knew from his masculine scent it was Edenstorm. In the mirror she saw him, his blue and gold silk banyan flowing as he moved toward her.
Quickly, she dabbed at the tears she didn’t want him to see, but knew he would see her wiping them, and just as rapidly, she converted the movement into something that resembled an attempt to slip her arms into the muslin dressing gown’s sleeves. There would be redness in her eyes, and she must not let him see it. She lowered her lashes, hoping the dim firelight would help her.
Edenstorm stood behind her. His blunt-fingered hands touched her arms and slid upward to her shoulders over the brown cotton. “You don’t ne
ed this,” he said, the whisper-soft words tickling her ear. “You need never hide from me again.”
Jane closed her eyes and leaned back against his chest, feeling instead of seeing as the gown fell from her shoulders, slid down her arms.
“You’re dressed,” she protested.
“Undress me,” he whispered back. His silvery eyes were darkening with wildness she had never seen in them before.
Yes. It was what she wanted most in the entire world. It would be her gift to him, for tomorrow she would give him an even more important one, for she valued all that made him who he was. Loved who he was.
Tomorrow would be a different thing, but tonight, she would give him this gift, knowing she really gave it to herself. She would love him, memorizing every inch of him, making memories she could cherish forever.
Jane turned to face him, her eyes still lowered, appearing to watch the movements of her hands as she fingered the golden frogs on his banyan. She slipped the knots free from their loops, one, two, three, and maneuvered her hands inside the silk, to the fine cambric of his nightshirt. She smiled, looking down, to see his bare toes beneath the cloth. Such strangely ugly feet with funny, snaggle-toes, for such a beautiful man. But she would love them, too. Later. When she finished with the more interesting parts.
In her hands, which seemed so small touching his huge body, the soft striped silk fell away from his shoulders. She let it drop to the floor, puddling on top of the plain brown dressing gown.
Following the hard lines of his body, then his legs, she bent and ran her hands downward to grasp the hem of the nightshirt. She gathered fistfuls of the cambric as she slowly rose, grazing her thumbs over his thighs. She leaned her head back, her eyes closed, absorbing the feel, learning the crispness of the golden hairs on his legs, imagining what it would be like rubbing against her legs.
Slowly as she straightened,, the fabric rose, up past his hips, and she heard the soft hiss of a sharp, deep breath. Yes. She would get back to that, the groin area that Lydia had so carefully described. She kept moving her hands upward, the fabric collecting in bunches so thick, she opened her grasp and hooked it on her thumbs. Up it moved, exposing his chest, and now she could see the male arousal she had grazed before.
She didn’t know what it was called, only the occasional vulgar term she had over-heard accidentally a few times. It seemed wondrous, powerful, this focus of his passion. Something zinged and sang inside her, wanting to stop and test it in her hands, but she wanted the nightshirt off his body first.
Upward, she moved her hands, skimming her thumbs over two hard, small nubs of male nipples. He arched his head backward, and a shudder ran through him as he moaned in that same way she had heard before when they were on the cliff. It sent a shiver through her that wound like a spring inside her.
As she reached the sleeves, she hooked her thumbs into them and continued moving up. His arms rose until the cloth passed his elbows, and he pulled his arms free. His male scent, clean, yet like the musky hint of leather, the feel of his flesh, the sight of his golden hair, all blended, made her hungry, a hunger that had been awakened on the cliff and grew beyond any she had ever known before. In a flash, he had both hands wrapped around her, sliding down her back to hold her against him, the hard unnamed part of him pressing against the flesh of her stomach. The nightshirt cleared his head and dropped behind him.
He bent down to capture her lips with his, the shiver still wracking through him. Gleefully, Jane embraced him as tightly as he did her and let her hands run wild over his smooth skin and muscles, loving their shape, feeling their hardness. Down his back, the marvelous indentation where his spine ran and joined to hard buttocks that were nothing like hers. Nothing, in fact, was like hers. She closed her eyes again, sneaking a hand between their bodies, drinking in the sensations of the crisp hair on his hard-planed chest and exploring downward over his belly which was not soft and forgiving like hers, and found the intriguing part of him which had no name. And according to Lydia, was the focus of a man’s desire.
She smiled, remembering, grateful that Lydia had insisted on educating her, even if Lydia didn’t always know what to call something. Lydia had mentioned gentle strokes, and later as the man became more aroused, more vigorous ones. That left a great deal to the imagination, but Jane figured her fantasies were up to the task. She heated up, just thinking about it.
The skin was silkier than velvet, and hot, sleekly covering the rigid thing that had grown even in the little time since she had felt it pressed against her. It moved at her touch, and he moaned, not releasing her from his kiss, but arching inward to give her hands free access. She wanted both, both to feel his body tightly pressed to hers, and to explore his marvelous maleness.
With one of his big hands cupping her buttocks, he slipped the other between her legs. Her heart sped as he slid his hand between her thighs up to the juncture with her body, and then between those lower lips. Something wild sprang free inside her. Whatever he was touching made her want to beg for more. And as he began to rub back and forth, she gasped, arching backward, her whole body screaming for more.
“My Juliette,” he rasped out.
Jane. But he didn’t understand that. She wished she could be what he wanted, wished everything for him, but it was only Jane who could give him this, and this was so very little, for the man who was giving her so very much.