by Mary Balogh
Her bosom brushed against his chest and then pressed more firmly against it. With her abdomen she could feel his watch fob and his warmth. Her thighs touched his as they continued to dance.
And then they stopped dancing and she stopped humming.
It felt like the most natural thing in the world. As if yesterday had been meant to happen, as if this had been meant to be. Although she did not actually think such foolish thoughts, she felt them. She felt that she was where she belonged, where she had always belonged, where she always would belong. It did not matter that a saner, more practical part of herself was clamoring to be heard. She simply did not listen. The whole of the rest of her life was for sanity, but for now, for this moment she had found something deeper than sanity. She had found herself. She had found what all her life she had dreamed of and searched for and doubted really existed.
“Frances,” he murmured, his voice low against her ear.
The intimacy of her name on his lips sent a thrill along her spine and warmed her all the way down to her toes.
“Yes.” She drew back her head to smile at him, and she lifted her hand from behind his neck to twine her fingers in his short curly hair. She knew then what the strange, intense light in his eyes was. But of course, she had never not known. It was desire. Raw and naked desire.
And then he moved his head closer to hers and closed his eyes and kissed her.
She had been kissed before. She had been kissed by a man she thought she loved. But it had never been like this. Ah, surely it never had. His arms came about her, the fingers of one hand closing over the knot of hair at her neck, the other spread below her waist, drawing her intimately against him. His mouth opened over hers, teasing her lips apart, inviting further intimacy. When she opened her mouth, his tongue came inside, circled hers, and stroked the roof of her mouth.
She leaned into him, her arms about his hard-muscled frame, her body on fire from the topmost hair on her head to her toenails. If she could have drawn him closer, she would have. She knew beyond any doubt that he would be an expert and experienced lover. Curiously, that knowledge did not alarm her at all. It only thrilled her.
“Lucius.”
He had lowered his head to nuzzle the hollow between her neck and her shoulder. His hands were cupping her breasts through the wool of her dress beneath her shawl, molding them, making them tender with need.
When he lifted his head, his hair looked slightly rumpled, his hazel eyes heavy with passion.
“I want you,” he said against her lips. “I want you in bed. I want to get inside these clothes.”
She was not so far gone into mindlessness that such plain speaking did not jolt her. It was the moment of ultimate decision. She knew that. He would not force her—she knew that too. There were all sorts of dangers and moral concerns to discourage her from proceeding. And he was, when all was said and done, little more than a stranger. She knew almost nothing about him. She would be sure to regret giving in to a temptation that she had been fighting valiantly since last evening.
But she knew too in the few seconds that elapsed before she answered him that she would also and always regret not being bold enough to carry her adventure to its ultimate conclusion. She could spend this one night with Lucius Marshall if she chose. Or she could spend the night virtuously tossing and turning in her own solitary bed and forever regret that she had said no.
Besides, saying no now would make her into a tease. She had come too far—much too far—to pretend that she thought they had been indulging in a mere kiss.
“Yes,” she said, hearing the throaty catch in her voice as if it were someone else’s. “It is what I want too.”
It was a relief to have spoken the words, to have owned her own desire, her own freedom of choice.
Her own madness.
He drew her close again and parted his lips over hers.
“It will be good,” he promised. “This will be a night to remember, Frances.”
She did not doubt it for one moment.
They did not take a candle with them when they went to her room. But Wally must have taken the rare initiative of starting a fire in there unbidden. It burned warmly in the grate, and light from it flickered over the walls and ceiling—and over the bed. But it was only when they stepped inside the room and he shut the door behind them that he realized how very chilly the Assembly Room must have been.
She turned to face him, her very dark eyes heavy with desire, her teeth sinking into her lower lip. She lifted her arms to wrap about his neck, and he set his arms beneath hers and reached up to tackle the prim schoolteacher’s knot at the back of her head. He dipped his head to touch his lips lightly to hers. She released her lower lip and thrust both softly, and parted, against his own.
This was not seduction, he told himself, or even half seduction. She was very willing. And it was not cynical amusement he was taking with a willing partner to while away an idle night. He burned for her, though, if he had been forced to put into words the powerful attraction he felt toward her, he would have been hard-pressed. He did not normally favor either dark women or tall women. He admired small women with blond curls. And he liked them well rounded and softly feminine. He liked English rose complexions. Frances Allard was none of those things.
But he burned for her as he had rarely burned for any other woman before her.
His fingers deftly removed hairpins, and her hair came cascading down over her shoulders, heavy and sleekly gleaming in the firelight and almost waist length. It framed her narrow face, and made her look like a Renaissance madonna. At that moment he could not imagine any woman more beautiful, more desirable. He ran his fingers through her hair, wrapping them in it in order to cup the back of her head and keep her face tilted toward his.
“It is glorious,” he said. “And yet you keep it so ruthlessly confined. It is a crime against mankind.”
“I am a schoolteacher,” she said, feathering light kisses along his jaw to his chin.
“Not tonight,” he told her, dipping his head to take her mouth with his again. “Tonight you are my woman.” He sucked her full lower lip into his mouth.
She drew back her head and gazed into his eyes, her own heavy-lidded now with desire.
“And tonight,” she said, “you are my man.”
Well. He felt himself harden into arousal.
“Yes, tonight,” he said, kissing her eyes closed, kissing her lips again, kissing the hollow at the base of her throat. “For tonight, Frances.”
He took hold of her shawl and tossed it aside before opening her dress down the back. He felt her shiver against him as her fingers twined tightly in his hair, though he knew it was not with cold.
He slid first one hand inside the soft wool of her dress, and then the other. Her flesh was warm and smooth, with the slight stickiness of desire. He drew the garment off her shoulders and down her arms until of its own momentum it fell to the floor. She wore a chemise beneath but no stays—an explanation, perhaps, for the fact that he had thought her small-bosomed until he had cupped her breasts in his hands in the Assembly Room. They were not voluptuous, but they were enticingly feminine for all that. He held her a little away from him and looked down at her.
She was long-limbed, slender, beautifully shaped. With her thick, very dark hair about her, she looked younger.
He drew a slow breath.
“Sit down on the bed,” he said, turning to it and drawing back the covers.
He set his hands on her bare shoulders as she did so, and bent his head to kiss one shoulder in the hollow where it met her neck. She smelled enticingly of soap and woman.
He went down on one knee before her and lifted one of her feet onto his raised knee before rolling the stocking down her leg and off her foot. He leaned forward and kissed the inside of her knee and trailed kisses down her shapely calf to her heel and her instep.
“Oh, yes,” she said in the same low, throaty voice she had used earlier.
He looked up to smile
at her. But she was supporting herself with both hands behind her on the bed, and her head was thrown back and her eyes closed. All her glorious hair trailed to the bed behind her and spread over the bottom white sheet.
He removed her other stocking in the same way.
She lay down when he got to his feet in order to remove his own clothes. But she did not close her eyes or turn her head away. She lay with her arms spread loosely to the sides, her head half turned toward him, one leg straight, the other slightly bent with her foot flat on the mattress. It was difficult not to tear off his clothes in order to join her there as quickly as he could. But with slow deliberation he shrugged out of his tight-fitting coat and dropped it to the floor, and then out of his waistcoat. He untied his neckcloth and dropped it to the pile. And then he drew his shirt off over his head and discarded that too.
Her bosom, he could see in the firelight, was rising and falling quite noticeably against her shift. Her lips had parted.
He smiled deliberately at her and crossed to the fire in order to throw on a few more coals before returning to the bed and removing his remaining garments.
He smiled again when she crossed her arms and stripped her shift off over her head before dropping it over the edge of the bed. That answered one question. He had been wondering whether he would allow her to keep that final barrier of modesty at least until both of them were beneath the covers.
It was strange how just yesterday he had thought her thin and unappealing. Tonight her beauty was so perfect in every detail that it quite took his breath away. She reached up her arms to him.
“The bed is rather narrow,” she said.
“But why would we want one that is any wider?” he asked her, lowering himself into her arms and sliding one of his own beneath her before kissing her. “Half of it would be wasted.”
“To echo what you said earlier of the waltz,” she said, threading the long fingers of one hand into his hair, “I must confess that my experience with this sort of activity is severely limited.”
“Or perhaps nonexistent?” He kissed the tip of her nose and looked into her eyes.
“Something like that,” she admitted.
“I had no experience in peeling potatoes,” he said, nuzzling one earlobe.
He felt her shiver.
“But they ended up tasting delicious,” she said.
“Exactly my point.” He blew softly into her ear.
She drew his mouth to hers once more, and the passion that had ended their waltz prematurely and brought them to this moment was instantly rekindled and redoubled in force. He kissed her open-mouthed, reaching deep into the heat of her mouth with his tongue while his hand moved over her, fondling, teasing, arousing. And her slender, long-fingered hands touched him, lightly, tentatively at first, and then boldly, urgently, hungrily.
They made love to each other with hot, fierce, panting foreplay. When his mouth enclosed and suckled a nipple and one of his hands slid between her thighs to find the hot, moist core of her desire, his fingers probing, rubbing, scratching lightly, she rolled onto her back and he came over on top of her, pinning her to the bed with his not inconsiderable weight. She needed no coaxing to spread her legs. They came up, slim and strong-muscled, to hug his hips and twine about his own legs. He slid his hands beneath her, positioned himself, and entered her firmly and as slowly as he could contrive.
But she would not let him make any allowance for her virginity. She pressed up against him so that he ruptured the barrier and embedded himself deeply in her far more forcefully than he had intended. Her hands pressed against his buttocks, straining him to her. She was gasping for air.
She was tight and hot and wet. The blood hammered through his body so that he heard his heart like a drum beating urgently in his ears. He held very still in her and fought for control.
“Easy,” he murmured, lowering his mouth to hers. “Take it easy. I would give you pleasure, Frances, not go off like a schoolboy on his first outing.”
Surprisingly—and delightfully—she laughed. He could feel the tremors of her amusement shivering through her body, and her inner muscles tightened about him.
“You are giving me pleasure,” she said. “Oh, Lucius, you are.”
He kissed her into silence. But some of the frenzy of their joining had been dissipated for the moment, and he was able to move in her with slow, deliberate strokes while she closed her eyes and tipped back her head and relaxed her muscles. He worked her through several minutes, her passage growing wetter and slicker until sound mingled with sensation and drove him closer and closer to his own limits.
But he would not change the rhythm yet. There was too much pleasure in anticipating pleasure, and she was a gorgeous, responsive, passionate bedmate. After the first minute she had begun to move with him, and her inner muscles had caught and complemented the rhythm of his thrusts. Her hips circled slowly, creating a pleasure so exquisite that it bordered on pain.
He had had experienced courtesans who were less skilled.
And then finally her control slipped, and she moaned softly to each stroke and contracted her muscles convulsively and off-rhythm. He could feel her increased body heat and the slickness of her sweat. He could hear the raggedness of her breathing. Her arms and thighs strained him closer.
He thrust faster and deeper.
It was impossible for a virgin to reach climax the first time. It was rare for a woman to reach climax at all. He had heard both pronouncements—from other men, of course. Frances Allard proved them all wrong.
She came to a sudden and shattering climax, every muscle in her body tensing before she cried out and shuddered in his arms while he stopped moving. It was a strangely wondrous gift, her cresting of the wave of passion, her shuddering descent down the other side. It had rarely happened to him before, though he had known many women who went to valiant lengths to pretend.
He waited until she was quiet and still beneath him, and then he completed his own pleasure, plunging into her over and over again until he reached the blessed moment of release.
He sighed against the side of her face and relaxed his weight down onto her warm, yielding body.
It had been and was, he thought as he rolled off her a few moments later and gathered her close in his arms, a fitting ending to an adventure—to use her word—that had been strange and unpredictable from the first moment.
Though his mind shied away from dwelling upon the realization that this was the end.
He would think about that tomorrow morning.
Frances was, she discovered, totally head over ears in love with Lucius Marshall. With yesterday’s nasty, bad-tempered gentleman, of all men. She smiled against his shoulder. She almost chuckled aloud.
With her intellect, of course, she knew that she was not in love at all. Not really. Not in the way of those great, enduring romances one occasionally heard or read about anyway. She had only just met him, after all, and she really did not know him. Even though he had somehow managed to learn several details of her life, he had said remarkably little about his own. What they had shared and were sharing tonight was entirely physical. It was lust pure and simple. She was under no illusions about that. And she was not ashamed of the admission. Perhaps she would be later, but not now. For now she was quite happy to accept the situation for what it was.
As she lay in the narrow bed with him, their limbs all tangled together, and he slept while she tried hard not to, she did her thinking with her emotions rather than with her intellect.
And she tried—she desperately tried to cling to the moment, to revel in the sensation of being in love and of having been physically loved in a manner more glorious than anything she could possibly have imagined.
She had expected lovemaking to be painful. It had been when he first came inside her and for a minute or two after he had started moving in her. She had also expected it to be horribly embarrassing. How could it not be when one considered what actually happened? But ultimately it had been neither.
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It had been by far the most wonderful experience of her life.
And it was still wonderful. She was warm and cozy. She could feel his strong arms about her and one powerful leg pushed between her own. She could feel his hard-muscled body against hers, her breasts pressed to his chest with its light dusting of hair. She could smell his cologne, his sweat, his maleness, and thought that no perfume could ever smell half so enticing.
Strange thought!
It was a good thing, she thought, nestling closer to him and butting her head into a warm spot beneath his chin, prompting a sleepy grunt of protest from him, that she would never have anyone with whom to compare him. Marriage opportunities—or even opportunities for casual amours, for that matter—did not come the way of lady schoolteachers with any great frequency. Once she had had chances to make a good marriage, even a happy one, but those days were long gone.
She was trying to stay awake, not because she was not tired but because tonight was something that was going to have to last her for all the rest of her life. Whenever her mind touched upon the thought that tomorrow she would be back in her own bed on Daniel Street in Bath, she felt twinges of panic somewhere in the region of the bottom of her stomach.
If she did not sleep, perhaps the night would never end.
What foolishness!
But tragedy—the certain knowledge of a dreadful, desolate pain to come—loomed just beneath the surface of her drowsy happiness.
She would think about it tomorrow when she would have no choice.
“Cold?” a low, sleepy voice asked her.
The fire had burned itself out sometime before, but she was as cozy as she could possibly be where she was.
“No,” she said.
“Too bad,” he said. “I might have thought of a way of warming you up if you were.”
“I am frozen,” she assured him, chuckling softly.
“You lie through your teeth, ma’am,” he said, “but I like your spirit. Now, I suppose I need to think of some way of warming you—and myself. Doubtless you can tell that I am shivering too. Any suggestions?”