A Matter of Sin

by Jess Michaels

  He hesitated, and his gaze held on hers steadily. Then he opened the gown and gently slid it down her trembling shoulders, down over her hips and let it pool around her feet on the floor. She was so on edge by that point that even the slide of her gown over her skin made her shiver with pleasure. Only then did she realize how exposed she was.

  Isabel lifted her hands out of habit to cover her breasts. She wasn’t yet naked, for she still remained in her chemise and a pair of what felt like extremely flimsy drawers, but no man save her husband had ever seen her in such a state.

  She wanted to turn away, but Seth caught her chin and held her steady with one hand, while with the other he pushed her hands aside and forced her to let him see her.

  “Isabel,” he whispered, his voice thick. “I’m not disappointed, I assure you. You are…remarkable. In truth, I fear I might not be able to control myself once I touch you and I won’t satisfy you. I wouldn’t want to repeat what happened today.”

  She blushed as images of their heated, quick coupling against the door in the orangery tormented her and made her already weeping sex ache.

  “I was fully satisfied, ” she murmured.

  He smiled, wicked and improper. “I’m glad. But the first time I made love to you, I should have taken my time. And so I intend to remedy that tonight. Now.”

  With that, he pushed the straps of her chemise away and the thin, silken garment joined her gown around her ankles.

  Now that she was naked from the waist up, Isabel longed to cover herself again, but Seth wouldn’t allow it. His hand closed gently against her wrists, holding them away as he stared at her bare breasts. To her relief, the hunger in his stare didn’t wane, but actually grew hotter.

  “Perfect,” he breathed as he finally released her and lifted one hand to cover her breast.

  Isabel arched helplessly as his bare skin touched hers so intimately. She didn’t recall being so sensitive before. Or that the brush of a thumb against her flesh made her sex ache. No, something had changed in the time between her last night with her husband and now. Something had made her come alive.

  Or someone.

  “Please,” she whispered as Seth gently squeezed, stroking the pad of his thumb against her nipple in a back and forth motion that nearly had her out of her mind.

  “Oh, I intend to please you,” he promised as his dark head lowered to her nipple. He caught the hard nub between his lips and stroked his tongue over her.

  Isabel cried out and gripped for Seth’s shoulders to stay upright, but her response didn’t stop him. In fact, the pressure of his tongue became harder on her breast and he sucked as well as licked until her nipple was distended and pink from attention.

  Her mind began to spin, her vision blurred and her knees shook. But still he tormented her. Before he turned to the opposite breast, he blew a gust of warm, steamy air to the one he had been toying with, and Isabel nearly buckled under the weight of pleasure.

  He repeated the same treatment on her other breast, tormenting her in time to her gasping breaths and sighs.

  All the things Isabel normally thought about, worried about, emptied from her mind as he pleasured her. For the first time in years, all she thought about was herself. All she considered was how to draw him closer, how to press herself nearer.

  She drove her fingers into his hair and held him steady as he swirled his tongue around and around her nipple. To her surprise, he chuckled at her demanding ardor.

  “Are…you…laughing at…me?” she managed to gasp out with difficulty.

  He lifted his head from her flesh. “Oh, no. Simply wondering if I could make you come just by manipulating your breasts.”

  She blinked. “Is that possible?”

  He grinned. “We’ll find out. Later. For now…”

  He trailed off and placed his mouth against her neck. He glided his tongue along the column and claimed her lips one more. She groaned against him.

  How could he feel so good? How could he inspire her to drive her tongue to meet his with a passion she hadn’t known she possessed?

  He suddenly broke the kiss with an animal growl.

  “Oh, Isabel,” he said as he guided her backward across the room. “I want you naked beneath me, I want you wrapped around me, crying out my name until your throat is hoarse from your screams.”

  He gave her one last gentle push and she fell back across the bed with a gasp. He loomed over her, dark and dangerous, but she wasn’t afraid. Instead, she lifted up on her elbows and reached for him, a bold daring awoken in her by his desire.

  “Come down here with me,” she whispered, her voice husky, not her own. She lifted a hand toward him and beckoned him.

  “A siren’s song if I ever heard one,” he whispered as he dropped to his knees on the bed beside her.

  “Sirens dash their lovers on the rocks,” she murmured as she cupped the back of his neck and drew him toward her. “But I want you safe with me all night.”

  He swore against her lips and let his hands move over her a second time. He smoothed rough fingers down her neck, then lower to her collarbone, lower still to move over her breasts. There she cried out softly at the renewed friction of skin on skin. Her hips lifted against him of their own accord. He didn’t stop. Instead, he moved lower to her stomach and then finally he settled his hand between her legs.

  The satin fabric of her drawers was thin—it did almost nothing to separate her from the heat of his hands, nor did it mask the wet desire of her oh-so-ready body. He curled his fingers against her and the wetness increased as she turned her face to the side and let out a soft groan.

  “When you touched me that night in the parlor during the ball…” she whispered, her voice cracking as he continued to gently stroke her through the last remaining item she wore.

  “Yes?” he encouraged as he brushed her hair away from her face with the other hand.

  “I couldn’t have denied this, I couldn’t have said no to being your lover after that,” she admitted, heat filling her cheeks that she would be so bold as to say these things. But she needed to somehow. He brought them out in her, these desperate confessions. “I was lost the moment you reminded me what pleasure felt like. I had forgotten for so long.”

  Seth drew back a fraction. He stared at her with such intensity that she feared she’d gone too far, said too much.

  “Seth?” she murmured when he didn’t move or speak for what seemed like an eternity.

  “If you are lost,” he said as he caught the waistband of her drawers and began to slide them down her hips. Relief flooded her as he stripped her bare. “I will find you. I promise you that.”

  She swallowed hard. He meant the words to arouse, but they touched her more deeply than that. She had to force herself to recall these were empty promises made in the heat of passion. Tomorrow they would be forgotten, at least by him.

  He stared down at her, then stood to back away from the bed. Isabel pushed her thoughts away in a panic. Was he leaving? Had he been displeased by the look of her when she was naked?

  But he didn’t leave. He simply stood over her, looking down on her with an intense focus in his eyes. Once again, she wanted to cover up, but she made herself hold very still as he examined her from head to toe.

  “You are beautiful, Isabel. You drive me mad for you,” he finally murmured.

  She shook her head, still disbelieving that a man like this could be so enamored with a woman like her. “You don’t seem mad, my lord.”

  She expected him to smile at her silly comment, but instead his face turned grave. Without answering, he lifted his hands to his shirt and stripped open enough buttons to tug it over his head. She gasped at what she saw there.

  Her late husband had been advanced in years. His body had never been in its prime the entire length of their marriage. But Isabel hadn’t fully understood what that meant until she looked at Seth.

  He was…a specimen. He was roped with lean muscle, his skin slightly sun-kissed, as though he some
times went without a shirt when outside.

  She was so focused on the look of his chest, she didn’t realize he was unfastening his trousers until they fell away to his ankles and he stood before her as naked as she was. Her stare slipped southward and she caught her breath a second time.

  His cock was hard, so hard, and it thrust up against his flat stomach in a proud display of masculine desire.

  Isabel swallowed. Hartley had sometimes struggled to become erect for her, and even when he did, it was nothing like this. She was entirely in over her head, in a way she hadn’t realized even when Seth took her against the doorway in the greenhouse earlier in the day.

  “Isabel,” Seth said as he came closer. “If this is not evidence of madness, I don’t know what is.”

  He caught her hand and brought it up to his member. It was soft as satin and hard as steel, and she wanted to hold it and stroke it and suck it in the most shocking manner. Instead, she just stared.

  “Every time I’m near you—” he continued as he covered her hand and guided her to stroke him from base to head as she had in the orangery. His voice was strangled as he said, “—this is what happens, Isabel. So I have been roaming around this estate, trying to hide the evidence of my desire for days.”

  She broke her gaze from the shocking and enticing vision of his hardness and instead looked into his eyes.

  “No,” she said with a shake of her head.

  He leaned over her, putting one hand on either side of her shoulders and forcing her to lie back against the bed once more. He covered her now, his warm body pinning her down and making her want to open her legs wide and somehow take him inside of her.

  “Oh yes,” he said. “I assure you it is most true.”

  She swallowed as she put her arms around his back, sliding her fingernails against the taut skin there. “Then let me offer you ease. Let me offer you what you claim you have desired.”

  Slowly, she maneuvered herself beneath him, parting her legs to allow him to settle his naked body between them.

  “Please, Seth,” she whispered.

  He swore beneath his breath and then his mouth crushed down on hers. She could feel his desire taking control now, smashing the restraint he had been struggling to keep. He was on the edge, and a wicked part of her wanted to throw him over. To see what he would be like if there was no gentlemanly part of him holding back to protect her.

  She wasn’t certain what to do to cause that, but she found her fingers gliding down his back, lower until she touched his muscular backside. She cupped him and held firm, pulling him even closer to her and moaning when the hardness of his erection stroked the outer lips of her wet sex.

  Seth let out a moan and then he looked down at her in shock that gave way to a grin of naughty pleasure. He reached between them, spreading her body open, and then she felt the head of his cock at her entrance. She tensed as she readied for the quick slide of the breach.

  But unlike earlier in the day, he did not slide home in one heavy stroke. He eased into her, inch by inch, push by push, tormenting her with the tingles of sensation that made her arch up, thrash her head against the bed, dig her fingers into his skin in an attempt to hurry him.

  Finally, after what seemed like a blissful eternity, he fully seated himself within her. And there he stopped, looking down into her face as he simply rested inside of her, letting her feel the fullness of her sex, the warmth of their bodies joined as one.

  She squirmed beneath him, trying to take what he withheld. She flexed her hips in an attempt to thwart his superior weight. He chuckled at her struggle and gave her what she desired as he drew back and then glided forward.

  That first stroke took her over the edge she had been balancing on since he first touched her. Isabel sucked in a gasp as waves of pleasure hit her with no warning, no mercy. And as if he sensed her crisis, Seth increased the tempo of his thrusts, driving her pleasure forward, making her lift and strain as she reached for more and more of it.

  She realized she was thrashing and moaning, repeating his name over and over as her pleasure increased to near pain. He took and took, holding her so close as he claimed her that she feared he would mark her in ways that would never fade.

  Ultimately, though, the pleasure did. Her tremors slowed, then ceased, and her body went limp beneath him as she let out a final satisfied moan.

  He turned his face and his mouth claimed hers, softly, gently. When he drew back, she opened her eyes and looked up at him. Pleasure had stolen her ability to speak, but she was stunned when a tear escaped her eye and trickled down her cheek.

  Seth leaned back further, his taut expression of desire and smug male knowledge of pleasure vanished immediately.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered as he pressed a kiss to her temple. “I was too vigorous. I hurt you.”

  He shifted, and Isabel realized he intended to leave her body, to roll away. Her arms tightened around him and she held him as tightly as she could to keep him with her.

  “No,” she hastened to say as she leaned up to touch her lips to his with the same gentleness he had used on her. “No, you didn’t hurt me.”

  “But you’re crying,” he said, smoothing a lock of hair from her face.

  She shook her head, unsure she would be able to express herself properly and explain the emotions that were now swelling inside of her. Uncertain she wished to do something that would make her so vulnerable to a man who she hardly knew and with whom she could share no future.

  Finally she simply said, “It’s been a long time, that’s all. Since someone was so tender to me, since someone brought me pleasure. I’m sorry for my tears, I know they make me a fool.” She blushed. “But they weren’t from pain, rather from…from wonder. I had forgotten—”

  She cut herself off with a blush. It was too much. She had gone too far.

  Seth stared at her for a long moment and she couldn’t read his suddenly intense stare. Like her, he was covering his emotions and for a brief moment she felt sorry for that. Sorry that neither of them could offer a deeper glimpse into themselves beyond a pleasurable joining of bodies during a clandestine meeting.

  But her thoughts faded when he smiled. “And we’ve only just begun.”

  She didn’t answer. She couldn’t, for as soon as he had spoken, he flexed his hips and moved within her again. This time he had more purpose. She recognized he wasn’t only working toward her second orgasm, but his own. She arched to greet his thrusts, grinding her hips in slow circles and pressing hot kisses along his neck, his chest, his lips, anything she could reach and taste.

  His hips moved erratically, his neck strained, and just as her own pleasure exploded a second, powerful time, he let out a ragged, animal cry and withdrew to spend himself away from her body. Then he flopped down on the bed next to her, wrapped his arms around her, and for a long while, everything was still.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “It may seem an odd thing, to want a man’s mouth on you intimately, but to be feasted upon is one of life’s greatest pleasures.”—The Ladies Book of Pleasures

  Just a few short hours before, Isabel had been embarrassed by her nudity and tried to cover herself. But after the shattering lovemaking they had just shared, she no longer felt the desire to hide her body from Seth. Not when she was tangled in his arms.

  He leaned up on one elbow and looked down at her with a sideways smile that made him seem less like a stern, responsible marquis and more like a man without a care in the world. That was far from the truth, but she liked the impression nonetheless.

  “We are still askew on this bed,” he said with a soft laugh. “Not that I’m complaining about how we got so cockeyed. It was—” he leaned down to kiss her neck, and Isabel was shocked that her body lit with fiery desire immediately, “—most pleasurable.”

  She smiled, though she found herself trembling. “Would you like to move so that you don’t lose the feeling in your arm?”

  He nodded, the twinkle still bright in his eyes.
“Indeed, for I have many plans for this arm that involve you and that wonderfully responsive body of yours.”

  Isabel couldn’t help but laugh at his playfulness, even as she tried not to imagine all those wicked things he wished to do to her. For her.

  “You are a cad,” she said as she began to maneuver so that she was actually lying with her head on the pillows.

  But as she turned, she noticed something lying on the floor. Seth’s copy of The Ladies Book of Pleasures had apparently fallen there during their passionate joining. She’d been so caught up in sensation and pleasure, she hadn’t even heard the clatter of it hitting the floor.

  She reached down and snatched it up before she rolled onto her stomach with one of the pillows propped beneath her chest. With Seth beside her, reading over her shoulder, she opened the tome to the first few pages. It was a table of contents that had each chapter name. Together, they read them in silence.

  “Oral Explorations”, “A Lady’s Guide to Self-Pleasure” and “A Tryst in Public” were just a few of the naughty chapters contained in the book.

  “It is quite a thing this ‘lady’ has written,” Seth said with a low whistle.

  “Indeed.” Isabel looked at him from the corner of her eye. “So what do you think of the book, Seth? You have had far more experience than I.”

  He chuckled as he reached out and began to trace a pattern along the bare planes of her back. Isabel shivered and barely suppressed a little moan. That light touch rocketed through her like summer lightning, making her sex throb and her nipples tighten again.

  “You keep going on about my experience,” he said softly. “I’m not exactly a libertine, you know.”

  “Are you not?” Isabel gasped as his fingers crept into the dip that was the small of her back and just tickled the top of her buttocks suggestively. “Tonight I certainly feel as though I’m with a very wicked man.”