by Eve Pendle
“Delicious.” She licked her lips in a gesture so blatantly suggestive that it sent the small amount of blood remaining anywhere else in his body straight to his member. Instinctively, he eased their movement in the dance as the music slowed and then stopped.
It was as much as he could do not to drag her off the dance floor right that moment and use any way necessary to convince her to come to his bed. But he couldn’t do that. In part, because if he didn’t have something to cover his groin area, it would be clear to all the guests at this wedding that he dressed to the left and that the size of the Westbury family jewels was substantial, even if the money was all gone. He pulled her closer.
“Everett, it’s the end of the dance.” She sounded amused.
“I can’t let you go.” He hadn’t meant to say that. “I need”—how to explain— “a grace period.”
Her eyebrows pulled together in confusion, then her eyelashes shadowed her cheeks for a second as her gaze flicked down to his waist, then back up. “And I am to be your saving grace?”
“You could be my amazing grace.”
“More like married grace. You’d better waltz me out of the room, then. Or perhaps we ought to go out for some fresh air on the balcony. I am feeling rather faint…” She fanned herself ineffectually with her hand. Her smile was positively naughty as she leaned into him.
He didn’t need asking again. “Excuse me,” he said to no one in particular. He moved so his arm was tight around Grace’s waist and began to guide them to the French windows. “My wife needs some air.”
“Excellent grace under fire, my lord,” she whispered in his ear.
He caught the words “tired” and “baby” from behind them as he opened the French windows, but was too intent on getting Grace away to think of the implications. It was raining outside, the raindrops blurring the view of the terrace and garden. He escorted her out into the humid freshness and the noise of the ballroom disappeared as he closed the door behind them.
The view over the lawn and the white-gray lake was blurred by the rain. The droplets of water were already getting caught in Grace’s hair, glittering. He drifted his hand from her waist up to touch the strands falling around her neck. She pressed her head back into his fingers, and he nearly groaned at the sensation. It was too much, and they were still only a few yards from the ballroom.
“Well? Shall we walk in the garden?” Grace smiled up at him.
“It’s raining. Your dress will be ruined.” It was slowly turning a darker shade of yellow in uneven little spots. They couldn’t stay here.
“Phssh, my dress is nothing…” She swept a hand irreverently over it.
His heart seemed to stop under the sheer weight of desire. “We don’t have to rejoin the wedding party.”
Her expression changed as she looked up at him, and her smile was impish again. “Are you recommending we should sneak away?”
“Yes. Immediately.” He turned and pulled her with him from her waist, walking backward. Then she was coming with him, and then they were running. Her hand found his and they were laughing and running down the steps, over the damp lawn and around the house.
Chapter Fourteen
They burst into the entrance hall, and Grace couldn’t hold in a giggle as Everett picked her up from the waist and spun her around. She held tight to the back of his neck and pressed herself to his chest. He was firm, even as he made the room spin. Perhaps she was getting carried away by the romance of the wedding. Perhaps she was caught up in admiration of Everett’s unfailing dedication to people. It could be the punch she’d drunk earlier. The gratitude she felt for his help could have contributed. But after days of denial where she’d failed to concentrate and sleepless nights, a wedding was too much. Watching Jane and Thompson, so happy and carefree, made her wonder why she was struggling against what Everett was offering.
Her heart pinged as he eased her down onto her feet. His hands stayed at her waist, steadying her. He hadn’t even been looking at her when he’d said, without regret during his speech, but his tiny glance in her direction had set her heart thudding as it was now. It had planted in her this reckless trust of him.
“We could go to bed…” The words spilled out of her.
“Yes.” His eyes shone.
“What we did the other day…” Well. Not completely reckless. She wanted more. Not just physically, but she had to know he cared about her, not just wanted to ensure he had an heir. After all, the third promise he’d made her swear was to stay if she was with child. “We don’t have to do anything other than that, do we?”
“We can do precisely what you would like.” He moved infinitesimally toward her. “You’re worried about consummating the marriage?”
“I don’t want to get with child.” Breaking her promise wasn’t an option but leaving her child without a mother was an even worse thought. It had been bad enough for her, losing her mother at sixteen. No child of hers would grow up without its mother if she could prevent it.
He spun her into a waltz, his steps pulling her along in time to the distant sound of music from the ballroom. “There are a great many delicious things we can do together without your becoming pregnant.”
Grace’s body reacted with an all-over flush that heated her skin. “Why are we dancing, Everett?”
“I don’t want you to catch cold.” He twirled her around and pulled her close as he led them across the hall.
“Oh, are you proposing we should get out of these wet clothes?” She stopped them in the dance, as they were at the base of the stairs. Their bargain was to share her dowry, but she needed to be wanted for more than that, not just for being a convenient wife.
“Upstairs, perhaps. A much better idea than dancing.” He stroked a hand down her back and over her bottom.
She shifted into his touch and he moved forward. Their bodies were aligned. Even through her corset, she could feel he was still hard, jutting out, and it sent a thrill from her nipples to between her legs that his desire was for her. He was controlling himself for her.
“Yes,” she breathed.
His regard was hot. “Quickly, then.”
Everett turned but didn’t relinquish her hand, and she had to take the steps almost at a run to keep up with him. His quick step as they made their way down the corridor was audible, despite the sumptuously thick carpet. He yanked the door to her bedroom open, pulled her through, then her back was hard against the panels of the door and his mouth was on hers.
His body was wonderfully strange compared to her own. She wanted to touch every part of him at the same time. Whereas she yielded, the sweep of his buttocks was rigid, and his shoulders were broad, warm, and firm. Including that rod that aroused her curiosity and a molten heat between her legs.
She could imagine his fingers brushing against her in private, oversensitized places. His hands were already sweeping down her sides, scrunching up her dress in his fingers. He was going to kneel before her again and drive her out of her mind, beyond reason, and stay untouched by the madness himself. She couldn’t allow that again. He’d said that he wouldn’t claim any of the rights of a husband, but she was going to impose on him some of the benefits of a wife. She reached down and laced her fingers with his, holding them.
“Don’t, Grace.” Everett drew back only just far enough for her to be able to see his expression, two-thirds lust and one-third concern. “Don’t stop now. I have to feel your skin.”
His eyes were intense on hers, too much. Their faces were inches away, and she wanted the reassuring inferno of his kiss back.
“Take your clothes off for me.” She had to see him, fully.
The sides of his mouth quirked up. “As you wish.” He dropped his hands to her waist and stepped backward, pulled her gently with him, backward into the room, then guided her to sit on the bed.
He sat down, his arm brushing hers, and yanked at his shoelaces, then pulled off his shoes and socks in one motion. She thought for a second he would stay and undress ther
e, not quite in her view, and felt a pang of dismay that she wouldn’t be able to watch him properly. Though she would be able to touch, so perhaps she could compromise.
Instead, he rose and turned. Holding her gaze, he shrugged out of his jacket, tossing it onto a chair. Next, he undid his cravat, undoing the complicated knot with clever, practiced fingers. He slipped his braces off and Grace’s fingers itched to follow their fall. One at a time, he popped open his shirt buttons. She watched their parting, revealing a smattering of dark hair and his solid chest. Her mouth went dry at the beauty of the smooth planes of his skin. He was unbothered by undressing, watching her closely as he let his hands continue downward. Whatever he saw in her face made him smile and reach for the fastenings of his trousers. The front of his trousers should have been flat, in keeping with the fashion, but there was a distinct bulge and Grace watched avidly as he pushed down the fabric. He stripped off his underwear with his trousers. She exhaled slowly.
Naked before her, he ought to have looked vulnerable. But he was as powerful and arrogant as when she’d first met him, claiming her for a dance in the ballroom. She wanted to look at every perfect, foreign-to-her part of him at once. He was rough hair and taut muscle, all held in check for her. She wanted to commit every detail of him to memory: the contours of his shoulders, the pattern of hair on his chest, the lines of the muscles on his stomach. Especially his upright male part, his erection. She’d been intimidated before, but all she could think now was how beautiful he was. “You took me in your mouth. Do women do that to men, too?”
His pupils dilated, and his smile was full of wicked anticipation. “Yes.”
Thank God. She coveted everything about him. She hungered to take him in with her eyes, to take him into her mouth, to take him into her body, and most of all, take him into her heart. She wasn’t going to do two of those, however.
He was standing there, all supple lines and muscles with a confident smile, waiting for her instruction. As if he thought she knew what in heaven she was doing, when that wasn’t in the least bit true. She’d had an idea she would take him in her mouth, but looking, that seemed impossible: he was much bigger than could fit. But she’d been resisting the lure of his dares for too long. “Come here, then.”
She reached out as he approached her. Instinctively, she wanted to touch the male part of him that was practically leaning in toward her. Grasping his hip, she drew him closer. Her cheek was the first contact, just a brush with his smooth tip. A slight turn and her lips touched him fully, and Everett made a sound from the back of his throat. Yes. That was what she wanted, and beyond. She pushed out her tongue to taste him. He was musky, with a hint of salt, and completely delicious. What would be most effective? She listened to his breathing for indications. He was aroused, but not enough.
“Put your mouth over the head,” he directed her, his voice strained.
If what she’d been doing so far was lewd, she felt positively obscene as she slipped her mouth over the head of his member. His response was a deep, guttural sound, and it filled Grace with a sensation of dizzying power. She withdrew, then pushed back down farther, and the feel of his hardness against the back of her mouth was unbearably intimate.
When he’d licked her, he’d followed the patterns with long, hard, repetitive strokes of his tongue that had driven her over the edge. She could do the same, with her mouth taking him in and almost out, her lips kissing the tip of his cock, then opening out to encompass it. Perhaps this was why he hadn’t wanted her to do this for him, because it made him as helpless with sensation as it had made her. He was at her mercy, a nip of her teeth could turn this into pain and speed, she was discovering, could make the muscles in his legs tighten as he tried to keep control.
“Fuuck…” He drew out the word like an alleluia.
It sounded like a curse and a blessing, a word she’d heard and girls had giggled about at the finishing school. Hearing it from his lips made Grace burn to know. She wanted to know every secret there was between a man and a woman, in name and in action. Everett would know, he would tell her. On a whim, she lifted her mouth. “What does that mean?”
His eyes opened into slits. “What?” He sounded confused, as though he were within a fog.
“Fuck. What does it mean?”
He groaned. “Right now, it means please put your mouth back on me, immediately. Please.”
A smile stretching out her lips, Grace lower her mouth back until her lips just brushed him. “What does it mean?” she whispered against his skin. Then his hands were in her hair, urging her onto him, gentle and yet firm, and she opened her mouth, allowing him in.
She slipped her mouth over his member and down as far as it would go, touching the back of her palate. It was only a couple of inches of distance, and there was clear space of two inches between her little finger as she held him and the rough curls of hair. But his moan for that short movement was gratifying.
“Fucking.” He was out of breath. “Fucking is sexual intercourse,” he gasped out. “Consummation. Fornication.”
She took him deeper, making a contrast between her lips covering him, the softness of her cheek, and where she was pushing him against the back of her throat. Her other hand crept around to hold his firmly muscled buttock to give her better purchase.
“Oh fuck… Don’t do that,” he said as she took him into her mouth quicker and quicker. “Really, you won’t like it when—”
He tried to pull away from her, but she didn’t let him, digging her fingers into the resistance of his muscles. Even if she couldn’t have every part of him tonight, she would have this part of him. She couldn’t have love, or fuck, but she would have him lose his mind like she had hers. He stiffened, seizing up under her hands and his member swelling harder and bigger in her mouth, before he convulsed. Amongst his incoherent sounds, she heard her name and it made heart ache, even as her mouth filled with his seed. She swallowed automatically, the taste of him too brief for her to have more than an impression of bitter musk.
Hesitantly, she withdrew from him and sat back.
He was watching her with something like reverence, or perhaps calculation. He took a shaky breath, then a contained one. Then he smiled, fully in command himself once again. “Now, it’s my turn.”
A tremor went through her. She would pay for making him lose himself, she was sure. But perhaps that was what she’d wanted all the time.
Everett pulled her to him so they were standing chest to chest, her clothes next to his skin, and Grace felt a pang. She wanted to feel his skin against her. But his naked body was imposing, godlike, as he leaned slightly over her, nuzzling her ear as he reached around her to release the pearl buttons on her dress. With each item of clothing he took off and revealed flesh, he fitted an openmouthed kiss in its place, spreading heat despite the coolness of the room. He created jolts of pleasure, too, lavishing attention on her breasts. When he squeezed her nipple, the pressure sent want searing through her.
As she helped him to finally remove her drawers, his pupils were dark and wide with lust. His impatient hands left the ties and plunged inside her drawers. She felt the garment pool by her feet, but she couldn’t move her gaze from his eyes. She was captured, and he didn’t stop his exploration now that she was bare before him. He went over each part of her body with diligent attention, his mouth and his fingers stroking down. Every touch was greater than she’d felt before, as though her skin was increasingly sensitive. She’d been living every sensation before she’d met him as though through a pane of glass. She’d been seeing and hearing, but not sensing anything like this, not experiencing every touch as a sting of pleasure.
What was worse was it was too intense, as well as not enough, as it had been when he’d gathered up her skirts in the study. He reached around to release her hair, tumbling her strands down as he picked out the pins that held it and tossed them away. Grace felt her defenses fall in the same way.
“Lie back onto the bed.”
A part of
her mind rebelled at being told what to do, but her body obeyed, sitting down then shifting backward toward the pillows. Hadn’t she ordered him, only a little time before? He followed her movements onto the bed as though they were held together by an invisible rubber band, until she was lying stretched out on her back and he was poised over her, not touching her. Just looking.
…
Grace was a sensual delight, reclined like a goddess on the silk coverlet. And yet, even with her lithe body laid out underneath him, Everett just wanted to drink in her beautiful face and the smile playing around her lips. The rest of her was perfect, too—glossy walnut-brown hair, curved breasts, and long legs that would encircle his waist as he made her his.
Soon, but not tonight. He would cherish every discovery of her body he made, but he would always treasure her smile best because it had been hidden entirely for so long.
Sitting back, he shifted so he could best please her with his mouth on her quim, leaving his hands free to roam from her breasts to her sweetly rounded bottom. He nudged her thigh with his hand, and when she spread for him, he felt a surge of lust and affection. Then, the revelation of the glistening pink folds of her sex made him want to lick his lips in anticipation. He glanced up at her, and holding her intrigued regard, Everett lowered his head with slow deliberation. Her soft folds quivered beneath his mouth. A gentle kiss revealed that she was soaking wet, as aroused by this as he was, and that lit his need anew. She tasted of musk and woman, and he’d never had anything so good. Despite having come only some minutes before, he was getting hard. He pushed out his tongue and swiped her nub over, her little bead delicately robust as it withheld his assault and moved with it. Repeating the action again and again, he pushed her higher.
When he’d done this against the wall in the study, time had been short. He’d pushed her to climax with determined strokes that allowed her no moment to resist. He took his time to taste her fully now, building the sensations and pressure slowly. His lust so recently satisfied, he had the patience to put aside his own needs, not just his desire to have her, but his hurry to feel her quake for him. He increased her pleasure with solid foundations that would make it all the more violent when she did release. He added in a graze of his teeth against her, interspersing the regular sweeps with playful nips that elicited moans from her. Then he drove her with definite licks forward toward completion.