“Shh,” he whispered.
And then a keening cry ripped from somewhere deep inside her as he buried his face between her legs and thrust his tongue into the hot, wet heat created by his mastery. He moved his expert mouth, like a skilled swordsman with a rapier. Desire drained the energy from her limbs and her arms went out from under her, and she gave thanks for the hard surface at her back. She laid there, a bundle of thrumming nerves as her pressure built in her belly and spread lower to that place he now worshiped, capable of nothing but feeling. She was burning from the inside out and that blaze had driven back anything but that deliberate thrust and parry of his tongue. Derek thrust his tongue once more in a masterful invasion and an agonized groan spilled from her lips. Lily tangled her hands in his hair, holding him close. She’d served as a vessel for other men’s lust, but never had a single one of them taken the time to awaken her body as Derek did now.
She wanted him to both stop and go on forever. She wanted him to continue nibbling at the nub of her womanhood and thought she might die from a blissful explosion if he did. Passion swamped her senses as a thick cloud of desire darkened her vision, and then her body was climbing higher and higher in a way it had never soared before, and if he stopped, she would shatter into a million shards of nothingness. And then he drew back. “No,” she cried out, thrusting her hips wantonly, pleading with her eyes to bring her whatever gentle gift he’d dangled before her.
“Shh,” he whispered, dragging his mouth up the inner seam of her thigh, trailing his lips in a shameless promise up to her breast. “Trust me?”
Her eyes slid closed. “I—” Lily’s words ended on a shocked gasp as he stood and shoved his breeches down.
The protest died on her lips as he kicked them aside and then captured her in his arms. Cradling her against his chest, he limped across the room and then sat in that leather winged back chair he’d occupied a week, a lifetime ago? Upon her arrival here. He adjusted her so that her legs straddled his hips.
A strand of sweat-dampened hair tumbled across his brow. Lily brushed it back. How had she ever been afraid of him? How had she seen a monster and beast when he possessed a tenderness that made mere men heroes?
He cupped her neck and pulled her forward to avail himself to her mouth. They thrust their tongues in a matched rhythm and in a desperate bid to be closer to him, Lily pressed herself to his chest.
He slipped his hand between her legs and she moaned into his mouth. Derek only deepened their kiss, swallowing that sound. His fingers continued their delicious dance within her so that she was rising higher once more, so near to attaining something she’d never known before...but she wanted more of him. She wanted more than the explosion of passion but rather wanted to know that explosion with him buried inside her.
She parted her legs and came up on her knees over him.
“Lily,” he rasped drawing back.
“Shh,” she whispered as she took control of their loving. She slid forward and he shot his hands out. Clasping her hips he guided her down on his long, thick length. She slid her eyes closed at the absolute fulfillment as he stretched her, sliding inside until he was buried so deep she no longer knew where he began and she ended.
Lily leaned close, savoring the pulsing of his shaft as it throbbed against the walls of her womanhood. A dark lock fell over his damp brow and she brushed it back, taking a moment to study him. His chest rose and fell rapidly and he clenched his eye tight as though he suffered the greatest pain. Her heart hitched. And yet, it was that very greatest pain, the kind where ecstasy and agony melded so reality ceased to be and only inexplicable feeling remained. She layered her palm to his cheek and he opened his eye. Her own passion and aching desire reflected in the sapphire depths. Then, with their gazes locked and no words between them, Lily began to move. She undulated over his rigid shaft, lifting her hips in a slow, deliberate rhythm that wrenched a groan from his throat. He clenched his eye tight, as though in blissful agony, and she knew because it was the most delicious kind of hurt and she wanted to forever know it with this man.
Lily increased her speed, rising and falling over him. In and out. She bit her lip, wanting that elusive gift he’d held out, wanting it desperately.
Then he raised her breast to his lips and suckled the engorged bud.
A scream spilled from her as he worshiped the sensitive, swollen tip. He was relentless, sucking, drawing it between his teeth, and then he shifted his attentions to her previously neglected nipple. He rolled it between his thumb and forefinger, gently tugged at it, and with those movements, her pleasure spiked. He brought her up higher and higher once more so that all she wanted was to explode and then collapse into the promise of his touch.
It fueled her movements and she ground against him with a franticness born of desire for him and his skilled ministrations.
“That is it,” he groaned and claimed her lips again in a hard kiss. “Come for me,” he demanded.
“I never...” knew this. For this magical meeting of their bodies, uttering those words slapped her with the reminder of who she’d been.
He held her gaze. “You never what?” The eye that held hers belonged to an unrelenting military man who’d not have his questions or wishes gainsaid. He was possessed of a strength and power that liquefied her to the core, all the more.
“I never knew it could be like this,” she whispered.
A flare of masculine satisfaction lit that eye and then, caressing her buttocks with his strong hands, he rammed himself upward and he slid even deeper into her. She matched his movements. Sweat fell into her eye, stinging and blinding and she blinked it back needing to see him as her heart raced and her body raced ever onward, on to that elusive light.
And then her body exploded about him and she was coming in long, rippling waves of white ecstasy so her body was reduced to a fire of pleasure that spread throughout her being. She was screaming and on a long, guttural groan he spilled himself, flooding her with his hot seed, and the pulsating length of him rang another blissful cry from her lips.
Lily collapsed against him. Her breath came in quick, gasping spurts. Tears dotted her eyes as she buried her cheek against the hard wall of his chest matted with springy black curls. No man had ever cared whether she knew pleasure. For she hadn’t mattered. And in this, Derek had given her a gift. The gift of passion.
When they’d come together, she’d convinced herself that theirs was just a meeting of bodies; a man and woman coming together of desire, wanting nothing more than the pleasure to be had in that intimate joining. Tears popped behind her lids and she pressed her eyes closed. Only she’d been wrong. A single tear escaped, lost against his skin, as reality intruded. For though he’d given her the gift of passion, she wanted something far more from this man—she wanted his heart.
God help her.
I love him.
Chapter 19
She is crying.
Her tears trickled through the hair matting his chest. Derek fluttered a hand about her back. He’d been so alone in the world, he’d long ago ceased to believe there was another soul who could bear to be in the same room as him, let alone press their flawless body to his scarred one in this most intimate of ways. In his youth, he’d known how to soothe, cajole, and tempt. He was not that man. Using his body to bring a woman pleasure was a skill he possessed. Being anything more eluded him. For the simple reason he’d not had to be more—until Lily. Until she’d stormed into his life just a week earlier and made him yearn—for life and a kindred connection to another soul...and her.
With Lily, he wanted to know the words to soothe her hurts. He wanted more than her body. He wanted to know the reason for those tears and how to drive them back.
His chest rose and fell and he concentrated on his breathing and searched deep within himself to be more—for her, when he’d been nothing for anyone, in so very long.
Derek settled his hands upon her back. Using one palm to hold her close, the other he ran up and down her sp
ine in a smooth, rhythmic motion. Her tears came all the more, soaking him while her small, narrow shoulders shook from the depth of her emotion. And yet, not a sound left her lips and there was something gut-wrenching in her silent misery. How long had she been alone in her feelings?
She brought her hands between them and curled them against her face.
“Lily,” he whispered, wanting to take away her hurt, but not wanting to silence the deserved, cathartic cleansing of her tears.
Her slender body shook like a fragile tree in a violent storm. And through it, he held her. She continued crying and the moments ticked by. Then on a shuddery sob, she stopped and curled on his lap the way a stray cat in search of affection might. Derek folded an arm about her shoulders and scooped her under the knees bringing her close. “Th-thank you,” she whispered.
He stilled.
“I—I did not believe it could be like this. I know I am a wh—”
A strangled sound escaped him and he touched his fingertips to her lips, staying the remainder of those words. It was a sin that for the courage of her spirit that she’d only seen the darkest act she’d committed, an act of survival. And yet it should be, to her, as the most important part of who she was.
“But it is true,” she whispered. “It is what I am.”
Agony knifed at his gut. Those words uttered once more, in a decisive way where she’d played judge and executioner to herself for those acts. The same as he’d done to himself.
How long had he spent hiding himself away from the world and living in these very walls perpetuating Society’s worst expectations of him? He looked a beast, therefore, he must be one. It had taken Lily and Flora to show him there were some who could see past the marks he wore upon his person and into the man he’d been and, more, the man he wanted to be.
Derek continued rubbing small circles over her silken skin. “What you did to survive can never be undone,” he said at last. “Just as I cannot change what I did to—” His gut tightened. He’d not allowed himself to think of Christian, the Marquess of St. Cyr and Lord Maxwell in those lights any more since he’d been carried off the battlefield.
Lily angled her head and looked up at him. “Your what?” she prodded with a gentleness that clogged his throat with pained emotion.
“My friend,” the words came out gruff and harsh. Words he’d not uttered. His friend... Christian had been his friend, and hating so much what he’d been transformed into from that one unwitting accident, Derek had been unable to stomach the sight of either of the men he’d called friends.
She cast a glance over at his desk. “The gentleman who wrote those letters.”
He gave a curt nod. Before Lily, he’d have roared the townhouse down had anyone read those intimate missives. This, her knowing, had a sense of rightness. She belonged in his world and he ached to belong to hers.
“Tell me,” she urged and just as though he’d known when she needed to weep, she knew he needed to share his life with someone.
And God, he wanted it to be her. Derek drew in a shaky breath and searched his mind for a place to start. “We were young and foolish,” he began. Then, weren’t the two inextricably the same? In a man’s youth, he believed himself undefeatable and capable of nothing but greatness. One didn’t see their own mortality at the young age they’d been. Nay, man tempted fate with his recklessness, until fate ultimately proved the lie.
She slipped her hand into his and gave an encouraging squeeze.
Taking that silent support, he continued. “Christian and Tristan and I were closer than brothers.” Even his own brother, George, now dead and gone, had been more of an aloof stranger since he’d stepped from the nursery into his father’s fold, to learn his responsibilities as a future duke. “We were sought after and full of our own self-worth.” How many years had he spent carousing and womanizing? He’d been no different than the nobleman who’d seen a beautiful woman, a desperate woman, and thought of nothing but his own desires. He’d brought those women to heights of great pleasure, but beyond that, he’d never spared them a thought. He’d never considered what had brought them to a place where they’d forsake marriage and a respectable future for his enjoyments.
“What is it?” she prodded.
He cleared his throat. “We were bored noblemen.” Just like that bastard who’d identified a girl alone—a younger, equally beautiful version of this woman before him. “All second sons at the time.” A wry grin turned his lips. “And, of course, all ladies desire a strappingly attired soldier, don’t they?” He gave his head a shake, disgusted at the initial thoughts that had first held a tantalizing appeal to his pair of friends.
Lily forced him to unclench a fist he didn’t recall making. She brushed her fingers over his palm and that butterfly soft caress filled his chest with warmth. “You were young.”
“Yes.” He dropped a kiss atop her black curls. “And idiotic.”
“We all are at that age.” Her and her first love. Derek tightened his grip reflexively about her. God how he despised the man who’d robbed her of her innocence and right to a joyous future. But then, I’d never know her... And he was just that selfish of a bastard that he could not imagine never knowing her. Unnerved by that staggering truth, he continued with what were suddenly safer talks of his past. “We went off to fight Boney’s forces.” Cannon fire echoed through his mind and the piercing screams of men as they died alone on a field of chaos.
Lily unfolded herself on his lap and he made to gather her back but she only wrapped her arms about his waist. With strength radiating from her delicate frame, she hung on tight, and he took that unspoken offering. It eased the tension in his shoulders and the battlefield cries faded to a distant hum. “Christian was...an unskilled soldier.” Where he and Maxwell took to battle as though that had been the purpose they’d been born to, Christian had been too human to be what Derek had too easily transformed himself into—a ruthless warrior. “Maxwell and I made a pledge to keep him alive.” In the end, Christian had returned unscathed and Derek had been carried off in shame.
Then, was anyone really unscathed by life? The tortured marquess he’d visited some months ago had given no evidence of being unscathed.
“You are both blessed to have one another as friends.”
He didn’t have friends. By hell, he didn’t even have family. Derek pressed his eye closed. No. That was not altogether true. There was still Flora, his sister’s daughter. “We are no longer friends.” He’d severed any possibility of that former relationship when he’d sought to destroy St. Cyr’s reputation and marriage.
“Of course you are,” Lily said with a matter-of-factness that brought his eye open.
“You don’t understand,” he said, his voice thick. “I blamed Christian.”
She shifted in his lap and he wrapped his arms about her. “Don’t you see? We always blame someone. Some blame themselves and some blame others.” Who was Lily Benedict? Was she one of those latter individuals? Did her hatred belong to the cad who’d ruined her and thrust her into an uncertain future, reliant on the whims of bored nobles? Or did she take on guilt she should not feel for the circumstances presented women in an uncertain world? Her gaze fell to his chest and when she spoke, her words were so faint he strained to hear. “It is easier to take the hatred we carry for ourselves and turn that sentiment on someone else.” Then, she gave her head a hard shake and looked up once again, with a firmed jaw. “Your friend, the marquess, he understands.”
“I tried to destroy his marriage,” he said bluntly, hating the way she stiffened. Remorse twisted inside, having nothing to do with this humbling moment and everything to do with the shameful actions in the cold of winter. “My friend found love and I was,” am, “alone.” With no one and nothing. Or so he’d believed. Except... He skimmed his gaze over the room, to where the pile of St. Cyr and Maxwell’s notes littered the floor. He’d not truly been alone. Not in the ways he believed, but in other, deeper, more isolating ones for the self-imposition of tha
t solitary state. What of Lily, however? Who had she had? He continued in quiet tones. “I read the papers of his and Maxwell’s triumphs. They returned the conquering heroes, sought after by all...” A dull flush burned his neck.
“And you were shunned by all,” Lily correctly finished for him. She trailed the tip of her index finger over the puckered flesh of his chest.
Derek flinched. He’d never grow accustomed to any person looking upon him and touching him as she was. Even in knowing she did not so revile him, he made to pull away, but she persisted.
“I had Harris,” his too-loyal butler, “find out about Christian’s circumstances. He was in need of a fortune and a wife, but he found something more than that.” And how Derek had sat cloaked in the shadows of this very room hating him for that happiness. Why should his friend know light when he knew dark? Why should Christian know love when Derek knew loneliness?
Lily looked questioningly up at him. “What did he find?”
“Not what.” The shame grew and continued its cancer-like spread through his being. “A woman. He found a lady with a fat dowry and that lady was...is,” despite my best efforts, “madly in love with him.” Memories flitted in of Derek’s first foray into the living. And where had he gone? To taunt and goad the newly wedded Marquess and Marchioness of St. Cyr. He spoke, his voice made hollow. “I crafted lies that made Christian out as a ruthless fortune-hunter.” And though the newly minted marquess had, indeed, been a fortune hunter, he’d possessed the same honor marrying where his heart willed it. And out of his own jealousy and self-hatred, Derek had tried to rob the other man of that gift. “I shared secrets of St. Cyr’s past with his wife.” He winced. Moments in his past that St. Cyr, no doubt, flagellated himself for.
Rescued By a Lady's Love (Lords of Honor, #3) Page 25