by Hart, Amelia
Still she unbuttoned him, one little mother-of-pearl circle at a time, down his chest to his waistcoat, unbuttoning that too, then on with the shirt to his navel, where it disappeared into his trousers.
She paused for a second, uncertain, but when he moved as if to take over she forestalled him by pulling the tail of his shirt out of his waistband and continuing down to the hem.
A line of his bare skin was exposed to her down the centre of his chest though he stood yet in all his clothes, cravat lying around his neck. She ran her index finger down the gap, from collarbone to waist, and he took a breath and tipped back his head, nostrils flaring. His hands clenching by his sides instantly drew her attention, but after a moment’s vigilance she realised it was a gesture of restraint, not of anger, and she relaxed.
She slid a hand from his chest to his shoulder, under the clothes, gathering the layers in one motion. He dipped his shoulder, letting her take them, shrugging off the other side as well so she had the whole weight. And it was a weight, the expensive, high-quality cloth dragging her arms down towards the floor. She sought and found a chair in the shadows of the room, walking in quick steps to place her burden there with a care for the creases she might create.
Turning back she paused to take him in, the powerful lines of him a study in contrast, light and shadows, planes, rolling hollows and swells. A man who could control a pair of horses all the hours of the day and into the night with no apparent fatigue. A horseman, a hunter, a boxer – he had told her that too, while they drove – a man of action. Trousers low on lean hips, shoulders wide and big hands hanging loose by his sides.
The sheer masculinity of him made her afraid; the power and the potential of it; the potential for savagery. But he waited, quiescent, upon her. She could see the particular swell of his desire for her, outlined at the front of his trousers. Still he waited, let her take him in. Waited for her return.
And she came, slowly, but she came back, looking into his eyes the whole way, taking courage from his steady, warm gaze, measuring the fine, thrumming tension in him and finding no threat, only promise.
She knew from last time how gentle he could be. But back then she had been awash with terror, until that had been lost in the greater swell of sensation. Now she felt only the faint twinges of it, so faint she could take the lead, could pretend to be calm and self-assured. It amazed her she could know him so little, and trust him so much. She would not have credited it. Yet here she was.
There was a wonder and newness to it, as she pulled off his gloves, then her own, taking one of those broad, naked hands between her two much smaller ones and feeling the raised veins on it, the blunt square fingernails, the pounding pulse at his wrist. Slowly he curled the fingers closed around one of her hands and raised it as he had done before, to his lips, but he tilted it at a different angle, baring her pale inner wrist and nipping her there, painlessly, before soothing the spot with his tongue.
Her mouth fell open in wonder at the intimacy of it, the warmth of him on her sensitive skin. He glided his lips over her palm then took her index finger in his mouth, cheeks hollowing as he sucked on it. She felt the sensuous slide of his tongue over the pad of her finger and quivered, caught in the spell of that wet, subtle touch.
He took her other hand and placed it palm down on his chest in a clear invitation, releasing it to wander at will. She flexed her hand to feel the curve at the edge of that great slab of pectoral muscle, then glided a little sideways to sample the texture of his small, flat nipple. His breathing grew harsher, then stopped altogether for a long moment, his whole body stilled, when she stepped even closer and flicked that nipple with the tip of her tongue.
“God,” he sighed, before resuming his ministrations on her fingers, eyes falling closed and free arm snaking around her waist to pull her in closer. Without his hot gaze on her she felt freer to explore, stroking down the ripples of his abdominals to the indent of his navel, and the mysterious place where flesh became cloth as his trousers began.
She toyed briefly with the button there, before releasing it with a flick, repeating the action with its four companions. It took a delicate manoeuvre to one-handed free the trousers where they were caught between her skirt and his bulging response to her, and he groaned quietly as she managed the task, the rush of his breath hot on her wet finger.
His undergarments tied with a drawstring, which was difficult to unknot at an angle and with only one hand available. But she persevered and finally wiggled it free, sending the fine cambric to bunch with his trousers around the top of his boots.
She realised she had trapped him neatly, mostly naked and hobbled. He was obviously aware of the issue, for he gave her a challenging leer.
“My boots, madam? Have you a plan?”
They were skin tight, and looked enormously difficult to remove.
“I see no need to take those off,” she said with lofty superiority, gesturing at those parts of him she had revealed as if to say she had all that mattered to hand.
He laughed. “Oh, quite, quite. Well if madam prefers me to service her with my boots on, then madam shall have it just as she pleases.” He crouched and swept her up in his arms, making her squeak with surprise and clutch at his neck. Then with a slow, shuffling step he made his laborious way the several feet to the side of the bed.
By the time he reached his goal she was laughing at him, he striking a heroic attitude for her benefit, head uplifted in haughty arrogance like a statue of some classical figure. He set her down on the soft cover and completed the picture by setting his hands on his hips and puffing out his chest so she snorted at the ridiculous image, then put her hand over her face as if to hold in the undignified noise.
He caught her gaze with a gleam of shared amusement then leapt, dived and rolled in one smooth motion, sweeping her up to tumble her to the centre of the bed where she fetched up sprawled across his chest. She pushed herself up and tucked the escaping waves of her hair behind her ears so she could see the grin that stretched across his face, making him look like a mischievous boy.
“Unhand me sirrah,” she said with grand hauteur, sitting up to straddle him. “You will have a care for my dignity, if you please.”
“I have every care for your dignity, milady. If you will hand it into my keeping I shall do all within my power to protect it. Where is this dignity?” and he made as if to peek under her skirts, bunched up as they were on his chest.
She laughed and shrieked and batted at his hands, which made swift and teasing forays first one way and then another until he let her catch them and pin them to the ornate bedspread on either side of his head.
She leaned all her weight on them to keep them pinioned and looked down at him, hair falling down about her face, pins all loosened or gone so the two of them were hidden in the darkness together, the light of the single candle not enough to penetrate the thick strands.
She strained to make out his expression. He shifted under her, not enough to dislodge her but quite enough to make her aware her most secret feminine core was against his bare skin, skirts hiked up to her thighs, her calves lying along his flanks. Testing, certain he would not discern the movement, she lowered herself into the most tantalising friction between the flesh that lay within the slit in her undergarments, and his hard and hair-roughened chest. There was a long moment of silence between them.
“Well mounted, milady?” he asked, and his voice was so husky as to be almost unrecognisable.
“Indeed, I think so,” she whispered, her own voice strange to her ears.
“If milady would permit me to make a suggestion . . .” he shifted one of his hands, as if the full weight of her upper body resting on it were nothing, bringing it down to rest on her lower abdomen and then – fingers wide spread across her belly – shoving her slowly down his torso. The sensation was indescribable, as the most sensitive part of her was exposed and then rubbed inexorably. She jerked and bucked with a pleasure so intense it was almost pain, clutching convulsively
at his wrist.
When she emerged from a daze he had moved his hand from her belly to her stockinged knee and was gently stroking her there in little circles.
“Ride me, sweetling,” he urged, his tone a rough velvet.
She shifted and discovered he had left her beached much further down his body, so the pressure of his shaft was nudging the cleft of her buttocks.
“Ride?”
He tilted his pelvis and readjusted himself so that thick ridge of flesh lay underneath her rather than behind. She was shocked to feel it nestle there between her netherlips, hidden from sight by all the fabric she wore, yet nudging her boldly in the privacy of her core. It was so hot and hard. Harder than any other part of him yet extraordinarily smooth on her tender flesh.
“Ride me,” he said again, and she moved a scant inch back and forth on him. When she opened her eyes, instinctively closed in the rush of sensation the better to enjoy it, she saw his head was thrown back on the bed, neck exposed and jaw clenched, his own eyes tight shut. She paused, fascinated by the sight.
“For God’s sake, don’t stop!” he gritted out, and she gave a guilty start and began to move again, a jerky rhythm that gained fluidity and confidence as he groaned deeply and shifted his hips with her motion, thrusting upwards as if to burrow even deeper into her.
It was thrilling to hold him thus underneath her, booted feet braced on the bedspread, body arched, his complete focus on her tantalising motion. But she could not enjoy it for long. She undid herself, unravelling suddenly in a burst of inner fireworks that made her quake, halting the rhythm all too soon for her own pleasure. She gave a mew of disappointment but he seized her hips and kept grinding, taking her far out over the edge of the precipice and letting her drop, weightless and unbounded.
“Yes,” she sighed blissfully on his skin, and felt the quake of a laugh, the rumble of it reverberating under her ear, making her look up from where she had collapsed onto his chest.
A fine haze of perspiration lay across his skin, making his face gleam golden in the candlelight as if carved of metal. There was no satiation in his intent gaze, only passion temporarily banked below a thin layer of humour.
“If milady is pleased, perhaps she would be so kind as to continue,” he suggested, his fingers once again urging her back and forth. When she resumed her interrupted motion she heard the muffled sounds of their flesh bathed in wetness wrung from her by her pleasure. She blushed at the noise, felt the smooth slipperiness of their connection.
He growled low in his throat, took her again by the hips and tilted her pelvis, changing the angle so her body caught the tip of his shaft where it quested for its sheath.
Pushing her down his body until he was imbedded in her to the hilt, he let out a guttural groan that she echoed, feeling herself filled and filled until she thought surely she could take no more. He stretched her until she imagined there would be no room inside her skin for herself, there was so much of him in her.
She was shaking fiercely, elbows locked, hands splayed on either side of him as all consciousness focused on that place where he entered her. Then she felt his hands at her neckline, where her modest gown covered her almost to the base of her throat. His fingers took a firm grip inside the fabric and then he ripped the dress and her chemise away in a single motion, parting the seams with a sharp protest.
“That took me hours–” she cried indignantly.
“I shall buy you another! I want you naked. Now!”
She subsided, letting him tear until the cloth fell shapeless about her waist, then raising her arms so he could lift it over her head and throw it away into the darkness. He gathered her close, his arms wrapped tight around her waist, other hand splayed across her buttocks, pushing her down onto himself, face buried in the side of her neck.
“I want to feel your orgasm. Do it again. On my cock,” he commanded. She clutched his shoulders, clinging as he pumped upwards into her, tossed by the sudden storm of motion.
Yet amidst the queer sensation of tugging as his shaft slid in and out, the rub of him all over her, so close and hard and hot and male, there grew again that glimmering wave of pleasure pushing higher and higher inside her until she cried out with it, clutching him as the only solid thing to which she could hold.
“Yes,” he cried in triumph. “Yes, yes, like that,” and he flipped her and kept driving into her, rhythm unabated as she squirmed and bucked and cried out. “Yes, do it again.” And she did, this time screaming in fierce exultation to have conquered herself, body powerful and limitless in the excruciating wash of pleasure.
Dimly she heard his growl of completion, as he hunched over and poured himself fiercely into her body, strained to the utmost to be as close to her core as he could reach. Then he collapsed atop her, boneless and finished, his chest pumping like a bellows, heartbeat thumping hard enough to shake her if she could have moved even one inch.
Before his weight could overpower her he rolled to his side, taking her with him so she was nestled close, hitching one of her legs over his hip so he remained embedded in her.
She wrapped her arms about her chest in an instinctive protection, gathering herself back together after that shattering climax, taking stock of a whole that was strange and foreign. What did she become when with him? How could he consume her attention so utterly all fear and caution left her? She forgot matters – like Peter’s welfare – that should command all her thoughts. Instead pleasure ruled her.
She could not even feel shame. For the heady decadence satisfied every instinct of how the world must be, woman to man, coupled and completed. Even as the haze cleared from her eyes, the crazed heat of her body subsiding and her breath slowed, still she felt right.
No, it made no sense at all. Perhaps because it was a thing of the body. The mind could not encompass it.
In the darkness of the night she woke, disoriented. His big hand was on her shoulder in a light clasp. She could have broken his hold if she wanted, but she froze, uncertain.
“Don’t go,” he whispered. “Stay,” and she realised she was at the edge of the bed, though she did not remember deciding to move. She also realised she needed to get up and find a chamberpot or the like, though she could not see a nightstand in the dimness of the room. She must have been shuffling half-asleep out of bed in search of somewhere to relieve herself.
“I’m not going,” she said softly. “I just . . . I need . . . er . . .”
Her searching scan of the room must have made her requirement clear, for he let go of her and gestured to a doorway that was not the one through which they had entered; the dressing room, of course.
“Through there,” he said, and she slid out of the bed and walked the intervening distance in hurried steps, feeling the weight of his gaze upon her back, acutely self-conscious.
She found the Necessary, the most elegant she had ever seen; a virtual throne. When she was finished she stood for a long few minutes, steeling herself to return to the bed. There was nowhere else to go. In truth, for he had ripped the clothes from her back, she hadn’t a decent stitch to wear – but no, he had brought up her bag, and there was a change of clothes there. And her needlecase, with which she could probably repair the other given a couple of hours, if it were only the seams that had given way.
She blushed with fiery warmth at the thought of him so urgent for the sight and feel of her he must needs destroy a gown.
Imprudent that. But flattering.
Finally she stepped out of the comforting privacy of the doorway, back to the room where he still leaned up on one elbow, waiting for her. She walked with shoulders back, head up as if unfazed by her own nudity, though she longed to scuttle and dive for cover, her body her own secret domain for so many long years. Reaching the bed she slipped under the covers as swiftly as she could manage without losing her dignity, and lay with them tucked up under her chin, staring at the ceiling.
“Did you think I was leaving?” she finally asked.
“You do have a
habit of stealing away in the night.”
“One such departure does not constitute a habit.”
“Maybe not. But it did make an impression. Having now found you again, I should not like to lose you so precipitately.”
“I am not going anywhere. I require your help to find Trevor.”
“Ah, so you do. So for Trevor’s sake, I may rely on your continued complaisance?”
“And also the house with the library,” she matched his teasing tone, but regretted his words when he repeated them blandly, humour somehow lost between one second and the next.
“The house with the library. Yes, of course.”
Now she felt like a declared whore, her presence in his bed made in trade for material possessions, when in truth the picture was larger and encompassed the man himself, also.
Not that that was sensible. Allowing her fascination a chance to develop was worse than foolish. But . . . Oh, it was too complex! Enough to give anyone a headache. She rolled towards him, hand outstretched in automatic gesture to entreat his understanding. But under the covers that hand found naked man, his abdomen twitching at the contact before he caught her hand and moved closer until their heads lay on the same pillow. She was distracted as his features became clearer, planes and angles and the challenging glitter of his dark eyes.
He kissed her, a hot, hard stamp of possession, his tongue between her lips, hand scooping her pelvis against his then delving knowingly between her thighs so she moaned helplessly into his mouth.
“Worth the price,” he muttered, his words barely intelligible then lost to her as her mind whirled away under the onslaught of his passion.
Chapter Nineteen
She woke again with the first stirrings of the house – the distant clatter of a coal scuttle striking a grate, a few words of conversation far below stairs, muffled and indistinct, hooves in the yard as horses were led out for exercise. One after another the sounds lifted her further from sleep until she surfaced.