How could any woman resist such a plea? Her heart warmed and her mouth curved in a sensuous smile. “Yes.”
She had no time to say more. At her consent, he was pulling at her clothes. She heard cloth tear. Her breasts were bare, and he fastened his mouth on one, sucking strongly. She gasped and clutched at his head, feeling the scrape of his teeth. He moved to her other breast but teased the first nipple with his thumb, rubbing and tweaking. She couldn’t catch her breath, couldn’t assimilate what he was doing to her.
He reared back and stripped off his waistcoat. His shirt drifted to the floor a moment later.
She stared at his bared torso. He was pale and taut. Long ropes of muscle shifted on his arms as he moved. He was breathing rapidly, and the fair hairs on his chest sparkled with sweat. He was such a beautiful man, and he was all hers. A ripple of arousal pulsed through her. He stood and shucked his breeches and hose; then he was unfastening the buttons to his smallclothes.
She held her breath, watching avidly. She’d never seen a man fully naked, and it seemed long overdue. But he climbed atop her, hiding that most interesting part of himself before she could see. And a strange thought ran through her mind: Was he shy? Or was it that he was afraid of shocking her? She raised her eyes to meet his gaze and opened her mouth to disabuse him of that notion—she had, after all, spent her life in the country, where farm animals abounded—but he spoke first.
“You’re making me harder, looking at me like that.” His voice was rough, almost hoarse. “And it’s not as if I need any help to get a cock-stand around you.”
Her eyelids drooped at his words. She wanted to taste him, to do things to him that she was only vaguely aware of. More. She wanted more.
“I want to put myself in you,” he said, guttural. “I want to stay inside you all night, to wake with you around me, to make love to you before you even open your eyes.” He knelt above her. His face was not kind, and she gloried in his savagery. “If I could, I’d place you on my lap, darling angel, and hold you throughout dinner, my cock inside you. I’d feed you strawberries and cream and not move. The footmen would come and serve us and never know that my cock was in your sweet cove all the time. Your skirts would cover us, but you’d have to remain very, very still so they wouldn’t guess.”
She felt a wild pulse of desire at his carnal words. She squeezed her legs together, helplessly listening as he told her wicked, forbidden things.
“And after we’d eaten,” he whispered, “I’d order the servants away. I’d take down your bodice and suck your nipples until you came, creaming all over my cock. And I’d still not leave you then.”
She shuddered.
He kissed her softly on her neck, his caresses at odds with his hard words. “I’d place you on the table. Very carefully, oh, so very carefully, so that we never broke contact, and then I’d make love to you until we both screamed.” His words brushed her skin. “I can’t seem to help myself. I don’t know what to do with these feelings. I want to make love to you in the carriage, in my library, my God, outside in the sunshine, lying in green grass. I spent half an hour yesterday calculating how soon it would be warm enough to do so.”
His words were so erotic, so dark, it almost frightened her. She’d never thought herself a sensual creature, yet with him her body felt out of control, helpless to feel anything but pleasure. He leaned over her and flipped up her skirts so she was nude below the waist. He looked down at what he’d exposed.
“I want this.” He placed his hand over the juncture of her thighs. “All the time. I want to do this”—he parted her legs and lowered his hips until his hardness nestled in her folds—“all the time.”
She moaned. What was he doing to her?
“Do you want it, too?” He moved, not entering her but thrusting his erection through her wetness. He was rubbing against her bud.
She arched helplessly, whimpering.
“Do you?” he whispered into the hair at her temple. He thrust his hips again.
Pleasure. “I—”
“Do you?” He bit her earlobe.
“Ohhh.” She couldn’t think, couldn’t form the words that he wanted. She could only feel.
“Do you?” He cradled both her breasts in his hands and pinched the nipples as he thrust over her again.
And she came, grinding her hips against him, seeing stars in the darkness of her eyelids, moaning incoherently.
“God, you’re beautiful.” He positioned himself and pushed.
She felt a twinge, a slight ache, but she no longer cared. She wanted him inside, as close as possible to her. He wrapped his hand around her knee and hitched up one of her legs and pushed again. She was opening, parting, accepting him. She moaned, listening to his rough breathing. He pushed once more and his entire length came into her.
He groaned. “Do you hurt?”
She shook her head. Why wouldn’t he move?
His expression was strained. He bent his head and kissed her softly, brushing over her lips, barely making contact. “I won’t hurt you this time.”
He pulled her other knee up until she was sprawled open beneath him. Then he ground down on her. She moaned. His pelvis was exactly where it should be, and she was in heaven.
He circled his hips and grunted, “Is it good?”
“Um, yes.”
He grinned tightly. And ground down again. Then he kissed her with long, luscious strokes of his tongue, his mouth making love to hers, and always the pressure of his hips, hard and demanding. She was drifting in a sensual haze and didn’t know how long he made love to her. Time seemed to have stopped so they could be wrapped together in a cocoon of physical pleasure and emotional rapport. She held him tightly to her. This was her husband. This was her lover.
Then he stiffened and his movements became jerkier, faster.
She gasped and caught his face between her palms, wanting to be connected to him when it happened. He thrust hard against her and she felt his seed, hot inside her, right before her world started swirling. His mouth became slack on hers. She continued kissing him, licking along his bottom lip, tasting his mouth.
He pushed up from her, but she tightened her arms to hold him. “Stay.”
He looked at her.
“Stay with me. All night long. Please.”
His lips quirked in a small smile before he whispered, “Always.”
Chapter Thirteen
“It’s not a game for you, is it?” Christian asked several nights later. His voice was low, but Simon glanced uneasily around nonetheless.