Chapter 15 #2
“Is it so wrong to want your wife?” she asked, looking up at him now.
The rain darkened the sky, made everything appear in shades of grey—save for his eyes.
They had followed her from childhood, and they would follow her into the rest of her life, no matter what happened here. “Why did you come out to this lake?”
He glanced away from her, but made no attempt to move from her hand. “I needed space to think.”
“And you chose the rain?”
“I chose this place because it reminds me of someone I met long ago.” He shook his head. “You shouldn’t be here. You’ll catch your death.”
“Wait.”
She had so many questions, and more than anything, she wanted to know who the lake reminded him of. But if she asked the question and revealed herself to be that person, it would complicate matters still further. Would he want to have married the same girl he had rescued?
Would that even matter?
His eyes searched hers. “For what? It is freezing, Lydia.”
“You feel warm to me.” Her hand traveled up his chest, to his neck, his skin indeed warm against her palm.
“Why are you fighting this, Alexander? Why are you so angry at the prospect I might want to get to know you better, or that we might become married in more than name alone?” Finally, she reached his cheek, and as the rain thundered around them, she reached up on her tiptoes.
She balanced herself on his shoulder. “Don’t run from me.
If you truly don’t want this, tell me to my face.
Don’t hide from me.” She took a single rain-flecked breath. “I am your wife.”
“Damn it all,” he muttered, and then his hand was at her waist, fingers digging painfully in, and his mouth was on hers, kissing her the way she had always imagined a man like him to kiss.
Not with restraint, not with the control he exhibited in every other aspect of his life, but with steel-melting passion.
Heat, urgency, need, she tasted all on his tongue.
Perhaps he had run, but he had wanted her to catch him. His mouth told her that.
She wrapped her hands around his neck, drawing him to her. She forgot about the rain, or the fact her gown was soaked—except for the way it made the heat of his palm scorch through to her skin. Or the way his cheeks were slick with water.
But her own cold? She felt none of it. Nothing in the world existed save for Alexander. He kissed her roughly, as though his life was ending, a drowning man desperate for his final breath. As though she was his beginning and end, a curse and redemption all at once.
She kissed him back as though he were her husband.
She kissed him back as though she could love him.
There were no lies between them here, no deceptions, no games. She could hardly even remember her purpose. To provoke him past the bounds of no return? To ensure that he would not send her away without tasting her first?
Her goals seemed laughable now, because as his palm traveled roughly up her body to cup her breast, she could hardly imagine why anyone would do this for any reason other than for the experience itself.
With a snarl, he pushed her through the door.
She absorbed his anger, chased it with her tongue.
The rain faded to a distant patter, and her back collided with a wall.
Yet for all his roughness, his hand came to cup the back of her head so she didn’t hurt herself.
Even as the edges of his control frayed, revealing something terrible and hungry and wanting within, he was gentle where necessary.
Her heart squeezed.
But then he was kissing her again, biting her lip so hard she clenched around nothing, and she forgot to be touched by his tenderness, because this was all so consuming, she couldn’t think past it.
Later, she would lie in bed and think about the caged aggression of his mouth—the way he demanded with his kiss, the way he took and took—and the consummate gentleness of his hands, the way he worshiped, not defiled, her.
But that was later.
In the moment, she was his creature, formed by him, molded by him, made entirely for him.
“I cannot think straight around you,” he breathed raggedly, and it sounded like a curse.
“Then don’t think,” she gasped.
He reached for her skirts, drawing them up her legs, and she helped him, revealing her stockinged legs to the chill.
Only, though she knew it was cold, she could feel none of it.
Her blood was rushing and her heart was pounding, and there was heat in her body, yes—the messy, liquid heat that she recognized from their last kiss—but not cold.
His palm skated across her thigh, and he muttered another curse under his breath. “I have been thinking about these incessantly,” he informed her in a voice that scraped.
She tipped her head back against the wall. “Please, touch me...”
He groaned, one hand cupping himself as he trailed his fingers closer to the precious point between her legs. To encourage him, she widened her stance.
Then, to her surprise, he dropped to his knees and took hold of her ankle, carefully placing it over his shoulder. Then, he pushed her skirts up further and just stared at her.
“It has been so long…” he whispered, seemingly to himself, squeezing that bulge between his legs. At least Lydia knew to look for it, though it was sadly out of reach with him all the way down here. “You look delectable, Lydia.”
She let out a shuddering breath. “Alexander, please…”
He seemed to need no more encouragement, finally bringing his fingers to where she needed him the most. The pleasure hit her almost immediately, far stronger than it had been by herself in her bed.
She pressed the back of her hand to her mouth, muffling her cries, though the rain was such that she doubted anyone would hear, even if they came into sight of the lakehouse.
“There,” she gasped. “There. Please.”
“You’re so wet.” He sounded almost tortured. “Can I use my mouth?”
“What?”
“To kiss you here.” To illustrate his point, he slid his fingers across her folds again, finding the spot she needed and drawing small circles. “Please.”
“Is that something gentlemen do?”
“I don’t know how gentlemanly it is, but it’s something I want to do to you.” There was real strain in his voice. “It will feel good, I promise.”
She hadn’t imagined using her mouth—or using his, for that matter—but as soon as she imagined the hot press of his tongue, her knees trembled. “Yes,” she gasped. “If it pleases you.”
“Believe me, Lydia, this pleases me.” He leaned forward, and then his tongue was there.
The flood of heat through her made her legs weak, and she gripped his wet hair, holding on tight as though she could somehow bear the pleasure better.
But, even as he ravaged her with his tongue, he slid a finger up inside her, and she trembled.
This was more than she could ever have imagined, and the same cresting peak that she had sensed in her bed by herself beckoned again.
Only, this time, instead of riding it and never progressing, it burst like fireworks behind her lids, and—
“Ohhh,” she moaned, and if he hadn’t been holding her up with his shoulders, she might have fallen.
This was different—bigger, better—than anything she had experienced before.
A pleasure so vast, she had fallen headlong into it; a pleasure so raw, it had stripped her bare, torn her into a thousand different pieces, and as the waves of light slowly ebbed, Alexander’s mouth on her was the only thing that stitched her back together.
She removed a hand from his head and placed it against her heart, feeling as though she had been rendered apart and remade anew. She knew, finally, what pleasure was. How intimacy felt when she cupped it in her hands…
Alexander groaned, that hand on himself again as his body jerked. And Lydia looked down in shock at the way he gripped himself, and the unmistakable pleasure that rocked him.
His eyes opened, meeting hers in the gloom. Something passed between them, bigger than any words they could have said. Still, the rain rattled on.
She reached for him, needing to feel him there, human and solid, before her. “Don’t tell me you regret this,” she breathed heavily when he rose to his feet.
His fingers came to wrap around her wrists. “Do you?”
“That was—” How could she possibly describe what that was? Mind-altering. Drugging. The kind of pleasure that drowned you in its wake and left you on the shore, bedraggled and overcome.
She could understand how it could become an addiction…
Unexpected tenderness swept across his face, and he brushed his thumb across her cheek. “I know.” He glanced around them, and a sigh gusted out of him. “This was not how I had intended on—” Before he could finish the thought, he cut himself off.
She looked up into his face wickedly. “You mean to say you imagined it?”
“Not precisely… this.” His voice was dry, and when she shivered, he took her arm. “You should never have followed me out here.”
“I can’t say I’m sorry I did.”
“No,” he replied. “Neither can I.”