Chapter Twenty-Eight
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
A LL HER LIFE, E VELYN HAD KNOWN EXACTLY WHEN TO EXPECT A kiss, how to position her face to perfectly accept the gesture. She knew how to anticipate. She knew how to outplay. That was the only way to win the game, after all. To be better at it than the men with whom she played could ever hope to be.
But when Thomas’s soft, inexperienced lips met hers, her entire body awakened with the surprise of it. This was not a performance, nor was it desperate and stilted as that first kiss at Coney Island had been.
This was the real thing. And suddenly, as his hands cupped her face and drew her deeper into it, she felt as inexperienced and new as he must have.
A flush of lust overtook her, and she grabbed him by the front of his tuxedo, dragging him onto the couch with her. It may have been more appropriate to trip up the stairs together, pinning each other against the walls and stealing more of these hot, breathless kisses along the way, but she didn’t care.
She wanted him. Here. Now. Like this.
They moved like one body, rolling against one another as intimately as their excessive clothing would allow. Her bruised ribs and aching muscles protested at the jostling, but the rest of her couldn’t care less. His touch was as healing as it was destructive, and she would walk through fire if it meant she could have more of him.
Hands moving from her face so he could brace himself on the back of the couch and hover above her, one knee settled between her thighs while one foot balanced his weight firmly on the floor. As she moaned into his kiss, Evelyn rolled her hips against his knee, relishing the delightful pressure.
She was perfectly wanton. Already begging for him, practically. This afternoon hadn’t been enough. She wanted all of him.
But just that simple motion seemed to smash Thomas back into something resembling reality, because no sooner had she done it than he resurfaced from her with wide, worried eyes.
“I really feel as though I should apologize.”
“And I really feel as though sex doesn’t need this much conversation, thrilling as the conversation may be,” she said, raising her hands to slowly slip the tuxedo jacket from his shoulders. It fell limply to the floor. She began, then, with his shirt buttons, slowly slipping them out of their placket until that, too, fell to the floor.
His body was hard to her touch. Firm and solid and impossibly strong for a man with a build as slight as his. But what really struck Evelyn was the hammering of his heart, which she could feel even as she grazed his chest ever so carefully.
She dragged her hand against his undershirt until her palm rested against that throbbing muscle in the left side of his ribcage. The epicenter of his fear.
“It’s just that I haven’t done this in quite some time and when last I did—”
“Thomas.”
His heart didn’t slow beneath her hand.
“Tom . ”
Ah, there it was. The rhythm steadied. So did his erratic breathing. He looked up at her from beneath dark eyelashes, and in those eyes, she suddenly saw the young boy who’d had his life stolen from him. A boy whose entire existence had been spent yearning for the approval of others. A boy who hadn’t ever had the chance to become his own man.
She knew the look because she saw it in her own mirror so often. She’d been fourteen when a man first had her—a booking agent who said he could take her out of the chorus and get her a full twenty-five-cent raise if she just did a little private dance for him in his office.
Ever since then, she’d had sex because she knew it could get her things. Sometimes, she enjoyed it. Sometimes, she didn’t. Sometimes, she really didn’t.
But this … This was different. She and Tom were equals now. And the only thing she wanted from him was, well, him.
“I just don’t want to disappoint you,” he said softly.
She brushed a stray lock of hair away from his forehead. “As if such a ridiculous thing is even possible.”
“But—”
No. The two of them had spent too long at the mercy of others’ whims. Too long trading their very essences for the satisfaction and help of others. Tonight, they would, for maybe the first time in their lives, have something that was just theirs.
A stolen moment for themselves in a lifetime of moments stolen from them.
She would never love Thomas Gallier. Could never love him. Couldn’t allow it of herself. But she could give him this. They could share this.
“Do you want me?” she asked, breathing the question against his lips.
“Yes. Since the moment I saw you.”
“Likewise. So, then. Let’s have each other.”
She could almost feel his lips quirking upward in a small, hesitant smile. “Just like that?”
The smallest of nods she gave him brushed her mouth against his. A suggestion. A welcome. A question. “Just like that.”
But Tom didn’t answer. He hesitated.
So Evelyn began to kiss her way down his throat, reveling every time he shivered at the contact.
“You know,” kiss … shiver, “once I told you that I never trusted a man’s promises until after he’d bedded me.” Kiss … shiver . “A person’s words can lie, but his actions never do.” Kiss … shiver. “If you really want more for us than just sex …” Kiss … shiver . “Tom,” kiss … shiver , “then I think it would be prudent for you to show me. Entirely, this time. Not just part of the way like you did this afternoon.” Kiss … shiver .
That was all the permission he needed. After far too long, Tom threw himself into the moment, bringing his own mouth to her soft skin and working his way down, down, down from the top of her throat to the place where her breasts swelled against her corset. Ripping away her topcoat and shirt—almost certainly ruining them in the process—he fought the coarse boning of her stays to withdraw her breasts without loosening the laces.
Between her legs, his hardness pressed against the fabric of her skirts, stroking against her center. She rocked her hips against him, groaning in pleasure as his mouth found her nipple and began to pleasure that, too.
They were a mess of hands and mouths, cries and hisses. Somehow, Evelyn managed to get his shirt over his head in a brief reprieve between his campaigns upon her breasts, and once his skin was finally revealed to her, she couldn’t help brushing her own hands over his nipples, just to see him writhe from the sensation of it.
From his chest, it was now her turn to descend, relieving him of his trousers in a fit of buckles and buttons. His shoes and socks followed. Once they were gone, all they had left between them were the folds of her skirts, her combination, and his undershorts.
Lifting her from the couch, Thomas easily unbuttoned the back of her skirt, and the fabric fell away. The combination went next …
And then, she was lying before him much as she had the first night they’d met. Only this time, there was nothing on her body but a pushed-down corset. Her open legs revealed her wet center. Her breasts were on full display.
She was ready for him. Waiting. And from the growing hardness straining against his underclothes, she could tell he was too.
For a moment, though, he looked at her from the bottoms of her feet all the way to the top of her head and then back down again, drinking in the fullness of her every curve and valley.
She flushed. When was the last time anyone had looked at her like this? Had anyone ever done so?
In that moment, under his scrutiny, she wasn’t just being observed. She was being adored .
“Do you like what you see?” she asked, if only to break the tension. “You know, when you turned me away all those times, I believed it was because you were like the rest of them. Disgusted by me. Or at least pretending to be so that you could fit in.”
His tongue darted out across his bottom lip. Hungry. There was no doubt his lust was genuine. “I’ve never seen anyone so beautiful.”
Likewise , she wanted to say, but she didn’t have the time. The word was replaced with a cry of ecstasy. Because when she opened her mouth to say it, he bowed down between her legs, took her clit in his mouth, and gave it the same treatment he’d given his bottom lip only a second ago.
She arched her back, desperate to get closer to his touch. He obliged, tasting deeply of her, reacting to her sounds and movements as she made them, coaxing more of them out of her with every passing second. The dizzying high of a climax approached with the speed of a streetcar—
But just when she thought she might get struck, she laced her fingers through his hair and pulled him away from her.
“I want you inside of me,” she said, breathless. “Please.”
“But—”
“Not to worry. I fully intend to finish what you started.”
It took a moment to navigate the use of contraception. Thomas, not imagining himself a man who would have an affair, did not keep any on his person or even in his home, while Evelyn, who generally did just that, had suffered her bag being taken from her at the police station. It had not been returned—another reason to curse those cops—but she was hardly inclined to spare a thought for them at this critical moment. It was Thomas who thought to avail themselves of Andrew’s makeshift medical ward, which—thank goodness—had sheaths to spare, and soon enough, they returned to the moment as though they’d never taken a reprieve in the first place.
Once again, Thomas brought his lips to hers and they crashed into one another. The taste of herself on his tongue sent her nearly to madness, and she rocked her hips against his, drawing the hard length of him fully inside her in one smooth gesture.
They cried out together this time, and found their rhythm together—slowly at first, and then with increasing need and intensity with every passing moment. Thomas guided her along him, and she tightened with every stroke inside of her. Gripping onto him with one arm, she lowered her other hand down between her legs, rolling her fingers along her clit and once again bringing herself toward the peak of her pleasure.
She could feel it. They were both close. They were both so, so close.
“Thank you,” Thomas whispered against her skin, burying his face in her neck.
And that was all it took. Evelyn toppled over the brink, shattering in a climax that sent fireworks exploding behind her eyes. She tightened around him, and before she knew it, he reached his own apex, too, crying out her name with every reckless thrust.
They each breathed their recovery for a few seconds, staring blearily into each other’s eyes as they came down from their shared height.
When they returned to earth, Evelyn couldn’t help but smile. Something in her smile must have triggered something in Thomas, because he returned it and before either of them knew how or why, they were both laughing.
Evelyn had never laughed like that before. Not with any man. And she wondered if it could be like this always. If she could feel this way forever.
If this was what love felt like.
And if it was …
How was she going to keep herself from falling for him?