Chapter Twelve #2
The stinging stretch was almost too much for Pearce to take when he began to press into her, but he paid attention to the tension in her body and froze to allow her time to adjust. Eventually, using a combination of patience and slow retreats and advances, his length was completely seated within her.
Needing to take her mind off the foreign fullness, Clara reached up and pulled Pearce’s mouth to meet hers.
She kissed him, using her tongue as he’d shown her.
When he began to move, slowly grinding his body against hers, circling his pelvis, claiming her with long and impossibly slow strokes, Clara’s desire began anew.
The discomfort began to ebb and it was being replaced by a new need.
The sounds of their wet flesh gliding, their heavy breaths mingling in the air, the feel of his hot skin beneath her hands, was urging Clara higher.
“More,” she gasped. She did not know what more she wanted, but her body told her it existed. And she craved it. “More,” she cried out when he did not comply. Rather than give her what she demanded, Pearce froze.
*
The last thing Pearce wished to do was cause his wife pain. She couldn’t know what she was requesting, but by God when she stared up at him with her heavy-lidded eyes, her lips parted with her panting breaths, he wanted to give her the world.
“Please,” Clara whimpered and squirmed beneath him.
His resolve snapped.
Cursing beneath his breath, Pearce complied with a triumphant grunt of satisfaction, losing himself in pleasure and pounding into her.
He filled her, savored the way her untried body gripped him, the glide and sweet perfection of her body.
With a hand on her hip, he showed her how to move and tilted her just so, overwhelming her senses with feelings she could not have known existed.
She came apart in his arms as he continued to thrust and caress, teasing every last drop of pleasure from her body.
She clung to him, whimpering and kissing his throat as he climbed toward his own crisis.
His pounding hips stuttered when a realization struck him.
He did not want to remove himself from his body and spend outside of her.
He wanted Clara marked as his in every way possible.
But his fear won out.
Just as his orgasm zinged from the base of his spine, Pearce ripped himself away and finished with his hand, spilling his seed on the pale softness of her lower abdomen, his entire body trembling with his restraint, finishing with a strangled, guttural groan.
He collapsed beside Clara, half dazed, heart pounding, eyes unfocused.
After he used his discarded shirt to gently wipe his seed from her body, she curled up against him. The contact was unexpected but not at all unpleasant. He held her as she traced the whorls of hair on his chest.
She softly asked, “What happened…at the end? That was to prevent pregnancy, was it not?”
He caressed her bare shoulder with his thumb. “I will not change my mind, Clara. Please respect it.” He did not wish to have that conversation, not so soon in the aftermath of their consummation. Not after the glorious passion they had shared.
He could feel her tense against his side, so he added, “There are precautions we’ll be taking during intimacy. It is the way things will be.” She lifted her head and the question was in her eyes, but he told her, “No,” before she could ask.
She lay back down and, eventually, Pearce drifted off to sleep.
*
It could have been minutes or hours later, but Pearce awoke to soft hands stroking his growing erection. He moaned in drowsy pleasure as he stirred, muscles clenching in anticipation. It did not take him but another moment to realize that Clara was testing her new skills.
He mumbled, “You are going to wear me out, woman,” before pulling her to straddle him. “Do you not realize I am an old man? You must be determined to work me into my grave.”
“Bah!” She brushed off his comment. “I suspect you possess the stamina of a man at least ten years your junior.”
“Madam!” Pearce gasped in mock offense. “A good horse will still ride himself to ground when given the right incentive.”
“Am I that incentive, then?”
His cock leapt when she looked at him from beneath her thick, kohl-colored lashes. “Oh, most definitely.”
She sighed as the thick, blunt head of his cock came in contact with her molten core. “Besides, it does not feel as if you are an incapable old man.”
He reached up and ran his thumbs along the silken undersides of her breasts and then cupped the full globes in his large hands.
He’d never grow tired of the sight of her pink nipples, hot and slightly raw from his earlier attentions.
She had such beautiful breasts… “I never said I could not rise to the challenge, merely that you were trying to do me in.” Reaching between them, he ran the tip of his member through the wet folds of her sex in a luxurious glide.
“And I suppose there are worse ways to die.” He guided her hips and slowly, tantalizingly slid her down his shaft, inch by inch, allowing her tender body to adjust. “Much worse ways,” he breathed as she took all of him.
He showed her how to move as she became accustomed to his body; she was so tight it nearly made him blind with pleasure. “That’s it,” he said through gritted teeth. “You can do it.”
“I don’t know,” she gasped. Her nails bit into his chest where she’d braced her hands to balance herself. He hoped she left crescent-shaped marks on him when they were done; he wanted to carry her with him everywhere.
When she eventually found a pace that made her breathless, she took his arms and held them above his head, taking control much like he did during their very first sexually charged encounter.
He allowed her to do as she pleased, reveling in the erotic power and control she held.
She was a remarkably quick learner and was surprisingly confident for one so inexperienced—and rightfully so.
If only she knew how glorious she was, how singularly perfect, she would feel as if she could rule the world.
Grinding her pelvis against his, she’d learned so quickly what he liked and what drove him wild. He loved knowing that he was the only man who had ever—would ever—be the recipient of these attentions from Clara.
When Pearce could tell they were both close, he lifted his hips to meet her and laced their fingers together.
With every slap and glide of their flesh, he praised and encouraged her as she gasped and moaned above him, her fragrant, damp hair creating a curtain around their faces, her sensitive nipples grazing his chest with each rhythmic rock of their hips.
As she came, he rolled them so he was on top, still gripping her hands in his. He gave several more powerful thrusts until he withdrew from her body once more, his hips jerking with the force of his release as he spilled on the milky white perfection of her abdomen, painting her with his desire.
Clara was still holding his hands, lips parted as she stared up at him as his vision slowly cleared. The way she watched him was new to Pearce. It was penetrating. It was so honest and open that it made a place deep inside his chest ache.
Unwilling to analyze the sensation, he glanced at the small, gilded timepiece beside the bed before cleaning her and pressing a kiss to her head. Then he left for his own chamber. They’d already crossed lines and tempted fate; she was becoming too important to him, too close.
The Brinley curse needled his conscience, reminding him that what he loved, he would lose. He refused to look at the locked door to the mistress’s chamber as he passed it on the way to his own.