Chapter 2
Chapter
Julianna wondered, almost absently as she kissed her husband, whether such a thing could truly be possible—whether two people might fit each other so completely as it seemed she did with Fred.
She knew there were still layers in him to uncover.
And she rather appreciated that, that he could be known and unknown to her at the same time.
That there were seeds still buried in him that would overwinter for many years still to come, but that would produce the greatest of gardens given time and patience and love.
She had enough flowers for today. They were the echoes of their days together here in London still reverberating through her body.
They were all those stolen moments in Dorset when she needed things large and small and Fred delivered every time.
They were feeling free from the relentless press of care-taking.
Not that she disliked being Thomas’s keeper; she loved him too deeply for that.
Yet the duty had come to define her so completely that it had swallowed the rest of her life whole until Fred had so loftily waltzed into their cottage.
Since then she’d finally felt the faint, startling relief of existing without watching the horizon for the next calamity.
She was grateful for that reprieve, just as she was grateful for every day she’d had with her brother, no matter how ill he was.
And grateful for each moment with her hands spent in the dirt of Farrow Cottage, coaxing life from it.
Grateful for her husband, a geology of unplumbed depths she could not wait to uncover.
She knew she’d treasure each new one she excavated.
She was grateful for all of it and she found she could let those notions co-exist inside her while Fred kissed his way down her body. He was—to be blunt about it and why not be—the most beautiful specimen of manhood she had ever seen. Truly astonishing, an Adonis in every way.
But he was more than that to her. His beauty, so arresting at first that it had made her angry, now seemed secondary to the rest of him.
“Jules,” Fred whispered, raising his head so that his curls fell into his forehead in a boyish manner that made her heart trill a happy little song.
“Yes?”
“I want you to spread your legs for me, dearheart. Will you do that?”
She felt herself shudder at his words, her attention drawn completely back to the moment they were in. The fire heating the room beside them, her husband heating every other part of her in an entirely different way.
He touched her shoulder, urging her back onto the floor before he glided his fingers up and down her legs.
She was in only her chemise, how she’d fallen asleep, and she watched as his eyes, so intensely blue, took in the sight of her.
There were oceans in those eyes, she thought.
Or better yet, vast fields of bluebells.
“And what now?” she asked, looking up at him.
“Now, I get to taste you, dearheart. I’ve waited long enough. Have you done that before?”
She shook her head. Intimacy with Robert, if one could even call it that, had always been a quick affair. Aimed more at achieving pleasure—mostly his—as fast as possible. This was something else entirely. This was a devouring.
And then Julianna forgot every other thought she had as Fred gripped her thighs and dipped his head, sliding his tongue between her legs.
She made some noise she’d never heard herself make before as his tongue met her body and he licked her.
Gently at first, as if he truly was savoring the taste of her.
Whispery thin licks that came harder and harder until she cried out, her hips twitching up against his tongue.
She felt her head tip back and her back arch as he reacted to every sound she made. He adjusted his pressure, the placement of his tongue, until she groaned. His mouth on her was hot and wet, his tongue laving her. First against her and then up inside of her until her legs began to shake.
If asked to explain how it felt afterwards to have him lap her as if she were the most exquisite meal he’d ever tasted, Julianna wouldn’t have been able to.
She was lost to words and articulation—then and after—given over wholly to the way his mouth felt on her body.
How she’d trembled when he pressed his tongue, still and flat, against her most sensitive places.
How she’d hardly known what to say when he’d lifted his head and asked her so gently if she’d like him to use his fingers instead of his tongue.
She’d nodded and he’d slipped one finger inside her. And then, after a moment when they’d both adjusted to the sensation, another. She felt herself moaning and panting while he tested their placement, finally crooking them up and touching her in a way that made the entire world explode.
“Are you close?” he whispered to her then.
“I don’t know.”
She didn’t. She’d had an orgasm before by her own hand but never like this. Never with a partner. Never with someone who was looking at her, treating her, like she truly was sacrosanct.
“Alright, dearheart,” he said soothingly and she realized she’d been almost whining.
He switched his fingers back out for his tongue and she arched and writhed. Her limbs were shaking, her hips canting up. “Fred—”
She couldn’t finish the sentence. She could only feel the sensation growing inside her, ready to explode out of her.
All at once his fingers were back in her, while he held his tongue flat against her, and she was shocked into some soaring physical sensation unlike anything else she’d ever felt.
There.
That.
This and him.
The destination was a place of exquisite pleasure.
The warmth of the sun and the smell of deep, dark loamy earth, flowers in bloom and the wafting scent of hay on a summer evening.
All of her favorite things, all at once.
Gratification and sensation and feeling.
Transcendent, beautiful, and nearly too much.
“Fred,” she gasped as she shuddered beneath him.
“I’m here.”
He held her close and she shook and shook. And then, when she opened her eyes again, she saw a sheen of tears in his.
“Fred!” She lunged for him, wrapping herself around him. “Fred, I’m sorry.”
“Shhhhh,” he said, stroking her hair. “I’m not upset, Jules. I’m—” He paused, looking for the right word. “I’m moved.”
“Would you like to stop?” she asked. She had to trust him to know what he needed, what he wanted, but she still wished to be certain.
“Only if you do. Do you?”
“No. But I—I don’t wish you to feel anything but joy.”
He smiled at her, his dimples appearing in the firelight. “That is part of what I feel,” he said and his eyes drifted down to his rock hard erection. “But not the entirety of it. I also feel nearly crazed with the need to keep touching you. To hear you make those noises over and over again.”
His eyes were wide, his pupils blown. “What do you want to happen next?” she asked gently.
“Would you touch me, Jules?” he asked and she’d pushed herself up before he’d even gotten the words out.
“Yes,” she said, her lips falling to his cheeks, his neck, his collarbone. “Yes.”
He laid back beneath her caresses, one arm tucked behind his head, framing his face.
She made herself go slowly and carefully, giving each part of him the attention it deserved.
She caressed the flex of his bicep, kissed the crook of his elbow.
Let her tongue lave the tip of his pink nipple as she watched the firelight gild his curls and create shadows in the taut lines of his body.
He smiled at her and her heart stuttered. She was so glad it was him, here with her, against every single odd. She would never want it to be anyone else.
She untied the dressing gown and pushed it off him so she had unfettered access to his body.
The planes of his chest, sprinkled with blond hair, his ridged abdomen.
She tasted every place while listening to the melody of sounds he made while she did.
Little whimpers and grunts and sighs, when her fingers delved into the creases at the sides of his hips.
Or her nails scraped across his skin. She leaned down further to take him in her mouth but his hand came down on her shoulder, stopping her.
“Not that,” he said. “I’d rather—can I be inside you, Jules?”
“Yes.” Whatever it was he wanted, he could have.
He sat up and gently guided her down so that she was beneath him.
And then he covered her, braced up on his forearms, his hips nestled between her thighs.
Skin to all that glorious skin. She felt herself reaching up to touch his face again, cupping his cheek in her palm.
Letting the tip of her fingers dip in and then out of his dimples.
She couldn’t get enough of it, of being able to touch him.
“Are you certain?” he asked and she nodded.
“Are you?”
“More certain than I’ve ever been in my entire life. About anything.”
He reached down and positioned himself between her legs and then he slid inside her slowly, inch by inch as her body made way for him.
When he was seated fully inside her she felt so full, the first tinglings of pleasure beginning again.
“Jules, are you alright?” he murmured, his eyes closed in what she hoped was pleasure.
“Yes. Are you, Fred? Alright?”
“I don’t…know. It’s been a long time Jules and I—” He paused, his brow furrowed. “I don’t know that I can make this last as long as I’d want.”
“So don’t. Just be here with me. That’s all I care about.”
She turned her face into that beautiful bicep of his. It was right there in front of her, begging for her to inhale the scent of his skin. To taste him. She peppered him with kisses first and then she licked him, letting the salt of his skin linger on her tongue.
“I’m going to have to take you at your word,” he said and even though his breath hitched she could hear the smile in his voice.
She was going to say something more but Fred had begun to move and she found she could no longer speak. She canted her hips against his to match his rhythm. Slowly at first, as he slid out of her and then all the way back in.
“Jules—” he groaned.
“I’m here,” she said, hearing her voice stutter. “Here.”
“I—I can’t—”
“I’m here, my love. Move, Fred. Please. I want you to.”
She felt it the moment he let himself go and moved his body the way she’d known he wanted to. His hips thrusting into her faster and faster, making her shiver with the sheer pleasure of it. Of feeling him there inside her, of the sound of his body as it met hers again and again.
“Jules—” he gasped and went absolutely still.
And then he groaned in her ear as he emptied himself in her body, whispering, “Jules,” over and over into her skin as he did.
After a long moment in which he nuzzled against her, his face buried into her neck, he thought to move away. But Julianna wrapped her arms and legs back around him, holding him inside her. “Not yet. Don’t leave me yet.”
Fred stayed there, where she put him, and it wasn’t long before she felt him harden again inside her, filling her up once more. She began to rock back and forth beneath him.
“Jules, I’ll hurt you,” he whispered but she shook her head.
“No, you won’t. I promise.”
She rocked her hips again, feeling dizzy with the pleasure of this moment, and powerful from the unintelligible noises he was soon making.
His lips found that place on her ear again and this time, when he began to thrust into her, his movements were slow and controlled.
A gliding, languid rhythm that made her head spin.
He dipped his head to kiss her neck and then her lips, while she slid her hands up his back, letting her nails graze him ever so slightly.
The groan he made told her he liked that so she did it again.
His fingers cupped her breasts now and then his tongue found her nipple.
They were moving so slowly—a languorous slide of his body over hers that gave him plenty of time to pay attention to the entirety of her in a way he hadn’t quite managed earlier.
His thumb slid back and forth over her dark nipples, then pressed into her lips while he kept that rhythm.
That steady, building rhythm of thrust after thrust after thrust.
“Christ, Jules. You are so beautiful.”
His lips moved back to her ear, her neck, her collarbone, her breast. All the while whispering that she was beautiful. That she was perfect. That she was his. That she was everything.
She felt the pleasure building inside her again, her pulse thundering in her ears. Her heart beat strong enough to shake the very foundations of Chester House.
And when he whispered, “Are you close?” again, she was.
“Yes,” she said to him. “Yes.”
And when he stilled completely this time, she was already soaring while he unleashed himself inside her.