Chapter 20 #2
He closed his eyes. When his lashes lifted, his eyes sparked with uncertainty and fire. Lacing his fingers at her neck, he drew her closer to look deeply in her eyes.
His mouth covered hers. She opened to him as he teased and probed and shifted inside her. His body tightened all at once, his arms wrapping around her waist, his back coming off the door.
He broke the kiss. “This is messy business.” His brow butted hers. “I have no plans to marry. You, on the other hand, want children. A husband. A home. Save yourself from me.”
His breath was like steamy chocolate on her lips. She plucked a kiss and drank the heady taste of his mouth, his tongue. “I have a question.”
He swallowed, dropping his head to the door as his shoulders rose to fill his lungs. “I’ll answer it if you stop kissing me.”
She pressed to her slippered feet. His hungry eyes traced down the length of her.
She blew out the candle and opening the closet door, stepped over him.
Full moonlight behind the clouds guided her to the narrow bed, though she could have found it in pitch-black.
She drew out a book beneath the mattress and sat on its edge.
Julian loomed tall in front of her, shades of grey and frustration. “What are you doing?” he whispered.
“Formulating my questions.”
“With a book?”
“Have you ever been to a brothel?”
He sucked in his breath. “What? No. Never.” He paced a circle, folded his arms, and glared at her. “Yes, I have.”
“Did you enjoy it? And the women, did they?”
“What sort of question—”
“One I am asking.”
He dropped beside her, his knees high. Bent over, he raked his hair with both hands. “Yes. To both.”
“Would I enjoy it?”
“Oh Christ.” He groaned. “I don’t know.”
“Am I different then? Than the women in the brothel?”
“Maybe. No. You are not, except for your start in life.”
“Do you think it a sin?” she asked. “Are you to burn in hellfire everlasting for your lustful acts? Would I?”
“Yes.” He slewed left toward her, his arm braced against the bed. “No. But that is my opinion. And there are men far more qualified than I to guide you in the correct path to the hereafter. Heed them, not me.”
Kitty pondered his advice. Tentatively, she stretched out her hand and caressed the hard flesh of his thigh.
He clamped his hand over hers to cease her exploration.
But he did not remove it. His muscles spasmed beneath her palm.
Tingling sensation raced from beneath his strong, callused hand.
Up her arms, to her mouth, down her belly, to the secret place between her thighs she was supposed to guard for the sake of her very soul.
“What do you know of the melting flow?” she asked. “The critical ecstasy of which Fanny writes?”
“Fanny?” he whispered harshly. “Fanny Hill?” He reached for the book.
She swung it away, but he caught her wrist. In silence, they wrestled.
Or she did, falling to her back and pushing him off with a foot to his abdomen.
He swiped her leg aside and came over her, twisting the book from her grasp with his other hand and tossing it to the floor.
Their struggle left them breathless, their bodies pressed together on the bed.
“Men give women this ecstasy,” she whispered at his mouth. “But Fanny did alone, with her own hand. I—I was too afraid to try. Will my heart seize? It sounds painful, and yet you say we enjoy it.”
His dark gaze riveted upon her in the moonlight. “You will enjoy it.”
He rolled to the edge of the bed and yanked off his boots. Next his coat, waistcoat, and breeches like a man on fire. She was not the marvel. He was. The vision of him made her body restless. If he had grown to be a man, then she had surely become a woman.
He hesitated at his smallclothes. Her heart kicked in her breast meeting his hooded, black eyes. He stood, his thumb ready to flick loose the top button.
Terror and awkward anticipation seized her.
She averted her gaze and removed her dressing gown.
From the corner of her eye, she saw Julian work the buttons as she slipped beneath the bedcovers.
She stared at the ceiling where the rain on the windows created chaotic shadows.
The wind and steady shower covered the sound of her breathing and the creak of the bed ropes as Julian slid beside her.
His leg, warm and roughened with hair, grazed her foot.
“Kitty, may I remove your nightshift?”
She flamed to the roots of her hair. “I—I will do it.”
Undressing in a novel read as much more graceful than her scooting and fumbling. She drew the nightshift from her head, and her hair twisted in the flannel. Julian untangled the unruly mass, and when she remained sitting and shivering, he eased her to her back.
Braced on his side, he traced her profile, the notch above her lips, the curved seam between them. “You are everything right and good in my life.” He nudged the tip of her nose. “And what is wrong is my doing.”
"Ditto.” She pressed the same spot on his nose.
He kissed her, canting his mouth, holding fast to her yearning gaze. He flicked his tongue with hers and gave in to an open-mouthed, hungry exploration.
Gathering her in his arms, his pace was languid, his muscled flesh taut, restrained, urgent. She shuddered at his touch, gentle, persistent, almost cautious when he reached her most secret part. She cried out, nearly died from the flood as he gazed upon what he had wrought and slowly came over her.
Her senses in an uproar, she enfolded him in her arms, to press upon, taste, and breathe in every inch of his skin.
A sigh grated at his teeth, his focus intense and still cautious.
When it was beautiful and nothing to worry for.
When she felt no fear, only a joyous fever, her hands teeming with thrilling electricity, exploring the muscled lines of his back, the hard curves of his shoulders.
There was power in him and mysteries to unfold.
And finally the secrets unveiled themselves.
He hung his head as if overcome. She arched in the pleasure and pain and completeness of it.
“I feel it,” she said between gasps. “Oh, Julian, it is…”
He revealed himself, the lines of his face harsh, moving inside her, cradling her against him, whispering at her lips. “It is us, Kitty. It is us.”