Chapter 24
Francesca followed Hart into his library, still consumed with dread. He closed both doors behind her. “I am sorry,” he said gravely.
“This is not your fault!” she cried.
He went to her and took her into his arms. “Isn’t it? And isn’t Rick right? If this portrait finds its way into a public gallery, I will be the reason you can never hold your head up again. I will be the reason you are scorned. I will be the reason you are hurt.”
She gripped his lapels. “I agreed to pose nude. I agreed freely. There was no gun pointed at my head.”
He cupped her face in his hands. “I had thought, until now, that I would begin a new life, and even acquire a new reputation with you. Suddenly the opposite seems to be the case. Rick is right. Eventually I taint everything I touch.”
“That is not true! Do not abandon me now!” she said fiercely.
Their gazes met. “I would never abandon you. I don’t want to ever be without you. In fact, I miss you terribly.”
She started. “What do you mean?”
“I hate being at odds,” he said vehemently. “These past few days, my life has felt so utterly cold and devoid of all meaning. The way it was once, before I met you, before you became my loyal and true friend.”
She leaned close, laying her cheek against his chest, her heart pounding now. “Calder, I miss you, too. I miss you terribly! I have come to count on my days being filled with you.”
“Really?” he asked softly, tilting up her chin so that their eyes met.
And the look there was so warm that it stole her breath away. Desperately, she wanted to tell him that she loved him. She wet her lips. “I cannot imagine life the way it was before we became engaged to one another. I cannot imagine life without you,” she said quietly.
He started, his gaze flying wide. “Do you mean it?” he demanded, as if stunned, his hands on her shoulders. “Did I just hear you say that you could not live without me?”
Had she said that? But it was the truth—she could not live without him. Without Calder Hart, her life would never be the same. She bit her lip even as she somehow smiled. “Yes, Calder, I mean it. I mean it with all of my heart. I cannot live without you.”
He stared at her with sheer incredulity.
She swallowed. “You are an enigma—a very difficult enigma—but you are the enigma I want to be with,” she said roughly.
He pulled her into his arms, his mouth finding hers, the urgency stunning.
Thrilled by his fierce response, Francesca felt the urgency not just in his lips, but in every muscle and tendon of his body and she was desperately relieved.
Nothing had changed, dear God, had it? And then she recalled the fact that her father was now dead-set against them. “Calder?”
He lifted his head, his eyes ash-gray with desire. “I want to make love to you,” he said.
She froze.
And every single time he had declared that he did not believe in love filled her mind. But there was more. He had said he had never made love to a woman, not once in his entire life. She pressed against his shoulders. “What did you just say?”
Staring intensely at her, he repeated, “I want to make love to you.”
It was impossible to breathe, nearly impossible to think. “You told me once that you have never made love to a woman.”
“I haven’t.”
What did this mean? Was he telling her that he loved her? “Calder?”
“I want to show you how I feel,” he said roughly, stroking his thumb over her jaw. “I want to make you feel the same way.”
She was ready to swoon. Every inch of her body had turned to fire. She was ready; she had never been more ready. “Please,” she whispered, a plea.
He smiled a little at her. “Your wish is my command,” he murmured, and with dexterous fingers he unbuttoned her jacket, sliding it from her shoulders and tossing it to the floor. As he unbuttoned her shirtwaist, her heart had never beat more swiftly. She had difficulty continuing to stand.
He watched her, dropping the shirt and reaching behind her to unfasten her corset. “Don’t faint now, darling,” he said, pressing his thigh between hers. “We have hardly begun.”
She gasped, holding tightly on to him for support as her undergarments hit the floor as well. “I am so excited,” she managed to say, “and you haven’t even touched me.”
He smiled. “I can rectify that,” he said softly, and he touched his forefinger to her hard, distended nipple, then began to rub it.
She cried out, waves of pleasure engulfing her, making her dizzy.
He bent and laid his tongue over the hot, hard tip.
Somehow, her skirts and petticoat dropped to the floor, pooling at her feet.
He sucked on her, hard.
Francesca moaned shamelessly, filled now with desire.
Hart lifted his head, his tone thick but surprised. “Darling, are you peaking?”
“Hurry,” she gasped, barely able to open her eyes and meet his smoking gaze.
Before she knew it, he had laid her on the rug, their mouths instantly fusing, his hand now between her thighs, inside her drawers. The moment he touched her sex, she screamed, racked by a violent climax.
When she was floating somewhere in time, she felt him kissing her throat and her breasts, his hands stroking over belly, her thighs, her sex. Her drawers were, miraculously, gone.
She struggled to open her eyes and look at him.
“I want to give you so much pleasure,” he said, his eyes hot. He bent over her and laid his tongue between the thick folds of her sex. Instantly, Francesca collapsed back on the floor, moaning.
He spread her wide and continued to caress her with his tongue. She spiraled out of control so quickly that there was no time to protest and disrobe him. Reaching down, clinging to his shoulders, she wept in pleasure and pain and more pleasure again.
He moved beside her when she was done and she drifted back into his arms. Toying with her breast, he whispered, “Perhaps we should argue more often.”
She was still floating; she managed to look at him. Still breathless, she took his hand. “I hate arguing with you, but for some reason, your every look, word, touch is making me insane with more desire.” She moved his hand down her belly and lower still.
He smiled, smug and pleased. He found her mouth and kissed her slowly, deeply, for a long, long time. This time his dangerous hand moved down her buttocks, playing there in a terribly sensual, suggestive manner.
From behind, he prodded and caressed, toyed and searched.
She tore her mouth from his, gasping in violent need. “You said you wanted to make love to me,” she cried, reaching for his trousers. “I think this moment is highly appropriate.”
He smiled at her. “I am making love to you, darling. I am making love to every inch of you that I can.” His smile faded and he turned her onto her stomach.
Her hair had long since come down and he moved it aside, kissing her nape and then slowly working his way down her spine.
He had straddled her, and when he moved over her buttocks, she finally felt him and her heart dropped to the pit of her stomach.
Beyond weak, beyond hollow, she arched upward, seeking to feel him again.
“Yes, darling, I know what you want and what you need,” he whispered hoarsely in her ear. And she felt every inch of his manhood, hard as steel, encased in fine wool, pressing against her buttocks. She cried out.
Holding her tightly now, his breathing harsh, he moved against her, thrusting long and slow. “One day,” he said, “you will know what this really feels like.”
She was sobbing but soundlessly now. “One day?” she wept. “You said you are making love to me tonight!”
It suddenly crossed her mind that they had a serious miscommunication. She tensed, torn between fury and despair, and she felt his mouth on the corner of her lips. “I never said I was intending to break the vow I made to wait until our wedding night,” he murmured.
“You are a complete bastard,” she cried.
“So much passion in one tiny woman,” he murmured, kissing her shoulder, and then she felt the naked length of him as he unfastened his trousers and sprang firmly against her buttocks. He surged deep and low, between her thighs, directly against her sex.
She rode him as he thrust, her swollen wet sex on his hard determined length, and the explosion was cataclysmic, throwing her far away into a black star-spangled universe.
She wept and wept as he thrust with increasing urgency, and at some point, lost in time and space, she was vaguely aware of his climax joining her own.
And then she was in the circle of his arms.
He was panting hard, kissing her cheek, her jaw, her ear. “That was too soon,” he whispered. “I want to give you so much pleasure tonight.”
She found his hand and held it tightly, her composure slowly returning.
Being with this man was like nothing she had ever dreamed of.
She had never imagined that so much passion and desire could exist, that it could be so raw, so urgent, so consuming.
Dazed, she spooned into him and he kissed the swell of her breast. Amazingly, her body was eager to respond to his again.
And bemused, she realized that once again she was completely naked in his arms, and he was fully clothed.
She could not form any coherent words just yet.
He raised her hand and kissed it. “We need to be in my bed,” he murmured. “Because I am hardly through with you, darling.”
She twisted to look up at him, smiling, while hot need shafted inside her.
He smiled with real amusement at her. “Cat got your tongue, darling?”
She had never felt more relaxed or more languid. Yet her sex had begun to ache in the most insistent manner. She closed her eyes and kissed his shirt and as she sighed, she guided his hand where it belonged. “Yes,” she finally murmured.
He laughed, sounding a bit too pleased with himself. “You are such a strumpet! You are so easy to set off!”
She felt slightly annoyed and she lifted her lashes to look at his impossibly attractive face. His eyes danced now. “And that is a problem?”