Twenty #3
The desire Peter felt for her was no longer healing or instructive.
It was like a river closing in over his head.
He prayed she would leave, would glance at the clock and make her excuses, saving him from destroying this precious connection.
He wanted her for the duration of the portrait, not a stolen hour.
He wanted to end their time together with friendship and a hope—faint though it might be—that the future might hold something more for them.
Peter was no longer young, but he had the patience of Job, and if Jacob Ryan made the mistake of losing her again, before the Guild selected a new life for him, he would find a way to return to her.
If they succumbed now, while she was committed to another, he would never see her again. No woman forgives her tempter.
She removed her hand, and he nearly collapsed, so great was the relief.
She said something about the night air, though he barely heard the words.
The scent of her skin was thick in his head.
Her hair, collected in its pins, tossed off lambent sparks that put the Guy Fawkes celebration to shame.
He strained to concentrate, but the graceful movement of her throat as she spoke captivated him.
He wanted to draw his fingers along it, lifting her chin with his thumbs, and bring that mouth to his.
In the distance, the boom of fireworks grew more frequent.
He apprehended that she had asked him a question, and his heart hammered, knowing that he’d been caught.
“I-I—”
She laughed, a rush of semiquavers that nearly undid him, and he turned to hide his emotion.
“Oh, Peter,” she said as if to an errant child. “There is paint on you.” And with a tiny sigh, she lifted her thumb and ran it across his cheek.
It was too much. He caught her hand to stop her, but the softness transfixed him. He held it, unmoving, between his palm and cheek, drinking in the heady warmth and cursing his foolhardy weakness.
“Peter.”
Small and pained, the word was like a bruise.
He kept his eyes closed, unwilling to see the look of shocked betrayal.
“Peter.”
This time the word was truer, deeper. It demanded his presence. He opened his eyes, and she looked at him, waves crashing in those sea blue eyes.
“I…must not,” he said, his mouth as dry as untempered pigment. “We cannot, I know.”
She pulled her hand free and laid it across his cheek. The last vestige of control left his head. In another instant he would be victim to a mindless, unrelenting urge. She must see the danger. She must.
But she paid no heed to the primitive need she’d aroused, for aroused he was. A primitive, carnal drumbeat pounded in his veins, and his hips ached to possess her.
She brought her face close, brushing a comet of sparks across his lips, and kissed him.
He groaned at the connection, her salty-sweet taste both a balm and a torture.
She was well schooled. Her tongue moved in his mouth like a whip, a plain invitation to the pleasures she offered and a shocking exposé of the pleasures she’d learned to bestow.
He wanted to strip her of those memories.
He wanted to own those kisses, master that unapologetic mouth.
There were ways to inhabit a woman from toes to forehead, leaving not a whit of space for rivals, to stir her slowly, make her a slave to her changing need, until her cries filled the room.
But he also knew the price he would pay.
“Stop,” he said. “You don’t want this.”
* * *
But she did. It had been so, so long since she’d felt this, so, so long since she’d felt entirely at ease, the ground was slipping beneath her.
She knew she should wait, had told herself as much no more than a moment before, but those lips had melted her resolve.
It wasn’t a fair fight, though she was certain for Peter it wasn’t a fight at all.
His forthrightness, his unremitting honesty stripped her of any ability to object, and of any wish to. But with all the power, he must rule gently. He must not try to coax her beyond a few kisses. For if he did, they would both regret it.
A little more, she told herself. A little more. Peter will stop it before we’ve gone too far.
* * *
“Apparently I do want it.”
She laughed, a wicked, willing laugh, and Peter felt himself harden. He jerked the gown open, and she gasped. The sweet pink flesh tightened instantly. He drew his palm over its luxuriant stiffness.
“Tell me this pleases you,” he whispered.
Her lids came down. “Yes.”
He wished he could see her eyes. He wanted what he saw there to guide him.
He pulled her close and their mouths locked.
Hungrily he supped, his hands in her hair, her arms locked across his back.
He could feel her need, more than mere carnality, and the storm of emotion it summoned in him was driving him to the edge of endurance.
“Did he hurt you?” He must know, and the taste of honey on her neck and ear made his need for the knowledge more urgent.
“Yes.”
“I hate him for that. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Does he love you?”
“Yes.”
“Then I will learn to endure it.”
He kissed her more and felt her tremble.
If was as if she were coming to pieces, and he had to enclose her in his arms to protect her.
Beyond them, the sky filled with light. One boom after another.
He could feel reverberations deep in his chest and wondered if she could too.
The crowds roared, and their joy floated out into the night.
He rose up and held her. “A night to remember.”
“Aye.”
He kissed her again, and she kissed back, hard and desirous, shaking him to the marrow.
Drunk with an overpowering lust and joy, he brought his mouth lower and traced the edge of her shoulder.
He ached to join with her, a soaring pain that ran up his back, squeezed his lungs, and bisected his heart.
It was nothing but disordered, raw, terrifying need.
Her skin was warm and inebriatingly scented, and in a rush he was at her nipple, tasting at last what had haunted his thoughts this last hour. It hardened further at his touch, and he flicked his tongue roughly over the intricate bas-relief.
Desire screamed in his bones. Blindly he pulled, letting the urge take him, and her earthy, deep rumble frenzied him. The harder he pulled, the louder the sounds grew and the less rational his thoughts became.
His hands knew no master. Her hips ground under his brutish touch, and he desired only to tear them loose of the fabric that covered them. He fastened her hands at her back and bent her to his liking, jerking the bare breast upward. How he longed to plow her.
“Tell me,” he said, bringing his lips to her ear. “Tell me you want this.”
She did not answer, and he brought the nipple between his fingers and plucked.
She arched, a beautiful, rigid arch, and he plucked again. Her mouth fell open. Oh, how he wanted to employ it.
“You have not won me,” she whispered, eyes closed. “Not yet.”
He laughed and dropped to his knees. “Have I not?”
He rucked up the gown to her waist. In the blackness of the night he laid his palms on the amorphous patches of light that must be her thighs and brought his thumbs across the silky tufts at their nexus. Gently he rolled her bud. She gripped the railing, sounding her desire openly.
He would win her. She would rock every rooftop in London with the cries of her pleasure.
He brought his mouth to the bloom and kissed her, a slow, quivering kiss that sent a howl through his brain. She tasted of spiced summer fruit, and he drank deeply, paced by the rhythmic rocking of her hips.
Her fingers threaded his hair, urging him on, but he had better use for them.
He pulled free and waited until she opened her eyes.
“Show me,” he demanded.
For an instant she was confused, but when her eyes flashed understanding, he saw the explosion of desire that accompanied it.
“No,” she whispered, fearful.
“Aye.” He rubbed his chin along her thigh, their gazes still locked. “You showed me in the studio. Show me here.”
Two trembling fingers came down. He kissed them as they found their home, and he exalted in her moan. She moved slowly, but the lightest touch of his lips showed him the rhythm—her rhythm—and he supplanted her.