Chapter 22
Chapter
Desire and want and greed rip through him like he’s never let himself experience before. She’d looked him in the eye, called him Andrew, and said she wanted him.
He feels whatever it is that has been holding him in place for so long break apart inside him.
He has a brief, fleeting insight that it isn’t self-control as he’s always thought but something else.
Something uglier and deeper and reflective of his father and brother, but he pushes that awareness aside.
He doesn’t want to think of his family or his past right now.
He wants to dive headlong into the pleasures he is finally going to allow himself.
“Come here,” he all but growls at her and lifts her atop him so she’s lying down the length of his body.
And then he kisses her again. And again.
And again after that, until she wraps her fingers in his hair and holds him as close as he can get.
He wants to flip her over, to breach her, to plow her right through the bed and the deck below it and the hull of the ship until he’s slamming into her in the sand at the bottom of the ocean.
He shakes his head, trying to get a hold of himself. But the wee bloody menace is having none of that. Not now. Not when she’s lying atop him and he’s the eejit that put her there.
“Stay with me,” she whispers, and he does. Although he knows, he knows, he can’t enter her. Can’t be inside her.
But by God and Elphame and the devil in hell, he wants to.
He can give her something else though. And the idea lights up his mind and his body until it feels like the very best idea he’s ever had.
Catherine’s entire body quakes. Her thighs, pressed against his long, hard, muscular ones, are trembling.
She’s slept in only a nightshirt, so her legs are bare against his trousers.
She reaches for the hem of his shirt and slips her fingers beneath it, wanting to caress his skin.
He pulls it up and over his head, tossing it away so she can move her fingers at will across his chest.
Her touch caresses his collarbone and then drifts down the curve of his shoulder and bicep to his forearm, feeling every hill and dale of his topography. Hard ridges of muscle, so like her fledgling ones, but larger and rounder. Her fingernails graze him and he shudders beneath her touch.
She grins at that, at being able to cause that kind of reaction in him.
She feels like she’s floating and throbbing and spinning around and grounded in the safety of his arms all at the same time.
And he, beneath her, is anything but a Roman marble now.
His hands roam too, down her back and across her hips, rekindling that fire that makes her want to spread her thighs and press herself against him.
He bucks his hips beneath her and she is dizzy with desire.
She wishes she knew the words for what she feels; she wants to understand the flames that are ripping through her.
And how to make them rip through him. She wants sweat, not perspiration.
Desire, not a tendré. Aching driving want, not a set of the cap.
She spreads her thighs so that nothing separates her from him except the swatch of cloth of his trousers.
“Menace,” he groans, “ye cannae, lass. We cannae.”
She drives her hips a little forward and a little back, because it feels good. It both feeds and quenches that fire between her legs. The place where she sometimes puts her hand, but it hasn’t ever felt like this when she’s been alone in her bedroom at night, Chester House silent around her.
This is so much more.
She does it again and again until he flips her onto her back.
“Careful, lass,” he murmurs quietly, all Scots accent and dark, curly hair.
“Touch me,” she whispers to him. “Please help me understand.”
He dips his head to kiss her again and she feels light-headed, like she’s once again drunk the champagne and spun around the Maypole. But beneath it is still that fire, that flame waiting to be a conflagration.
“Catherine,” he whispers, and she revels in the sound of her name on his lips. He never uses it. “Do you know how to touch yourself?”
“I beg your pardon?” She looks up at him, startled.
He takes his fingertips and brushes them across her breasts, still bound in the linen she’s been wearing instead of a corset.
“Here, lass.” Her nipples peak beneath his fingers but he leaves them covered as he drags his touch down the front of her chest and abdomen, stopping below her belly button. “Or here?”
“Yes,” she says, remembering again her own fingers fumbling in the dark.
“Would you like to try it now?” he asks, and the heat in his eyes nearly undoes her. “With me?”
“Yes,” she says.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes,” she says. “Yes.”
He tugs the hem of her nightshirt up and she lifts her arms to help him.
“Like Christmas morning,” he murmurs, catching sight of her bound breasts. He moves slowly, unwrapping her, caressing her as he goes. His fingers gently brushing against her nipples and then trailing down the divot of skin between her breasts.
“Show me,” he says, “how you touch yourself.”
She puts her hands to her own breasts, caressing them as he’s done. Her fingers find her nipple and she gives it a tweak. She makes a little sound as she does that causes him to shudder beneath her. He presses his hips and hardness into her once again and she grinds herself against it.
“Like this,” she says and takes his hand and places it on her breast. He squeezes the nipple like she’s done, and she throws her head back, her eyes closing.
“Again,” she says. “Do it again, please.”
He obliges until she’s trembling and aching. Her hips moving against him, too fast.
“Slow down,” he whispers and brings his large hands to her sides, holding her still. “We’re not in a hurry.” He kisses her again and then asks, “Where else do you like to touch yourself?”
“I’ll show you,” she says, feeling the flame of embarrassment tinge her cheeks again. “If you’ll show me too. A touch for a touch.”
“Aye, lass. A touch for a touch.”
He regrets it the moment he says it. Because there’s no going back from this kind of intimacy once they share it. He stares at her for a moment, cheeks flushed and pink in a way he rarely gets to see.
A little droplet of sweat has appeared at her hairline and is purling down the side of her temple. Her heart beats so fast that the rapid up and down of her chest reminds him of a hummingbird’s wings.
He knows there’s no going back, and he also knows he doesn’t want to go back.
He wants this. He wants her. And for the first time, there’s no reason he can think of that he can’t have her.
She’s no longer engaged. She’s as far away from the blasted English aristocracy as she can get.
And she’s here, in front of him, all bright eyes and mischievous smile and want.
And she’s waiting for him. For him.
He lifts himself off her so they’re facing each other on the small bed, and then reaches out to gently cup her cheek with his hand.
“Are ye sure?” he asks.
“Aye,” she says, her eyes never leaving his, and her face breaking into the grin he loves.
“Aye, indeed, ye wee Menace.”
He moves his hand slowly, so slowly, to his trousers. He undoes the first button and glances up at her. She’s staring, transfixed. So he undoes the second and the third. When he reaches the last and his cock springs free, he hears her make a little gasp.
He can’t help but grip himself and give his hard length a slow, lazy tug. He feels full and hot and desperate for friction. But not yet. He makes some kind of gurgling, frustrated noise but removes his hand.
“When I say touch yourself,” he says, “I mean do you know how to bring yourself pleasure?”
He looks at her, eyes wide and blue.
“Yes,” she says, but her voice is unsteady now.
“Catherine, would you like to stop?” He will, of course, the moment she says so. He’ll shove his hard cock back into his trousers no matter how much that might hurt.
“No,” she says.
“Then what is it, lass? It’s okay to be nervous.”
“It’s only… I had no idea what it would look like. What you would look like. I mean, I’ve seen the marbles, of course, but they look nothing like you.”
He glances down at his own hard member. He’s never given it much thought before, that he knows the exact contours of a woman’s body and has done for half his life. But women are not afforded such opportunities to know men.
“And?” he asks, “do you like what you see, lass?”
“Are you shamelessly begging for compliments, Captain?”
He grips his cock again and slides his hand up and down it, the tip already leaking. He grunts and grins at her. “Aye. I believe I’m doing exactly that.”
“Well,” her eyes glint. “Yours is the handsomest… what should I call it?”
“Cock will do,” he says and allows himself one more stroke.
“Well, then. Yours is the handsomest cock I’ve ever seen.”
“‘Tis the only cock you’ve ever seen, I’d warrant.”
“That is true. Andrew?”
“Yes, lass?”
“What do you call… me? If yours is a cock, what is mine? The real words please. No euphemisms.”
She leans back on her elbows and spreads her legs so he can see her.
A groan escapes his lips at the sight of her, pink and swollen with need already.
Glistening as the tip of his cock is glistening.
As if they’re made for each other—these two particular puzzle pieces ready to slip together and interlock. He feels his hips buck involuntarily.
“That,” he says, “is the most beautiful quim I’ve ever seen.”
“Quim? That’s what you call it?”
She slides her hand down and rests it there but she doesn’t move, just lightly presses into herself. His hips buck again into the air. She makes a little noise, a kind of mewling sound that sets his blood on fire.
“There are other names. Lady’s garden, cunt, cunny. How do you touch your cunny when you’re alone at night?”
Her fingers begin to move in a gentle circular motion. “Like this,” she says.
“Look at me, lass.”
She turns her blue eyes to his and they lock into each other.
He clasps his balls and groans, before moving his hand back to his cock.
Their eyes never leave each other as their hands begin to move.
The air around them turns heavy with the scent of arousal.
He tries to savor it as the pleasure builds within him, tries to make each motion long and slow, but he’s already too close to peaking.
His hips are already moving as if he’s inside her. He squeezes himself again, hard.
“Why do you do that?” she asks. “Squeeze yourself?”
“Because I’ve waited six long months for this, lass. And I’m damn well going to make it last as long as I can.”
He gives his tip a little twist and grunts at the sheer bloody pleasure of it. At having her watch him.
“You like that,” she says. “A twist at the tip. You close your eyes when you do it.”
“Aye, I do. Will you show me what you like? Where you put your fingers to give yourself the most pleasure.”
She bites her lip and he sees her flush, pink with embarrassment or desire or some mixture of both. Pink on her cheeks, pink on her quim. He’s never loved pink before the way he loves it now.
“I take my finger,” she says and slips it up inside her. “And I put it here.”
“Aye,” he grips himself again. He can’t stop it. Can’t help it. “Show me, Menace, what you desire.”
“Catherine,” she says. “Call me Catherine.”
“Aye.” Another hard stroke of his length and he’s leaking and trembling and grunting. “Show me, Catherine. Please, sweetheart.”
“Like this,” she says and she arches her back. Her fingers moving now to the outside, where he knows that little sensitive bud lies. He wants to touch it for her. He wants to suck on it and hear her noises and watch her see stars.
He wants to plunge himself into her, but he doesn’t. And this is enough. It’s almost too much, the shared intensity of watching each other. Of bringing each other to the peak of pleasure without ever touching one another. It’s beyond any other sexual experience he’s ever had.
“Are ye wet?” he asks, his voice straining. He can see the glisten on her fingertips.
“Yes,” she whispers, her eyes moving between his face and his hand.
“For me?”
“Yes, Andrew. For you.”
She moans then, while his hand flies up and down himself.
“Do you know what it will feel like when you’re close?”
“Maybe,” she says, and he can hear the change in her voice and the timber of the noises she’s making. He’s never heard anything so beautiful in his entire life.
“Imagine your fingers are mine,” he says, his hand flying over his cock now, his cadence hard and driving. “How it would feel to have my hand there, my fingers gently massaging your quim.”
She whimpers at that, and then her fingers begin to move faster, small circular motions over her most sensitive parts.
Fuck. He’s losing control and he doesn’t bloody care.
He lets his hand go at the pace it wants to now, faster and harder up and down his shaft, the feeling electrifying his cock and his balls and the deep pit of his stomach. His gaze moves from her fingers to her blue eyes and locks there.
“Imagine,” he says, “that I take one finger and I glide it up into ye. Ye’re wet, are ye no’? Slick and hot and ready for me. Christ.” He groans again and his voice hitches, his breathing labored. He strokes himself harder and squeezes the tip of his shaft.
“Ye Gods, Menace. I can imagine the feel of ye wrapped aroun’ me. My cock buried deep inside yer quim.”
She closes her eyes and slides a finger back inside herself while the other still circles her little center of pleasure. They fall quiet but for the whispers of hand against skin, their groans of shared desire.
And then she lets out a sharp, “Oh,” and he knows she’s there and he can let himself go.
“Look at me,” he says and her eyes lock back onto him while his hand moves faster and faster until he feels the lightning move up from the base of his spine and burst through him.
“Jaysus goddamned Christ! I cannae!”
The cum explodes out of him in long, milky strings. He watches her throw her head back and groan into her own orgasm, and a second wave of pleasure washes over him at the sight of her. He comes and he comes and he comes and Jesus wept, he’s never ever experienced anything like it.
“Holy mother of God,” he murmurs before he reaches for her and pulls her close, pressing her into his chest.
He might never be the same again. A Scots pine forever felled indeed.