Chapter 12 #2
His hands clutched her hips, lifting her, his cock poised below the entrance of her sex. Bliss awaited them, but it was hers to decide and take. Sweat pinpricked his skin, as anticipation built inside him.
Inch by slow, careful inch, she lowered onto him, her quim stretching around him, taking him inside. Oh, the slick, tight feel of her. When she’d taken all she could handle for the moment, she paused, her eyes closed, her mouth parted, her breath quick and shallow.
His mouth found her neck, and his hands her bodice, pushing it low, giving her breasts leave to spill over in all their voluptuous glory.
He cupped one in each hand and still they didn’t fit.
“Valentina,” he groaned as he shifted forward to taste them, taking one delicious nipple, then the other, into his mouth.
She steadied herself on his shoulders and began moving up and down on him, slowly, deliberately, drawing her pleasure from his cock inch by inch. The feel of being inside her…sublime…right. Never had it felt like this.
His hands again found her hips, and he began thrusting with calculated intention. That he would reach climax was a foregone conclusion. But he wanted to bring her over that edge with him.
“You’re so big,” she gasped. “And you feel so good.”
A chuckle rumbled from him. “Flattery will get you everywhere.”
“As long as it’s with you.”
Her hips swiveled, grinding her quim against him, driving him wild for her, as he thrust deeper.
“You’re almost too much,” she gasped. A little smile hovered at the corner of her mouth. “Almost.”
Beneath hands that nearly spanned her waist, he felt a tension enter her body—the specific tension that preceded climax.
She was so…so…so close… Then on a cry that filled the carriage, she broke, her quim pulsing around him.
Her head fallen to his shoulder, her breath ragged and hot against his neck, as he drove inside her, his own release building, ready to collapse on him.
Then climax crashed through him, pushing him over the edge into oblivion, lighting sparks of desire, pleasure, and lust into a full conflagration. “Valentina,” he shouted.
The feel of her—her body enervated and draped atop him…her slick warmth holding him tight—this was heaven. It was that simple.
At last, he slowed to a stop, panting into her hair.
Though this had been a romp in a carriage, the moment between them felt more than intimate. It felt…
Significant.
That was the difference between being with Valentina and anyone else.
With her, this act of coupling contained significance.
And perhaps it was that feeling which sent a question falling from his mouth, into her ear. “Did you mean it?” he asked with an utter seriousness that felt new. Why did everything feel new with Valentina?
“Mean what?” she asked as if the response had been dragged from her. She was still floating in the hazy, in-between state of entering her body again. From the sound of it, she was resisting.
Still, he needed to know. “What you said.”
He felt a lazy smile against his neck. “I said a great many things.”
As long as it’s with you.
Those had been her exact words.
And he wanted to know if she’d meant them.
They’d been like an arrow shot—whissing through the air and meeting their end at a point directly in the center of his chest.
But his nerve failed him at the last second. “That part about me being so, ahem…”
“Big?” She giggled.
“Good,” he finished on a chuckle. “Hoyden,” he added.
That would have to do for now.
He wasn’t even sure he had the right to ask about the other words. After tomorrow, he may never see her again, and those were simply the words one spoke while in the throes of passion. They tended to lose their heat once bodies cooled.
Right.
“We never did get those stockings removed,” he said.
She pushed against his chest and straightened, tugging her bodice up so her glorious breasts were lost to view.
He experienced a pang. This was the beginning of her separating from him.
This pang… Another novel experience.
“I believe we managed to work around them.” She pushed off him, her skirts falling to her ankles before she returned to the opposite bench. He adjusted himself and closed the fall of his trousers.
As he stared across the distance now separating them, that pang stole through him again. He wanted her in his arms. He wasn’t sure he’d ever let her go.
But he must. He wasn’t a medieval warlord, and she wasn’t truly his to claim and possess.
Right.
Toward that end, he said, “Shall we run through what will happen tonight?”
She nodded.
“There will be a point in the evening where you and I will be seen talking by Nestor. Then I will very pointedly turn in his direction and nod at him.”
“Ah, The Nod.” She looked slightly skeptical.
“Yes.”
“And that is all?”
“When he arrives home from the musicale, a note will be waiting for him. It will inform him that he will need to be at Epsom at one of the clock tomorrow with the money in guineas.”
“You think it will meet with success?”
“Yes.” Archie hadn’t a single doubt.
“Why?”
“Because I’m offering Nestor what he truly wants.”
“Which is?”
“His family’s return to the highest level of Society.”
Valentina’s jaw tightened. “He doesn’t deserve it.”
“It will be paradise regained, then paradise lost again.”
“Good.” She released a long exhale. “And I’m to be the silent contessa again tonight.”
“Your last performance.”
Her hands fidgeted with each other. “And after tomorrow, we’ll have no reason to see each other again.”
“Not unless you can think of one.”
The words hung in the space between them, true and immovable. He hadn’t spoken them with suggestion or salaciousness.
Her gaze, serious and questioning, searched his, then skittered away to stare out the window. They’d entered the City of London and would be arriving at Casa Windermere within minutes.
Archie couldn’t help feeling that an opportunity was slipping away from him, if it wasn’t entirely lost already.
But how to grab hold and seize it?
He hadn’t experience with that.
But he would need to be a quick learner if he was to have any chance.