Chapter 23
Without another word he turned her around a pillar and through the servants’ doorway, almost colliding with a footman as he did so.
With a quick excuse to the startled servant, Tristan pulled her down the plain corridor until they reached the back stairs.
Heart thumping, Joan followed him up and up the winding stair and then down a long corridor.
This floor was not open for guests, and it was quiet and deserted.
Tristan tried a door, and swung it open to reveal a small library or study.
The walls were lined with shelves of well-worn books, and a comfortable-looking sofa, positioned in front of the fireplace, had more books stacked on one end.
A pair of French windows opened onto a tiny balcony at the other end of the room, with the rooftops of London visible in the moonlight.
“What is this?” Joan turned to Tristan. “Did you know this room was here?”
“Yes.” He closed the door softly behind him. “It’s Sir Paul’s private library. I was at school with his son Tom, and came to visit on holiday one term. We sat up here and drank his brandy one night until we were sick.”
Yet another lonely holiday for him, brazening his way into a friend’s home and trying to act like a man. She put her hand on his arm. “Such a bold boy you were.”
“Well.” He smirked. “We were nineteen, not quite babes in arms.”
Joan blinked, then laughed. She laughed and laughed, even as he gathered her into his arms and pressed his face against her neck.
“Christ above, you smell good,” he breathed, his lips whispering over her skin.
“Bergamot.” She let her head fall to the side to better revel in his attentions. “And orange.”
“I could devour you.” His teeth grazed her earlobe, and she had to cling to his jacket to remain on her feet, she felt so unsteady. “Would you let me?”
Her head was already spinning—cursed champagne—but his words conjured images straight out of 50 Ways to Sin. “How?”
“One long, slow kiss at a time.” He pressed examples along her jaw. “From your head to your toe and back to your maddening, gorgeous mouth.”
She was leaning against him, her head thrown back in abandon. “Maddening?”
“In all senses of the word.” He brushed a light kiss on the corner of her lips. “Infuriating and beguiling enough to drive me out of my wits from desire.”
She shivered. “Desire . . .”
His low laugh was harsh. “You know I want you—beyond all temperance or reason. Do you want me? Tell me, Joan, before I truly do run mad . . .”
She opened her eyes, more than a little drunk on the fervor in his words and the burning passion in his kisses. And, perhaps, just a shade, on the champagne. His face was taut with hunger, his body rigid in her arms. “I do,” she said. “Now kiss me.”
He kissed her. Deeply, hungrily, possessively.
Joan felt a flicker of surprise—was this the sort of unwise kiss Evangeline had warned her about?
—before she succumbed to the carnal promise it offered.
It seemed as though she had waited her entire life for a kiss such as this.
He tasted of champagne, and every stroke of his tongue against hers seemed to reinvigorate the feeling of fizzing in her blood.
She clung to him, laying herself open for his conquest. There was no more resistance in her; he had won—her heart, her mind, and most definitely her body.
“I want to taste your skin.” He whispered the words against her lips as his fingers played with the fastening of her gown.
“Yes,” she sighed, letting him urge her back until she leaned against the pilaster.
Her bodice loosened and he skimmed his fingers along the neckline, teasing it down until her breasts were only covered by her shift.
His mouth followed, blazing a hot, wet trail over the highly sensitized flesh of her bosom.
By the time his thumb grazed her nipple, it was already standing firm and eager.
With a faint growl he yanked her corset and shift down, and sucked the rigid nub into his mouth.
Her mouth fell open in a silent cry. He sank down on one knee, suckling her by turns roughly, and then delicately. She groped for support and ended with her hands threaded through his long hair, speechlessly urging him on as he moved to her other breast, leaving each stinging and full.
“Sweeter than strawberries,” he rasped. “Richer than cream.” His hands moved down, from her waist over her hips and down the backs of her legs until he reached her knee. “Spread your legs a little for me, darling. Yes, like that . . .” he crooned, urging her feet apart. “I want to drive you mad.”
“You’re doing a damned”—she gulped for air—”damned fine job of it already!”
He laughed quietly. “And I’ve hardly begun.” His fingers traced feathery circles over her ankle before drifting upward.
Joan held very still, every breath rippling through her like a strong breeze through the leaves.
She couldn’t see anything but his face, dark and focused in the moonlight.
She couldn’t feel anything but his fingers stroking lightly up her shin .
. . now at her knee . . . now climbing her thigh, pausing to move aside the cloth of her pantalets . . .
“By my bloody eyes,” she gasped, her body arcing as he parted the damp curls and laid his thumb on a spot that seemed to burst at his touch.
“God Almighty,” he said, his voice shaking. “You’re so soft—so wet—” His thumb circled and rubbed, and Joan twisted in a pleasure so sharp, it was almost pain.
“Stop,” she whimpered. “What is that?”
“Not yet.” But his touch gentled, until she had the sensation of being coaxed along, guided.
She held still for a while, until some primal feeling made her hips rock and sway of their own accord.
The shudders of pleasure built anew. He pulled her closer with a wordless murmur, kissing her breast again.
Joan sighed and melted against him, letting him drown her apprehensions in the wicked stroke of his fingers between her legs and in the delicious attention he lavished on her bared bosom.
“By all the gods, I want to make love to you.” He kissed her again. She cupped her hands around his jaw and held him to her, marveling at the sheen of perspiration on his face.
“What do you mean?”
She could feel his pulse hammering under her palms. Tristan gazed deep into her eyes, his own gaze feverishly bright, as he slowly probed and then inserted his finger inside her body.
“I want to lodge myself here,” he whispered.
His finger withdrew and then slid back in.
Joan could hardly breathe. “Again and again.” He repeated his earlier action, sliding higher and deeper than before.
His thumb rolled over that locus of nerves, and her knees almost gave out.
“Until you scream my name in the pinnacle of pleasure and I expire inside you.” Again he penetrated her, but this time a little harder, and his thumb pressed in time with the stroke.
The blood roared through her veins. Her body shook.
She should say no, but . . . She was in love with him.
No matter how many times she told herself he wasn’t the sort of man a girl like her married, she loved him.
No matter what her mother thought of him, she wanted him.
She had pictured him making love to her as wantonly as Lady Constance’s lovers did to her, and now it was happening.
And just as she had dreamed, he was looking at her as though she was the most beautiful, desirable woman in the world.
For the first time in her life she felt the thrill of being wanted—madly and passionately—and if it made her wicked to revel in that, then she was glad to be wicked.
“Yes,” she whispered. “Yes, Tristan.”
He went very still, except for the heaving of his chest. “What?”
She nodded, even though the action almost made her lose her balance. “Yes. I want you.”
He quaked. She felt it. Then he slipped his hand out from between her legs.
She was shocked at how bereft she felt by that, but he wrapped his arms around her and lifted her off her feet, carrying her to the sofa, where he leaned her back against a pile of cushions and dropped to his knees between her parted legs.
“You need to see how desperately I want you.” He stripped off his jacket and unbuttoned his trousers.
Joan gaped as he shoved down his trousers and smallclothes and bared his male member to her gaze.
It looked enormous, jutting fiercely from his body.
It was too dim to tell much detail, but it was darker than the skin of his face, and as she stared in fascination, it twitched and surged upward all on its own.
“It stands at attention, insistent and distracting, whenever you come near me.” He folded his shirt out of the way and reached for her hand.
“It knows no reason, no caution, no restraint, only that you make it rise, hard and furious, every time you simper at me or deliver a stinging set-down or cling to my arm because you fear the balloon is about to crash.” He laid her fingers on his member, and Joan’s eyes widened even more.
It was hot and smooth, thick and long and so very hard.
“It was like this in the balloon?”
“Not quite so frantic, but ready at a moment’s notice.” He exhaled, moving his hips so that her hand glided along his length. “You know it was like this in my bathing room.”
She managed a nod. Yes, she’d felt it, although she’d had no real idea how much larger it would look.