Chapter 25
Catherine kissed her husband with everything she had.
Her fingers curled into his shirt, pulling, and she felt his hands slide into her hair, tilting her head to deepen the kiss. His tongue stroked against hers, hot and possessive, and the sound he made when she opened wider for him sent heat flooding between her thighs.
She shifted without thinking, swinging her leg over his lap until she was straddling him on the narrow piano bench, her skirts bunching around her hips. The bench screeched dangerously beneath them. She did not much care.
The moment she settled against him, feeling the hard, unmistakable ridge of him pressed directly against the aching heat between her legs, they both gasped into each other’s mouths.
“Catherine,” he moaned gutturally like a prayer.
She did not answer with words. She rocked against him instead, seeking friction, and the groan that tore from his chest made something fierce and wild surge through her.
Her fingers worked at the buttons of his waistcoat, clumsy with desperation, and he shrugged out of it without breaking the kiss.
His cravat followed, landing somewhere on the floor.
His hands found the fastenings of her gown. The hooks gave way one by one, frantic and fumbling, and she arched into him as the bodice loosened and cool air met her flushed skin.
“Too many layers,” he muttered against her mouth.
“Far too many,” she agreed breathlessly.
He tugged the sleeves down her arms, letting the gown pool around her waist. Her stays followed, unlaced with shaking fingers, until she sat astride him in nothing but her chemise, the thin cotton clinging to her breasts, rosy nipples stiff and visible through the sheer fabric.
His cobalt gaze darkened. He stared at her as though she were something he had been ravenous for, and then his hands came up to cup her breasts, thumbs brushing across the tight peaks through the linen, and her breath left her in a rush.
She rocked against him again, harder this time, and felt the wet heat of her own arousal dampening the front of his breeches where they pressed together. The friction was delicious. Maddening. Not nearly enough.
His mouth dropped to her throat, kissing and sucking at the skin there while his hands kneaded her breasts, and Catherine threw her head back with a broken sound that was pure want.
She felt his fingers hook into the neckline of her chemise and tug downward, baring her to the waist, and then his mouth closed over one nipple, and she nearly came undone on the spot.
The wet heat of his tongue, the gentle scrape of his teeth, the way he sucked and laved at the tight bud until it was swollen and aching, made her hips roll against him in helpless, rhythmic pulses.
She clutched at his shoulders, his hair, anything solid, because the sensation was so sharp, so overwhelmingly good, that she felt as though she might fly apart.
“We should,” he said roughly against her skin, “move. Before this bench collapses.”
“I don’t care if it does,” she gasped.
He laughed, breathless and raw, and lifted his head to look at her. His eyes were nearly black, his mouth swollen and damp. “I do. I will not have our first time end with us in a heap on the floor.”
“Our… first time?” she repeated. Something about the words, the promise in them, made butterflies cavort in her stomach.
He stood, lifting her with him, her legs wrapped tight around his waist, and carried her across the room to the chaise near the window.
He lowered her onto the velvet cushions with surprising gentleness, following her down, and the full weight of him pressing her into the soft upholstery made her feel safe.
His mouth found hers again, kissing her deeply while his hands worked at her chemise, dragging it up her thighs, over her hips.
She lifted her arms and let him pull it over her head, and then she was bare beneath him except for her stockings, and his gaze raked over her with such raw, unguarded hunger that she felt it like a brand.
“You are so beautiful…” he muttered hoarsely, “it frightens me I might break you.”
“Don’t be frightened,” she whispered. “Be with me.”
He kissed her again, slower this time, and his mouth began to wander.
Down her throat. Across her collarbone. Between the hollow of her pert breasts.
He took his time with each one, sucking and licking until she was writhing beneath him, her hips seeking pressure, seeking him.
His mouth trailed lower. Across her ribs.
The soft curve of her belly. Lower still.
“Aaron…” she breathed, half question, half plea.
He looked up at her from between her thighs, and the wicked gleam in his eyes made her pulse kick hard.
“I’ve wanted to taste you again so bad.”
Then his mouth was on her, and her back arched clean off the chaise with a cry that echoed off the parlor walls.
He licked into her with broad, deliberate strokes, his tongue moving through the slick heat of her arousal with a thoroughness that made her thighs shake.
He found the swollen nub at the top and circled it, teasing, before sealing his lips around it and sucking gently.
The sensation was so sharp, so devastatingly intense, that Catherine grabbed at his hair with both hands, torn between pulling him closer and pushing him away because it was too much, it was too much, she could not possibly—
Just before her climax could absorb her into its firmaments, he withdrew, and she squirmed in beautiful agony. He rose above her, wiping his mouth with the back of his wrist, his eyes blazing.
His shirt rolled off in a smooth maneuver, and heat shot through her. The flex of his shoulders, the hard planes of his stomach. God, she wanted to taste him. Wanted her hands on all that bare skin, wanted to feel the way his breath would hitch under her touch.
Then his hands went to the buttons of his breeches, and Catherine watched through heavy-lidded eyes as he freed himself, as the hard, thick length of him sprang free, flushed and straining.
He settled between her thighs, and she felt the broad head of his manhood press against her entrance, and her throat tightened.
“If it hurts,” he murmured, his voice low and serious, “tell me.”
She nodded once, trembling.
He pushed forward slowly, and the stretch of him was enormous. Her fingernails dug into his broad shoulders, gripping hard, and he stilled immediately.
“Breathe…” he murmured, his forehead pressed to hers. “That’s it. Just breathe.”
She did. Long, shuddering pulls of air that seemed to ease the overwhelming fullness, and when she exhaled and shifted her hips experimentally, he slid deeper.
The sensation was strange at first. Almost uncomfortable.
But as he pushed in further, inch by careful inch, something shifted.
The discomfort gave way to something else.
A fullness that felt complete. Sinfully seraphic.
When he was finally seated to the hilt inside her, buried as deep as he could possibly go, they both let out broken sounds.
“Are you well?” he asked, his voice strained.
“I am,” she whispered. “More than well… Move. Please.”
He withdrew almost completely, the drag of his arousal against her inner walls making her vision blur, and then he thrust back in, slow and deep.
She gasped, her nails digging into his shoulders, and he did it again.
And again. Each thrust steady and deliberate, letting her body adjust, letting her learn the rhythm of him.
“Good?” he asked roughly.
“Yes. Oh yes...”
He shifted the angle slightly, and the next thrust hit something inside her that made her cry out, sharp and startled. He stilled immediately.
“Was that—”
“Don’t stop,” she gasped. “Whatever you just did, do it again!”
A slow, wicked smile crossed his face. He thrust again, hitting that same spot, and her back arched fully off the chaise, her mouth falling open on a broken moan.
He set a rhythm then that was deeper, harder, each thrust driving him against that place inside her that made pleasure spiral tighter and tighter in her belly.
The slick sounds of their bodies joining filled the room, mingling with her gasping breaths and his low, guttural groans, and Catherine had never felt anything so raw, so consuming, so utterly perfect.
His hand slid between their bodies, finding the swollen nub at the top of her sex, and he circled it with his thumb while he kept moving inside her. The dual sensation was too much. She was going to shatter. She was going to—
“Look at me,” he growled, his voice coarse and commanding.
She forced her eyes open. His face was above hers, flushed and damp with sweat, his pupils blown wide. He looked intoxicated. Undone. And the intensity in his gaze, the way he was watching her as though she were a goddess of worship, made something small and significant crack open in her chest.
Her release built like a wave, enormous and inevitable, and when it finally crested, it tore through her with a force that left her gasping and trembling. Her body clenched around him, tight and pulsing, and she heard him groan low and broken as her climax triggered his own.
He thrust once more, twice, and then he was spilling inside her, hot and thick, his hips jerking erratically as he emptied himself with a shuddering groan that she felt in her bones.
For a long moment, neither of them moved. They lay tangled together on the chaise, divine and breathing hard, slick with sweat and trembling.
Finally, he lifted his head to look at her. His hair was disheveled, his eyes worn and wondering, and there was something vulnerable in his expression that made her throat close up.
He kissed her then, slow and sweet and achingly tender, and Catherine wrapped her arms around him and held on, and thought that perhaps this, right here, was what happiness felt like.