Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
“Are you going to turn the key in the lock?”
Juliet should gasp in ladylike shock.
She should shoot to her feet and flee the licentiousness being proposed beneath the outer layer of that question.
What happened the other night was to have been but once.
Rory began rolling up one, then the other, sleeve of his shirt, exposing forearms sinewy with muscle and fuzzed with golden hair.
And she knew she wouldn’t flee.
With that simple question, he’d brought her not only to the point of decision, but to the point of commitment.
There would be no doubts of intention between them.
For there he stood, languid, with his exposed chest and forearms and with that particular dark expression in his eyes, looking like Adonis, and who was she to resist?
After all, she was only a woman.
She rose to her feet and, with firm decision, walked to the door.
Her heart a butterfly in her chest, she twisted the key in the lock.
She turned and pressed her back against solid wood, not ready to move toward him yet.
“This was a bold idea, you know. Here, at Dalhousie Manor, in full light of afternoon.”
“Boldness wins the day.”
“I take it neither of us is going to apologize for the other night.”
“No.”
She pushed off the door and took a step.
The way he was propped against the wall…
his shirt a wide V exposing the muscles of his chest…
his arms crossed before him showing bare forearms to particular advantage…
the cock of his head…the wickedness in his eyes…
the knowing curve of his smile…the dimple in his left cheek…
They all added to one undeniable truth.
A man who looked like he wanted nothing more than to be ravished.
By her.
Again.
She took another step, drawn to him by a force she was powerless to control. “And here I thought your penchant for wickedness extended only to bedrooms.”
He gave his head a slow shake. “My penchant for wickedness extends to rooms where I find myself alone with you.”
His words poured through her like molten lava.
She stopped a mere foot away, their gazes locked. She reached out and caressed the side of his face, sharp cheekbones and soft beard beneath her fingertips. She saw in his eyes permission—to touch him…to make him hers for as long as they were alone in this room together.
She would make the most of it.
She pulled his shirt from his trousers and lifted it over his head. One advantage of being a tall woman, she supposed. Though, unlike many men, he had yet a few inches on her. The garment landed unnoticed on the floor.
Solid and bulky from farm labor, he was all gorgeous man in the bright daylight. Her fingers couldn’t resist exploring the ridges and valleys of his sculpted torso before following the dusting of hair down to the waistband of his trousers. “Oh, Rory,” she muttered. “Just look at you.”
A chuckle rumbled through his chest.
She met his eyes, unable to match his humor, for she was utterly serious. “I need to see the rest of you.”
Oh, and there was his wickedness twining alongside the humor in his eyes. “As you please, my lady.”
And his mouth when he smiled like that… She needed to kiss it. She lifted onto the tips of her toes and pressed her lips to his, their breath mingling. It was a kiss that promised more…later.
First, she had more exploring to do.
And perhaps other parts of his body to kiss.
She tore her mouth from his and met his dark, wicked gaze. A dare glinted in there. The rigid bulge pressing against brown superfine drew her eye. Instinctively, her palm grazed along the hard length, pulling a rumble from him.
Until this very moment, she hadn’t been certain what to do next. But now, feeling him, an idea began to form… She could do more than kiss him above his waistband.
She flicked open a few buttons and the fall of his trousers released and there he was—long, thick, hard…begging for a touch…begging for a lick.
As she lowered to her knees, driven by this novel feeling, he caught her beneath the chin, forcing her to meet his gaze. “Is this what you want?”
The answer was simple. “Yes.”
And she continued her descent, one hand instinctively wrapping around his hip to find his taut bottom.
She gave it a squeeze. Hard, like the rest of him.
Fingertips feathered along the velvety length of his shaft, its pulse throbbing with promise.
She breathed him in…salt…pine…the deep, complex scent of man… musk and earth and vital.
She lifted her gaze and met his eye and held as she dragged her tongue up his hot shaft.
She hadn’t any idea if she was going about this the correct way, but the flaring of his pupils, turning his eyes nearly black, told her she was doing something right.
How intimate was the smooth, hard, searing feel of this skin against hers.
In a strange way, the intimacy of the other night was nothing to this.
Her mouth parted, opening to accommodate his girth as she took him in.
His hand found the top of her head, his fingers weaving through her hair and clutching.
The room’s only sound was the ragged in and out of his breath as her hand tightened around him and developed a rhythm with her mouth as he penetrated deeper.
Lightning borne of want and need—longing and lust—streaked through her veins, tore through her body, creating a void inside her that opened wider with every slide of his manhood inside her mouth…
every flick of her tongue against him…every moan that poured from his parted lips… every uttered, “Juliet.”
Her name on his mouth while her lips were wrapped around his shaft…
This was wickedness.
This was intimacy.
This was all she ever wanted.
“Juliet,” he said again, but a change in his voice. “We must stop.”
Without releasing him, she gave her head a little shake. They’d only gotten started.
He chuckled. “You must stop,” rasped across his throat. “Or I won’t be able to.”
And she caught his meaning. He was nearing release.
Well, that wouldn’t do.
Not yet, anyway.
Slowly, she pulled back, his length slipping from her mouth one inch at a time. Before he pulled completely away, she gave his manhood a parting kiss.
He slid his hands beneath her shoulders and lifted. As she stood before this man mostly naked in all his masculine beauty, she became acutely aware that she was still fully clothed.
Again, that word came to her. Transgressive.
And another one, too.
Delicious.
Dark intention in his eyes, he pulled her to him with one hand as his other reached beneath her skirts, trailing up her thighs. Then his fingers were sliding against the swollen flesh of her slit. “Just as I thought,” he rumbled into her ear.
“What?” she exhaled, gasping at the slick friction of his calloused fingers against her.
“Wet.”
Oh, that a single three-letter word could incite a riot of need inside her. But—oh—she needed—oh—more of him…now. She would burst into a ball of flame if she didn’t have him. Her hips gave a greedy swivel, aching for more of his touch.
Of a sudden, he pressed his hand firmly against her lower back, hips now against hers, his cock hot and hard between their bodies, and stepped her backwards until her bottom bumped against a desk.
She gave a short hop and perched onto the oak edge, still fully clothed, but her skirts gathered about her hips, the only flesh exposed her most intimate parts—the skin of her thighs above her garters and…
her quim with its dusting of black curls and pink center.
The ravenous look in his eyes as he feasted upon the view was nearly enough to bring her to the point of release.
But not yet…
She parted her knees wide and reached for him, giving herself utterly and completely over to wickedness, as her arms twined around his neck.
He stepped between her legs, and she pulled his face to hers, greedy for every touch she could have of him.
As her lips touched his, so, too, did his manhood graze against her slit.
A jagged groan poured from her. “I need you inside me,” she spoke against his mouth. “Now.”
Her tongue met his in a carnal tangle, her hips pressing forward, this sheer need overwhelming her. He reached between them and guided the head of his manhood to the entrance of her sex.
“Greedy for it, are you?”
“Oh, yes,” she groaned, her legs wrapping around his waist.
But he didn’t push into her in the rush she all but demanded.
Inch by deliberate inch, he penetrated her, taking his time, letting her quim adjust to his girth.
Sparks flew where they touched—her hands roving across the furred muscles of his chest and back…
his fingers toying with her breasts, squeezing the hardened tips…
the join of his cock inside her quim… even there—especially there—with every push in and out of her, as their coupling took on a demanding, unrelenting rhythm, the desk groaning beneath them.
A sheen of perspiration pinpricked her skin.
It could almost be described as animalistic, except…
It wasn’t.
This joining of his body with hers was more.
He lowered his head to take one of her nipples into his mouth. Her head arced back when he lightly bit down and landed a direct hit of pleasure in the center of her sex. “Do…oh…do that again,” she begged.
He sucked her other nipple into his mouth, his tongue teasing the tip.
The now-familiar coiling sensation began winding her sex tight, taking her in its grip, turning her into naught more than a frenzied vessel of need with every thrust. Again, his teeth nipped her tight bud, and without warning, her sex broke in sudden climax, pulsing its release around him.
“Juliet,” he muttered against her. “You are a revelation.”
Here was more as she lifted outside herself, her hands gripping his shoulders while he impaled her upon his turgid length—relentless, focused—his own pleasure driving him toward his own completion.
Her quim felt spent and like he was too much and yet it still wanted this.
This was the territory that extended beyond the carnal and animal and into the place that contained their souls.
With a muffled roar into the curve of her throat, his release collapsed onto him, and he spent his seed.
In the aftermath of seconds slower than the usual beat of time, his movements eased, but he didn’t part from her.
Instead, he gathered her closer into the secure warmth of his embrace, his breath ragged against her shoulder.
“Rory,” she muttered into his neck. “I never knew this about you.”
“What is that?” He hadn’t lifted his face from her hair.
“How magnificent you are.”
“I am a rather large, lumbering fellow.”
She angled her head without pulling fully away and caught his turquoise gaze. “Not your body. You, Rory. You are magnificent.”
He tensed, and she had the distinct feeling she’d spoken precisely the wrong words.
“Ah.”
He pulled away. She experienced loss the instant he separated from her.
How was it she was now only whole when he was inside her?
He tugged her skirts down over her knees, the fabric dropping to her shins.
“Ah?” She’d said something wrong, but couldn’t understand what.
He buttoned the fall of his trousers, his chest still bare. “You are new to this.”
“This?”
“Tupping.”
Her brow lifted as she waited in silence for him to continue.
“You’re not yet acquainted with the particular feelings that flow through the body and mind after a good—”
“Tup?” She was, however, familiar with the particular feeling that was currently flowing through her. Pique. “Would you care to explain it to me?”
He spread his hands wide. “It’s just that sometimes it provokes people to express emotions that they likely won’t feel as strongly in an hour or so.”
She nodded slowly. “So, you’re saying that in sixty minutes I won’t find you quite as magnificent as I do now?”
“I might’ve sunk to middling by then.” He hesitated. “Or worse.”
“Or worse?”
Darkness flashed behind his eyes. “You might think me a rake by then,” he said, low and sincere.
“I’ll never think that about you, Rory.” It was only the truth. Besides… “Perhaps I’m the rake.”
“Can a lady be a rake?”
“Perhaps.” She considered the question. “It depends on how the power is balanced between the two people.”
“And how is the power balanced between us?”
A good question.
One she wasn’t prepared to answer.
It was this desire that kept spiking through her. She wanted him again. His mouth upon her. Hers upon him. Their sexes joined. The intimacy of that union.
She wanted to test the balance of power between them with their bodies.
He slid his shirt over his head and made quick work of dressing. She took the opportunity to straighten the twist of her bodice and reassemble her hair into a knot at her neck.
“Will you be attending the village assembly tomorrow evening?” he asked.
“I’ve promised Delilah. She would like to invite the village to our performance.”
“And how do Mr. and Mrs. Dalhousie feel about that?”
“They are completely under her spell.”
He smiled, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes. He glanced toward the locked door. “Will you leave first? Or shall I?”
Juliet didn’t hesitate. “You.” She needed a moment to gather herself.
Rory looked as if he would say more. Instead, he closed the distance between them, tucked his thumb beneath her chin, and tipped her head back. His mouth grazed across her lips for a bright instant of contact, then was gone.
When she opened her eyes, the door was closing behind him.
Somehow, alongside the carnality and wickedness that blazed between them could exist this…a sweet parting kiss.
Rory…wicked and sweet—a combination of ingredients only recently discovered.
And yet she was ravenous and insatiable for them.
She’d always possessed a sweet tooth.
And yet…was he her sweet to sample?
Wasn’t he, in fact, destined to be Miss Dalhousie’s?
The thought unleashed a definite and resounding no inside her, as every cell in her body rejected the idea.
It was only now—now that the haze of lust was fading—that she was able to string together a few rational thoughts. One of which was quite plain and simple:
She’d taken matters too far with Rory.
Her heart was going to break when this was all over. A sliver of a crack might’ve already formed.
There was only one thing for it.
She must finish the poem.
And finish whatever madness that had sprung between her and that magnificent, sweet, secretly wicked man.