Chapter 17
Giselle had never seen a man without clothes. Even the jaunts she and her half sister had taken to the British Museum to look at sculptures had not prepared her for the sight of a real man “unclad.” For one thing, the sculptures had no hair. And hair made quite a difference in a man’s appearance.
Her mouth went dry at the sight of Heath’s hair-dusted upper body—his sculpted, muscular chest and his lean stomach with hair that led down to . . .
She jerked her gaze up hastily. She was not quite ready for that. “You are rather hirsute, sir,” she said, keeping her eyes above his waist.
His eyebrows quirked upward. “I come from a long line of hairy gentlemen, I’m afraid. Does it bother you?”
“Non. I like the hair myself.” She finally let her gaze go lower to where his verge thrust itself boldly forward like a long, thick aubergine emerging from the vine. She swallowed hard. “You are also . . . er . . . large, are you not?”
He chuckled. “I don’t know. I don’t make a practice of comparing my penis to other men’s.”
“Oh! We have that word, pénis, in French, too!”
“We also sometimes call it a man’s member.”
“Membre. Yes, we use that one, too.” She frowned. “Although it is considered vulgar to say either word in polite company. Indeed, it is considered vulgar to speak of any of this.”
“Then it’s a good thing we’re not in polite company,” he said, and tugged her close enough so she could feel the thrust of his membre. “I doubt they’d approve of what we’re doing with my pénis and your mont de Vénus, anyway.”
“True,” she said, feeling heat rise in her cheeks again.
He hesitated. “You do know what we’re doing, don’t you?”
“Yes. Maman told me.”
“Everything?”
How much was there to tell? The man put his verge inside the woman, and then it was done. “I think so.”
He cupped her cheek. “I merely don’t want you to have any surprises.”
“Then let me touch your . . . you know . . .”
“God help me,” he muttered, but released her to close her hand about his membre.
She marveled at how alive it seemed, the skin like velvet, but the meat of it quite firm beneath the skin. “It is stiff, no?” she said as she carefully stroked along it.
“Getting stiffer by the moment,” he muttered, closing his eyes. “Hold it a bit harder when you stroke it.”
She did so, and he groaned. But after a few moments, when she explored too close to his body, he shoved her hand aside. “You are too good at this, mon petit chou.”
She tensed, both at the rejection of her caress and his use of the endearment. “I am not your little pastry, sir. I do not want you to eat me up, like the wolf in Le Petit Chaperon Rouge.”
“If you didn’t like the words, ma chérie, you should have said something sooner.
Although you may find you enjoy a bit of eating in the bedchamber.
” He bent his head to nibble on her earlobe.
“Like this.” He kissed his way down to where he could suck and tug on her nipple with his teeth. “And this.”
Every suck and nibble sent surprising tingles straight to her mont de Vénus, making her warm and damp below.
She arched up on tiptoe to feel more. “Perhaps that is not so . . . very bad,” she whispered.
Next thing she knew, he had tumbled her back onto the bed so he could lie beside her and spread soft kisses over every inch of her body. “Do you know how many times I have dreamed of us like this?”
“As many times as I have?” she whispered.
He lifted his head to stare at her. “You dreamed of me?”
“More often than you know. I just never thought you would want me.”
“Then you were daft, my sweet.” He kissed his way down her body. “I will always want you.”
The words caught her off guard. She wished she knew if he meant he would always want her body or if he would always want her.
But she was not sure she wanted to hear the answer if she asked, so she did not ask.
Instead, she threaded her hands through his hair and attempted to pull him back up to her, so she could kiss him.
He chuckled against her belly. “Let go, Giselle. I mean to show you that you can enjoy being eaten by the wolf.”
Curious to see what he meant, she did as he bade, but when he spread the curls of her mont de Vénus with his fingers and bent his head toward it, she gasped. “You are not . . . you do not mean to . . .”
“Taste you,” he said with an arrogant smile. “I do, indeed.”
Then he covered her there with his mouth.
For a moment, she remained tense, thinking he truly meant to bite her there.
Then he began to suck and use his tongue as he’d used his fingers there before, and she nearly burst out of her skin.
Since he had already told her to release his head, she dug her fingers into the bedclothes to keep from grabbing him again as he tongued and licked and drew on her there.
She had never experienced such sensations, such wild . . . carnal . . . heart-palpitating sensations!
Oh! That feeling was building again . . . as when they were in the stone tower . . . oh! And now . . . oh . . . she had not realized . . . oh, yes . . .
Suddenly he drew his mouth from down there, wiped it on the bedclothes, then crawled up her. He used one knee to part her legs and fit himself between her thighs. “Now, may I finish this by making love to you, my darling fiancée?” he asked in French.
“Yes,” she said in English, ridiculously cheered by his not using the word faux this time. “Please do.”
That was all it took to have him sliding inside her.
For a moment, she regretted her Yes, for it felt very odd. Intrusive. Unfamiliar. Not what she had imagined. But then he began to move.
She grabbed for his shoulders in surprise, and he said hoarsely, “Yes, ma belle chérie, touch me . . . anywhere you like.”
Now that he had given her license to do so, she used her hands to feel his strong arms, she stroked his chest and then down his ribs to grip his waist. He brushed kisses over her temples and rasped lovely, sweet words into her hair, all the while driving slowly in and out of her.
“You’re so tight, dearest,” he murmured. “It feels like . . . heaven to be inside of you.”
“Does it?” She kissed his neck. “It feels . . . different for me, too.”
“Different, hmm?” he choked out. “Let’s . . . make it more . . . pleasurable.”
He caught her under one knee and dragged it up, then switched hands to pull up the other, which planted him inside her in a much better way.
“Oh!” she said. “That is . . .”
“Good?” he asked, drawing back to smirk at her.
“Very much . . . good . . .” she uttered, not caring she was murdering the English.
“I came by my . . . reputation honestly . . . you know.”
“I see that,” she said, and squirmed a little until he was slamming against her where she wanted him to be. “Oh-h-h, yes. Yes. Like that, Heath. Yes . . .”
That made him thrust harder, deeper, as he used one hand to fondle her breast quite deliciously. “You are quite . . . the seductive . . . minx . . .”
“And you, sir . . . are a true . . . rogue.”
They were both panting now, their bodies entwined, each of them seeking pleasure from the other.
Soon, she was feeling those same wild sensations from before, and her body seemed aflame, and her blood trampled through her veins, and her breath .
. . she could not . . . catch her breath because she had to . . . had to . . .
Scream! And she did, as her body vaulted into a glorious release. But he must have anticipated the scream, for he was already cupping his hand over her mouth. He gave one last deep plunge and let out a broken string of French curses—or English prayers?—as he reached his own release.
Then he collapsed atop her before rolling off to lie beside her, clearly spent. His breath came in quick gasps, and his eyes slid closed. “That was . . . amazing.”
It was, indeed. She felt happy and sated and warm all at once. If she were a cat, she would lie here purring, but since she was not, she merely curled up against him and laid her arm across his waist.
He pulled her closer and nuzzled her hair. “I’m sorry, Giselle,” he whispered.
She frowned. “For what?”
“For taking you like a madman run amok.”
“If that is what a madman run amok is like, then I say, bring on the madmen.” When he chuckled and relaxed, she added, “I did not know what to expect of faire l’amour. But I very much enjoyed it.”
“So did I.” Mischief shone in his face. “And may I still call you mon petit chou?”
She tilted up her chin. “I do confess I rather like having you eat my pastry.”
“I rather like eating your pastry, too,” he said, and kissed her forehead softly.
They lay there in utter contentment a while longer, warm and pleasantly spent.
“May I ask you something?” she said after some time had passed.
“Anything.”
“Did you become a rakehell because of Lily? Because she made you doubt all women?”
He sucked in a harsh breath, then let it out. “Not exactly. If you’ll recall from that day in the Court of Chancery, I wasn’t a saint before she and I tried to elope. At Eton, Jon and I spent plenty of time with loose-living barmaids and married women and the like.”
“Jon? Really?”
“Oh, yes. We were both rascals . . . and Percy, too.”
“And Captain Scovell?”
He shook his head. “Not Scovell. That one tried to serve as the conscience to all of us.” He turned grim. “Not that it worked. Jon was wild because his parents coddled him, Percy was wild because he had no father to rein him in, and I was wild because I had too rigid a father.”
“Or perhaps you were all wild because you were young and rich and simply liked being wild,” she ventured.
He gave a mirthless laugh. “Quite possibly.” He sobered.
“But once I met Lily, I honestly decided to be better. I had no intention of being a faithless husband. I’d seen that too many times among the parents of my other friends at school—some of the lads even joked about their fathers’ mistresses.
Even then, I could hear the pain behind the jokes, and I swore I’d never be one of those fathers. ”