Chapter 4
A rabella knew all the colors in the rainbow of her pleasure.
She knew how to coax them to the surface with very little effort and welcomed all the varieties.
But tonight, as the man she’d fantasized about for years put his arms around her naked body and drew her against his chest, she found something new.
Or perhaps it was something she’d lost when her innocence had gone all those many years ago.
It was the heated anticipation, the wild uncertainty that contained so much wonder and also a twinge of fear.
And yet here it was as she lifted into this man and kissed him.
Savored him, explored him. All the while her heart throbbed like she was some virginal miss.
He seemed to feel it too, for he drew back a fraction and stared down into her eyes once more. “You’re trembling.”
She swallowed and put all her effort into donning the costume of the experienced, playful courtesan once more. “Am I?” she said with a smile as she paced away from him. “Then don’t make me wait any longer. I want to see you naked, Mr. Windham.”
When she turned, putting her hands on her hips so she’d draw his attention there, he was still watching her face. Still reading her.
“Whatever the lady desires,” he said with an incline of his head.
She kicked off her slippers, though she left her stockings tied as she watched him. Though he might not have been a courtesan, made his money from his body like she had, she still sensed something in him that was like her. He knew when to put on a show and he very obligingly did for her.
He shrugged from his jacket with almost a lazy indifference and let it fall to the floor behind him. The cravat was next, untied and unfurled without intentional speed. All the while, he held her gaze, playing with her.
She smiled. Most men expected her to play but didn’t know how to play back. She was a toy to be put back on the shelf when a man was finished with her. But this was something different.
Silas tightened the fabric of the cravat between his hands, almost displaying it for her, then tossed it over his shoulder. He was faster with the buttons at the top of his shirt and then he tugged it off with one arm.
She froze and stared. There had been very many lovers, with varying bodies and she’d enjoyed them all.
But this man was someone’s masterpiece. His arms were something she could have written poetry about.
Not just broad shoulders, not just spectacular biceps—no, even his forearms were something to behold.
“Your mouth is open,” he said with a low chuckle.
She nodded and came across to him, uninterested in continuing the show if she couldn’t touch the performer. “I think it wants to taste,” she whispered.
She reached out a hand and drew just the edge of her nails down that truly wonderful, defined chest. He hissed in a breath as she did so and she reveled in the sound.
A year since he’d had a lover. Well, she was going to be such a lover.
Whether they did this again or not, she was going to burn a brand into him that would make it impossible for either of them to forget.
She stepped closer, watching him with every move.
He could have caught her arms and done whatever he liked with her.
She would have liked that too, truth be told.
But he didn’t take control. He let her slide up to him, let her trace the naked lines of him without stepping back or taking over.
And when she lifted her mouth not to his lips but to his throat, he dipped his head back with a shaky moan.
He tasted good. Of course he would. A man like this would always taste clean and somehow still masculine. Like a sweet treat someone had kindly crafted just for her.
She rested a hand on his stomach, letting her fingers tease at the waist of his trousers and he hissed in a harsh breath. “Arabella.”
Oh, he was going to be her undoing. Just the way he said her name made her legs shake. So she kept herself from having to use them by dropping to her knees before him.
“I want that,” she murmured, pointing to the cock that was so plainly outlined along the front of his fall front. “Please.”
He cursed beneath his breath, though he unbuttoned the fall front obligingly. “It’s the please that kills a man,” he said.
“But just a little death.”
She smiled up as she drew the fall front away and revealed him. It was a deep pleasure to her that this man was built the same in every part of him. If he was tall and broad and enthralling in the way he held himself, his cock was just as impressive.
It curved proudly toward that firm stomach, thick and hard as steel as she took him in hand and stroked him from head to base.
“Fuck,” he grunted, and his hands came down into her hair, stroking against her scalp and making her body twitch with wanting him. And wanting to make him lose control.
She looked up him, holding his stare as she stroked him against her cheek, drew him across her lips but didn’t open them. He surged toward her, moving through her hand and bumping those same lips gently. She smiled and then her tongue darted out to lick the head of him.
What happened next felt like a blur. After all these years of fantasy and memory, the heat of this moment finally being here exploded.
She took him into her mouth and all the way to her throat, sucking and swirling her tongue around him as she did so.
Whatever she couldn’t take, she stroked with her hand and for a little while there was silence in the room aside from the occasional wet sound of her mouth on him and the soft groans he made in pleasure.
All of it aroused her beyond measure. Her sex was tingling, wet with wanting him and pleasing him. Achy with being so close to having her wildest dreams come true at last.
But just as his legs began to shake, just as his breath grew short and harsh and labored with the effort of waiting, he caught her under the arms and dragged her up to her feet.
“Maybe some time,” he grunted as he pushed her back onto the bed and fell to cover her. “But not tonight.”
There might have been some game to play where she protested and he bargained, where she toyed with him a little more, but he didn’t allow it.
His lips came over hers and his tongue drove into her mouth, exploring her, tasting her.
Kissing had long ago lost its thrill for her, but this was like being reborn.
Like being kissed for the very first time and feeling the explosion of want fill her.
She found herself lifting beneath him, trying to find some way to make their pelvises align when her legs were pinned shut and he was sprawled over her.
He lifted his head and chuckled. “In such a rush?”
She stared up at him, lost for words for a moment at the image of him like this, real not some foggy fantasy. “Aren’t you?”
“No. Well, yes. Since the first moment you touched me every part of my body has been screaming at me to flip you onto this bed and rut with you like some wild animal.”
“One of my favorite ways to fuck,” she whispered, and glided her hands down his back, raking lightly with her nails.
He moaned a little at the touch and then cupped her cheek. It was such a small thing to do, so gentle and what could be construed as meaningless. But when he did it, everything in the room seemed to come to a stop. All there was was him.
“It’s been six years since I first saw you. Six years since your face started invading the moments where I did this very thing with other women. So I intend to take my time. And you, Arabella, are going to let me.”
He said nothing more and for what felt like a lifetime, she stared up at him. He had been the one to admit he’d thought of her face for so long, why did she suddenly feel dangerously vulnerable?
But she also felt even more deeply aroused. And the second outweighed the first. “I’m yours,” she whispered. “To do with as you please for as long as you please, Silas. Close the place down while you fuck me if you want.”
He dropped his mouth to her throat and began to suck gently, swirling his tongue against the skin and waking all the parts of her that were linked to her desire.
“Have you ever shut the Donville Masquerade down?” he asked as he dragged his lips lower, over her shoulder and then her collarbone. His tongue was so hot on her skin and she found herself squirming beneath him.
“No,” she gasped out. “Do you think Rivers would kick us out?”
“If he did…do you have a carriage?” He was moving his hands now, down her sides, then in and across her ribcage. He slid up beneath her breasts and lifted them, massaging gently, flicking his thumbs over the nipples.
“Y-Yes,” she gasped.
“Good. I came on my horse and doing this on his back doesn’t seem very comfortable. So I’d fuck you in the carriage,” he said. “And then on the stairs in the house I’m letting in Town.”
She gasped as he lightly circled her left nipple with his tongue. “And then in the bed?”
“For a few hours in the bed,” he promised. “And then we’d eat. And then I’d fuck you on the dining table. So don’t you worry. If you’re not sick of me in the next few hours, having the Donville Masquerade shut down won’t be an issue.”
She found herself laughing even though the images he created were entirely heated. Even the idea of sex on the back of his horse. It wasn’t practical, of course, it seemed cruel to the animal, but the idea was lovely.
He smiled as he drew his mouth across the valley between her breasts and then focused his same attention on the right one.
She dug her fingers into his hair, reveling in the electric pleasure that jolted from the place where he sucked her and the rest of her achy body.
It was such a familiar path and almost comforting.
Frustrating when he continued to lap back and forth, tugging, tasting, even gently nipping her until she was starting to rock beneath him with increasing urgency.
God, who was the last man to make her so needy?