Twenty-one
Georgette started to untie her wrapper.
“Not so fast,” he said. “There are some things a man likes to do for himself.”
“But I thought—”
“That I can’t wait to see you naked? You’re right, as always,” he said, taking over the job of unbelting and removing her wrapper. “But as much as I want you, I want even more for this to be good for you. So we must go slowly.”
“You’re sure?” She leaned against him and nearly ruined his resolve. “That doesn’t feel right. I think…fast would be good.”
“It is.” The urge to bend her over and show her just how good a hot, hard rut could be was almost irresistible. “But not the first time. Trust me.”
He struggled to hold her gaze and lost the battle. The swell of her breasts beneath her lacy night shift called to him. Under his scrutiny, her nipples drew into hard points beneath the thin fabric.
“You see, it’s not just a question of fitting the right parts together,” he said as he kissed along the top of her bodice. He let his fingers trail down her arms from her shoulders to twine with hers.
“Really?” she murmured. “I would have thought that’s the main point.”
His body cheered this line of thinking with a raging cockstand. But if he was going to talk her out of the royal duke’s suit, he needed to offer her more. “It’s meant to be a joining of spirits, as well.”
“A joining of spirits?” She laughed, then covered her mouth with her hand. Then all mirth fled from her face. “Is that what you told all the other women you’ve been with?”
“No.” It never would have occurred to him before.
The mindless couplings of the past few years all blurred into a mass of tangled limbs in his memory.
For the first time, he wished he didn’t have those images in his brain.
He wished he stood before Georgette offering her as clean a slate as she brought to him. Then he’d be filled with only her.
Perhaps he could be in any case. If he loved her long enough, strong enough, Georgette would banish thoughts of any other.
He was a rake. A ruin. A cad who’d agreed to bring her shame in order to save his family from scandal.
But if she could somehow love him, it might be the saving of him.
He bent to show her how.
***
His kisses were absinthe. Poppy juice. Hashish.
Not that Georgette had ever tried any of those highly addictive, mind-altering substances, but after reading lurid accounts of their use, she’d imagined their effects on numerous occasions.
Her imagination hadn’t come close to the drugging effect of Nate’s mouth on hers.
She was going all soft and liquid inside and couldn’t care a whit.
He encircled her waist with his big hands, snugging her close. The hard warmth of his body against hers made her feel cosseted and safe.
But she knew whatever else this madness with Nathaniel was, it was not safe. Not in the least. Her belly jittered as she waited for whatever came next.
Nate cupped her cheek, tracing her bottom lip with his thumb. The sensitive skin tingled. Then he started to unbutton her night shift.
Her skin prickled with self-doubt. What if he was disappointed with her?
He showed no sign of it as he lowered his mouth to her neck. His warm breath feathered along her jaw and tickled her earlobe.
When he straightened and looked down at her, his gaze lingered over her bared breasts. A smile spread slowly over his face.
“You have no idea how beautiful you are, do you?”
His words flowed over her like warm honey, heating every part.
The moonlight played a little trick of light, encasing him like an aura, glowing brightly for a moment.
Then the glow faded along with his smile, and his deep eyes warmed to burnished cobalt.
If she’d heard the rustle of leathery wings unfurling from his broad back, she wouldn’t have been surprised.
My dark angel.
He bent and claimed her mouth in rough possession.
She didn’t protest. Instead, she answered his kiss. Then he slanted his mouth across hers, tasting her, teasing her lips open. His tongue toyed with her and she made a little noise of impatience.
He drew back just a little. “We must learn control, Georgette.”
“It appears to me like you’re the only one who gets to be in control,” she said testily.
“Right now, I have to be,” he said with a catch in his voice. “But it’s myself I’m controlling. You can’t imagine how badly I want to throw you down and—”
“Why don’t you?”
A low growl escaped his throat and he bent to whip her night shift off in one smooth motion. Then he scooped her up and carried her to the waiting bed and lowered her into the feather tick. Nate lay down beside her, pulled her close, and plunged his hand between her legs to cup her sex.
Life roared inside her, shaking its fist at the retreating memory of the dead girl on Lackaday Lane.
He slid his fingers along her cleft, making her sensitive spot swell up to be stroked like a tabby arching her back. His mouth was at her breasts, suckling her hard. When he nipped her lightly, she cried out in aching joy.
She wondered briefly if this was only another of her vibrant fantasies. Perhaps she’d wake in a moment and find herself still in her own bed with her night shift rucked up to her waist and her body straining in helpless need.
But there was nothing imaginary about the way her nethers throbbed.
“What,” she gasped, “are you doing to me?”
“Loving you,” he said, his voice passion-rough. But speaking seemed to have settled him a bit because he slowed his relentless pace. He continued to stroke her, but not in a heated rush. He drew out the torment.
Georgette closed her eyes as his fingertip invaded her.
She spread her legs to give him room to delve in and find that she was already wet and slick and aching to be filled.
Then his blessed fingers pulled out of that empty place and circled her sensitive spot again, teasing and petting, whipping her into a stiff little peak.
“Hot and wanting,” he whispered. “You’re a goddess, Georgette.”
His mouth tugged at her nipples.
She was spiraling into that hot dark place again. His lips on her bare skin were both torment and delight. She groaned with need.
He rose up to plant fevered kisses on her neck, her jaw, the corner of her mouth, her closed eyelids.
“Make that noise again,” he warned, “and I’ll spread your legs and take you right now.”
“Do you promise?”
They rolled together in a tangle of arms and legs, kissing, stroking, straining against each other, skin on glorious skin. She felt him hard against her thighs, pulsing strong.
“Wait, wait.” She shoved against his shoulders and came up for air. “We haven’t…I mean, how do we…”
“What is it, woman?” His chest heaved.
“What if…I mean, there could be a…” She sat up. Looking down the fine length of his body to his swollen member, she nearly forgot the rest of what she’d intended to say. She was surprised to find she was panting shallowly.
“Could be a what?”
“A child.”
He traced a circle around one of her taut nipples, watching it with absorption as it drew even tighter. “Georgette, you’re trusting me to take your maidenhead. Don’t you think you can trust me with this as well?”
He bent down for another kiss, not as frantic as the last, but more insistent. One of his knees wedged between her thighs, pushing them open.
She didn’t fight him.
“It’ll be all right,” he said as he positioned himself. Just the tip of him entered her.
She throbbed, a deep, low drumbeat between her legs, but she narrowly resisted the urge to squirm down and take him in. She felt so empty, but she was still self-possessed enough to want reassurance on this most important point.
“Nate, I don’t want to be found with child while I’m still unmarried. I don’t want it very much.”
“You won’t be,” he assured her, sliding slowly in, hot and hard. He stopped his forward progress when he met the barrier of her purity. “I’ll never see you shamed.”
That was all she needed to hear. She draped her arms around his shoulders and squeezed. “I trust you.”
“Good,” he said. “This may hurt a bit.”
He thrust forward and filled her in a single rush.
She gasped at the shock of it, but she expanded to receive him, stretched to the limit, swollen and achy.
He held himself motionless, willing them to maintain control, but in her heightened state of awareness she could feel the blood coursing through him, throbbing with heat.
He was as primed as she.
Nate cradled her cheeks with surprising tenderness after that sharp rending. The shock of it had made her gasp, but then the sting faded. The emptiness retreated.
Not so the ache.
There was no going back now. Perhaps there never had been.
From the moment she’d first seen him again, coming to her rescue there at Madam Bouchard’s disreputable brothel, Nathaniel had become both her secret hero and her darkest villain.
He filled her mind and heart as surely as he now filled her body.
He drew a ragged breath. “Are you all right?”
“I will be.”
“There shouldn’t be any more pain.” He raised himself on his elbows to look down at her, his face taut with need. “Tell me if I hurt you.”
“You won’t.” She pulled his head down and suckled his earlobe. He began moving inside her and it was nothing short of a revelation. She loved holding him like that, wrapping herself around him.
Slowly he lowered his mouth to hers and began a rhythm with his tongue to echo the thrust of his hips. She rose to meet him, desperation making her sob into his mouth.
The wanting was so keen, a knife’s edge from pain.
He smelled of leather and sandalwood and tasted of aged whisky, all smoke and peat. It might only have been minutes. It might have been hours. Time expanded and contracted around them as they moved together, skin on skin, with no way to tell where one left off and the other began.
Pleasure crackled like heat lightning along every nerve. Bliss swallowed her whole, filled her, pressed tight and overflowing into every crevice. She couldn’t hold another ounce of joy.
She didn’t know what the morning would bring. She didn’t care. Georgette decided she could die at this exquisite moment and count herself the happiest of women.
Then, all of a sudden, she sort of did.