Chapter Twenty-Nine
Scarlett could not believe that they had done that.
At the supper table. At a ball. Surrounded by so many people.
And it had left her so hot and breathless that she had to excuse herself.
Instead of finding the retiring room, though, she kept walking away from the ballroom. Her breath was coming fast and shallow, and she felt a torturing heaviness in her core.
It had been a thrill to tantalize him in such a forbidden way, while others unknowingly watched. Her hand on his cock had been secret and completely depraved, and yet somehow public.
She remembered that there was a library at the far end of the house, and so she headed there for refuge. She hoped it was empty now. When she reached it, however, the door was closed. She put her ear to it and heard movement from within.
She couldn’t bear to encounter anyone at present.
In desperation, she turned, trying to find someplace else where she could just be alone and rest for a moment.
When she whirled around, Malcolm was standing before her.
He had followed her.
It took everything in her not to run to him and melt into his arms. All she wanted was his touch.
“You followed me,” she said dumbly.
He advanced on her. “Do you think you can so utterly destroy me, master me so effectively, and I won’t come and find you afterward, Scarlett?”
Despite his recent release, he looked ravenous.
“If I am going to be so thoroughly ruined by you,” he continued, “then I need to ruin you in turn.” He reached down and pressed the pad of his thumb to her bottom lip. “And you look like you need it, darling. Like you are aching for it.”
All she could do was gasp in response. But when she did so, his thumb sank into her mouth, and she found herself sucking inward.
His eyes went absolutely molten. She had to think that he was hard for her again.
She gave his thumb another suck and couldn’t stop herself from whimpering as she did so.
“Fuck.” It was a dirty word, and she had never heard him use it before.
Was it wrong that she liked turning him into a rogue? That it delighted her to reduce him to his base instincts?
He grasped her hand. “This way,” he said, pulling her toward a door opposite the library.
When she entered, he closed the door and threw the latch behind her.
It was a study, no doubt intended for the master of the house, outfitted with a large wooden desk and handsome bookshelves.
“We shouldn’t,” she said, the words coming out rushed and insincere.
She knew what the solitude they had found meant. She knew how risky this assignation was. It was madness.
But she was so blazingly desperate for him, she was willing to forget all caution.
“Please,” he murmured from behind her.
She still had her back to him. She felt him approach her, and then he put his arms around her.
“Let me please you.”
“Dear God,” she swore softly.
One hand found her breast, as the other palmed her arse. She had no conviction, she realized. She was only boneless desire.
“Tell me what you need.”
“You.”
He turned her around toward him and kissed her. He drank her in deeply, and she felt her want heighten even more. Would she climax just from these kisses? Was that possible?
Then he pushed her back until she was sitting on the desk.
“What are you doing?” she said, faintly aware that he must have a plan, but unable to think through the haze of want.
“Don’t worry, darling.”
He caught the hem of her skirt and brought it up over her knees. He found her drawers and pulled them roughly from her body, so that they were deposited on the floor.
He kissed the inside of her knee and then edged her legs open.
“Wait,” she said, faintly aware that he was about to do something that would surprise her.
“I can’t,” he said, bringing his mouth to the inside of her thigh. He kissed the flesh there, swiping his tongue over it, and she felt her core clench and unclench in an imitation of what she so dearly wanted. To find oblivion. With him.
When his lips found her core, she couldn’t object. Just the sensation of his mouth there, his breath on her most sensitive flesh, had her grasping his shoulder.
“Please,” she begged. “I need…” She couldn’t say what she needed, but he seemed to understand.
“I’ll make it better. I’ve wanted to do this for so long.”
These words surprised her. She had never even thought of this particular act. And she was sure that, in any other state, she would be much too self-conscious to try it. But she was not in her wits at present.
He opened her with his tongue. The sensation was exquisite—truly unbelievable. He found her center of pleasure and sucked, and she saw stars. She held onto his shoulders to keep herself from falling.
“Yes—” She gasped out. “Please. More.”
He did it again.
Then he began licking, lavishing her with attention. She wound higher and higher, her core tightening.
Still, she was missing something.
“Please,” she begged, completely helpless now. “Could you … I need … something … inside—”
He stopped and looked up at her, and she thought she might weep with frustration.
“No, no, don’t stop.”
“You have to tell me what you need, Scarlett.”
“Don’t stop. Keep doing that. But I need your hands—your fingers—”
She was in a frenzy of need. She could barely articulate what she wanted, and it shamed her to do so.
For a moment, he looked perplexed. But then he reached up to her core and slid a finger into her.
“Yes.” She moaned. “But don’t stop.”
He laughed. “I think now I understand.”
He resumed tonguing her then, and it was perfect. Scarlett could only think that she would like to die this way, such was the intensity of the pleasure.
“Yes. Yes,” she said, urging him on.
He seemed to need no encouragement on that front. He continued, and she could feel that she was about to break apart.
When she did, it was with a shout. She came so hard that she was afraid she might break.
But she didn’t. His shoulders were there to steady her. And then his arms were around her.
“Shh, I’ve got you,” he murmured, standing now. She buried her head in his chest. Strangely, she wanted to weep, but she kept herself from doing so. She didn’t understand why she would weep or why being with him, like this, felt so emotional.
Scarlett gripped him, reveling in his solidity. “I keep thinking I’ll wake up,” she said, pulling away from him, “and you’ll be gone.”
He gave a rueful chuckle. “I think the same of you. Do you know,” he said, looking down into her face, “I feel sometimes like I dreamed you up myself? That you are my dreams come to life? For years, I was tormented by these visions in my sleep—a beautiful woman who I held and tupped and who I knew was mine. I didn’t understand why I had these dreams when I had resolved that such things weren’t for me.
I thought it was some aberration, some accident, but now I know it wasn’t. ”
It was as if his words had emanated from within herself. She also had not understood why she would have such dreams when she wasn’t meant to be loved in such a way.
She didn’t know how to explain that to him, though. She had never told him about her own dreams, and she still didn’t know how. Because while she felt that she had been made to be here with him, like this, she knew it couldn’t last.
Her mind was in a tumult—so she listened to her body. “I want you. Again.”
“Christ, Scarlett.”
“I’ve only had you properly once,” she whispered. “I don’t know if we’ll get another chance.”
“There is no bed in this room,” he said, looking around with a wistful expression. She was touched by that look—how this powerful, passionate man could look so na?ve.
“I don’t think we need a bed, Malcolm,” she teased.
He raised his eyebrows as if such a possibility was indeed, for him, new intelligence. “What did you have in mind?”
She pointed to the chaise in the corner. “There. Lie there.”
He obeyed, walking across the room.
She followed him, suddenly feeling very in control. She knew how she wanted to have him.
He settled on the chaise and she positioned herself atop him. She kissed him, letting her fingertips trace along his face and up through his hair. If this time was to be their last—and she had no way of knowing whether it would be—she wanted to enjoy him. Savor him.
She reached down to the placket of his trousers and undid it. His smalls were wet from his spend at the table before, and he flinched when she made contact.
“I am—sorry.”
She laughed. “Sorry for the mess I created?”
He grunted. “I should have had more self-control.”
“But I didn’t want you to.”
“It is very hard to withstand you.”
“Then don’t.”
She removed his cock from his trousers, allowing herself the liberty of palming it.
She wanted to explore him, if only for a moment, and he let her.
His little intakes of breath when she discovered a particularly sensitive place or angle had her pulsing with want soon enough.
Pleasing him made her almost vertiginous with desire, it turned out.
She had never experienced something that she liked so much as making him gasp and swear with pleasure.
Eventually, he reached downward and caught her wrist. “If you don’t stop, you won’t get to have me—properly—as you say.”
As much as it would delight her to make him spend again from stroking him alone, she did want to feel him inside her. And she knew exactly how she wanted to do it.
She stood and he looked perplexed.
“Scarlett—”
“Shh, I have a plan.”
She straddled him, her knees fitting easily on either side of him on the sizable chaise.
“Dear God.”
She smiled—and she knew her grin must look wicked. She lowered herself down onto his cock. He hissed, bucking up beneath her and grasping her arse.
She felt so powerful. More powerful than she ever had before in her life, truthfully. She felt almost guilty about it. That her desire for him and the way he responded to her made her feel so lit up with power.
She rose and then sank down again. His grasp on her arse tightened, but he let her control their pace, not even attempting to interfere.
Slowly, she found a pace that suited her, that seemed to fill her and tantalize her in equal measure.
“Scarlett, you are better than any dream. You destroy me, do you know that?”
She closed her eyes, finding his words and the sight of him too much for her sensitive body.
And still she felt something threatening—something that was more than an orgasm. It was related to the dangerous emotion swirling in her chest, one that was connected with him. The feeling that she didn’t want to part with him. That didn’t know how she was supposed to do so.
She opened her eyes and looked down at him. He was looking up at her reverently, his expression a mixture of keen desire and—something else. Something that felt familiar to her, and yet she struggled to name.
Her pleasure was building. She knew that she could only stave off the inevitable end of this coupling for so long. And yet she wanted to because she didn’t want to reach the end of this, of him.
He had started directing her now, more and more, with that hand on her arse. He brought her down more roughly on his cock, and she saw stars.
“You take me so well,” he murmured. “You ruin me for anything else. God, Scarlett.”
She felt a sob rise in her throat. How would she ever walk away from this, from them, and go back to a life so barren of feeling?
She was close. So close. He kept driving into her.
“Please,” she said, not sure what she was asking for.
She had everything she could ever want. And yet she still wanted something else.
“God, you’re perfect. So sweet. Fuck. Scarlett. You’re going to make me come.”
“Yes!” She gasped. “Yes.”
“Fuck. Darling. My darling. I love you.”
He said the words in a rush—but she still heard them.
And she had only one response. “I love you too,” she panted.
It took no more. She was gasping above him, her core working his cock furiously, as he poured himself into her.