Chapter 13 #2
“You should not be here.” It breathed out, barely a whisper.
“No.” Nothing in his expression changed. Not the set of his jaw nor the fire in his eyes. “You can close the door if you want.”
She gripped the door’s edge. She could close it, of course. And she should.
His gaze locked on hers. He looked for her decision. He saw it before she knew it herself.
With one step he was over the threshold and she was in his arms. Passion crackled through him, silent lightning in a palpable storm.
He lifted her, kicked the door closed, and swung her around.
Breathless and unsteady, she found herself pressed against the door.
His body imprisoned her there while he claimed her in a furious kiss that made the world spin even more.
He dominated her, and commanded her response with searing kisses to her mouth and neck.
The arousal she had carried to her chamber, which had distracted and taunted her, surged in a wave of sensation.
His heat and strength titillated her whole body.
The feral energy he exuded as he handled her incited erotic stirring low and deep.
When she clutched his shoulders desperately, to hold on to something tangible and real, he would have none of it.
He captured her hands in his and forced them above her head, so she could only submit to the sensual chaos.
Submit she did, to the kisses coaxing her primitive self, to the ache throbbing between her legs, to the body so close it became the focus of all her senses.
He stripped away the shawl from her shoulders and neck, and it floated out of sight.
Kissing her hard, he pulled up her nightdress impatiently.
Air cooled her legs, then her thighs and hips.
He pressed his knee between her legs, raising her so she rode a hard ledge pressing up against her vulva.
Her toes barely scraped the floor. The pressure aroused her, thoroughly.
Deep, dark tremors of pleasure overwhelmed her.
“Enough of this.” He released her hands and peeled up her nightdress. A cloud of white cloth engulfed her head. Then she was naked, her body inches from his, waiting for the torture his caresses could create.
He looked down while his hands moved up her legs and thighs. He paused, briefly, to slide one thumb between his knee and her mound. He pressed with precision on the very spot she kept moving to relieve. Her deep moan brought wicked lights to his eyes.
“Beautiful,” he murmured, while he watched his hands slide up her body. “You are elegant. Sinuous.” His hands cupped her breasts. His thumbs grazed her nipples. Tantalizing excitement streamed into her blood. “Kiss me now, while I drive you mad with pleasure.”
She circled his neck with her arms and kissed him hard, as best she knew how.
She tried using her tongue the way he did, and her teeth.
All the while his hands teased at her breasts, forcing the pleasure higher until that special madness did close in.
The erotic torment left her whimpering within the kisses, and gasping out urging breaths.
His hands left her. She wanted to scold him, until she saw him strip off his shirt.
He pulled her into an embrace so their bodies met with no interference.
Holding him like that, feeling his skin beneath her hands and arms and against her breasts, enthralled her.
The pleasure changed in that instant. Even his kiss felt different.
A new intimacy touched her, and she could not ignore its power.
He lifted her in his arms and carried her to the bed. He laid her down and started to remove the rest of his clothes.
In a slice of clarity, she saw where she was, what he was doing, and what would happen.
Her nakedness felt stark. Scandalous. More than when she was on that table, even if she had been equally exposed.
She instinctively covered her breasts with her arm and her mound with her hand.
When his trousers lowered, she looked away.
Warmth beside her depressed the mattress. Intimacy descended on her like a mist. His scent, his skin—
“Do not be shy with me now, Padua.” He lifted the arm from her breast. “You were not before.”
She had not been so naked before. So vulnerable. She had not been in a bed either.
He banished her misgivings with a kiss that sent her reeling.
Pleasure abolished hesitation and shyness.
His kiss commanded that she not only acquiesce but also participate.
While the fever took control again, he came over her so his body covered hers.
He pushed her legs apart so his hips could settle between her thighs.
Another shard of reality broke through the sensual fog. “Are you going to . . . ?”
“Not yet.” His arms slid beneath her torso. “Soon.”
His embrace made her arch so her breasts rose higher. He tasted her shoulder, then moved slowly down her skin. She arched more, offering, urging. Anticipation made her wild and so aroused that her hips rocked.
“Very soon, if you do not stop that.” He kissed the tight tip of one breast, then the other.
Stopping her hips meant suffering without that small relief. Flicks of his tongue sent currents of exquisite torment down to the sensitive, weeping void where all the sensations pooled and waited.
He aroused her until she could barely see, barely breathe. She thought she might die from it, or scream. She held on to him, hard. Her body moved again, without her direction. Her knees pressed his side, and her hips insisted on that slow rock.
He had given fair warning. Now she learned why.
Restraint fell off him like armor dropping.
He commanded a new wildness in her with scorching, biting kisses and the most possessive caresses.
His hand slid down between them and pressed her mound, then ruthlessly sought the places that made her cry.
He forced her higher, to the peak, and with one devastating stroke sent her careening into the glory of completion.
No slow recovery this time, however. No floating in a cloud of perfection. Another touch, lower, deeper, sent shudders into her contentment. He shifted, and raised one of her legs onto his hip. Within the tremor a fullness filled the ache of want that had tortured her.
More fullness made her gasp. His strength hovered above her, taut and hard while he thrust deeper. She welcomed the relief but feared it too. He both awed and frightened her.
He took her then. There was no other word for it.
Too ignorant to take, too, she could only wonder at the power controlling her.
Engulfing her. Her past did not prepare her for this.
For him. The sensation of his movements made the echoes of her completion go on and on until at the end, deep in her mind, she cried out yet again.
* * *
When something close to clear thinking began returning—and it took a good while to do so—Ives experienced a curious moment similar to what he knew after thrashing a man after succumbing to an abrupt outburst of anger.
His sensible self tapped his current self on the shoulder and asked, What in hell are you doing?
Enjoying the rarest peace with a lovely woman. Go away, you self-righteous idiot.
Unfortunately, he could not avoid thinking forever. And so amidst the tangle of limbs and sheets he made with Padua, a few solid ideas made their way into his head.
Being with a tall woman indeed had its benefits.
He had ravished her. He had not intended to, but there was no other word for it.
She had not been a virgin. That she might be had entered his mind rather late, when he was long past caring too much about it. He doubted that thieving rogue had had her more than a few times, from her ignorance, but at least Lord Ywain Hemingford had not just assaulted an innocent.
She lay beneath him still. He looked down at her long, white, shapely leg sprawled to his side.
He raised himself up on his arms and gazed at her face.
Her thick, dark lashes feathered her snowy cheeks, and her lips remained slightly parted.
Deep breaths did not sound like those of sleep, but of someone recovering from extreme exertion.
You ass. Look at her. What in hell were you thinking?
He had been thinking nothing at all. He had left rationality in his own chambers. He had been little more than a chaotic collection of hungers and raw need when he came to this door. If she had sent him away, he probably would have howled like an animal.
Only she hadn’t. And he had repaid her generosity by battering her like a whore.
He eased off her. Her lids fluttered when he withdrew, but she did not open her eyes. He settled beside her, propped on his arm. He caressed her cheek with two fingertips.
“I hurt you.”
She shook her head. “I am not frail. Far from it.” Her lashes rose and she looked right into his eyes. “I liked it.”
Now, that was interesting. “And here I was forming an apology.”
“Please don’t. That would make it sad.” Her lids lowered again. An impish smile curved her lips. “If I am going to be scandalous and irresponsible, I would prefer passion to politeness. I would prefer the wicked Ives to the upstanding Lord Ywain.”
Even more interesting.
Absolved of his bad behavior, he pulled her over and tucked her against him. She required no apology, but the upstanding Lord Ywain sat on his shoulder, reminding him of other matters that should be addressed. Not now. He shrugged the inconvenient ideas away.
“Do you think to do this again?” she asked.
“Not for half an hour.”
Her head jerked around and she looked up at him. “Oh.”
“Ah. You did not mean now.”
“No.”
“I think the future is up to you.”
“Not entirely.”
She did not mean it was up to him too. Like most women she probably assumed men would take pleasure if they could get it. Which was true. She was thinking about the reasons they should not even be enjoying one night.
“It is a choice to be made in the light of day, I think.” He thought himself damned noble saying that. In truth he wanted to establish his rights clearly and unmistakably while she was too sated and dazed to know better.
“Probably so,” she murmured, her head now resting on his chest. “No negotiations, however. No jewels and such.”
She would not agree to be his mistress, she meant.
She would not be one of those women. That was something best left to the light of day too.
If she held to it, he would find ways to take care of her that did not reek of her being bought.
Right now she needed someone looking after her, whether she accepted it or not.
He drifted on the edges of sleep. The little conversation repeated in his head many times. The notion joined them that the light of day might bring decisions he did not like. One impulsive, insane, ill-advised night might be the sum of their affair.
The lawyer in him began marshaling the arguments he would use to convince her otherwise. The rogue in him imagined all the pleasures he might never know.
“No negotiations, you said.”
Her crown moved as she nodded.
“Good.” He lifted her shoulders. She blinked, confused. “Here. Like this.” He guided her until she straddled him, sitting on his hips, looking down. Her dark hair fell in a tumble all around her face and shoulders. “Stay like that.”
He could see her clearly this way. He watched her while he caressed her.
Her expression displayed her reactions to what he did to her.
She watched, too, from beneath lowered lids.
Her lips trembled when he slowly teased at her dark, erect nipples.
His erection swelled and prodded against her bottom.
He pulled her down over him so he could use his mouth the way she liked. Trembles of pleasure shuddered through her, into his hands, where he held her waist. Her faint cries rained down on him. He pushed her further, until she whimpered with need.
He set her back, upright. She was wet now, and lost in her abandon. So beautiful in her abandon. “Up.” He urged her to her knees so she towered over him, her white body and lovely limbs open to his gaze and his hands.
He slid his fingers between her thighs and stroked. A thousand stars glinted in her eyes. He explored the folds of flesh and watched desire overwhelm her. She swayed, unsteady, unable to control what the pleasure did to her. A primitive wildness entered her eyes.
She surprised him then. She turned her body so she faced away from him. Her lovely back and rounded bottom enticed him. He caressed her cleft in a long path that ended again at the hot velvet of her swollen lips. As he did, he felt her take his cock in her hands.
It could not last long, their mutual pleasure. His arousal took on an edge he knew too well. He grasped her waist and lifted her enough to slide out from under her.
She looked over her shoulder and began to turn.
“No. Stay there.”
She looked over her shoulder again, confused. He pressed her shoulders down. She looked back once more, but this time she understood.
She hugged the mattress while on her knees. Her bottom rose, round and taut. He caressed its swells, and her hips circled subtly, tantalizing him.
He rode the erotic torment a little longer. “What do you want, Padua?”
Her bated breath told him. The small of her back dipped, raising her bottom more. He reached low and caressed her. “This?”
She cried out and nodded. “Yes, please, yes.”
He kept his hand on her until she moaned, then begged. Head hot and jaw clenched, he replaced his hand with his cock and pressed slightly, so its head entered her. He paused and sought an anchor in the storm breaking in him.
“Yes,” she whispered. “Yes.”
He thrust into her, stayed to savor the sensation, then withdrew. She moved her bottom, impatiently. He thrust again and she cried out.
The storm claimed him then. He let the fury rule and let the pleasure own him, until the excruciating tension snapped in a profound relief of sensation.
In the sensual stupor afterward, he bent and kissed the small of her back. And while he did, he used his hand to send her to her own ecstasy, one that left her screaming into the sheets.