Chapter 16 #3
He lifted her again and carried her to the tester bed, draped with curtains of red and gold. Reuben’s bedchamber carried a vaguely Eastern flavor, as if he imagined himself a Turkish pasha or Persian shah. Joseph felt the faintest bit like a king choosing a companion from his harem for the night.
Except his harem only held one girl, this one, and he would choose her over and over, every night from now through the rest of his days. She half-rose toward him, holding out on arm, and he crawled over her.
“Boots,” she murmured, and he kicked off his shoes with a low laugh. “I know how to be frugal.” She tugged him over her body and kissed him deeply.
“But how am I to pay you?”
“I’ll work for room and board, and you can arrange a salary when funds permit.” She slid her tongue into his mouth as she commenced undressing him, and Joseph felt the flame rising up to enfold him. This woman was a siren, a spellcaster.
All his awkwardness, all his fears had vanished.
He knew how to please her. His mouth on her breasts brought pants and soft moans.
She tugged off his coats and shoved her hands up his shirt, dragging her palms over his skin, taking as much pleasure in touching him as he did in touching her.
When he lowered his weight to her body she shifted her hips to cradle him, fitting herself to the bulge in his breeches, and once again a great scissors came and snipped off the top of his head, letting thought tumble out.
All he needed was Inez. She was everything good and sweet and beautiful, and she made him feel powerful and whole.
“You’d be best to return to London with Jock,” he muttered as he kissed his way down her body, pushing away the voluminous hem of her shift. “Let the Duchess take care of you.”
“I’ve fended for myself this long.” She fisted her hands in his hair, clutching at his shoulders as he kissed down her legs, then back up.
Her chest heaved as desire shook her, and he marveled that it was this powerful for both of them.
They were lost together in the storm and only the one could bring the other safely to the far shore.
“Don’t make me leave you,” she muttered, and the words punched inside his chest, bruising his heart, making it swell.
No, he didn’t want to part with her, not with this between them.
This passion. This craving. This sense that she saw what was good in him and brought those qualities to the light to show to the world in her tender, careful hands.
“I want you,” he murmured, kissing the soft inside of her thigh, then curling his tongue around those parts of her that made her shake and cry out his name in a voice of desperation and amazement.
“Be with me.” She pulled at his arm, panting for breath, tugging him toward her. “Be with me. Inside me.”
He wanted nothing more. She fumbled with him to loosen the buttons of his breeches, then shoved them away. Her hand on his bare cock was ecstasy itself. He loved her sureness with him. He loved her want. Because it was for him.
“There cannot be a babe.” He held himself poised at the entrance to utter bliss. Or what he’d been told was the portal to the only paradise this earth knew. Reuben and Eyde. Reuben and how many others. He couldn’t leave her with a babe, because how could he support two when he couldn’t support one?
“Don’t spend inside me,” she whispered. “Spill your speed outside.”
“This is…”
He wanted to warn her. In case he fumbled.
In case, at the last minute, all the old horrors and shames rose up before him, like they had with the others, and he curled into himself.
He wasn’t the kind of randy man who could rise for any willing woman, and he knew this about himself.
It had been proven again and again, too many embarrassing times.
“This is new for me.” He rested his forehead against hers, caught up in fear. What if he didn’t please her? What if he was rubbish after all. What if—
“Then we can just have this,” she whispered. She reached between them, stroking him, cradling his tenderest parts. “I only want to be close to you, Joseph.”
And that was the key, somehow, to his certainty.
Everything was different with Inez, because her want matched his, and because it was Inez.
He wasn’t performing; he was connecting with her in the deepest way.
He surged against her and she ushered him in, and the pleasure staggered, almost blinded him.
“Ye gods, Inez,” he muttered through gritted teeth. “Ye gods.”
“Yes,” she whispered. “Joseph. Yes.”
It was his name on her lips that nearly undid him.
He didn’t need to be taught the rhythm because it was there with instinct, and there was nothing wrong with him after all because when he moved within Inez, she clutched her arms and her legs about him and her eyes flew wide and her breath took on that halting pattern again.
“Good?” he managed, because he didn’t know, this was his first time, but ye gods, if he’d known this was possible he would have risen from his chair in his study the first time Inez entered with the tea tray and he would have taken her into his arms and begun everything right then.
Heat and need crashed through him, a torrent that shook him to his toes.
“Joseph,” she whispered, her voice amazed and keen with need. “There—just that—oh, please, darling. Please.”
Then her breath caught and her eyes squeezed shut and her body seized and he understood she was there again, shaking with that culmination, coming apart like dandelion fluff.
Her inner walls quivered around him with her pleasure and yes, this was paradise, because his entire mind was a white blaze and he gritted his teeth hard, clenching his entire body to catch that uprush of pleasure and hold it, hold it.
He slid out of her and almost spilled right then, the sweet glide of her body, but he managed to grab the nearest cloth and pull it between them and then he let it happen, let the need spill out of him, let the pleasure pump through him like the heavy effacing grind of a millstone.
On the fringes of his consciousness he realized Inez was kissing him, kissing every part of his face, and when he could breathe again he kissed her back.
“That.” He rolled off her body to flop beside her, staring at the underside of the canopy, trying to catch his breath.
The cloth was embroidered with naked gods and goddesses cavorting in a field of flowers.
One, likely Zeus, reclined among a bed of crimson petals, his member fully erect.
Of course Reuben would have such a portrait above his bed.
Joseph felt the same way, still fully engorged, as though spilling his seed had only been the first vent of steam and his tool was ready for more, so much more, now that it understood its function.
Inez curled up beside him, hair spilling over his shoulder. He pressed a kiss to her forehead.
“Is it always like that?”
“No.” Her smile was sleepy and sated and full of wonder. Her eyes held a light he almost couldn’t bear to look at. “No, it is not. That was… I’ve never had it be like that.”
“Will it be like that again?” he demanded.
She slung her knee over his thigh and nestled her body beside his, breasts pressing against his side. “Not if you send me back to London.”
“No. Don’t go.” He pressed his fingers into her hip. “Stay.”
“All right,” she murmured.
He wiggled and shoved until he freed the bedclothes and pulled the covers over both of them, rising only to blow out the candle and discard the cloth he’d used—one less neckcloth for his wardrobe, he noted.
Then he slid into bed beside her and she gave a warm sigh and he slid his arms around her and understood that he could never send her away, never.
And not only because of this, because he wanted this pleasure again with her, morning and night and perhaps sometimes in early afternoons. Because when he talked to her, she listened, and she was sensible and practical and knew more about the world than he did.
And because she was Inez, and she belonged to him. He knew that now, though he had no notion how he was to claim and hold her.