Chapter 9
Nine
Julia Redmond was a sound sleeper, so sound Con had a few extra minutes to doubt his sanity and argue with himself over his presence in her bedroom—fruitless minutes while his cock clamored for him to be about a lusty man’s typical business in a willing woman’s bed.
Too bad for his cock, that wasn’t the plan.
“Connor?” Julia struggled up to prop herself back on her elbows, her braid a thick, coppery rope over one shoulder.
“It is you, isn’t it?” She blinked in the moonlight streaming through her windows then reached out to where he stood beside her bed to take him by the wrist. “Say something, or I’ll think I’m dreaming. ”
“Maybe you are dreaming.” He put one knee on the bed, pausing long enough to pull his shirt out of his breeches and over his head. “Lie back, Julia, and be silent.”
There was risk involved. Risk that she’d start shrieking, belatedly recovering her previously misplaced sense of decorum, but Con had seen the loneliness in her eyes, had heard the bewilderment and hurt in her voice when she’d tried to apologize to him in the stable.
“You have one chance to change your mind, Julia Redmond. You shake your head if you don’t want me here, or you nod if I’m staying.”
He waited as if he had all the time in the world, as if a Chinese rocket weren’t trying to launch itself from his breeches into her body. She nodded, slowly, solemnly.
Good. She understood this was no small concession on his part. He pulled the covers aside and settled his body right over hers, caging her with his bigger frame.
“Kiss me, Julia.”
He didn’t give her time to get all those female gears spinning in her brain; he charged forth, intent on seizing his prize, which was to say, he kissed her. Set his mouth on hers and consigned himself to the sweetest suffering known to man.
She kissed like a young girl, lips sealed, not like a widowed lady who went around propositioning near strangers in the woods. Her reticence pleased him, helped him lecture that trouser rocket into submission and gave him the patience to savor her.
Sweet, was his first impression when he traced her lips with his tongue. Sweet, soft, enticing—like the rest of her. He felt himself getting pulled into the kiss, the exploration and pleasure of it, while he sank a hand into her hair.
“Connor…”
“No words, Julia.” Except the mention of his name had parted her lips.
He didn’t invade. He explained and waited for her to catch on, then demonstrated again.
On the second try, she got the idea and touched her tongue to his lips, a little lick of warmth that coursed down through his body and made him want to clutch at her.
To shuck his pants and swive her witless.
He let the thought go, thanking the Deity he’d had sense enough to wear trousers rather than a kilt and to keep his trousers on and buttoned. Her tongue grew a tad bolder, venturing to explore the soft flesh inside his lips then retreating uncertainly.
He let out a growl of pleasure at her overture and felt her hips lift against his body.
She wasn’t cold. She wasn’t the aloof, standoffish lover he’d worried she might be. She was eager and shy and lovely, which was worse—far worse.
And much, much better.
He lifted off her a fraction of an inch, wondering when he’d let himself give her that much of his weight. It was too soon for that—they had a great deal more ground to cover first.
Julia’s hand came up, stroked over his hair, then clutched a fistful at his crown, holding him still for her questing lips. She’d apparently found her initiative, forging delicately into his mouth, seeking more of him.
And if he wasn’t mistaken, more of herself.
So he let go a little more, put some rhythm into his kiss, put some swagger and dare into it until she was orally consuming him, making little sounds of want and frustration that had Connor wishing his trousers to Halifax.
“Nightgown off, Julia.” She lifted her arms in compliance so quickly she almost clipped him on the chin with her elbow. It was a summer nightgown, gone in an instant, tossed who knew where in her willingness to show him her treasures.
And they were treasures. She lay on her back while Con sat on his heels between her legs.
He let her suffer a few panting breaths of trepidation while he took lazy, decadent inventory by moonlight: Perfect, full, pale breasts crested with small pinkish nipples puckering invitingly in the night air.
Shoulders a touch more broad than he’d anticipated on such a diminutive woman, but tapering to a feminine waist that curved right back out to lovely hips.
Not quite an hourglass—she was sturdy and apparently not given to overly tight stays—but so very definitely a woman.
She turned her face aside, which he took for a silent plea for his hands, his mouth. Him. She’d be begging before he was through with her, and he’d be cursing.
He shifted forward to hang over her, so they touched only when he gave her his mouth again.
Start slowly, he admonished himself, teasing his lips over her features.
Beneath him, Julia caught the shift, letting him set a more languorous pace.
She also took advantage of the distance between their bodies to run her hands over Con’s naked ribs.
Her touch shifted gradually from a hesitant request to hungry seeking. She mapped his entire torso with two hands—his ribs, chest, waist, hips. Her fingertips explored his nipples slowly and thoroughly, as if she’d never explored such territory before.
Con had encountered female hands on his person in every imaginable intimate caress, but this… plundering of him was unraveling his composure. He retaliated by shifting up enough to catch her busy hands in each of his and press them to the mattress on either side of their bodies.
Which left him free to plunder her, to run his nose along the underside of each warm, rosy breast and hear her breath catch in her throat. He did it again, making her squirm delightfully beneath him, and then when he made a third, slower pass, she sighed and went quiet.
Surrender, of a sort.
Only then did he put his mouth to her, by degrees and inches and slow marches, making her wait and whimper while she tried to pull her hands from his. When he finally drew on her nipple, gently of course, she groaned.
“Hush, lass.”
She couldn’t keep quiet, which pleased him enormously. The sounds coming from her were soft, plaintive, and erotic, escaping in time with the restless shifting of her hips in search of him. He felt the dampness of her curls against his belly and paused, laying his cheek on her abdomen.
The next part was tricky. She was English, after all, but he was betting she’d cast that aggravating detail into the darkness along with her nightgown.
He certainly had.
“Spread your legs for me, Julia.”
There was an instant’s pause, but only an instant. He grabbed a pillow for her hips, though he had to show her what he was about.
Some husbands—some English husbands—were not worthy of the name.
He sat back to gather his courage in one hand and his self-discipline in the other, then reached out to stroke his fingers over the smooth, soft expanse of her belly. So pale, her skin, and so warm.
She arched her pelvis toward him, her eyes huge in the moonlight.
“Trust me, Julia. For the next few minutes, you trust me.”
She did it again, moving under his hand like a cat insisting on its owner’s caresses.
He ran his palm up the front of one of her thighs, a nice muscular turn of leg that suggested she enjoyed riding and walking. She was going to enjoy what he had to give her too.
As if he had all the time and fortitude in the world, Con learned the feel of her legs with his hands.
His touch wandered over her abdomen, down to her knees, made occasional forays back up to those luscious, succulent breasts.
Only when her restless shifting was continuous did he slide both hands up from her knees and brush aside her curls to expose her sex to the moonshine.
He used both hands, focusing his touch on the bud of flesh at the apex of her sex. The shock of it went through her palpably.
“Oh, Connor… Connor…”
His name, but not just his name. A blessing, a pleading, a promise to him and to the night. She wasn’t so English after all.
She held still for an admirably long time while his fingers explored her intimate glory. He could not resist dipping his head to kiss her, though only fleetingly. She was sweet here too, and hot, and ever so ready to be cherished.
Which he did, for long, long moments, until she got a hand fisted around his wrist so tightly Connor noticed it even over the throbbing in his groin. He increased the tempo of his caresses, touching her carefully and then not so carefully at all.
She muttered something that wasn’t a prayer, though she called upon the Lord’s name in guttural desperation, and then her breath was soughing harshly in her chest as she bucked up hard against his hand.
He rode it out; rode out the thrashing and grinding, the low moans from her, the rising crest of his own arousal. She was fierce and glorious in her pleasure, also greedy and more athletic than a mortal man might withstand.
He withstood it, nonetheless.
When she lay panting and sated, he found he’d hilted two fingers in her heat and pillowed his cheek on her abdomen. While she heaved one mighty breath after another, he felt the small aftershocks spasming through her.
She’d been long overdue. Long, long overdue. More overdue even than he.
“Oh, Connor MacGregor. You…” Her hand landed in his hair on a sigh.
She caressed his scalp, ran her touch over his ears, and for some godforsaken reason, he didn’t want to withdraw his fingers from her.
It was a pathetic gesture toward the joining his traitorous body wanted, so he made himself slowly ease away.