Chapter 15
Phoebe really couldn’t understand why Oliver was such a terrible dancer. Everything indicated that he would be wonderful, from the way he moved with her ice skating to the way they spent time in each other’s arms.
He should have been blissful as the Pirate King.
But every single move that he made was utterly wooden. It was mystifying to her. They went through the steps slowly, one at a time. She counted out the music for them, since they had no accompanist in the privacy of her chamber.
She had hoped that perhaps here, he would be able to open up with her, when in reality it seemed he had actually only become more closed off.
With each step, each turn, each gesture of the arm, he seemed to be retreating further and further from her, and worse, from himself, until he was almost like a wooden doll.
At last, she turned to him. “Are you quite all right?” Then she decided to tease, “Are you thinking about a bill in Parliament or something? Or the cows on your farms? Or…”
He looked down at her and let out a long sigh. “I told you. I don’t like this sort of dancing. Any dancing. Dancing is just a tool a duke must have.”
She eyed him, struggling to take his words at face value. There seemed to be more there. “I have trouble believing that. You’re so good with your body.”
“Am I?” he teased, reaching for her, pulling her into his arms and allowing his hands to rove along her back.
“Yes,” she exclaimed, playfully batting at his shoulder. She adored the way he made her feel, but then knowing she couldn’t think in his embrace, she tickled his sides and darted away from him.
Gasping for air, for he was apparently unused to being tickled, he laughed and eyed her as if he enjoyed this game very much.
She ran behind one of the chairs in her room and winked. She eyed him. “I feel like you are resisting my questions, Your Grace.”
“I’ll show you what I’m up to,” he said. He chased her around the chair, his lips parted in a grin.
She knew the pleasure he’d give her when he caught her.
She whirled around and arched a brow, loving the joyful look upon his face…as well as the desire in his gaze. “You see, I can tell that you are the most lovely and humorous and fun fellow, no matter how hard you try to make me think that you aren’t.”
“Oh, I see,” he said. “You can tell that I’m really not so very difficult.”
“You’re not difficult at all. But something is making you move about like a wooden stick.”
He gave her a silly look and waggled his brows, crossed to her, and pulled her into his arms. She let him, for she had no wish to put up a chase now. She wished to be in his arms, to feel adored. But she hoped beyond measure that he might open up to her.
And for a moment, she was sure he was going to.
“Look, Phoebe, you are simply looking for something that isn’t there. The same with Monsieur Georges. The same with all you Briarwoods. I’m simply a perfunctory dancer. That’s all I will ever be. It’s all I ever need to be. It’s really all a duke needs. There’s nothing more to it.”
Her heart sank, knowing it wasn’t the truth. “Is that the only thing you worry about? What a duke needs?”
He nodded. “Of course. It’s what I am.”
“But what about what Oliver needs?” she exclaimed.
He frowned. “What do you mean?”
She paused, wondering if she was being a fool for asking him too many questions. “Don’t you wish that you could dance as freely as you do other things?”
His face grew guarded. “No,” he said. “Not at all. I don’t worry about that one bit.”
“All right, then let’s dance again. At least let’s try. We really don’t want to disappoint Anne, Emily, and Tabitha. Their play is very important. They’ve been working on it for ages, avoiding matrimony and all that, and I have a funny feeling that we are going to have a Christmas wedding.”
“You and I?” he bit out.
“No,” she tsked. “Emily, Anne, and Tabitha to their Scottish fellows! They have been tittering away. And Leith, Brodie, and Archie? They looked pleased as punch, like peacocks parading about. So, we mustn’t let them down with a failed performance, since this will almost certainly not just be Christmas revels, but wedding ones too. ”
He scowled. “I don’t think I’m prepared for that sort of pressure regarding a dance. Maybe we should ask Hartigan Mulvaney.”
She balked. “You can’t be serious. He is old enough to be my father, perhaps almost even my grandfather, and you are going to let him be the man who sweeps me off my feet, carries me to his ship—”
“All right,” he growled, pulling her closer, as if laying claim to her. “You make a fair point. I still feel the same. I won’t be allowing him to be your Pirate King.”
She nodded. “Good. Then you better get a bit more piratical.”
“Like this?” he asked, pulling her to the side, dipping her down, and taking her mouth in a fiery kiss.
The searing passion of that kiss crushed any protests, any questions, and left her smoldering with need. His lips, his tongue, they caressed her, bringing her body to exquisite life and hunger.
She held onto him tightly, throwing herself into passion.
When he lifted his head and gazed down into her eyes, his desire darkening his own orbs, he queried, “What is your verdict?”
“Yes, well, I suppose that will do,” she managed.
“Then let me continue to show you what I am good at, even if I might not ever be good at what you hope.”
And he kissed her again, kissed her wildly, with abandon, over and over until all thoughts of dancing slipped away.
Phoebe had the strangest feeling that that was exactly what he was actually trying to do. He wasn’t just swept up in the kiss. He was deliberately trying to distract her from the dance. It seemed odd. She’d have to pursue it, but not now. Right now, all she wanted to think about was him.
Oliver seized her and turned her. He kissed her neck, teasing the curve with his tongue and his lips.
“God, I love the feel of you. The taste of you,” he moaned.
“As I love you,” she whispered, arching against him, undone by the way he caressed her back and held her in a passionate embrace.
She rocked her hips against his hard sex, tempting him, urging him not to delay, for she was hungry for this. For him.
“I love every bit of this, of you,” he said, as he pressed his hard sex against the folds of her silk skirt covering her bottom.
He bent her forward along the chair and began to slide her skirts upward.
“Whatever are you doing?” she teased, glancing back over her shoulder at the man she adored.
“I am studying what will soon be mine,” he whispered in return. “Look at these beautiful legs,” he mused.
And he knelt behind her.
Then he began to kiss his way up her body. He pressed open-mouthed kisses along her legs, teasing over her calves, kissing the backs of her knees, the sensitive skin of her thighs, and then he kissed her buttocks.
He parted her thighs and teased his fingers along her opening. Phoebe let out a cry of need, rocking back towards him, needing him.
Oliver whipped her around so that she faced him. Slowly, he stood. Again, he kissed her, taking her mouth with his own, branding her with his fiery need.
He picked her up easily and carried her to a beautiful wood table at the side of her chamber and laid her back on it.
“I want all of you,” he said. “I want to look at all of you.”
Garment by garment, he undressed her until she was naked, displayed before him. A groan of pure pleasure parted his lips.
How beautiful she was. And she would soon be his, all his. She made him half mad, half wild, and he was unable to do anything but throw them both into pleasure’s tide.
Oliver traced his lips along her throat, the hollow there. He kissed her clavicles, then kissed down the valley of her breasts.
How he loved her perfect breasts with their pink nipples.
He tasted each one, delighting in their sweetness, rolling the hard nubs with his tongue. Then he teased over her rib cage, loving the curve of her waist.
Determined to make her feel bliss, though he wished to be fast, he forced himself to take his time. He caressed her, massaged her, readied her.
At long last, he parted her thighs, bent down, and took her into his mouth.
God, he loved the taste of her. He loved how she felt under his tongue when he ministered to her and gave her pleasure.
She arched and bucked, but he held her still with his hands, determined to make her rise with pleasure, determined to make her know that he was the cause of this, that he could make her body sing.
When she pitched over the edge, and he felt the ripples of her pleasure against his tongue, he felt a male pride that couldn’t be described. There were no words for it, and when he did elicit the last pleasure out of her, he stood.
Undoing his breeches, he guided her thighs and wrapped them about his waist. He took his sex in his hand and drove forward into her tight core.
The way she wrapped about him with her welcoming heat nearly undid him in that moment, but he would not give in so quickly.
No, he stroked her, thrusting deep, ensuring that he was coaxing her along the path to pleasure again.
Even as his own breath became ragged and he hurtled to his release, he watched her face as bliss began to transform it.
He wanted her to know that he was hers, and she his.
And when he was on the precipice himself, barely able to hold back, barely able to control himself, Oliver stroked his fingers over the crest of her folds and pressed ever so slightly.
Her body tightened and squeezed around his sex. He threw back his head and cried out her name.
Both of them becoming one. Both of them nothing but ecstasy.