Chapter 14 #2
“I am redecorating. I’ve moved some things into the library for now. It’s my, er, Christmas present. To you and Bea. Mrs. Perkins gave me three footmen to help.”
He found her, finally, a flash of pink dress and red hair at the far end of the library, where she’d been shielded by a substantial stand of potted palms and a suit of armor.
Actually, no. They were fake potted palms. Why in hell did his house possess six fake potted palms?
She was balanced, he noted with a faint wellspring of terror, atop the back of a taxidermied boar. She was in her stockings—God knew where her shoes had gone—and his eyes fixed on the delicate arches of her feet as she stretched up to pull a dreadfully ugly still life off the wall.
She leaned out over the boar’s bristled black back, one freckled arm planted on the wall, the other maneuvering beneath a heavy gilt frame. Her hair was pinned up in a neat coil, exposing the pale nape of her neck.
He wanted to drag her down off the boar and bite her neck. He wanted to run his hands from those elegantly arched feet all the way up to the dimpled curve of her thighs. He wanted to bite her there too. He wanted—
“You might help,” she said dryly, “instead of just standing there.”
“Stop.”
She paused at the sound of his voice, dark and grating. Only her eyes moved, wide and blue, flying up to meet his.
“Stop,” he said again, and somewhere inside he knew he’d meant it for himself. Stop, he told himself. Don’t go any closer. This cannot end well.
But he didn’t listen. Only Matilda followed his command, her body frozen, her lips parted, blood rushing to her cheeks and neck and the triangle of bare skin he could see where she’d unbuttoned the high pleated collar of her dress.
She did not move, only stood balanced on her tiptoes, her body canted forward, both hands flat against the wall.
Lust was a fire in his blood, his body growing taut all over. He drew closer, close enough to touch, and wrapped one hand around the fine bones of her ankle.
He could hear the unsteady rhythm of her breath.
“Don’t move,” he said. And then slowly he slid his fingers up her silk-clad leg.
He coasted over the taut muscle of her calf, the back of her knee.
His hand had disappeared under her skirts, but he did not need to see.
He could feel each inch of flesh as he drew his hand over it, the warmth of her skin through her stockings, the rounded curve of her inner thigh.
He could breathe in her scent and hear the catch in her throat as his fingers met the lace edge of her garter, the last tiny separation between his skin and hers.
He curled his fingers underneath the lace and stocking and dragged it all down, baring the silk-soft skin beneath. He flipped his hand over and closed it around the curve of her thigh, gripping hard, listening to the whimper and gasp Matilda made, feeling her body tilt harder into the wall.
He knew, somewhere in the dim corners of his mind called Reason and Sanity and Self-Protection, that this was a terrible idea.
But he put his other hand to her waist anyway.
“Get down,” he told her, “before you fall.”
She leaned shakily into his body. He cupped the bare skin of her thigh, her hip, the sweet curve of her buttocks—oh God—and he let her slide slowly down to the floor.
Her body crushed against his, and he couldn’t think over the pounding of his blood, the lightning-strike of pleasure everywhere they touched.
Finally, her stockinged feet met the floor.
He’d let her skirts fall down, but he was greedy.
Possessed. He could not give up touching her skin.
He moved one hand to the back of her neck.
The other toyed with the buttons at her collar, tracing the small revealed triangle of skin at the base of her throat.
He could see her pulse, light and fast, and her face too: her lips parted, a flash of pink tongue as she wet her lips.
“I know about the dinners,” she said.
For a moment, he could not fathom what she meant.
“I know you arranged them for me. I know you told Mrs. Perkins to alter the menus so that I would have something to eat.”
He touched the hollow of her throat with one finger and did not know how to respond. Of course he had. What else would he have done?
“I have something to offer too,” she said, and there was a fierceness to her voice, almost a demand. “I can make this place a home for you and Bea. If you will not go to London, at least let me help you here. I can bring in light—and music—”
“Stop,” he said again, and he pushed into her, nudging her back into the rows of books behind her, beneath the hideous painting she’d been trying to pull down. “You have to stop.”
Her back met the books. Her hands came down to the shelf just beneath her hips, and fastened there. Her knuckles went a little white, he saw, and for some reason, the sight aroused him further.
Yes, he thought, a little desperate, not quite controlled. Hold tight.
“Stop what?” Her chin tipped back, and Christian watched his own fingers slip another button at her throat free. More flushed skin emerged beneath his hand.
“Everything,” he said. “You. Here. Invading my house. My goddamned dreams.”
“What am I—”
“Changing things.” He put his mouth to her neck and kissed the two freckles beneath her ear. His hand still cradled the back of her neck, and he held her still as he kissed the line of her jaw. “Making me want. Bringing me back to life.”
Too much—he’d said too much. She inhaled, quick and sharp, as though she might speak.
He kissed her.
And God, she tasted better than he remembered.
Sweet and dark and hot and wet. She tasted needy and hungry, and she whimpered into his mouth, a shiver running through her body as she tried to arch up into him.
He put all his frustration and longing into the kiss.
It was hard and brutal, and she took it all, sucking and biting back, her fingers still clinging to the shelf at her sides.
He was mad. Out of his head. All he could think about was Matilda, her sweetness and her generosity and the soft fragrant heat of her body—and oh God, he had to see her again.
He pulled back. Her chest rose and fell rapidly as she breathed, and—fuck it—he needed both hands. He let go of her nape, unfastened the rest of the buttons of her bodice, and then yanked down her chemise. Her breasts spilled out above her stays, round and pale and luscious.
Matilda gasped, and the sound was both spur to his desire and warning.
“Remember,” he ground out, “to say stop.”
In answer, she nestled her bottom more firmly on the shelf, spread her legs wider, and hiked her skirts up to her knees.
Jesus, he adored her, this brave, stubborn, extraordinary woman. He could not get enough of her.
“Oh no,” he growled, and he peeled her fingers off her skirts, moving them back to the shelf. “Right there. Don’t move.”
Her skirts started to slip back down, and she whimpered, twisting her body. “Christian, please—”
He went down on his knees in front of her.
Her moan of relief was so loud and greedy that his cock pulsed in his trousers. He pushed her skirts back up and peeled her stockings completely off, his hands tracing the dips and curves of her legs, teasing up the inside of her thighs.
He watched her hands, which flexed and tightened on the shelf. Her hips bucked as he coasted closer to her sex, his fingers brushing over her curls, red as fire in the late-afternoon light.
“Please,” she gasped, “please—”
Her voice was fractured with need. His hands shook with the desire to dig into her flesh, to leave marks on her skin.
Instead he lifted one hand and put his thumb against her mouth. “Suck.”
She did as he commanded, her lips closing around his thumb, drawing him into the wet heat of her mouth. She sucked hard; he felt the flutter of her tongue against his skin.
Jesus Christ, he could feel that hot suction all the way down in his cock. He turned his face in to her inner thigh and bit her there.
She gasped, his thumb slipping from her mouth, and he ran his hand down her body, bringing his wet thumb to her sex.
He licked the place on her thigh where he’d bitten her, and then he circled his thumb around her clitoris. Matilda made a little incoherent sound, and her hips bucked again, bringing his thumb harder up against the taut bud.
He pulled his thumb back, sliding down into the searing heat of her channel. “I thought I told you not to move.”
She shuddered. “I’m—I can’t—”
He blew a cool stream of air against her wetness, and she gave a soft cry. “Christian—”
He circled her clitoris again with his thumb, then pushed two fingers inside of her. “What is it you want, Matilda?”
“This,” she said. Her voice was fractured, dusk dotted with stars. “You. Inside me.”
He gave his fingers a slow, deliberate thrust, and she cried out again, louder this time. He leaned forward to bring his mouth to her clitoris above his fingers, licking, sucking until she started to shake.
He pulled back then, pumped his fingers once more, steady and slow. “This?”
“No,” she choked out.
Her head was pressed back against the shelves, her hair falling down her neck. She was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen, her whole body flushed pink and her legs splayed wide before him.
“What, then?” he asked. He pressed his mouth to her inner thigh, letting her feel the edges of his teeth.
“More,” she managed. “Please, Christian.”
He rewarded her with his mouth and hand, with the hard sucking rhythm she seemed to like. The little broken whimpers she made had him shaking, his hips jerking uncontrollably, his cock seeking her heat.
But he mastered himself. Before her crisis, he stopped again.
She gave a ragged, frustrated cry, and perhaps the hot sound of her need should not have sent desire rocketing through his blood.
But it did. Oh, it did.