Chapter 21 #2
“Jamie,” she panted, her voice half harsh whisper, half groan, her hand running up and down his shaft. “I need you inside me.”
His arousal had only increased with her frenzy in the bed. He had never felt so hard, nearing the point of pain. He wanted to be inside her, but he thought he might spend very quickly once he was.
But she had told him what she wanted, and it was what he wanted, too.
He could not remember wanting anything, any woman more.
He took his finger out of her opening and rolled to kneel between her legs.
He held himself up with his arms, fearful of his weight on her.
Still her hand was on his cock, stroking him, not letting him go.
“Catherine,” he said, and she allowed him to replace her hand with his own.
He laid his sex against hers, his hardness against her dripping softness.
She put her legs up and out, kicking the counterpane off, pointing her toes to the ceiling.
Her small hands were on his hip bones, pulling his pelvis towards hers, urging him, wanting him.
The silk of her folds and then her inner warmth and wetness and tightness, and so much of her frenzy was suddenly contained even as she contained him.
“Jamie,” she cooed. She was still. Her blue eyes looked up at him. She licked her lips. A drop of sweat ran down her neck and between her breasts.
He was lost in a welter of feeling. He wanted to hold still, to savor this moment, the incredible sweetness of being inside her while he looked at her face and her breasts. But he also wanted to thrust and move and buck.
She made it easy for him. She pushed her rounded hips up off the bed to hold all of him, and she began to rock.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I . . . can’t wait.”
He joined her then, pulling back when she pulled back, thrusting in when she raised her hips to his.
He leaned over to brush his lips against hers when he thrust. Her wildness returned, and she grabbed at his hair, his back, his shoulder blades.
He supported himself with one hand and twisted his other between their bodies so as to be able to graze her pearl as he thrust.
“Shall I touch you here?” he asked.
“No, no, no, oh Jamie, yes, yes!” she cried out, looking into his eyes.
She sneezed. She shuddered and stopped thrusting up towards him. He could feel her sex close even more tightly around his, her upper body convulsing in perfect synchrony with the lower body spasms that gripped his member. He stilled his hand and waited.
She stared at him with glazed eyes. Her breath was ragged but became slower, more even. She whispered something that might have been my mastiff, but that made no sense to him.
He bent his head to hers and kissed each of her blonde eyebrows. Those marvelously expressive brows. She grabbed his head with both her hands and kissed him deeply, forcing her tongue into his mouth as she started pushing up against him once more.
He began to thrust again. He was so aroused by her arousal, her climax, he could not stop himself.
Within a minute, he was consumed by pleasure and spilling himself into her, clenching on top of her, looking down at her as she held his flanks.
He collapsed on top of her, forgetting himself for a moment, and then tried to raise himself off her in a panic. But she held him tight.
“I won’t break. I’m not made of porcelain,” she breathed in his ear.
He rolled over, taking her with him so he was under her and she was perched on his chest and abdomen.
“It’s crushing you, not breaking you, that has me worried,” he said and lifted his head up to put his mouth on her perfect white shoulder. “And you look like you’re made of porcelain.”
She purred contentedly, lying on top of him, her cheek to his chest. He stroked her back, long soft strokes from her shoulders all the way down to her buttocks until he noticed she had some gooseflesh.
Holding her to him with one arm, he reached for the counterpane and drew it over them.
As he did so, he felt the stickiness at his groin for the first time.
Some of it was her, undoubtedly; she had been very ready for him. But most of it was him, his seed.
He had not used a French Letter. He, who had always been the most scrupulous of all the rakes.
“Catherine,” he began.
She raised her head from his chest and looked at him. “Kate.”
“Kate—”
“Jamie,” she hummed and kissed him on the breastbone.
“Kate, I did not use . . . I had no French Letter . . .”
She began to shake. She was laughing. She moved herself up his body so her face was above his, her beautiful breasts resting on his collarbone.
He was very interested in what she might say when she was done laughing, but he couldn’t help taking his hands off her back to bring them to the sides of her breasts.
The full, soft globes curved perfectly into his palms. These breasts of his warrior goddess.
His unbound Viola. He began to rub his thumbs over her nipples and was gratified to feel the tips grow erect under his touch.
“Jamie.” She kissed the side of his mouth. “The advantage,” she kissed his chin, “of bedding,” she kissed the angle of his jaw, “an old woman,” she nibbled on his earlobe and spoke softly in his ear, “is there are no babies to worry about.”
He turned his head to hers so they were eye to eye, nose to nose, mouth to mouth. He covered her lips with his and kissed her deeply, slowly, luxuriating in the taste of her mouth, the feel of her tongue, the warm scent of her, all the while rubbing her nipples.
When she broke finally from the kiss to breathe, he whispered, “I don’t see an old woman. I see a goddess.”
“Jamie,” she said, her voice strained. She began to move atop him.
Her transient peace was gone, shattered. He was holding her breasts and rubbing her peaks with his thumbs, alternating between quick, soft brushes and rougher, slower strokes. Her groin throbbed in time to the movements of his thumbs, and she began to feel her sex dampen and widen.
He moved lower down the bed, still beneath her, and took a thumb off one nipple.
She felt a pang of loss, which quickly turned into a flash of the most delirious pleasure as he took her breast in his mouth and began to suck.
Heavenly, sharp raptures shook her. He lightly bit the nipple and then transferred his lips to the other breast. He kissed, he licked, he suckled.
And when he nibbled on her other breast, she raised her head up, neck straining, and sneezed just before her entire body was rocked by a climax that started at the tips of her breasts and spread in ever-widening circles across her entire body, like the ripples from a stone cast into a still pond.
She collapsed to his side.
“My breasts,” she said between pants, “are very susceptible.”
He took her hand and pressed her palm flat to his mouth and kissed it. He looked at her with those crystalline gray eyes whose corners crinkled, and she knew he was smiling under her hand. She moved her hand to his cheek, and, indeed, the smile was there.
“Kate,” he said through his grin. “I would say they are exquisitely susceptible.”
As she slid her hand off his cheek to fill her fingers with his hair again, a weariness came over her. When one has fought against something for months, as she had, even a temporary surrender was exhausting.
She thought of sending him away to find a room and a bed of his own. To draw a line. It was this one time and this one time only. They were not lovers. They would never be lovers. That was an impossibility.
But she did not think he would understand. And what harm could there be in letting him stay close for a few more hours?
Every harm. Every danger. But for the moment, she could not bring herself to care about the peril of letting him stay in her bed.
She turned and pushed back into him as he gathered her in, his chest against her back, his arm pillowing her head, his other arm around her body, his hand between her breasts, his knees behind her knees. Once they were positioned thus, he went completely still, save the rise and fall of his chest.
Catherine felt his stillness infect her, and the muscles in her neck softened. And she slept.
She awoke some hours later, having felt something change behind her, although he had not shifted his position.
“My lord?” she whispered.
“Yes?” he said, seemingly fully awake. He did not move.
She nudged back against him, pressing into his tumescence.
His mouth was just behind her ear. “I apologize for waking you, Mrs. Lovelock.”
“Mrs. Lovelock?” She laughed. “I think I’m a little naked for that mode of address.”
“You called me my lord.”
Very slowly, she turned to him, reluctant to break the warm touch of his body against hers.
But, in turning, there was a thrilling friction over her breasts as he kept his arm in place, his forearm abrading her nipples until she was facing him and his arm was curled around her back, her breasts brushing against his chest.
She had to see his eyes. There they were. Gray, soft, maybe a little drowsy.
“What should I call you, my lord?” she asked. She put her hand to his hair, that hair.
He caressed her spine. He bit his lower lip, as if in thought. “Well, the last time you spoke to me, Kate, a few hours ago, you called me Jamie.”
“Jamie,” she said and kissed him.
He had slept heavily, surprisingly heavily, considering their circumstances. He would have thought his mind would have been vigilant and alert, but his sleep was dreamless and deep.
As he came to himself, feeling her pressed to him, sheltered by him, he thought that this, this position, this flesh-to-flesh contact with this woman, this was something worth dying for. Or living for.