Chapter 7 #6
Desire shot through Haydon. It was just an uncertain little kiss, he understood that, an inexperienced pressure of one mouth to another, but he could not remember ever having been so aroused by one simple touch.
Of course he had been impossibly stirred by Genevieve during all the long hours she had tended him and bathed him, soothing every inch of his aching body with her skillful caresses and unbearably soft hands.
His body was aching now, but it was with the rigid need to be touched again, to be stroked and kneaded and clutched, not gently, but with desperate, gasping hunger.
He fought to control himself, struggled to endure the sweet graze of her mouth and the clean scent of her hair and the feathery brush of her fingers against his clenched jaw.
If she would but pull away he might be all right, might be able to maintain the tightly shackled control he had been exerting over himself every time he saw her, or thought of her, or inhaled the lingering summery fragrance of her after she had left a room.
But she did not pull away. Instead she increased the pressure of her lips, as if she was trying to elicit a response from him and was not quite sure how to go about it.
With the fragile uncertainty of a woman who had never been properly kissed, she parted her lips ever so slightly, inviting him to taste her.
Haydon groaned and crushed his mouth to hers, wrapping her in his powerful arms as he dragged her against him.
He plunged his hands in the strawberry-gold of her hair, plucking away the pins until the heavy mass poured like liquid silk into his rough palms. His tongue swept along the coral of her lips and then slipped inside, tasting her deeply as his hands roamed the elegant curve of her jaw, the fine silk of her cheek, the slender column of her throat.
Much to his pleasure, she did not fight him, but instead moaned and grasped the back of his neck, pulling him even closer as her own desire flamed.
Her gown was a primly buttoned affair of slate-gray, unadorned and inexpensive and well-worn, yet as Haydon cupped the soft swell of her breast, he thought it the most mysterious and erotic fashion he had ever seen.
One by one the tiny black buttons at the front were freed, until finally the creamy expanse of her breasts was exposed, barely veiled by the transparent fabric of her chemise.
His tongue twined with hers as his hand wandered over the lush mounds, aroused by the flimsy barrier of linen separating his rough skin from hers.
He rained a hungry path of kisses along the pulse of her throat, over the delicate structure of her collarbone and down into the valley below.
Her chemise was loose and dipped in a low crescent over her, enabling him to slide it across her skin with little more than a sigh, releasing the beauty of her breasts to the shifting coppery light of the fire.
Genevieve felt as if she were melting, as if her skin and flesh and bone had been transformed to molten honey.
She wanted to taste Haydon’s mouth again, to swirl her tongue around the whiskey-sweet wetness and heat, and feel the low rumble of him moaning against her as his hands laid claim to her body.
She tried to pull him up to her once more, but he was consumed with circling his tongue across her tingling skin, setting it afire with slick little caresses.
And suddenly he closed his mouth over the peak of her breast and began to suckle, sending a deep shiver of pleasure surging through her.
She gasped and threaded her hands into his hair, tilting her head back as she held him at her breast and shamelessly offered herself to him.
She felt her nipple tighten into a taut bud of pure sensation, and just as she thought she could bear no more he broke away and flicked his tongue over the other peak, licking and suckling until both breasts were full and aching.
He eased her back against the cushions of the sofa and continued to worship her, trailing up and down from her breasts to her mouth, while his hands roamed across the ample layers of padded crinolines and skirts that cocooned her belly and hips and thighs.
Suddenly his fingers were circling her ankle, and then they were trailing up, along the thin wool of her stocking, barely grazing her calf as they found the edge of her drawers.
Up and up they moved with swift certainty, and then they stole through the opening of her undergarment and began to caress the downy soft mound between her thighs.
Genevieve gasped, but Haydon only kissed her more deeply as he stroked the intimate triangle, awakening it to a myriad of glorious sensations.
Hot, dark pleasure bloomed inside her, and when he lightly traced his finger along the cleft of her womanhood, he found her slick and anxious to be touched.
He eased his finger inside, fondling the slippery folds of her with slow, patient strokes, teasing her and rousing her as he devoured her mouth.
His own hardness was pressing against her, and she tentatively laid her hand against it.
He groaned and drove his finger deeper, shocking her, exciting her, filling the terrible void that had begun to throb from the very core of her body.
In and out he moved as he suckled from breast to breast. His fingers circled the honeyed petals of her in swift swirls before slipping ever deeper inside again.
He altered his rhythm and his touch, teasing her, coaxing her, distilling her awareness until it was nothing but a ripple of ever-increasing pleasure, tightening and intensifying until she couldn’t move, couldn’t think, could only take the smallest sips of air.
Her modesty forgotten, she gripped his hardness through the wool of his trousers and restlessly shifted her hand up and down, wanting to torture him as he was torturing her.
But it was impossible to concentrate on what she was doing, because the sensations swelling within her were growing hotter and deeper and tighter, until she was certain she could bear no more.
And then she was shattering into a thousand sparkling pieces and she cried out, a cry of ecstasy and wonder, and Haydon crushed his mouth to hers and held her tight.
It took every fragment of his self-control to keep himself from taking her right there on the sofa, with her breasts spilling wantonly from her spinsterish gown and her ruffled skirts tangled in frothy disarray about her thighs and hips.
Genevieve had ignited a desire within him that had long lain dormant, and he wanted to slake it, here, now, quickly, before the flames of her passion cooled.
He had no right to her, he reminded himself.
She was innocent and pure, a woman who had devoted her life to saving lost children from a bleak and unforgiving world.
What could she possibly want with a selfish bastard like him, who had wasted most of his life in a drunken orgy of pleasure, gambling and drinking and rutting?
He had carelessly permitted his family’s fortune to dwindle until it was less than half of what he had originally inherited from his staid, thoroughly responsible brother.
He had recklessly copulated with a married woman and created an unwanted child who was doomed to a life of loneliness and misery, until she finally decided she could bear the cruelties of this world no more.
Now he was running from the law, accused of murdering a man he did in fact kill, albeit in self-defense, afraid to be known by his own name, without so much as a penny for food or shelter.
In the midst of this appalling situation, he was selfishly ravishing the woman who had risked everything in her world to try to help him.
Hating himself, he rolled off of her. He stood and began to straighten his clothing, staring morosely into the fire.
Genevieve’s senses began to return. Her heated flesh was suddenly cold and shockingly bare now that the comfort of Haydon’s powerful body stretched over her was gone.
Mortified, she rose from the sofa, pulling down her skirts before she clumsily began the task of buttoning up the gaping bodice of her gown.
“Forgive me,” said Haydon tautly. “I should never have touched you.”
What could she possibly say to that? she wondered miserably.
Obviously he was trying to spare her feelings, for surely he could not have forgotten that it was she who had kissed him.
But she had never imagined that a simple, tender kiss could burst into such a frenzy of heat and lust, of wanting to touch and taste and grope and feel, deep within, the sensations that had flooded her body with such glorious abandon.
No kiss that she had shared with Charles had ever exploded into such a breathless, spinning vortex of erotic desire.
And even though her skin was now chilled by Haydon’s abandonment of her and her own shame, the area between her legs was still mysteriously wet and aching for more.
“I must go,” she managed in a tiny voice, wishing the floor would open up and swallow her whole. And then, because her breeding and her irrevocably instilled civility would not permit her to do otherwise, she added awkwardly, “Good night, Lord Redmond.”
Haydon closed his eyes as he listened to the door close behind her, excruciatingly aware of her summery citrus fragrance upon the air, his clothes, his skin.
He would never touch her again, he vowed fiercely. He had already destroyed one innocent life by following the torch of his lust, and he’d gladly burn in hell before ever doing so again.