Chapter Twenty One #3
She found herself leaning into the kiss, arching her back and craning her neck to lift her face to his, parting her lips to admit the slick thrust of his tongue.
Her arm curled about his neck to anchor herself; his palm flattened upon the small of her back.
That last bit of tension that had held her clutched in its grip from the moment she had asked him to meet her privately evaporated as if it had never existed at all.
She could feel the rise and fall of his chest against her breasts, feel the soft, cool locks of his hair sliding through her fingers.
She hadn’t wanted the kiss to end, hadn’t wanted to relinquish this closeness that felt as necessary as breathing.
But the sigh of disappointment that slipped free as his mouth broke from hers stifled itself when his lips slid along her cheek to nuzzle the delicate skin near her ear.
Tiny tingles of pleasure sparkled across every nerve.
Her whole body arched into the sensation, her eyes closing on a gasp.
Would he feel the same, if she should attempt something similar?
Of their own accord, her hands grasped his shoulders, and she pulled herself up even higher until she was balanced precariously upon the very tips of her toes.
Turning her face to the side, with utmost delicacy she found the lobe of his ear and bit down gently upon it.
Elliot froze entirely, a barely-muffled groan catching in his chest. A shudder wracked him head to toe. He said, in a voice gone rough and gritty, “You’ve read the book.”
“Yes,” she admitted in a murmur, her face flushing so hot that she was certain the crimson of it would be visible even in the darkness. Her fingernails raked across the fine wool of his coat, the sound of it startlingly loud in the sudden silence.
Another helpless shudder slid down his spine. “And…how did you find it?”
What was she meant to say to that? “Educational?” she ventured in a mortified squeak.
A warm laugh curled into her ear, and the heat of his breath seared her skin. “That’s not quite what I meant.” Absently, his fingers stroked the nape of her neck. “Did you enjoy it?”
In a manner of speaking. When she had managed to beat back the initial embarrassment that had assailed her over its lascivious content enough to risk cracking its cover once again, she had devoured the volume in a single night, burning through a small handful of candles in the process.
But the hot, shivery feeling the words printed upon the pages had evoked had stayed with her for hours afterward.
The same feeling that had come over her now.
The same heat, the same queer breathlessness.
The same fierce, burning need to touch—to be touched.
Kate pressed her lips together, fighting the sudden urge to squirm, to press herself more firmly against him. “You said that one was tame?”
Another low chuckle that slid across her skin like silk and sent a shiver skittering down her spine. “As such things go, yes.”
“Could I”—her breath hitched as his lips touched the side of her neck—“borrow one that isn’t quite so tame? Something a bit more shocking?”
“You want to be shocked, then?” he asked, amusement weaving through his voice. And then, after a brief pause in which his fingers traced the edge of her neckline, just barely sliding beneath, he asked at last, “Katie…how shocked do you want to be?”
“How shocked?” Kate murmured. Her voice sounded throaty and faintly drunken even to herself. Her fingers toyed with his hair, sliding through the crisp, soft strands with a gentle rake of her nails. “What do you mean?”
“That book I lent to you,” he said carefully, almost casually, with a soothing stroke of his palm down her spine, “has got a particular scene in it.” A long pause drew out, his breath hissing through his teeth, and she thought—she thought he was searching for some delicate phrasing of words which, when he happened upon them, would somehow put the lewd content in polite terms. An impossibility on its face.
“The one that takes place in the drawing room,” he said.
“Upon the couch, where the man puts his head between the woman’s legs. ”
Her heart hammered against her ribs. “What…what about it?” she asked, the words eking out as she forced the question past her lips.
“That one—that one I think I’d like to try.”
“To try?” she repeated, baffled, the meaning of the words eluding her for several long seconds. Until all at once they crashed upon her with the force of a tidal wave. Half-mortified, half-titillated, she asked, “To try here? Now?”
“Yes.” The raw and primitive tenor of his voice prickled the fine hairs upon her arms. Heat gathered low in her belly, made her squeeze her thighs together. “Here,” he said. “Now.” And then, self-consciously he added, “Kate, you can say no.”
She should have said no. One didn’t have to be particularly schooled in such things to know that there were some things that a woman was not meant to do with a man who was not her husband.
A man who would never be her husband. What purpose would be served in living by rules which had failed to serve her?
She would be happier knowing. Seizing these last few moments of pleasure while they could still be hers.
Some new memory to hold within her heart, which would forever belong only to the two of them.
“Yes,” she said in a whisper. And she found herself repeating those same words he had told her often enough lately: “After all…who is going to know?”