Chapter Twenty Seven #2
Yes. Kate sighed in satisfaction as his mouth opened over hers, as the breadth of his bare chest pressed her down to the earth, infusing her with a lovely, luxurious heat.
As she swept her hands down the flat plane of his back, she learned swiftly enough that she could play him just as skillfully as he could play the pianoforte, teasing passionate little sounds from him with just the lightest application of her fingers and the gentle rake of her nails.
She explored the texture of his skin, enjoyed the smooth slide of her palms across his rain-slicked shoulders.
Craned her neck to the glide of his lips as he traced the path of a raindrop that slid down her throat.
Somewhere far in the distance, a low ripple of thunder rumbled as the storm began a slow ebb, traveling away from the heart of London.
His warm breath followed the strokes of his fingertips, shimmering across her damp skin with a silky flourish.
The wool of his trousers abraded her tender skin as his hips settled in the lee of her thighs.
The hard ridge of his arousal pressed against her belly, and mad, inane thought traipsed across her mind and slipped out of her mouth. “Oh. This is…not like sheep.”
The puff of Elliot’s laughter teased her nipple to an aching point. “No. Not like sheep.”
“But you do know how—”
“I have read quite a lot of books.” His tongue flicked across her nipple, and Kate let her head drop back upon the grass as the dizzying sensation left her breathless.
A restless tension stole through her limbs, and a cascade of shivers slipped down her spine.
Her fingertips slid beneath the waistband of his trousers, skating over the muscled flesh of his arse.
She felt the groan that vibrated against her breast, the pulse of his arousal against the soft skin of her belly.
“God, I love you,” he whispered as his lips closed around her nipple.
The delicate suction of his mouth stoked that fire that had kindled low in her belly, made her tip her head back and pant a few frenzied breaths to the clouds roiling above.
Purple wisteria danced across her field of vision, glittering with rain in the soft glow of moonlight through the haze of clouds, and her fingers clutched his backside as his hand slid down the quivering flesh of her stomach.
His fingers petted the fleece at the apex of her thighs.
She made some soft, embarrassing sort of sound as he explored the melting-wet flesh of her core, and her hips arched into the tender strokes, welcoming the slow thrust of his fingers inside her.
It wasn’t enough; she ached to be filled by more than only his fingers, ached for the blanket of his body over hers, ached to cradle him in her arms, to feel him inside her.
A plaintive cry wrenched itself from her lungs as he withdrew his fingers at last, her inner muscles striving to hold him, searching for that fulfillment that dangled just out of reach.
Cool air coasted over her skin as he pulled away altogether, and Kate wilted with a sigh as she heard the thump of boots onto the grass, the wet rustle of fabric as he shed his trousers.
Reverent hands smoothed down her body once more. Elliot’s lips touched her temple, her cheek, her chin. The warm weight of him settled over her, blanketed her in a comfortable heat, soothed her with the velvety slide of his bare flesh on hers.
His hand cradled hers, drew it down the corded muscle of his belly to the jut of his arousal.
Her fingers shaped him uncertainly at first, then with increasing confidence as his breath whistled through his teeth, as she felt the escalating beat of his heart against her breasts, heard the soft, impassioned sounds he made near her ear.
This gave him the same sort of pleasure, she realized, as he had given her.
The thin skin felt silky smooth as she ran the light clasp of her hand up the shaft. Hot and hard as steel, ending in blunt crown. She fancied she could feel his heartbeat within the swollen flesh against her palm.
“That’s enough,” he said, his voice sounding faintly strangled—tortured, even. Gently, his fingers pried hers from around him, and he sank over her with a sigh of relief, his whole body shuddering.
“Did I do it wrong?” She followed a drop of water down his back with the tips of her fingers, feeling the muscles of his back flex and bunch beneath the delicate strokes.
“No. God, no.” The touch of his lips burned across her cheek.
One hot hand slid over her hip, down her thigh, eased her leg up and around his waist. She could feel the blunt head of his arousal prodding at her private flesh, in that space where his fingers had been.
A strange, unfamiliar sensation, one that made her want to lift her hips into the pressure of his. “This part…I’m told it might hurt.”
Her fingernails pricked the satiny skin of his shoulders, digging in to brace herself. “A lot?”
“God, I hope not.” He breathed the words like a prayer. “But you’ll tell me if it does. If you want me to stop.”
That pressure increased, the weight of his body bearing down upon her.
Kate’s breath caught in her throat at the odd sensation of it, of his body entering hers.
Deeper than his fingers, in a relentless invasion, a long, slow glide that felt as though it ought to be impossible.
Her body accepted the intrusion of his with no more than a token resistance, somehow finding the space to accommodate him, and he came to rest at last, his forehead pressed to hers, a groan lodged somewhere in his throat.
“All right?” he asked in that same tortured, strangled voice.
She traced the path of a tremble that raced down his spine. “Yes?” she ventured as she gave an experimental wiggle and provoked a gasp from him. “You?”
“I might be dying.”
A giddy giggle burst from her lips, absurdly pleased with the heartfelt declaration. That feeling—that was one she knew. The one he’d given her in the library at the ball, with that act he’d learned from the book he’d lent to her, which was even now stuffed beneath the mattress of her bed.
Another shift of her hips, nudging up into the press of his, and his head dropped to her shoulder, burying a choked sound into the side of her throat.
His hand groped for hers, interlacing their fingers beside her head.
A zip of pleasure tingled up her spine. “I am going to read all of your naughty books,” she sighed.
“I’ll let you,” he said on a gasping breath. “Tomorrow, everything I own is yours. But tonight—”
Tonight, he was hers, and she was his. Tonight, they belonged to each other. Tomorrow, all of London would know it—but tonight was just for the two of them. A private pledge sealed here beneath the hanging wisteria, under the soft caress of the rain.
Her hips arched to catch the lazy, slow plunge of his, each thrust exciting latent nerve endings to a sparkling awareness. There was a magic in this, a music of sighs and gasps and moans that wove around them, enfolded them in its strange beauty.
That blissful glow began in her belly, heating her skin until she was certain the rain had to be sizzling off of her. Her muscles drew tight and tense, straining toward the glory of the coming release. Elliot’s heart pounded against hers, two matched pulses waltzing together in perfect time.
His lips opened over hers just in time to catch the wild little cry that tore itself free of her throat, as every locked muscle dissolved into a pleasurable lassitude.
Lethargy stole over her by degrees as those tiny pulses radiated outward, as she felt the tension slowly drain from his body and the throb of him inside her.
Here, at last, was peace. A sense of belonging she had never thought to feel, gathered with the lace of Elliot’s fingers through hers, with the blanket of his body over hers, and the rhythmic beat of his breath against her shoulder.
The rain moved on overhead, taking with it the storm that had enveloped her this last day, and the sigh that drifted from her lungs in the sweet aftermath sounded like a hard-won happiness seized at last.