Chapter 10 #2
“Your mother has a good deal of sway over you. It’s true. But Oliver is the one who, in the end, decides who you can and cannot marry. And soon you will be the one to decide because I think you’re about to or have reached your majority.”
“It’s not about that,” she hissed. “It’s not about legality. It’s about…”
“What?” he asked, stroking his hand along her jaw.
“It’s about a Christmas very, very long ago.”
“Do you want to tell me about it?”
She gave her head a sharp shake. “No, I don’t. I never really want to think about it. It changed my entire life, that Christmas.”
“Then let this Christmas change it again,” he said gently as he pulled her into his arms.
“I’ve wanted to do this for so very long,” he said softly.
“What?” she asked.
“May I?” He lifted his hand to her hair. She held very still and gave a slight nod. He slipped his fingers to the pins, pulled them out, and let her hair tumble down her back until the tendrils danced against her waist.
“Ah,” he mused, his face transforming. “There you are. I’ve been looking for you.”
“What are you prattling on about you, silly man?”
“My Seraphine, my angel. There you are.”
She still didn’t feel angelic at all. She didn’t feel powerful at all. But, at least, here with Laertes, she felt like maybe she could breathe.
“Kiss me,” she blurted. “I want you to kiss me.”
He bit his lip. “I don’t know,” he said. “I’m worried.”
“You’re the one who’s holding back now?” she cried.
“Like I said, I don’t want you to recriminate yourself. I don’t want you to look back on this night in a few months’ time and feel regret, feel as if you’re overwhelmed by this family and this house.”
She took his face in her hands and stared into his eyes, her whole body quaking with emotion. “Please don’t take this from me, not right now,” she said. “This is the first time I have wanted something in a long time and dared to truly ask for it. So, don’t take this from me.”
“Then I won’t,” he said. And Laertes kissed her, and she knew there would be no going back. Which was perfectly all right because she did not wish to.
It seemed Laertes was going to give her everything that she required.
She’d finally asked for what she wanted, finally allowed herself to choose, and he was a maelstrom of passion, as if he had been holding it tight, barely able to control it. And now he was unleashing it upon the both of them.
His mouth was a wild dose of heat and she cried out, moaning at the intensity of how it made her feel wanted, loved, worshipped.
He lifted her in his arms and carried her to the bed without hesitation. Again without hesitation, he lowered her upon it and then began working quickly at the pins and ribbons of her gown. Quite efficiently, he had her out of all her clothes in a thrice.
And then, like a man driven, like a man who was uncertain if he had enough time, he worked on his clothes before the fire.
It was all happening so fast, and her mind raced.
“Slow down,” she whispered. “Are you afraid I will stop you if we slow down?”
“I am not afraid to be stopped,” he said honestly. “But you consume me in a way nothing ever has before. It makes me wild, barely able to hold myself in check.”
“And you me,” she murmured in return.
He lay down beside her on the bed, his breath ragged as he stroked a lock of hair back from her breast and tucked it over her shoulder.
Deliberately, he rolled her onto her front and then stroked her back. She stared at the pillow, feeling oddly vulnerable and yet loving it as he paid attention to every bit of her.
Laertes touched and kissed every muscle of her back, every bone, every rib, and then he pressed a kiss to the arch of her spine.
With low murmurs of approval, he kissed her bottom, and then, slowly, her thighs, the backs of her knees, her calves. He tickled her feet, and she cried out with laughter and tried to pull them back, but then he turned her over onto her back.
His eyes were hot now, intense with hunger and what he wished to do with her.
He kissed her ankles as if they were the most beautiful things in the world.
And then he began to kiss his way up her body, just as he had her back. He left no part of her unattended. When he reached her thighs, he gazed down between them and let out a growl of possessiveness. Then, before she even realized what he intended, he kissed the most sensitive spot of her body.
A wild breath escaped her. Astonishment filled her. She had no idea that a man could do this to a woman! But even more so, she had no idea that she could feel so transported by his hot mouth on her hot core.
It made her feel like liquid gold. There was nothing more powerful in the world than this, she was certain of it.
And just when she was about to reach her pinnacle, her body arching, he raised himself.
“I do not want you to go alone. I do not wish to go alone. I wish us to do everything together,” he said, his face a mask of male seduction.
Laertes took his hard sex and began to rock against her opening.
She bit down on her lower lip. She was tight. For a moment, it was frightening, but she wanted this, and so she held on.
“Take me,” she rasped.
“Seraphine?”
“Take me,” she insisted.
As he strained, trying to make entry, he looked down at her eyes. Then he nodded and thrust forward.
She let out a cry and bit down on the back of her hand. It was agony for a moment, and she regretted the choice she’d made, or at least for a moment she did.
He looked horrified, but then that horror was replaced by determination. Her regret began to dim with the way he stroked the sensitive spot between her thighs, the way he seized her mouth with his own, and somehow her body began to yield to pleasure once again.
Now that he was fully inside, it did not hurt. She seemed to adapt to him, and he rocked and thrust and teased and caressed, and her body began to awaken under him and move in perfect unison with his again.
Yes, unity. That’s what she felt with him.
At last, her body reached its final crescendo, just as his did.
With her arms wrapped tightly about him, their kiss more exquisite than anything she’d ever known, Seraphine was swept away by him.
By their bodies peaking as one, and by the music that only the two of them could make.