Chapter 33
Thirty-Three
Sebastian paused, entirely still except for his heart. She could feel it. Her hand was on his chest. She didn’t remember putting it there, but his skin was hot through the thin, damp fabric of his shirt, and his heart was racing.
I want you.
It wasn’t I love you. It wasn’t I’ll marry you. She knew the pause was him registering that. Taking a moment to parcel away the pain and tuck it deep inside him along all the other pains he kept hidden.
“Madelaine.” He whispered her name. They were so close the faintest breath told each other everything. “You have me.”
It was all she could give him right now, all she had the courage to offer up. But then he kissed her. Not hot and heated like before, at the society’s ball, but slowly.
Slowly, without hesitation, without doubt…even his tenderness had strength. He kissed her to say I love you, I’m here, I’m yours. Every brush of his mouth laid him open even as it claimed her. He was opening himself up, and she fell further inside him with every slide of his mouth.
His tongue touched her lip, and he even took her gasp, breathing her in with a shuddering rise of his chest as his hands moved down from cupping her face, slid down her arms, settled on her hips.
They shared one look, a tight gaze of ask and answer, then he picked her up as he stood.
Her legs wrapped around his waist, around his wet shirt, and he kissed her again as he carried her across the tiny cabin to where two small beds lay on either side, a threadbare rug and a three-legged wooden table between them.
“You’re soaking my shift,” she pretended to grumble, her mouth against his neck.
He was strong there too. Entirely masculine.
His stubble brushed her temple, and she felt the rumble of a silent laugh in the firm column of his throat.
His shirt had dampened her front, dampened the thin linen bunched along her thighs where they wrapped his firm waist.
“We’ll both be out of these clothes soon enough.”
Yes. And then she’d see him stripped bare.
An impulse, an instinct, had made her bring him here.
She understood it now. Without all his grand clothes, without his fine home, away from society, away from London…
He was in her territory now; this was her land—no, not even land.
They were on a boat, moored in the estuarine forces where two elements met.
Here, in bed, both of them naked… This was where she’d finally get to know him. And she had to know him before she could trust him. She had to trust him before she could love him. She had to know who she would take for a husband.
Having been married before, she knew exactly what a husband could be, how entwined two lives could become.
And she knew very well what happened in bed between man and woman.
The French called it la petite mort, the little death.
She would bring Sebastian to that point of no control. And then she would know him.
But her plan met difficulties as he set one knee on the low bed and put her down. He pulled off his shirt, and even though he was the one stripped bare, he still seemed to be the one in control. He smiled faintly at the way her gaze slipped down his body.
He was still capable of smirking with his whole jaw.
“You said you were soaking?” He knelt before her, running his hands up her thighs, his thumbs catching in the fabric of her shift and rucking it up. Her hem skated over her knee.
She knew what he meant. But she met his look blandly.
“And getting cold.”
“Well then.”
He smiled again, just a crook in the corner of his mouth. The dark light in his eyes was unholy, but it softened as he leant forward to kiss her; it became reverent as he sat back and reached for the bow of her stays.
They both watched his hands as he unlaced her.
She thought inevitably of fishermen and their nets, of sailors slacking rope, deft and sure and skillful.
He was scarcely less muscled than any of those men she saw on the dock, but he wasn’t harrowed to sinew and tanned ribs.
His body was a sculpture, deliberately honed, built to aesthetic ideals purely through the strength of his will and his discipline.
A man ought to look like this, the breadth of his shoulders said, and so this is how I look.
How did she look? A flutter of nerves went through her as he drew her stays free and dropped them to the floor.
Her chemise was finished with the thinnest of blue ribbons, a bow over her breasts.
She’d sewed it herself, two or three years ago.
Some small urge of vanity, of impracticality, always made her add ornament where no one would see it.
An edge of lace, a puff-gathered sleeve.
Sebastian lingered on the bow, rolling the knot between his fingers.
His palm was hot and heavy, resting just between her breasts.
This thin linen was all that remained between them.
He pulled the bow free, knuckles white, as though he held on for life in a heavy storm.
She let out a breath as his hands settled once more on her thighs, intensely hot as they slid under the fabric, bunched it up, urged her to lift her hips so he could lift it higher. Obediently, she raised her arms. He pulled her chemise over her head and dropped it at his side.
“God…” His whisper was hoarse. Had she felt nervous that her body, not far from thirty years, might not appeal to a man? She’d been nineteen the last time. She’d been as slim and smooth as a fresh reed. Now she was heavier. Fuller. A few lines marred her thighs.
But there had been no need to feel nervous. Sebastian’s gaze burned.
It was a brand, fixing her now, in this moment, as the woman she was. He knew this woman. He loved this woman. Even as heat swirled harder through her, liquid and throbbing and mad, she felt he’d caught her soul again. He made her alive in the present…he held out the shape of a future.
His hand ran a worshipful path down her side, shoulder, breast, belly, and it was the shape of who she was to him. A different woman to the memories she’d been. A real woman. Alive. Free.
“Sebastian…”
Her voice was weak with need. He heard the fear in it, the realisation, the hope.
He eased her down to lie on the bed, lying beside her, dragging the scratchy blanket free.
It was a tiny bed, narrow even for one, but they didn’t want space.
They lay tight against each other, touching everywhere—ankle, calf, thigh.
The hardness of him was a hot promise against her stomach.
She wanted it. Needed it. But first was the bliss and wonder of this…
touch and touch and touch… His hand in her hair, on her cheek, on her breast. He kissed her, deep and drugging, the softness of his lips holding the edge of a bite, the tangle of his tongue against hers holding out a hand to sin…
She accepted. Let him lead her there, a dance both familiar and not.
Because this was darker, harder. Sebastian demanded more, took more, gave more.
He nipped her lip, grazed teeth along her throat, pinned her wrist with infinite strength.
Submit, submit… But it was tender violence.
It was worship of a primal kind. His fingers skated down her body, claiming, but with a touch like silk, gentle as petals.
He touched between her legs, a delicate swirl, treasuring her as though she was a virgin.
She might as well have been. Nine years had been long enough for her body to forget.
“I love you.”
It wasn’t the first time he’d said it. He’d breathed it between kisses. The kisses had said it themselves.
“What have you done to me, you witch?”
He whispered it with wonder, sweet and hard, the way he always was. She knew him… She’d always known him…
“Fair revenge for what you’ve done to me.” She hardly sounded like herself. He’d woken this knowing, sultry version of herself, equal to doing battle with him.
His fingers still explored the secret heat of her, stroking the centre where she’d turned liquid for him.
“Is this what I’ve done?” he murmured, pleased with himself, as men always were. She liked it, that in this moment he was just as male and mortal as anyone else.
She knew how to press her advantage. She stroked down his chest, down the taut lines of his stomach, and took him in her hand.
His eyes shut for a moment, his fingers stilled. The breath he let out had the flavour of a curse.
But even so, he was still himself. He wrapped his hand around hers, closing her tight with fingers wet from touching her. He showed her how to stroke him, his grip firmer than anything she would have dared.
She’d seen the size of him. He felt even thicker in her hand. And then he took her hand away, pinned both her hands above her head and kissed her in a way that showed he’d been holding back before.
He let go her wrists as his kiss headed down her body. She trembled, knowing the path, wondering if she’d survive it. He praised her breasts with the soft sweep of his mouth before he took her nipple between his lips.
Oh…she had certainly forgotten a great deal. Perhaps he taught her something new. Teeth, tongue, lips, until she was writhing, panting. He released her only to continue south. She knew this too, but—
The first touch of his tongue made her forget everything. Her name? The year? Did it matter? His hands circled her thighs as he spread her and tasted her, no hesitation, no uncertainty, no apology as he ate his fill.
She broke, of course she did, climaxing with a cry, wave after wave of it.
He lapped at her, gentle, easing her through it, staying there with her until she was done.
When he moved back up the bed, she hid her face against his chest. Strong arms wrapped around her, and that haughty voice was all hoarse softness as he hushed her, holding her tight, staying with her through that moment too, the release after the release. A final letting go.
“We fit.” His voice was a whisper against her hair.
She thought he might be speaking to himself.
Fractured words from a fractured prayer.
“We’re good. This is good. Be mine.” His lips found a patch of skin at her temple, kissed it, coaxed her face from his chest. “Be mine, Madelaine. You know I’m yours. ”
She nodded.
“Yes.”