Chapter 13 #2
His fingers twined through her hair as she took him into her mouth and used her hand for the other half that wouldn’t fit. She swirled her tongue around the crown and moved on him.
This was pleasure not simply received, but pleasure freely given.
And, oh, how that distinction increased her desire—every moan…every groan…making him wild for her.
And, oh, how she liked him like this—wild for her.
“Tilly, I can’t take much more,” he uttered…pleaded…begged. “I’m about to spend.”
Slowly, she pulled back, her mouth sliding off him, dragging a tortured groan from his parted lips. Again, she met his gaze up the length of his body. “Then spend, my lord.”
And she took him in her mouth and used her hand until she felt him tensing and reaching for the place he’d taken her tonight—the ether of release. She slid her mouth off him just as, between one heartbeat and the next, he tensed, then he was shouting with climax.
His eyes slid open, and he lowered into the water, facing her.
He reached out, cupped the back of her head, and brought her mouth to his.
Long and deep, he kissed her, her body swaying forward, slick and soft and hot against his night-air cool skin.
He reached for the soap and smoothed the lather over her breasts, washing where he’d spilled.
Oh, the ache between her legs… It was near excruciating.
“Tilly, your breasts are perfection.” He rinsed them, then angled forward to trail kisses across them…softly sucking…swirling his tongue around her taut nips. She was on the verge of release, only from this. But, oh, she wanted more…was nearly mindless with the need. “Rhys, I want you inside me.”
He lifted his head and met her gaze, his pupils flared, the irises pushed to thin deep-gray rings. Then he did something unexpected. He stood. “Come with me to my bed, Tilly.”
He stepped out of the tub and offered her his hand.
She took it, then she was in his arms and he was carrying her into his bedroom, where he lowered her onto his square, canopied bed and followed with his large body, hovering above her.
Eyes locked, their choices made, slowly… deliberately, he entered her.
As they made love, as they clung to one another with a ferocity bordering on desperation, it was as if they existed in some place outside of time.
It was that magic Rhys carried inside him.
It translated here, too, like a spell was being woven around her, layer by invisible layer.
No less powerful for its imperceptibility to the eye.
It was there, nonetheless, binding her to him all the same.
Desire.
He’d given her access to that.
Pleasure.
He’d given her access to that, as well.
And now, he was granting her access to something else…some other part of him—not just his body.
A place beyond desire…beyond pleasure… A deeper, more intimate place beyond where one body spoke to another.
For what they were doing with their bodies was simply the key turning in the lock…
the door opening. But what they found beyond and who they revealed themselves to be… that was the space they occupied now.
Two souls, entwined.
But it was so very of the body, too, wasn’t it?
The pleasure his large shaft was delivering to and exacting from her cunny, relentless, as he penetrated her and poured pleasure through her. That feel of him, heavy on top of her… How very much she loved this feeling. Even the scent of him—amber, citrus, Rhys—amplified this pleasure.
How at one she felt with him.
This act had never been so.
She’d never had the slightest inkling it could be.
But this was Rhys.
Everything was possible with him.
His hot, ragged breath in her ear sent little sparks of lightning through her, and she moved her hips to take him deeper, as deep as she could.
That feeling was beginning to build inside her—release taunting…
teasing…making her reach for it. He threaded the fingers of one hand through hers as he relentlessly drove in and out of her, their joined movement becoming more frenzied…
becoming almost an entirely animal act—almost.
With every stroke, he pushed her toward an edge.
She sensed release beyond that boundary—and oblivion, too.
Her breath caught in her lungs, and she hung suspended in a moment that felt so very fragile and so very fraught with uncertainty and so very necessary…
Her body tipped over the edge and an explosion of light flared behind her eyes and she was crying out as she fell and flew, her quim pulsing its release, her soul freed from its physical form.
Then he, too, was tipping over that brink and groaning his climax as his head arced back, exposing the vulnerable column of his throat, joining her in this exquisite ether they’d created together.
He collapsed down, but not fully onto her as he rolled onto his back, bringing her with him, so her head was nestled into the hollow of his shoulder. “Tilly, will you stay with me tonight?”
She nodded, knowing she shouldn’t agree.
Knowing she had more sense than to agree.
But it was Rhys asking and somewhere along the way she’d lost all sense when it came to him.
He’d asked her to stay.
So, she would stay.
What she needed to say to him would keep until the light of a new day.
For now, she was in his arms.
Exactly where she wanted to be.
Rhys lay in his bed, one hand propped behind his head, and stared up at the ceiling, golden dawn light creeping in at the edges of the curtains.
The only part of him asleep was the arm Tilly’s head was resting upon, as her lush body lay curled into his side, the in-and-out of her breath warm and soft against his chest.
The rest of him was wide awake.
Last night, a few hours ago, he’d had Tilly.
Or, he supposed, she’d had him.
I’m yours to have.
He was.
But the course that lay before him was one he hadn’t ever charted, for here was a woman in his bed that he didn’t want to see leave it.
Yet…what use did a woman like Tilly have for a man like him?
She was a woman with goals and ambitions.
She was a scholar of her profession.
Tilly was a woman who was going places.
The only meaningful thing he had to offer her was more of what they did last night.
Which, to be fair to himself, was not insignificant.
A dry chuckle escaped him, little humor in it.
Tilly stirred, and he froze. He didn’t want her to wake. He wanted them to lie like so for, oh, another ten or so hours…or days…months. If he had his way, he’d never let this woman leave his bed.
“Rhys?” came her sleep-soft voice.
“Aye?” he uttered, low. Perhaps he could soothe her back into slumber.
“Do you have the time?” The question whispered across his fuzzed chest.
Barely suppressing a sigh, he reached toward the nightstand, fumbling around until his hand clamped around the small brass clock. He moved it close to his face and squinted. “Half past six.”
Tilly bolted upright on a, “Lawks,” her heavy breasts bouncing.
Oh, lord, he couldn’t look at her breasts.
He couldn’t not look at her breasts.
His cock had certainly noticed and gone hard as iron.
“Half six?” She scrambled off the bed. “I have to get home or I’m going to look a right old harlot of Babylon.”
Her movements both frantic and focused, she crossed the bedchamber to the hearth, where her clothes were draped over the fire screen to dry, and began dressing.
“Do you require assistance?”
Half of him hoped she would say yes; the other half understood a no would better further her goal of successfully clothing her body. For if he helped and put his hands on her, he wouldn’t be able to keep those same hands off her.
So, he rolled out of bed, donned his robe, and went to stand beside the hearth. Offhand, he said, “I reckon I’ll need to have another go at my second noble deed.”
During the delivery of those words, Tilly had gone still.
“Not with Whitty, of course,” he said on a dry laugh. “Though, I will try talking to him after he wakes. Might as well, I suppose. I’ve come this far.” Another dry laugh.
Neither laugh had she reciprocated.
Which wasn’t like Tilly.
She finished lacing her boots, then turned and met his gaze. “Well…”
She had something to say, it was clear—but she was having trouble saying it.
“Yes?”
The heavy footstep of foreboding crept through him.
He didn’t like that look in her eye—apologetic…determined.
It was only when she dug into an interior pocket of her black velvet cloak that he realized she was fully, decidedly dressed.
She was ready to leave.
Her hand emerged holding something shiny.
Rhys blinked.
On her palm lay Papa’s signet ring.
“Here,” she said. She was offering it to him.
Rhys didn’t move to take it. “What do you mean, here?”
“You can have it back.”
“But I haven’t earned it.”
No, no, no.
If she gave him the ring now, then time was up.
Their time was up.
Carefully, she set the ring on the table nearest her, the embers from the fireplace imbuing the gold with a mellow shine, the cabochon emerald glowing an otherworldly green.
A thing of beauty and power, that ring—and Rhys wished she would keep it.
“Return it to your pa, Rhys, and make your amends.”
“But the noble deeds—”
She didn’t let him finish his protest. “You are noble, Rhys. In here.” She tapped her chest directly above her heart. “You just need to believe it of yourself and let it guide you. I believe it of you.”
And that was her case made.
Rhys watched, gobsmacked and gutted, as she gathered her cloak about her, then crossed the room to the door. It was only when her hand closed around the handle that she hesitated. She glanced over her shoulder, a war in her eyes. Then she released the handle and doubled back to stand before him.
“I have something else to say.”
Rhys’s heart throbbed and threatened to break free of his chest. His heart knew what words it hoped she would speak.
And he knew he would say them back to her.
“Thank you,” she said.
His brow formed a deep trench in his forehead from which it might never recover. “Thank you?”
“Yes.”
“You’re thanking me?”
She nodded. “For last night and the night before, actually.”
He was trying to get this straight, truly. But he was having a devil of a time… “You’re thanking me for…what?… Tupping you?” He might feel a hair insulted.
A blush staining her cheeks, she shook her head. “I’m thanking you for introducing me to parts of myself that I didn’t know existed.”
“Like?” What was he hearing, anyway?
“Well, desire, for one. And pleasure, for another.” The tips of her ears had gone red.
But Rhys had no interest in sparing her blushes. “And that’s all I introduced you to?”
She blinked.
He shouldn’t have said it, but those hopes of his had embedded deep into his heart, he now understood.
“Have a happy Christmas, Rhys.”
And with that, she made her way to the door and, this time, through it.
She was gone.
He shoved to his feet and crossed the room, only stopping when he was within reaching distance of the ring. He lifted and held it to the meager light.
This ring had a lot to answer for.
It had first been the unmaking of him.
Then the making.
And now the unmaking again.
The loss of it had brought Tilly to him.
And now with the attainment of it, he’d lost her.
In truth, he felt piqued and slightly swindled.
In giving him the ring, Tilly had denied him more time with her.
Time, he realized now, he’d been counting on.
But what she’d done, he also saw, she’d done out of selflessness—out of that good in her heart.
Return it to your pa, Rhys, and make your amends.
Really, there was but one word that fit this feeling inside him.
He wasn’t feeling piqued or swindled.
Bereft.
That was the only word for this feeling channeling through and hollowing him out.
Utterly, completely, irretrievably bereft.