Chapter 24
For the briefest moment, Mae thought he was going to refuse her.
She felt him tense against her body, saw a flicker of emotion move across his face. She half expected an appeal to her sense of reason or, perhaps worse, a gentle refusal, based on her state of mind.
Instead, he merely seemed to be taking a moment to hear what she’d said.
And then he kissed her.
He squeezed the hand he was already holding gently and pulled her to her feet, those remarkable turquoise eyes darting over her face as he captured her lips once, twice, and a third time in soft, lingering gulps of sensation.
The only reluctance he showed was turning his back to her out of necessity in order to lead her to his bedroom, their hands still entwined as he guided her down a narrow hall and to a door that stood a little ajar at the end, flooded with sunlight and dappled with the shape of hanging ivy that clung to the glass outside.
She had always imagined that this would happen in the dark. That it was a thing for the night, fumbling and instinctive and made of hands and breath rather than sight, but his chamber was awash with late-afternoon glow.
The breeze outside made the patterns of shadow dance across the plush quilted coverlet over his four-poster bed, and as much as the Mae of only a moment ago would have stopped and fallen into reverie absorbing every detail of this sacred, secret space, the Mae of just now wanted only Roland. Only him.
He turned back to her, his hands going to the bow he’d tied in her apron strings that morning and tugging them loose while his eyes held steady on hers. He watched her reach up to untie the strip of linen from her brow and unwind the barrier that held her hair in place while she worked.
She untied the top of her bodice, the very first knot, pulling the string gently and slowly as an invitation, should he wish to do the others, and smiled at the descent of his mouth on hers as his fingers came up to push hers away, tugging and pulling at the fabric, exposing her simple linen shift inch by inch while he tasted the silence on her tongue.
She reached up to dig her fingers into his hair, something she had dreamed of doing for years now and had never dared, even after they had begun to kiss one another.
She sighed at the silky feel of it gliding over her knuckles as he tugged the yellow cotton down over her shoulders.
She gave him one arm, and then the other, refusing to entirely give up her exploration of those softly curling pink-gold locks as he ran his hands down the curve of her waist to push the skirt to the floor past the barrier of her hips.
He pulled away from the kiss then for a moment, his chest heaving and his eyes wild, clearly desiring to look at her like this, half undone in her underthings.
She stood for him, shivering as she felt his eyes rake over her.
He watched as she reached to unlace the front of her short stays, releasing her ribs, her spine, and her breasts from the confines of good posture and sensible restraint.
She slid them over her shoulders and let them drop to the floor on top of the yellow remains of her dress, taking a deep, indulgent breath once she was free of them and reveling in the heat that immediately fired through her at the way his eyes fell directly to her breasts.
The gooseflesh that scattered over her hardened her nipples under the thin material, beckoning him back to her, a sound like hunger ripping from his throat.
He caught her face in those freckled hands, cradling the bottom of her braided crown with his fingertips as he devoured her again, moaning into her kiss like a man finally satisfying a need so great that it had pained him.
He pressed his hips into hers, unabashed of the way his arousal strained against his trousers and toward the soft warmth of Mae’s own flesh.
She felt the heat climbing in her, over her shoulders and arms, into her throat, and inside her mouth.
She clawed at his shirt, tugging it out from the waistband of those trousers, desperate to see his own skin again, to look at that expanse of brass-colored hair on his pale chest, at the perfect dip of his navel, at the shiny cautery scar she’d made with her own hands, and not have it stolen from her by the demands of propriety this time.
She circled him as he parted from her long enough to whip the shirt over his head and send it down into the pile where her dress and stays lived, backing herself toward the bed as he prowled after her, his fingers moving to the ties at his waistband.
She drew her bottom lip in between her teeth as he pulled the leather laces loose and began to push the skintight fabric down over the lean muscle of his hips, revealing more of himself to her than she ever dared to imagine.
The burn scar glinted on his ribs in the sunlight. The white remains of the suture scars glowed against his forearm.
He bent briefly at the knees to divest himself of the last scrap of fabric, his hair falling over his face as he stood back upright, as perfect a body as any diagram or idealized imagining in her studies. Far more beautiful. Far more vital.
Far more tempting.
The diagrams were almost never fully aroused. And even the ones that were did not look like this. They did not look like Roland Reed, coursing with hot blood and glowing with ethereal beauty, his very flesh thrumming with life and desire.
She was staring so avidly that somehow she didn’t realize he’d closed the distance between them until she felt his hands bunching into the skirt of her shift. She startled, which made him smirk at her, something predatory and hungry in his face.
“Show me your body,” he whispered. “Show me what I’ve been aching for.”
She lifted her arms, blinking at him until his smirk blossomed into a full-toothed grin and he finished rucking the fabric up fully, filling his fists with it and pulling it up over her head and sending it sailing back over his shoulder.
She took another deep breath, another deep inhale of free air, with nothing confining her or stopping her short of the sweet completion of indulging.
She fell back onto the bed, her hands braced behind her, enjoying the way his breath caught at the jiggle of her breasts and the soft fold of her belly.
“God,” he muttered, his eyes drinking her in. “You are perfect.”
“I’m quite short, actually,” she returned, only to make him laugh, a startled little huff coming out of his mouth as his eyes came up to meet hers and his grin seemed to ache at his cheeks.
“I’m going to have you now,” he told her, leaning forward so that their noses brushed, bracing his hands over hers where they dug into his mattress and stroking her wrists with his thumbs. “You know that, don’t you?”
“I’m going to have you, too,” she replied. “Mr. Reed.”
He chuckled, nipping at her lip. “Do not call me Mr. Reed.”
And then, quite suddenly, she found herself on her back. There was warmth and weight and so much pleasure atop her as Roland braced himself over her body, kissing his way up from the dimpled curve of her hip to the soft brace of her ribs, his hands running freely over her bare legs.
She tried to prop herself up on his pillows, to watch him, but every new flick of his tongue or scrape of his teeth sent her collapsing back again, stars exploding in front of her eyes.
He was not shy with his touch nor his taste, his fingers tripping and sliding into the soft, naive flesh between her thighs as he sank his teeth gently into the little dip where her hip gave way to her leg and then licked the damage as though he wanted to taste his own audacity.
He left his hand to explore between her legs, stroking gently without demanding entry just yet, while his mouth traveled back up, dropping kisses and gentle nips on the soft flesh of her belly and up along the narrow center of her chest, where he hesitated for a moment, breathing out a hot gasp of air over her breasts as he rested his forehead between them.
Only then did his fingers begin to push into her.
He raised his head, watching her through the curtain of his gilded hair as he discovered her from the inside, drinking in every gasp and twist of her body as new and incredible sensations began to shiver and settle and turn over her.
She slid her hands along his shoulders, struggling to keep her eyes open, seeing the way his lips curved every time they started to flicker shut again as he began to kiss the curve of her breasts, working in agonizing slowness toward her dark, aching nipples.
When his tongue darted out, flicking against one, she released a sound that she did not know herself capable of, her hips bucking up against him, dragging his wicked fingers deeper into her want.
It won a groan from him as well, as though he somehow felt her pleasure vicariously by merit of providing it to her, and rather than drawing back to give her reprieve, he lowered his head and doubled his attentions, his hand moving in answering pulses below.
She ceased to be able to think, her fingers curling and pulling at the muscled lines of his shoulders as she writhed and pled with him, nonsense words rising up in her throat. There was no day before this, no life full of complications, no worry or strife or logic or intellect.
Only sensation.
Only him.
Only her.
She tried to say his name but the only word that would leave her tongue was please.
She said it over and over again.
“Please,” she sighed so softly, it was almost a prayer. “Please.”
And finally he answered, his own lips and tongue coming to silence hers with the warm, firm press of assurance and the weight of his body colliding down on the burning, buzzing need of her own as he ran his hands down her sides and brought her thighs apart, guiding her knees around his hips.
“Look at me,” he whispered against her lips. “Mae, please. Please look at me.”
It took some effort. It took two shallow, dizzy draws of breath, but she managed to lift her eyelids, to blink them open and bring his face into focus as he hovered over her, dropping kisses over her brow, the tip of her nose, the corners of her lips.
He lowered a hand to touch her again and to touch himself, to guide them together. And again, he beseeched her so sweetly, “Please look at me.”
She wasn’t sure she would ever wish to look upon anything else ever again.
She reached up again to touch his face, to trail her fingertips over the curls that hung down over his cheeks as he began to join them, as his hips moved forward in slow, delicious dips of progress.
She memorized the expression on his face, this mix of reverence and satisfaction as it happened, as they fully joined together.
She gave him her attention, the focus of her eyes and the rise of her hips, and when a soft smile of wonder broke over her face, he mirrored it, leaning down to kiss one dimple and then the other as well.
He took his time, finding the gossamer strain of balance between what pleased him and her own newfound exploration.
“There?” he would say, shifting his hold under her knee. “Like this?”
And then he would kiss her, no matter what the answer was, as he continued to drive her over the edge into something adjoining heaven.
“Oh!” she cried, pulling at him, filling her hands with every perfect dip and swell of his warm skin. “Oh, I feel … oh, that!”
“Yes,” he replied, gone raspy and strained. “Yes, good.”
She didn’t remember much beyond that moment, that moment where she had indicated that something.
It had apparently been enough.
He had taken her garble of desire, her half-coherent expression of enjoyment, and used it, drawn it out, taken it to somewhere she had never imagined someone else finding on her behalf.
It was brighter and hotter than the summer afternoon, than all the sunlight of every summer of her life, and it cracked over her skin and through her muscles with the sweet relief of pure, untainted enjoyment.
He held her through the throes of it, through the writhing and the crying out, through the thrashing and arching and clawing. More, he met her there, his fingers finding the loops in her braid, his mouth hot and hungry on her throat, his hips stuttering and pushing in response to her release.
He lost himself then, just as she began to find her own self again. As her clawing gave way to cradling, as she was able to hold him through his own ascent and destruction just beyond the crest of her own, he fell too.
He fell with her.
They fell together.