Chapter Fourteen
Montaigne was sure his heart had never pounded so hard. If he wasn’t so gone with lust and nerves, he would have feared an apoplexy. But if he died in pursuit of Olivia Watson, it would be worth it.
Unfortunately, as it so happened, he had no idea what he was doing. It would shock high-society London and the readers of the scandal sheets to no end, but he had never had a liaison in Hyde Park. He had no idea where to take a woman who was baiting you into sexual ecstasy—and whose reputation you wanted to keep intact.
Fortunately, it did not take Don Juan to know that he should pull her beyond the tree line. Her hand clasped in his made his head swim. He had wanted her so badly and for so long that he could hardly see straight.
They stumbled past a thicket of trees and into a small clearing. More trees promised beyond. He stood there, stunned with desire, immobilized with uncertainty about how to proceed.
When he had retrieved Olivia from Bloomsbury this morning, he had not imagined any of this. He had thought he had weeks, months, perhaps of winning back her trust—and yet she didn’t seem to have any of the same notions.
Not that he felt that he did know what her notions were. Was he to ravish her in this clearing? The prospect overwhelmed him.
“Augustus.”
He realized, suddenly, that he had had his back to her. He turned and looked at her.
She was so beautiful that it hurt to look at her. He would have wanted to close his eyes, but the only thing more unbearable than continuing to look at her was stopping. She once more appeared lit from within. The pure honey of her eyes beckoned him towards her. The skin at the throat of her dress seemed to glimmer, silken and tempting. The few wisps that had escaped her coiffure skimmed her freckled cheekbones. He felt breathless.
“Augustus. Are you alright?”
He kissed her.
And it was so much at once. She was in his arms, her soft curves pressing into him, causing his senses to riot. At the same time, her lips opened for him, letting him taste her, admitting him to the sweet flavor there and allowing him to sup from it. He heard his own groan, unable to control his reaction, not even attempting it. She must feel, he thought, wildly, how hard he was against her. He was a beast, he knew it, but he couldn’t help it.
He kept kissing her. Of course he did. He found, in fact, that he couldn’t stop. As he did, he couldn’t believe, that after so many years of yearning, she was solid in his arms. That she was real.
He wanted to stay here, kissing her in this little clearing, forever. Some part of him did not even want their encounter to progress, for her to address the insistent hardness in his breeches, that was willing him towards a conclusion. He wanted no conclusions. No endings. Just this moment. Olivia. Forever.
But her hands had begun to roam. Over his chest, which made his legs, for a moment, buckle—and then down towards his groin, running her hand once more over his cock and causing him to shudder. He couldn’t resist more, even as part of him desperately wanted to.
Montaigne broke the kiss and pulled her towards a nearby tree, one that looked substantial enough for what he wanted to enact. He gently pushed her against it, kissing her again, and she sighed, her legs bracketing his own on either side. His cock pressed into her belly and he knew, if they stayed like this for much longer, he would come just from her kiss and the friction.
But he wanted this, here, to be for her.
After all, he had been the one who had hurt her. Who had made her feel less than himself. Disappointed her. Made her flee. He needed to show her the extent of his regrets—to return them to the place where they had left off.
She reached again for his cock, her fingers brushing against his member, now at a point of sensitivity hitherto unknown to him. Stars flooded his vision.
He grabbed her wrist.
“No. Not me. This is for you.”
Her eyes widened at this proclamation. But she didn’t object. Instead, she stilled. Waiting for him.
He reached for her skirts, pulling up her thin dress and petticoat, and then finding her chemise and lifting it likewise.
When his fingertips grazed over her bare thighs, he felt himself almost spend. But he gritted his teeth and held back. He knew there was no way he was leaving this encounter without spilling, his senses were too heightened, it had been too long—but he wouldn’t let himself yet.
When he realized that she wasn’t wearing drawers, he nearly wept. Instead, he felt her soft curls and heard her gasp. She spread her legs, just slightly, at the contact.
Good god, she was soaking wet. He bit back a sound that, he was sure, if he had let himself emit it, would have been scarcely human. Instead, he delved into her, gently stroking that desperate, wet place he had found.
Olivia moaned and steadied herself against his shoulder.
“Does that please you?” he said, still just stroking her languidly, not trying to elicit any particular reaction from her, not trying—yet—to go anywhere.
She murmured an incoherent assent and closed her eyes, her head resting against the back of the tree.
Montaigne continued stroking her, reaching deeper as he did so and feeling her open for him. Soon, he was fairly fucking her with his fingers, sliding in and out of her. From the sounds that she made, he knew she was enjoying the sensation. He gloried in watching her and he found self-possession through it—he could forget his own frenzy when he touched her.
Still, despite how deeply he now slid into her, giving her all she could want in her channel, he had yet to even graze her clit. He wanted to tease her, to make her feel some scintilla of what he had felt all of these years, waiting for her.
“Augustus,” she said, bucking against him lightly, trying to move, he knew, to get more friction where she needed it most. “Please.”
“Say it,” he whispered in her ear and then kissing her neck, which only made her cry out once more. “Tell me what you want.”
“You have to let me—I need to come. I’m so close—I just—I can’t—”
He grinned. Earlier, she had made him stammer. Now, he was returning the favor in the best way imaginable.
“I will,” he said, once more in her ear, “if you tell me something.”
“What?” she said, her voice going foggy as he continued to stroke her. “What do you want me to say?”
“Tell me something no one else knows about you,” he said, realizing he wanted the intimacy as much as he wanted her to find her pleasure. No, that wasn’t even quite right. He knew he could give her pleasure. He felt he had been made for it. But he wanted more from her—he wanted her to feel it as he felt it.
“Augustus,” she said, a whine entering her voice, and this time she bore down on him with her cunt, trying, he knew, to find her release.
“Naughty,” he chided her, moving so that he still filled her with his fingers but denying her satiation. “But no.”
“I don’t know. I have no secrets.”
“I don’t believe you.”
He added a few tender strokes to this statement and, then, to convince her, he edged slightly upwards, so that the back of his hand brushed against her clit.
“Ahhh,” she moaned, at the contact. “Please.”
“Tell me. And I’ll let you have it.”
Her eyes flew open.
“Only you,” she said, “Only you can make me come so hard that I see stars.”
Slowly, the meaning of her words—that this was her confession—dawned on him. He stopped moving, stunned, by what he had been able to extract. He was aware again that he was as hard as steel and he had the seed of anticipation soaking his smalls. That he would give anything to thrust himself where his hand was now and give himself over to her warmth.
Instead, however, he had to keep his word. He growled at the confession and moved his fingers from her core and up to apex of her pleasure. He touched her clit and felt how swollen and bothered it had become.
When he made contact, she let out a moan of abandoned want. He rubbed her, just gently, and she let out a sound much closer to a sob. He continued the motion, knowing she was very close, but denying her just a second more, wanting to keep this moment his for a touch longer.
She repeated his name, what seemed a plea and a prayer all at once.
And then he moved against her, giving her what he had denied her, and she shuddered against him. He felt her body go completely limp and he held her between himself and the tree, not letting her fall.
Soon, he had his arms around her, steadying her, and she clung to him. He kissed her hair. He murmured her name into her temples.
After a few minutes, she regained the use of her legs. When he kissed her lips, she kissed him back and he could taste, somehow, her recent climax on her lips.
And he knew he wasn’t done with her.
No, he needed to make her come again.
He kept kissing her, swiping his tongue over her bottom lip, and palming her breast through the fabric of her respectable pelisse. She relaxed into him and he could tell, from the languor of her pose, that she, too, was in no hurry to leave this clearing.
He found her nipple through the cloth and pinched it, lightly, extracting from her an exclamation somewhere between surprise and want.
She broke the kiss.
“I want to please you,” she said, moving her hand downwards again, but he once more caught her wrist.
“No, Olivia. As I said, this is for you.”
“You just gave me pleasure.”
“It’s not enough.”
And then he dropped to his knees.
“Oh, god,” she said, when he stared up at her and reached for the hem of her skirts. He moved them out of the way, so that he was under them, and then rose up on his knees, so that his face was level with her core.
He pressed his face to her curls, inhaling the sweet scent there. She moaned above him.
“Don’t tease me anymore. Please. I can’t bear it.”
And, so, he obliged her. He placed his lips over her clit and sucked, gently, and earning from her more moans of assent. He didn’t tease her, but he didn’t rush either, sucking and licking.
In his opinion, he was back where he was meant to be. The place for which god had designed him—between her legs, giving her all the pleasure he could.
After a minute of pleasuring her in this way, his tongue and lips flitting between her channel and her clit, he was full to bursting himself. From where he was perched, his cock wasn’t even touching her, but it didn’t matter. He didn’t need friction when he was like this with her. He never had.
He remembered the first time, back then, when he had come this way. He had been embarrassed and tried to hide it from her, but she had not been so easily fooled. She had told him that his reaction delighted her. That it made her want him more.
He wasn’t a boy anymore. He wouldn’t hide it from her now.
“Olivia, you’re going to make me spend.”
“Oh god,” she said, “I didn’t know.”
For a second, he froze. He wasn’t sure what she meant.
“I didn’t know it would still be this way. I thought—I thought I had imagined it.”
Relief permeated his chest. It was not just her affirmation that she, too, felt this depth of pleasure. But that she hadn’t forgotten what they had shared. She had known it had been special all along.
“No. You didn’t.”
And then he put his face back to her core. This time he brought his fingers to fill her up, too. He filled her that way, as he licked her clit, and he heard her wild intakes of breath, her fluttery moans that indicated she was close.
Just as her legs began to shake and he felt her convulse, he felt himself lose control. He came, explosively, and his seed seeped hot and wet over his smalls. It came in one wave and then another and another. He cried out into her sweetness, trying to let her ride the waves of his pleasure as he himself came. He grasped onto her, giving her stability, even as he needed it himself.
The pleasure blanked his vision.
If she would be the death of him, he thought, at least he would die happy.