Chapter Forty
P erhaps wine and spirits still raced in Genova’s blood. Perhaps the solution of so many problems made her delirious. At the first touch of his mouth, reason evaporated and molten need exploded.
She pushed off his jacket as they kissed, unbuttoned his long waistcoat. A waistcoat button resisted and she wrenched it off so she could slide her arms around his strong torso, feel his heat beneath fine lawn.
Distantly she thought, I just threw away diamonds!
But her mind was all on him and the fire his mouth, his hands, his body, ignited. She’d wanted this for days—for a lifetime, it seemed—and she couldn’t fight it anymore.
Their mouths slid apart and she explored his jaw, his ear, his throat, his wonderful taste and smell that made her purr deep in her throat.
His cravat. It was in the way.
She jerked out the jeweled pin, tossed it away, tugged loose the knot and discarded the length of silk and precious lace. To unbutton, to kiss, to nuzzle hot skin, to inhale him. Him. The only man to create this ecstasy in her.
He was laughing, murmuring, nuzzling, nibbling.
She dragged his shirt out of his breeches and he stepped back to pull it over his head and discard it.
She held him off with her hands over his flat nipples, letting her eyes feast. “Even to a woman who’s seen many naked chests, yours is remarkable.”
“Is it?” He put his hands to the front of her gown. “And you do not disappoint me, pandolcetta.”
With a rake’s skill he’d loosened her clothes as they kissed. Her gown slid off her arms at his touch, and her loosened petticoats fell to the floor. She was in her stays over her shift, and he stroked up her sides.
“You’re magnificent, Genni.”
“I want to be. For you.”
She wanted to eat him whole, as if starving, but this was good, too. This moment of pulsing restraint.
She stood still as he dug into her hair and found pins, as she felt her hair tumble. He drew fingers through it, flaring it around her shoulders. Then he buried his face in it against her neck, inhaling like a drowning man bursting out of the water.
They wove toward the bed twined around each other, she licking his strong neck, he squeezing her tingling breast. He dragged back the covers, then picked her up and laid her on smooth sheets, sliding his arms away, watching her with hot, dark intensity.
She could imagine herself, mirror to her vision of him.
Laughing, disordered, half naked, and crazed with desire.
Slowly, loving every stormy look from those heavy-lidded eyes, she unhooked the front of her stays bottom to top, until her full breasts sprang free, now covered only by the delicate silk shift.
His eyes were fixed there, so she cradled her breasts in her hands and offered them. He fell, catching himself on his arms over her, then lowered his head to mouth first one nipple, then the other.
Heat shot through her thighs to burst in exquisite pain deep inside her, so she thrust up against him, seeking.
A flicker of caution stirred. Too late, too late, because she would not give this up now, not even at threat of the hangman’s rope.
He switched to kneeling over her, pushing up her shift to reveal her nakedness. No man had ever seen her there, but it felt right in the passionate admiration of his gaze. She helped him lift her shift over her head, then lay back down, his, as he should desire.
Please.
He knelt before her, magnificent in candlelight and firelight, and unfastened his already bulging velvet breeches. Slowly, he opened them, watching, smiling, as she inhaled, exhaled, and licked her dry lips.
He rolled off the bed and stripped.
She turned to watch. “You put Rothgar’s statues to shame.”
He laughed. “I might be hard as stone, but I promise I’m anything but cold.”
As he came back toward her, Genova realized she wasn’t naked. She was still wearing her stockings. She reached for one black garter, but he said thickly, “Keep them on.”
He crawled up onto the bed and over her pinning her hands on the pillow as he lowered his head to suck at first one, then the other nipple.
Her body surged again, even more powerfully for being restrained. Still suckling, driving her wild, he put a knee between her legs, nudging her open. She spread herself willingly, wondering through fever if her virginity was going to spoil this.
Nothing must spoil this.
Surely she could hide the pain.
Could a man tell?
She heard her own deep-throated cry of need and then the hard pressure of him, there, against her burning hunger.
She was saying, “Yes, yes…,” and then She cried it—“Yes!”—as he thrust hard and deep.
Had there been a sting? It had been nothing, and she was tight and full. They were locked together now as she’d longed to be.
Then he pulled back and thrust even deeper, then again, and again. Startled by the force, Genova faltered for a moment, but then she matched it, loving it, exulting in the fast, slick pounding that allowed not a breathless moment for anything but pure, blinding sensation.
When she thought she’d reached her limit, he drove her on and fire exploded in her brain, searing away all reality except his body surging with hers, and then his shattering release.
Her head was still full of fireworks, and she had her teeth sunk in his shoulder. She released him as they tumbled slowly down, him heavy over her, her boneless, liquid, sated.
She stroked him, inhaling and exhaling as if breathing was a novelty. That had been insane. That had been wonderful. Having thrown herself into the ruinous flames, she wanted to do it again. She knew men needed time to recover. How much time?
They didn’t have a night. Thalia would miss her, and Fitzroger would return here at some point.
She tensed. Had they locked the door?
As if he picked up her thought, he rolled to one side trailing kisses over her, then left the bed.
As lordly naked as when in velvet and jewels, he strolled over to turn the key.
Then he looked back at her as if she were the most beautiful object in the universe, and promised wordlessly that there would indeed be more.
He went to a small table and poured brandy into a glass. One glass? He brought it back to the bed with a look in his eyes that made her feel that she might swoon down through the bed into the room below.
“What?” she asked, and some instinct made her pull the sheet up over herself a bit.
Smiling, he sat on the edge of the bed, facing her, so at ease with his naked virility that she wanted to eat him. Her whole life seemed to have shrunk down to the present. To this.
He dipped a finger in the glass and traced her lips. Brandy magic teased her nose, and when she licked, it tantalized her tongue. He drank, then kissed her, sharing brandy heat.
Then he lowered the sheet and dribbled brandy just above her right garter, and licked it up.
“I wish my stockings were gossamer fine,” she breathed, “clocked with flowers, and held up by lacy garters.”
“They will be,” he murmured there. “You’ll take off silk stockings for me. You’ll swim naked with me in a warm Grecian bath.”
He poured a tiny amount of brandy into her navel and tongued it “We’ll lick cream and honey off each other as we lick brandy now.”
He collapsed onto his back beside her and upturned the glass to empty over his chest. She laughed for the madness of it and set to lick him clean.
“We’ll have long nights of love in a bed,” he said, hand playing in her hair and down her back. Playing, as a musician plays an instrument. “And we’ll slip away from entertainments to enjoy quick, silent passion in an alcove within hearing of the throng….”
Arousal rippled through her body at that thought.
“All in one night?” she asked unsteadily.
“Probably not.”
She stilled, scarce daring to breathe. Her swimming mind couldn’t quite comprehend what he was saying, but surely he’d just sketched out a life. A life together.
“We’ll spend quiet times talking,” he went on as his fingers slid between her thighs, opening them as if he’d touched a spring. The spring of her need. “In bed and out.”
He found the place that made her arch, his touch teasing, tantalizing. “I talk with you as I never have with a woman, Genova Smith, and that is precious beyond rubies.”
Wasn’t there something about a good wife being more valuable than rubies?
“Be my sanity, Genni, please.”
Delirious with happiness, Genova cradled his head in her hands and blended their brandied mouths. “Yes, of course, Ash. I will be yours, forever.”
He rolled her under him—hers, miraculously hers!—and slid his hand between her thighs. Her body responded immediately. As he built her desire, she touched, tasted, stroked, bedazzled that he was hers forever.
Love and passion wound tight in her, and she wanted him in her again. She cried out, “Now!”
“Yes, now,” he commanded, stroking harder, sucking harder. Tension shattered into pleasure that rolled on and on.
“And again,” he said, thrusting into her still-shimmering body, and indeed, it happened again.
Perhaps she fainted. It seemed that she returned to reality from a great distance, from a dark, burning, airless, wonderful place.
But this was wonderful, too.
She stroked his hot, sweaty skin all the long length of his powerful body, from shoulder, down back, to thigh. No wonder empires had fallen for this.
And this, and he, was hers, till death did them part.
Fitz was strolling along a corridor toward bed when he heard, “Fitz! Oh, Fitz!”
He turned to see Ash’s dotty Great-aunt Thalia trotting after him, quite out of breath.
“What is it, Lady Thalia? Is something the matter?”
“The matter? No, dear boy. But I do so want you to partner me at whist.”
She hooked an arm around his, giving him no choice other than to turn with her and go back toward the festivities.
“It must be an age since we’ve been partners, dear boy. Come along. The night is young!”