Chapter 14 #2
By the devil, he had never needed anyone as he needed her in this moment. The cloth between them was the only barrier between hot desire and pure, unadulterated lust, and without it he would not have been able to hold himself from sinking deep inside her.
She rolled her hips, and the friction tore an unearthly groan from his throat, stifled only by her kisses. He stroked his hand up and down her arched spine, attempting to calm himself. Just a little, just so she could accustom herself to the feel of him.
Only, she seemed as though she had no intention of accustoming herself to anything. No, if anything, she was eagerly encouraging him to take things further, grinding against him, rubbing herself on his cock with the fervor of a woman determined to chase her pleasure.
For a moment, he wondered if she had done this before, but when she broke from the kiss to pant against his shoulder, he knew the thought was both unfair and uncharitable.
“Nicholas,” she gasped, “I … I don’t know—”
“It’s all right, sweetheart.”
The endearment tripped off his tongue, but he couldn’t bring himself to take it back. In his arms like this, she felt precious, something to shelter and cherish, even as every carnal impulse in him demanded that he lay her down and ravish her fiercely until the only name on her lips was his.
She was his. His.
Her arms twined around his neck, drawing him into the silken ruffle of her hair, and then her hips traced a slow path over him, squeezing the breath from his lungs. How something could ever feel so indecently good without being skin to skin, he hadn’t the faintest.
If she kept this up, he would embarrass himself. But the prospect of stopping them now felt utterly impossible. He could no more have stopped her than he could have flown.
He gathered her face in his hands and brought her mouth back to his. Her knees cinched his hips while she sought the pressure again, and a tremor fluttered through her thighs.
“I don’t know—” she whispered, the words dissolving into a moan, “Nicholas, it feels so…”
“Good?”
She nodded and parted her knees farther until the whole aching length of him lay cradled between her thighs, and even through silk and wool he could feel the heat and wetness of her desire. There was no disguising it now—whatever else passed between them, she wanted him.
And heaven knew he wanted her.
Her fingers drifted down his nape. “May I touch you?”
“Yes.” He very nearly choked the word and guided her hand, holding it against his chest. From there, she would feel the rapid pounding of his heart. “Touch me, Isadora. Everywhere you choose.”
Almost immediately, her hand slipped underneath his waistcoat, only the thin cotton of his shirt separating her palm from his skin.
She traced his muscles, sliding down his chest to explore his abdomen as he offered her the same treatment.
He slid one hand along her calf under her skirts, finding her knee, then the sensitive skin behind.
She shivered. If she felt anything like him, then every nerve was sensitized, lightning playing under her skin.
He wanted to stoke the fires higher.
“You are beautiful…” he whispered as his fingers trickled between her inner thighs. She arched herself, lashes flitting, and he drank in the pleasure of her face as though he were a man in a desert, and she, an entire oasis.
His free hand slid up the curve of her waist to find the swell of her breast. To his desperate delight, his questing fingers found the pearled nub of her nipple, even through the material of her gown. Her breath hitched as his finger brushed across it, and he grazed it again.
She gave a little mewling sound, rocking against him deeper and deeper.
“That’s right,” he growled, hardly recognizing his own voice, only knowing he needed to encourage this until it reached its natural end.
If he could bring her to her peak—well, he had to before he made a mess in his breeches like a schoolboy.
This pleasure, the feeling of her wet against him as she slid against him, perfectly slick, was enough to bring any man to his knees.
“It feels…” She gasped, her teeth sinking into his neck.
He throbbed against her, perilously close to the edge. Filled his palm with her breasts, kneading until her head tipped back and scarlet spread from her throat to her cheekbones.
“Nicholas.” Two red spots appeared on her cheeks, and her eyes were drunk with pleasure. He gloried in the sight of her like this, even as he teetered ever closer to his own peak. “Nicholas,” she panted, “I think I might—”
“Let go,” he urged.
He felt the moment she did. She shuddered against him violently, trembling through a voiceless cry, and Nicholas gathered her close as her back bowed and every soothing word deserted him.
Her pleasure swept him with it, and they tipped over the brink together, and as she squirmed and writhed above him, he emptied himself inside his trousers.
She collapsed against his chest as they both fell back against the chaise, her heartbeat fluttering through both their bodies. Nicholas stared at the ceiling above, still quaking from the aftershocks, his wife in his arms. As lethargy crept through his limbs, so did disbelief.
After everything, he had sworn to himself he would never give in to this again.
Yet here he was.
If she had been more practiced, he might have even taken things further. Exposed her to the deepest of his lust. Even now, he could feel it simmering, barely sated. He’d yet to see her naked, yet to touch her everywhere he still wanted.
And if he gave in to all those base desires, he would risk hurting her as much as he had hurt Grace.
More, even, for as much as he had loved Grace, he had never felt anything close to the volcanic passion he felt for Isadora here and now.
Perhaps he didn’t love Isadora—thank the Lord above—but he certainly desired her, and far more than he had ever desired Grace.
Grace’s charms had been in her bearing, in her birth, in the fact that they had always been supposed to marry. He had loved her out of duty as much as anything, and when they had performed their marital duty, she had been present but never as enthusiastic.
Which made the threatening letter he’d received even more disturbing. If Grace had been an eager lover, and if their marriage had been less fraught, then perhaps he might have dismissed it out of hand. But if she didn’t want him because she loved another—
The thought no longer stung the way it once might… but the nagging prospect it had started to usher in over the past weeks, the very notion that Sophia might not be his by blood, persisted, a thorn in his mind that he couldn’t pull himself free from, no matter how hard he tried.
Isadora stirred on his lap, raising her head to look at him with soft, limpid eyes. She reached up a hand to brush across his cheek, and he caught her wrist before she could. He didn’t deserve her affection.
“I think,” he said as gently as he could, “I ought to leave.”