Chapter 18
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The kiss was incandescent. With that single, devastating touch, Nicholas seemed to loosen every thread by which Isadora had bound her composure. Restraint fell away. Reason dimmed. She was reduced to sensation and longing, to the primitive certainty of her body answering his.
Whatever else lay hidden in Nicholas’s heart, he desired her.
For now, perhaps that could be enough. Isadora could accept the strange little life he fashioned for them, provided he remained within it—provided he remained with her.
His hand rose to her breast and closed around its fullness. Her breath caught sharply. She shifted against him, suddenly conscious of the aching emptiness deep inside her. Need swelled through her body, fierce and almost unbearable, and she pressed closer.
This time, she would have everything. He would not awaken her so wholly only to withdraw again.
“I want you to undress me,” she gasped.
He tore his mouth from hers only long enough to look down at her. For the first time ever, his eyes were dark rather than that familiar frost blue, his expression stripped of everything but hunger. Then his hands found the hooks at the back of her gown.
With a heave, he wrenched the bodice apart.
Isadora gasped as the fabric gave with a sharp rip. He dragged the gown from her shoulders, baring the pristine white of her chemise and stays. His gaze settled upon the swell of her breasts above them, and his throat moved convulsively.
“You have no idea just how long—” He hissed a long breath and sank his teeth into her earlobe. Pain flashed, small and exquisite. Isadora moaned as it struck through the heat coiling in her belly. She was empty. Aching. Past all willingness to wait.
At once, her fumbling fingers flew to his waistcoat buttons. Nicholas made no effort to stop her. He shifted back instead, raising his arms while she stripped the garment over his head.
Candleflame was woefully inadequate, she realized as she took him in.
It slipped over the brutal breadth of his shoulders, the slabs of muscle across his chest, the hard furrows of his abdomen.
Strength had been carved into every line of him.
Yet when she pressed her palm to his sternum, skirting the purple bruise there, she found his skin soft and jumpy beneath her touch.
Hardness and heat. Violence and vulnerability. She had the strangest urge to sink her teeth into him, to mark that godly body and taste the salt of his skin.
His breath shuddered free, and she realized her hand hovered only inches above a bulge in his breeches. The same she had felt when she’d sat astride on his lap, rubbing herself shamelessly upon him.
“Isadora,” he said through gritted teeth.
“…May I touch you?”
In answer, he took her wrist and brought it to the bulge. She wrapped her fingers around its length and girth.
“Has anyone told you what happens between a man and a woman when they lie together?” he asked, his voice tight as her fingers explored. Up and down, squeezing slightly to feel how turgid it was.
“I…” She shook her head, slightly ashamed of her ignorance. If she’d had more married friends, or if her mother had still been alive, she might have been privy to this information, but no one had thought to tell her—not even on the eve of her wedding.
“My…” His words appeared to fail him for a moment. “This will go inside you.”
Her eyes widened a touch. “Where?”
“There is a place. It may be uncomfortable at first, but I promise I’ll prepare you.
” His hands returned to her breasts, finding the taut peaks beneath his fingertips.
He circled them slowly, coaxing sensation through her until the tenderness became a sweet, throbbing ache.
“That part,” he murmured roughly, “I hope you will enjoy.”
“I want you to do it.”
A curse escaped him.
In the next instant, her world tilted, and she was upon the bed, as Nicholas stood over her, his body eclipsing the candlelight.
He seized the torn edges of her gown and rent them farther apart.
Her chemise followed. Isadora nearly protested on principle—but she wanted this as fiercely as he did, and ruined linen could be replaced.
His callused hands swept over her newly bared skin. He bent his head and drew her nipple into his mouth, his searing tongue lapping pleasure through her. Her spine arched in ecstasy.
It was richer than imagination.
More wondrous than any dream.
“Nicholas,” she breathed shakily.
He pinned her down to the bed, all muscle and heavy steel, covering her body with his own, his thighs pushing her legs apart. He almost gave her that precious friction right where she needed it most—but not quite… So close, so close, so close. She whimpered, and a rare smile crossed his face.
“Eager for me, sweetheart?”
Sweetheart.
The tenderness of the endearment struck more deeply than it should have. Isadora refused to mistake lust for affection, even as her heart strained toward both.
“Please,” she managed.
“Please, what?”
“Touch me.”
He pinched one nipple and took the other into his mouth, sucking until white-hot pleasure flared through her.
His body was a furnace above hers, and she felt pleasantly unmoored, as though she had consumed far too much wine and wandered into a world where nothing remained but Nicholas, his mouth, and the hands that seemed to know every way to unmake her.
Oh heavens—and how they unmade her.
He leaned back a little, allowing the golden candle flame to spill across them both.
He still wore his breeches, which seemed a terrible injustice when she was so very naked.
The delicate skin of her inner thighs and the damp curls between felt cool in the air. Shivering, she tried to close her legs.
He stopped her with a hand, his eyes feasting as though he meant to devour the sight of her.
“You are utterly beautiful,” he breathed, his voice husky with emotion. “Let me see you.”
Reluctantly, she relaxed, allowing him to open her legs with one hand and see everything that lay between. He spent an inordinate amount of time just looking until Isadora forgot her shyness and instead writhed, hungry and aching.
No longer did she worry that he might not like what he saw; rather, she was eager for him to stop with his perusal and finally touch her again.
“Nicholas,” she whined.
He started as though surprised, and a new light danced in his eyes. “What do you want, sweetheart?”
She couldn’t bring herself to utter the words, and so she spread her thighs farther, hoping he might get the hint.
He grinned, pinning her down with both hands, and brought his mouth to her inner thigh.
He inhaled, then groaned, sounding a little as though he was in the depths of torture.
Or perhaps merely just the depths of the deepest delight.
“You smell divine,” he told her, his voice guttural. “May I?”
“…May you what?”
“I want to kiss you.”
She shivered. “…There?”
His lips grazed across her thigh, traveling slowly upward. “Everywhere,” he murmured. “I want to taste you.”
How could she deny him when the words awakened precisely the same hunger in her? He had made her ravenous for pleasures she had never known existed.
Perhaps all women felt this way.
But she suspected it was Nicholas.
When she looked at him—so handsome, so proud, so… remote, except in those unguarded moments with her and Sophia—she had visions about what it might look like to make him melt. She longed desperately to break down every single wall he had erected and devastate them to rubble.
She wanted to know what he looked like when there was nothing but Nicholas in his eyes looking back.
His mouth pressed against her core, and all thoughts fled.
His groan rumbled through her, and she pressed the back of her hand against her mouth in case she should make any sort of embarrassing noises.
Then again, she fancied it was too late for that already; he compelled licentious moans from her with every swipe of his tongue.
He feasted on her like a man starving, demanding pleasure from her with every long, drugging kiss. Isadora had no choice but to comply—she had no wish other than to comply. Everything he did to her made her feel like she was a being of sensual power.
The crest of pleasure built, and she reached down to slide her fingers into his hair, tugging slightly. He glanced up at her, his eyes scorching, and hummed, the vibration in the sound almost enough to tip her over.
Just as she thought she could wait no longer, that she must reach her peak or she would die, he withdrew from her, surged up her body, and placed his length at her entrance. His finger found that same point of pleasure, and he stroked just as he pushed inside.
She broke, she saw stars, and he filled her in a single thrust.
So full. At first, she felt as though it was too much—it didn’t hurt, precisely, but the pressure of being so full overwhelmed her senses. All she could do was gasp and moan and grip at him as he held solid above her.
“It’s all right,” he reassured gently. “I have you.”
Her back bowed, and a bicep hooked under her spine, holding her until the tremors subsided and pleasure loosened its brilliant hold upon her.
Only then did he begin to move.
Carefully, at first. He withdrew scarcely an inch before easing into her again, watching her all the while.
She felt the slow intrusion everywhere, even in the tips of her fingers, yet he kept her poised at the delicate boundary between fullness and pain—as though her body were an instrument whose limits he understood by instinct.
Watching her face for guidance, he rocked into her, his thrusts gaining in strength as she recovered. His movements were barely restrained, as though he had slipped his leash, and it was all he could do to keep himself from expelling himself in her immediately.
Isadora wound her arms around his neck and held on, knowing, somehow, that it was all she could do, and that he needed no more from her. The more time passed, the easier the movements became, and she could hardly remember how tight the first thrust had been.
At the last second, he withdrew and pressed himself against her stomach. She felt warm liquid there, and glanced down at his spend. From what she understood, which was very little, the man habitually released his spend inside the woman.
But Nicholas leaned forward as though this was perfectly ordinary and kissed her forehead. Obviously, he was not thinking too much about it.
And so Isadora let it go.
“Are you going to send me away?” she whispered.
A drowsy chuckle stirred in his chest. “Do you wish me to?”
“No,” she said too quickly.
“Then stay.”
She privately rejoiced at the simple invitation, so much more than she had expected to receive. He briefly rose to find a damp cloth to wipe her down, and then he returned to lie beside her, curling one arm over her shoulder.
This was her first time lying in the arms of a man. Of course, all of it was new for her, but afterwards—this sense of safety and security that came from being encompassed in his embrace… That was wholly unexpected.
If there had been any hope for her heart, it was long gone. Nicholas had it all, every part, and all she could pray was that he handled it with care.