Chapter 21 #2
She fumbled with his breeches, and he helped her undo them. Then, wrapped together in an embrace neither could have escaped even if they’d wanted to, they sank to the carpet.
Isadora glided her palms over the carved terrain of his torso.
Her fingers dipped into the furrows between hard muscle.
She touched the livid bruises upon his ribs and kissed each one.
Tasted his scars. Suckled his jaw, his neck, his shoulders.
All the while, he squeezed her curves tight enough to leave fingerprints.
Her breasts, her hips, the long sweep of her legs.
When he reached the apex of her thighs, she allowed them to fall open, exposing herself to him.
If he noticed or cared that they were on the floor of the drawing room, he certainly said nothing about it. And the idea that they were being carnal in a place that wasn’t a bed—at a time when it was not generally expected that couples gave in to their desires—merely made her blood singe hotter.
Her fingers brushed his arousal, and his abdomen contracted sharply. Watching his face, Isadora reached for him again and curled her hand around his length, feeling his pulse beat against her palm.
“Tell me what you want,” she whispered. “Teach me how to please you…”
“You already please me.” He closed his eyes as her fingertips glided to the smooth, flared crown of him and descended again.
After a moment, warm fingers closed over hers, encouraging her to hold him firmly, though not too tightly.
“Like this,” he rasped, drawing her hand up and down, flesh sliding across flesh.
He felt scalding hot under her palm, almost excruciatingly hard, yet the skin was still soft.
The feel of him like this made her hungry. Eager. Desperate.
He groaned, the sound low. “You feel so good like this, Dora.”
Dora. The name pierced her more sweetly than any endearment could have done.
Her parents had called her Dora, back when they had been alive and she’d lived with them—the last time she had felt loved.
Being with Nicholas like this made her feel loved, too, wrapped up and warm as though emotion were a blanket he could wind about her shoulders to keep out the chill.
It was as though she had spent most of her life cold and afraid, and now finally—finally—she had a fire and someone to sit beside. A source of warmth. A place she could be wholly herself.
“Last time, you used your mouth on me,” she whispered, “Could I—”
His hips surged helplessly in her hand as though he could not help himself. “If you do,” he warned, dark amusement threading through his ragged voice, “I fear I shall not conduct myself as I had hoped.”
She bit her lower lip. “In what manner?”
“I had hoped to last inside you. To—” He hesitated, then eased them both until they were lying on the floor. How very fortunate that the carpet was soft and thick, although she would scarcely have minded if it had not been. She would have taken him on stone.
His gaze searched hers, lust still burning in its depths, though something quieter had risen beside it—something tender and strangely vulnerable.
“Do you want children, Dora?”
She blinked up at him. “Now?”
A faint crease appeared between his brows. “Well… would you be averse to the idea?”
“Sophia is my child.”
Surprise flared across his face. Beneath her hand, his arousal grew thicker still. She resumed her slow caress, and his eyes fluttered shut. His throat worked before he spoke again. “If I finish inside you—if my seed is inside you, there will be a chance you might become with child.”
“Oh.” At last, understanding unfolded within her.
That was why he had withdrawn the night before. He had not known whether she wanted a child. Perhaps he hadn’t trusted himself to imagine making another life with her.
Yet he imagined it now.
The knowledge lodged beneath her ribs, bright and dangerous.
“What about you?” she whispered.
“I would not object to another child, if that was what you needed.” His eyes softened. “You and Sophia have given me more than I deserve. How could I deny you anything more?”
“Children are not a need, Nicholas. Merely a desire.” She rolled to kiss him, and to her surprise, he caught her hips, lifting her on top of him.
“You are my desire.”
I love you.
The words pressed on the tip of her tongue, but she swallowed them back.
There was such naked affection in his eyes that hope swelled painfully within her. Yet she had only just persuaded him to remain. If she laid the full weight of her heart before him, he might still take fright and retreat behind all those glacial walls.
She must be patient.
So, instead, she swallowed the confession and reached instead for his body, guiding his rigid length to the wet heat of her entrance. Nicholas gripped her hips as she forced herself slowly down upon him.
The tenderness left from the previous night made the first stretch ache. She paused, breathing through the resistance, and felt his fingers sink into the yielding flesh of her hips. Yet he did not thrust. He held himself motionless until she had taken him completely.
The cost of that restraint was etched into every taut line of his face.
Then, the discomfort ebbed, and pleasure burst through her like tiny fireworks.
Nicholas slipped his hand between them. His thumb found the sensitive crest above their joining, circling it as she began to move. The twin sensations—his fullness inside her, his measured caress without—overwhelmed her rhythm.
He smiled despite the strain and guided the rise and fall of her hips.
“That’s right…” he moaned gutturally. “That’s perfect. Just the way you are. Just like that.”
The praise entered her like honey poured right into her blood. His other hand encompassed her breast, his fingers teasing the nipple into a sweet, exquisite sting.
She felt as though she was winding tighter and tighter, an inevitability, a certainty that this time, when she fell, she would be taking him with her. They would be turning each other inside out; this was the sort of vulnerability that marked a person forever.
She would never forget or outgrow this or him. He would be in her heart forever, and so would this moment. For the first time, she felt as though there was nothing between them. No lies or secrets. Just them.
She rocked faster on him, urging both to that luminous precipice. And when his eyes locked on hers, a naked desperation within them, and his fingers gripped her still more tightly, and he whispered, “What do you want, Dora?” she knew they would both fall together.
She did not relent until they both came apart.