Chapter Seventeen
Staring into her wary, uncertain eyes, Edmund felt a deep tugging pull in his chest. She didn’t trust him. Perhaps she was right not to. But he couldn’t stand to see her unbelieving her own desirability.
He took a shallow breath, then a deeper one.
“The very first time I saw you—and every time I’ve looked at you since—I’ve had this need to feel you.”
Her expression darkened and he fought to find better words.
“I need to feel your heartbeat race. For me. I must feel your body softening, melting, sighing.” His tone deepened roughly.
“I need you to tremble at my glance—my voice. I must know by your voice, the glimmer in your eyes, the catch in your breath, and the scent of your skin that you are feeling me. Needing me. Tonight, and after. Even from across a ballroom, I must know this—feel this.”
The physical hunger inside him pulsed with the truth of every word.
She angled her chin. “So, it’s a physical thing?”
“Is that so terrible?”
“How many other—”
“No others,” he said sharply. And it was true. No other woman existed to him.
He took a single step forward. She did not retreat.
“Tell me you do not need to feel me?” he challenged, his voice intimate and unrelenting.
Her lips parted and he braced for a denial.
“I cannot tell you that,” she admitted.
Fire danced through him. Desire roared in his blood. He offered a half-smile and graveled, “What can you tell me?”
She breathed deep. Her gaze flickered to the door, then to her bed tucked in the shadows. Then back to him, shining and mysterious.
“For the last few hours,” she said, “I’ve been horrified at the thought that you might actually come to me tonight.”
His stomach dropped and his hands tensed.
Then she gave a shaky little laugh. “And now, I’m terrified I might not be able to make you stay.”
This time, his heart dropped. He walked toward her, watching closely for any indication that she wanted him to stop. She was stock still. Her chin lifted, her gaze starry and focused intently on him. Her lips very slightly parted.
“I’m not leaving until you kick my arse back out that window,” he promised, coming to a stop now that he was within reach of her.
“I don’t know what to do,” she whispered on a breath as her lashes lowered to half-shield her eyes.
His smile softened. That statement was difficult for her.
She did not like being at a loss—unknowledgeable and uncertain.
Her admittance only reinforced the fact of how vulnerable she was willing to be with him.
It implied she trusted him at least somewhat.
It was a heady aphrodisiac. Not that he required one.
He’d been ready for this since their first meeting.
“You don’t need to,” he whispered.
His body hummed in need of her. His blood simmered and every nerve was screaming for the feel of her. But he needed her to feel him in the same ways.
He reached for her hand. As his fingers slid against her palm, her hand tensed then relaxed into his. Still holding her gaze, he gently lifted her hand for him to press his lips to the center of her palm.
There was a quick flare of her eyes and her breath subtly quickened.
Edmund smiled, allowing her to feel the curving of his mouth against her skin. When her fingers twitched, he brought her hand lower, pressing the tips of her fingers to the pulse thrumming at the side of his throat. Her heavy gaze followed.
“Can you feel that?” He was surprised at the deep roughness in his voice, but he continued. “How my blood hastens beneath your touch?”
She nodded.
He smiled. Then he directed her fingertips to the hollow of her collarbone.
“Do you feel your own pulse quicken?”
Her eyes flickered up to his. And without a word, she slipped her hand from beneath his so his own fingers rested against the base of her throat.
His breath stopped.
Her skin was so warm and soft. And her heartbeat thrummed swiftly beneath his light touch.
“What else do you feel?” he asked. “Explore your body’s reactions. Tell me what you are learning in this moment.”
Her eyes flickered with understanding, then closed. She took a long breath, expanding her lungs, before releasing it slowly. When she opened her eyes again, there was a depth and intensity in the dark gray-blue that reached into his core and took hold.
“My skin is more sensitive,” she began. “I can feel every slight movement of gown…my underclothes. The difference between the slide of silk and that of cotton,” she murmured.
He cleared his throat. “Would you like to feel the weight of your gown falling away from your body?”
There was just a moment of silence following his question. Then, “Yes.”
His heart jumping to a frantic rhythm, Edmund stepped behind her and expertly released the buttons down her back. Once the gown gaped open, he gently brushed it off her shoulders, allowing it to slide down her arms, then past her hips to pool at her feet.
She stood in the center of the billowing silk, wearing only a single light petticoat and short stays over a whisper-thin chemise.
His mouth went dry. He’d seen countless women in their underclothes before—and out of them. But this moment struck him acutely. It couldn’t have been easy for her to embrace such vulnerability. His bluestocking was a brave one.
Barely breathing, he gently brushed his knuckles across her bared upper back, then up to tease her sensitive nape.
She sighed and his stomach clenched. Stepping closer to her, he drifted his fingertips over her shoulder, past the ridge of her collarbone in a whisper-light caress across the top swell of her breasts.
“And the touch of my fingers?” he asked thickly. “How does that feel on your skin?”
There was no hesitation in her answer. “Like delicate fire. Hot. Tingling. Like it is awakening something beneath the surface.”
Turning his head, he whispered against the shell of her ear. “What is being awakened, Lydia?”
Another deep breath lifted her breasts against his questing fingertips.
“More heat,” she admitted with a subtle lick of her lips.
Edmund saw it and clenched his teeth against the urge to chase that tongue into her sweet mouth.
“Through my limbs,” she continued, “making them feel heavy. The tingling angles down to my belly, causing a wild fluttering there.”
She gasped then as he smoothed his hand over the curve of her breast, brushing her peaked nipple with his palm before continuing down to flatten heavily over her lower abdomen. Her balance wavered and her head tipped back, almost resting on his shoulder before she caught herself.
“Here?” he asked, splaying his fingers across her soft belly.
She nodded.
His voice was rough as he asked, “What else is your body revealing to you?”
She took a deep breath that lifted her breasts against the top edge of her stays, deepening the hollow he glimpsed between them.
Edmund had to bite his lip against the desperate need to tear away her confining stays to release her softness.
“I’m feeling…” she gave a small shake of her head. “Restless, I suppose.”
“Aching?”
“Yes,” she whispered.
“Needful?”
She nodded.
“Where?”
In a bold move that utterly stopped his heart, she covered his hand on her belly with hers and moved it lower. Stepping her feet apart, she pressed his fingers between her thighs, to the damp heat of her core covered by nothing but two thin layers of cotton.
Her sigh was a husky moan as she dropped her head back against him. Her spine went soft and her thighs trembled.
“Fuck me.” The coarse words slid roughly from Edmund’s throat unbidden.
Lowering his head, he pressed an open-mouthed kiss to the slope of her shoulder and wrapped his other arm around her chest to hold her more firmly against him as he delved deeper between her thighs.
Her heat was lush, her flesh soft under the stroke of his fingers.
The cotton of her petticoat and chemise quickly became soaked with her moisture.
With her hand still resting lightly atop his, he explored her folds, teasing the sensitive bud of her clitoris with circling strokes and the delicate scrape of his fingernail.
She began to move against him. Her hips tilted and her spine rolled. Turning her head toward him, she murmured, “It’s not enough.”
“I know,” he replied, cupping her sex in his hand before releasing her to make short work of the ties securing her petticoat. It fell to the floor in a cloud. After untying the knotted strings of her stays, he pulled the stiff garment away from her body to toss it aside.
With her now in nothing but her stockings and a chemise that clung softly to the swell of her hips and reached her mid-thigh, he turned her to face him.
The storm in her heavy-lidded gaze was beautiful and astounding.
So much mystery and depth could be found in her eyes.
And her mouth…softly parted, her lips glistening from the recent sweep of her tongue, her breath short and swift and sweet.
His entire body ached for her. In deep, previously unknown places, he felt the weight of his yearning. Despite how fiercely he wanted to pull her against him and wrap her legs around his waist, he chose something different.
Reaching up to cup her face in his hands, he gazed into her eyes and brushed his thumbs over the softness of her cheeks as he pressed his mouth to hers.
The kiss was a sigh. A promise. It was a gentle molding and a tantalizing taste.
As his lips moved over hers, she stepped into him, lifting her face and resting her hands on each side of his rib cage.
He was suddenly, deeply irritated that he still wore a coat, vest, and shirt. Just imagining the smooth warmth of her hands on his skin triggered a rush of heat through his body.
With a soft groan, he pulled away from the kiss, stepping back to create a breath of space between them.
As soon as her hands fell away, he unbuttoned and removed his coat, tossing it to the side.
After an initial flicker of confusion in her face, she stood still as her gaze followed his movements intently.
His vest was next, then his neckcloth. He managed to loosen the throat of his shirt before she lifted her hand to lay it on his chest, over his heart.
Her touch burned in the best way. Tingling fire, she’d said.
It was exactly right. He wanted it everywhere.
But he waited for her to connect to the rhythm of his racing heartbeat before he took her hand and brought it to his lips once again, this time allowing his tongue to tease the center of her palm.
Her eyes widened. Sparks danced in their depths.
He grinned.
Then, placing her hand on his shoulder, he lowered to his knees. When she threaded her fingers into his hair, gently scraping his scalp with her nails, lightning danced down his spine and twisted his stomach. He looked up at her, and his heart stuttered at the expression on her face.
He’d never imagined such a lovely combination of breathless need and quiet, wicked anticipation.
Reaching beneath the fluttering hem of her chemise, he released her garters. Then, one at a time, he removed her stockings. Her eyes closed as her first limb was bared. When he lifted her second foot to toss the length of silk aside, her hand curled into the hair at his nape with a tugging fist.
He paused then. Resting his hands gently against her outer thighs just above her knees, he waited for her to look at him.
After only a moment, her lashes lifted and that deep, mysterious gaze found his.
He cleared his throat. “What have you learned?” His voice was graveled and raw.
The corner of her mouth twitched. “Was I supposed to be studying?”
Edmund chuckled and slid his hands higher along her outer thighs, raising the hem of her chemise as he went. He stopped only when his fingers met the undercurve of her buttocks.
Her eyes sparked. Her lips parted. And a flush spread across her chest.
“Why do you keep stopping?” she whispered.
“It’s a lesson in patience.”
“Trust me. I’ve learned that one well.”
A smile twitched on his lips. “Perhaps. But there can be a unique sort of pleasure in the act of withholding,” he whispered, leaning close so his breath bathed her thighs. “An ache in the anticipation that draws the fire deeper.” He pressed a kiss to the soft skin a couple inches above her knee.
Looking up at her, he slipped his hands around to grasp the globes of her bottom.
“It’s also about trust,” he continued, pausing to press a kiss to her other thigh, a bit higher than the first. “I want you to trust that I will give you what you want, in time. So you can enjoy the delicacy of the approach—the desperate wanting before the fulfillment.”
“I don’t think I can enjoy it,” she confessed. Her voice was heavy, trembling.
Edmund eased his knee between her ankles, gently forcing her to step apart.
Her muscles tensed, then relaxed as she reclaimed her balance.
When he leaned forward to press his lips to the untouched softness of her inner thigh, he breathed deep.
The honey-musk of her body’s response inspired a weighted moan.
He flexed his fingers into the softness of her bottom and flicked his tongue against her skin.
Her breath stuttered and the muscles of her thighs tensed.
“You are moments away from a revelation, luv,” he murmured, nuzzling his nose along her thigh.
He could almost taste her. The sultry heat of her core taunted him, hidden by soft dark curls.
His body pulsed and thrummed with his rising need.
His hands would likely be shaking if he weren’t gripping her buttocks so firmly.
“A threshold of knowledge,” he rasped. “What do you feel?”
Her legs began to tremble, but she managed to answer. “Weak. Weightless and heavy at the same time.” He gently licked along the crease at the top of her leg. “Like I’m falling but there is no indication I’m going to find solid ground.”
“It’s not falling,” he graveled, “It’s flying.”
Slipping one hand down her leg to lift it over his shoulder, he brought his mouth to her cunt.