Chapter Twenty-Four
Jasper was braced for the slow dawn of horror that would follow release, for the clarity and panic that he had felt this morning. He didn’t let her go, but he waited for it. He expected it.
Instead, all he seemed to be feeling was … relief?
Bone-deep, all-encompassing relief.
What the hell was that about?
Libba let out a little sigh and squirmed against him, bracing her hands over his ribs, all her soft, lovely skin gliding against his.
He blinked rapidly, shocked for the second time in quick order. “Lib,” he said. “Stop moving or I’m going to do it again.”
“Do what?” she murmured into his shoulder, dissolving into a throaty, little chuckle at his returned sound of distress. “Oh. Already?”
“Already,” he confirmed miserably.
“Hmm,” she purred. “I don’t think I would mind that, but I probably need a moment, to be honest with you. I am … well, something.”
“That you are,” he agreed, tilting his frowning mouth down into the crown of her hair. “You are something.”
“Sometimes,” she said. “Other times, I am nothing. Nobody. Remember how Malcolm used to tease me for being Bess and Lizzie and Elle day to day? Little Miss Nobody. Madam No One At All. He was right.”
He shook his head. “Don’t lie to me, Liberty Lennox.”
“Oh, but I am very good at it,” she said with another little laugh. Then she stretched, her muscles tensing and arching as she rolled her limbs to and fro. “Christ. Oh, I feel so much better.”
Jasper considered that perhaps he had not yet experienced that wave of clarity because he was still, somehow, unsatisfied. Maybe he’d experience it next time. Or the time after that.
His body twitched at the thought of multiple encounters, of more of her body on him. Around him.
“How long,” she asked softly, “have you wanted to do that?”
He groaned, dropping his head back onto the pillow with his eyes shut for the briefest moment, just long enough to take a gasp of air, and then he rolled over atop her, pinning her to the mattress with a press of his hips, his hands braced on either side of her wild, loose hair.
“I don’t know,” he confessed, taking her lips in a languid kiss, trailing his mouth down the line of her jaw, the hollow of her throat. “I don’t know.”
She wriggled under him, her long, manicured fingers coming up to thread into his hair as he kissed lower, his tongue flicking over her clavicles. “Since this morning?” she guessed. “Since last night?”
“I don’t know,” he breathed, running his hands down to her waist, working his way over the soft swell of her breasts. “No. Yes.”
“Since I returned from London?” she suggested, pausing only to gasp and sigh as his tongue dragged over one of her pert nipples. “Oh, God.”
He almost collapsed from the feel of it, from the taste, from the sound that tore from her throat, mid-thought.
He wrapped his fingers around her thigh, pulling it higher, up around his hips as he buried himself in her breasts, the ones she’d teased him with over the charades card, bending low enough to create an insatiable craving.
He would try to satisfy it, anyway, he told himself, sucking her hardening nipple into the heat of his mouth, tormenting with his lips and tongue.
“Since the night in the parlor?” she suggested thinly. “Did you want to pull my tatty, pink robe open that night?”
He didn’t answer this time. He couldn’t. It was just a helpless growl from his throat as he continued to touch her, to taste her.
He slid his hand between her legs, sinking his fingers into the leavings of their joining, his mind blowing white hot and static at the sound she made in response.
“Longer?” she continued, breathless and moving against him, rolling her hips against his fingers, pressing her chest into his hungry mouth. “Did you think about doing this when we were younger? Did you dream about putting your fingers in me, Jasper?”
He cursed, using those fingers rougher, stroking the parts of her he knew were weakest. The sound of his name in her mouth, surrounded by this taunting, this torment, was enough to break him, and by God, she was going to break too, if that was the case.
He curled his fingers, he smeared their combined juices over her, he used them to heighten the slickness of his motions.
She only moaned in approval, her legs spreading further. “That was very naughty of you,” she murmured, rocking her hips, tugging at his hair. “Did it go further in those youthful dreams? What else did you imagine?”
If he’d had the capability of leaving his feast of her breasts, he might have kissed her to shut her up, to stop stoking an already dangerously hot flame. As it was, he could not. He could not stop licking and kissing them, stroking their soft perfection with his tongue.
“Did you ever think you’d actually do it?” she continued. “Did you imagine sliding your cock into me?”
That was it. That was all he could take.
He dragged his hand out of her and used it, wet and dripping, to grip his arousal, to coat it as he reared up over her, tormenting her with the promise of penetration. He dragged himself against her entrance, his teeth raking against her nipples.
And as soon as he heard her attempt to breathe, as soon as he clocked the audacity of her inhale, he drove into her, spearing her through the core of her want—and nearly going blind in the satisfaction of doing so.
Her hands grazed down over his shoulders, her nails scraping into his skin as he thrust hard, his eyes rolling back, his toes curling. He could hear his own moans, his own desperate sounds of need and pleasure.
He finally got himself to leave her breasts, replacing the wet heat of his mouth with the possessive cup of his hands. It was only because he had to have her mouth. He had to have her tongue. He had to have all of her.
“Jasper …” she said raggedly against his mouth, which only pushed him further into madness, more chaotic and desperate with every snap of his hips.
He silenced her with his tongue, thrusting it into her mouth in a mimicry of what he was doing elsewhere. He anchored her hips, grinding himself into her, all coherent thought lost, all tenderness forgotten.
This was need at its most primal, at its most animal.
She clawed his arms, raking her nails down them as she planted her feet on the bed and thrashed against him, meeting him blow for blow. She cupped his arse again, pulling him deeper into her, kneading the muscle there, making little sounds of conquest in her throat.
When she tensed, her body going as taut as a strung bow, he sank himself to the hilt and rode out the waves of her pleasure, uncertain he could ever go back to being a man, a civilized, reasonable man.
The sounds she made. The feeling of her body clamping down on his erection. All of it was too much.
She had always been too much and now he was buried inside her.
He lost himself again, holding her hips in the palms of his hands as he crossed boundaries he would have sworn were permanent and unyielding. He crossed them over and over again, until there was nothing left in him.
Nothing at all.
For now.
For however long now would bless him.
He squeezed his eyes shut and opened them again, filling his lungs, willing the color in the world to slow and desaturate. His head was spinning. He didn’t know if he was sleepy or restless.
He didn’t even know if he was only one person anymore.
He didn’t even realize, for some time, that he had splayed himself out atop her, their legs threaded, his head sharing her pillow, with his nose buried in her hair. He was still inside her, though everything was murky and soft now, rather than a miasma of insanity.
He wasn’t certain how long she’d tolerated his weight there, her fingernails gone soft and soothing, tracing patterns over his back.
He knew, somehow, without looking or moving, that her eyes were open, that she was staring up at his ceiling while her mind filled with words and pictures. He could feel it through her skin, somehow. He could hear it bending the air.
“Yes,” he said gently, into her throat.
“Hm?” she said, her hands stumbling in their mindless caress of his back. “What did you say?”
“To all your questions,” he told her, shifting his weight gently to the side, into the mattress without having to peel himself away from her. “About when and how I wanted you. Yes.”
She hesitated and then tilted her head down to meet his eyes. “Really?”
He gave a soft, incredulous chuckle, his shoulders sagging, unsure if he should nod or shake his head. “Yes. Though that was the strangest interrogation I’ve ever been put through. Feel free to always find your answers like that.”
“I didn’t,” she said with a smirk. “You didn’t answer me until after.”
He slid his hand over her belly and grabbed her hand, linking his fingers through hers. “The price is getting to the after,” he suggested, unsure why he was suddenly feeling heat in his cheeks now, after everything. “I think I’ve earned it.”
She watched their hands travel back to the midpoint between them, her eyes hooded and thoughtful. “Since we were young?”
He groaned, squeezing her fingers and putting his face back in her hair. “I already said yes!”
“Yes, I know, but it raises many more questions!” she said, nudging him with her elbow. “And I need a pitcher of water if I’m going to have to get more answers in that particular fashion.”
He laughed then, the anxiety sparkling in his chest like the fizzing ends of fireworks, caught in a web of contradictory contentment. “You can have the water regardless, but you must not move from that spot while I fetch it.”
“Don’t fetch it yet,” she said quickly.
He waited, the soft fluff of her tight curls soft as heaven on his cheeks. She seemed to be squirming something out, pulling it from her gut into her mouth before she could speak it.
This happened sometimes.
“Why didn’t I know?” she finally spat out, the words falling out of her mouth like each weighed a stone. “How did I not know?”