Twenty-two
Nate was in dire straits. Her inner walls pounded around him while her limbs bucked with the force of her release. He had to pull out. After he promised she could trust him, he couldn’t risk spilling himself into her.
She whimpered when he withdrew, but he swallowed it with another kiss. Then he moved down her body, kissing, kneading, licking.
Nate nuzzled between her legs, drunk on her scent, desperate to draw this loving out, desperate to sink into her sweet flesh and find release.
She chanted his name, arching herself into his mouth. He devoured her for a moment, only pulling back when he thought he detected the slightest pulse of a contraction in the soft lips of her sex.
His balls tightened in response to her need.
Without even realizing he’d done it, he found himself poised to slide into her wet channel once again. His cock urged him on.
He couldn’t seem to help himself. He had to be inside her.
He rushed in with one long stroke and she molded around him in a warm, wet embrace. To his joy, she wrapped her legs around him and crossed her ankles at the small of his back. Who’d have guessed his little virgin would take to rutting with such abandon?
His balls drew up into a tense mound, coiled for release. He held himself motionless, willing the urgency to subside so he could revel in the joy that was Georgette a little longer.
Only a little.
His heart pounded in his cock.
But when he looked down at her, at the soft gape of her mouth, the way her brows tented in distress, he knew he couldn’t keep her suspended so near release any longer. He had to let her go.
She pulsed once, squeezing him at the base of his cock with her slick inner walls.
He covered her mouth with his and flicked his tongue in, loving her with his tongue and his cock in tandem. She moved beneath him, urging him in deeper with little noises of desperation that threatened to shred his control.
A little longer, please.
It was such a selfish thought, but she seemed to have heard him.
She turned her head away. “I can’t—”
He felt it start. Her insides contracted around him again, pulsing in waves. It was like being born, but instead of going out, he was trying to come in.
Pleasure, sharp as a blade, sliced through him, rending him soul and marrow.
Her whole body convulsed.
He bit his lip, trying to stop his body from emptying his seed into her. Pressure shot up his shaft and he jerked himself out before the first hot spurts began. Georgette glowed beneath him like a being aflame.
The world began pulsing. Dim. Bright. Dim. Bright. Slowly at first, then ever faster as his body strained against her and he poured himself out on her soft belly.
Georgette, oh my Georgie.
Her name wove through his brain like a half-remembered song. He wasn’t able to find the end of it, and it kept repeating in rhythm with his release. It got all tangled up in the joy of Georgette’s warm body under him.
“That was over too soon,” he murmured into her hair.
The last spurt escaped from him and his muscles went limp as a dead man.
“Well, you’re right about that,” she said as she stroked his head and neck. “It was over much too soon.”
Nate buried his nose in her hair and clutched her tight. He could scarcely believe his good fortune. She’d come to him. Now he only had to convince her to stay.
“That’s what you think,” he said, rising up to look down at her. “Give me a few minutes and we’ll start round two.”
Her laugh warmed him to his toes. Nate got up, wet a cloth at the small commode fitted with a ewer, and returned to wash her inner thighs gently. She’d given him more than her innocence. She’d given him her trust. He was determined to deserve it.
“Mmm, that feels nice,” she purred as he ran the cool cloth over her.
“I know lots of ways to make you feel nice.”
She grinned up at him. “Show me.”
He sank back down onto the bed, covering her with a hailstorm of kisses. There were so many variations on this randy theme. If he could only keep her here till dawn broke and the chambermaid came to clean the hearth for the start of a new day, she’d be his.
Permanently.
***
Georgette had dropped off to sleep at some point, sated and lethargic. She didn’t know what jerked her to full wakefulness, but suddenly her eyes were wide open and her ears pricked at any sound.
The moon that had brightened Nathaniel’s chamber earlier had set, throwing them into near total darkness. Only the soft glow from the banked fire allowed her to see the chest for his clothing along the far wall and the pair of chairs with a chess table arranged between them before the hearth.
Georgette turned to look at the man whose head rested on her pillow. Nathaniel’s face was in shadow, but she could imagine it in repose. The frown line between his brows would have relaxed. There’d be no tension in his jaw, and Nate would look far younger than his years.
She resisted the urge to stroke his cheek, to feel the stubble of his beard under her palm. The man had richly earned his rest. She wouldn’t disturb him now.
Instead she eased out from under the linens and went in search of her discarded night shift and wrapper. With an ear still cocked for sounds of others stirring in the great house, she dressed quickly.
Georgette supposed she ought to feel a bit saddened about losing her innocence, but instead a satisfied glow warmed her chest. She might still be facing a loveless match, but no matter what the future brought, she’d remember this night till she was dust. It was the night she’d come fully alive.
And she had Nathaniel to thank for it.
She padded toward the door.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
His voice seemed loud enough to wake the dead and she whirled to shush him, her warm feelings toward him dissipating in irritation.
“Do be quiet, Nate. What does it look like? I’m going back to my own room.”
He was out of bed and across the room to her in a couple heartbeats. “Why?”
“Because I don’t want to be found here, of course.”
He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close to his warm nakedness. “Stay, Georgette. It’s hours till dawn.”
She doubted that. Her sleep had been so deep and restorative, she felt as if she’d slept the clock around. Surely the sky would begin to brighten to pearl between one breath and the next. “No, Nate. I need to leave now.”
The hardness of his groin against her belly was making it more difficult for her to keep her resolve by the moment. She’d thought that ache between her legs had been fully assuaged, but it flared to life again.
He brushed her lips with his. “Would it be so terrible if we were caught together?”
She blinked in surprise. “What happened to your promise not to see me shamed?”
“You wouldn’t be. I’d do the honorable thing and marry you.”
But only if he were cornered into it.
If he’d spoken a word of love, she might have given up, accepted the fact that her family was going to be bitterly disappointed in her, and followed him blithely back to his wicked bed.
But Nate hadn’t spoken of love.
In fact, all night long while he played his lover’s games on her willing flesh and did all those filthy, lovely things to her, things that made her cheeks heat and her body rouse afresh with remembered pleasure, he’d never uttered a single word of love.
Why had she not noticed that till now?
Now he spoke only of duty—and grudging duty at that. It would be “not so terrible” for them to be found together. If that wasn’t damning the idea of marrying her with faint praise, she didn’t know what was.
“I know better than to expect honor from a rake,” she said, trying to extricate herself from his arms, but he wouldn’t let her go. “I came into this room of my own free will. Do you intend to hold me prisoner?”
“We all choose our own prisons, my lady,” he said darkly. “Are you telling me you still want yours to be Windsor Castle?”
I’m telling you I don’t want to be your prison, Nate.
But she couldn’t say that. It would be tantamount to admitting that she wanted him when he clearly would only take her as his wife under duress.
“I’m telling you I want you to let me go. Now.”
He didn’t twitch so much as an eyelash, but she felt tension building in his muscles. She began to think he meant to cart her back to his bed and take her again whether she willed it or no.
A dark part of her was disappointed when he released her.
“Go,” he said raggedly. When she reached the door, his voice stopped her again. “Next time you have an itch, madam, kindly find some other willing cock to scratch it. But mind you do it quickly. I doubt you’ll have such freedom once you’ve become royal.”
His words were a punch to her gut. She didn’t mean anything to him. He was merely “scratching an itch.”
She fled from the room. She didn’t bother with stealth. She tore down the corridors and up the curving stairs, not stopping until she bolted the door to her own chamber behind her.
She wouldn’t even have cared if she’d been discovered at that point. All that mattered was putting as much distance as possible between herself and that hateful man.
Georgette leaned against her door because she was trembling too much to stand without support. She hugged herself to keep from coming apart.
During the delirious days when she battled with scarlet fever, death had drawn close. It hovered at the foot of her bed. It leered from the darkened corners of her room. But she hadn’t felt this hollowed-out emptiness, this sense that part of her had already died.
Until now.
She slid to the floor and wept.