Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter
THIRTY-ONE
They took a convoluted walk back to Berkeley Square through the empty backstreets and quiet parks, chatting amiably about everything and nothing and stopping to kiss more times than was wise.
Each time that he tugged her closer, Portia tried to tell herself that she was playing with fire, and each time that sensible voice in her head fell on increasingly deaf ears.
Leo seemed determined to seduce her and she seemed just as determined to let him.
By the time they climbed the steps at the front of the house and he kissed her again before a footman opened the door, she was riper for the picking than she had ever been in her life.
Kitty’s incendiary words about enjoying the benefits of marriage while they lasted were ringing in her ears while something decidedly wanton was happening to all the nerve endings between her legs.
He led her to the foot of the stairs. “Shall I send up a maid to help you out of that wet dress?” They both knew what he was really asking.
“I would rather you did.” Portia barely recognized her own voice. It was so needy and willing.
His blue eyes instantly darkened with desire. “So would I.”
His hand rested on the small of her back as they climbed the stairs, and he laced his fingers in hers at the top of them.
Neither of them spoke as he led her along the landing and then into his room.
Words seemed unnecessary. Especially as she didn’t want either of them to say anything that might inadvertently shatter the spell they were under.
This truce was too new to risk testing it.
He let go of her to turn the key in the lock, then leaned back against the door. “Are you sure about this? Only if you—” It was her turn to close the distance between them.
“Just shut up and kiss me.”
And he did, only this time and to her hungry body’s complete delight, he held nothing back.
It was a deep, decadent, and thoroughly carnal kiss that seemed to involve every bit of him because she experienced it from her lips to her toes.
Her breasts were flattened against the solid wall of his chest while his erection pressed insistently into her lower body.
So hard and ready that she could feel it through all her layers of petticoats and heavy brocade.
He filled his hands with the cheeks of her bottom and dragged her hips still closer.
Needing the heat of his bare skin against hers, Portia pushed his coat from his shoulders and he briefly let go of her backside so he could wrestle his arms from the sleeves while she set about the buttons on his waistcoat.
No sooner had that hit the floor than he yanked off his cravat and stripped out of his shirt in one impressively fluid movement.
His chest was a thing of beauty, firm and smooth and dusted with dark golden hair that narrowed and arrowed through his navel on its seductive route below the waistband of his trousers.
Portia traced it all with flattened hands while he watched her progress with stormy, desire-filled eyes.
She trailed one finger down the middle of his abdomen to the bulge that called to her and screamed for her to be brazen.
She pressed her palm against it and he moaned, his eyes scrunching shut as she explored the tantalizing shape of him over his clothes.
When that wasn’t enough and curiosity got the better of her, she slipped her hand beneath the waistband and reveled in his involuntary shudder when her fingertips found the silken skin stretched so taut over his rigid manhood.
He sucked in an erratic breath and his eyelids fluttered open as she gently caressed the whole length of him.
“Do you like that?” She wasn’t entirely sure what she was doing but she wanted to do it right.
One of the benefits of having Kitty as a friend is that Kitty had always managed to find the sort of books that contained a great many lurid details about what went on between a man and a woman in the bedchamber.
All of those books had stated that men enjoyed very much being touched here.
It surprised her how much she enjoyed it too.
His shape, his hardness, the heat that his aroused body created.
The way she undid him.
“What do you think?” A nerve in his tight jaw ticked as he choked out every word. One of his hands covered hers over the fabric as the other fumbled with the buttons of his falls. “Hold me.”
“Like this?” Her hand slipped lower to cup his testicles and he groaned. “Or like this?” She wrapped her fingers around his shaft and adored watching his eyes slam closed again as his erection jerked within the confines of her closed hand and she tentatively stroked it.
“Either or.” He kissed her hard until he could endure it no longer and wrenched his mouth away. “I need you out of that dress now.” Leo had never looked quite so ferocious or so desperate and that thrilled her.
“Then relieve me of it.”
She turned, presenting him with the laces that held her gown together, expecting him to go straight to them as they both wanted, but instead his fingers went to her hair and he tormented them both by gently removing every hairpin.
When her still-damp hair hung heavily down her back, he brushed it all to one side, then with her back to him, he slipped his arms around her waist and kissed her neck and shoulders. “Do you like this, Portia?”
“Yes.”
“And what about this?” One of his big hands cupped her womanhood over her skirts.
A stupid question when she instantly arched her hips against it. “Yes.”
“Would you like me to touch you like you just touched me?”
Suddenly, it felt as though she might explode if he didn’t. “Yes please.”
While his teeth teased her earlobe, he took his time hoisting her heavy skirt up as if he knew that every single second of delay made the wanton nerves between her legs throb more and more with anticipation.
The cool night air whispered over her bare skin, torturing her still more, but Leo refused to touch her until she was completely exposed below the waist. His hand cupped her again possessively.
“You have no idea how many times I have yearned to do this.” He sounded as undone as she felt as he dipped his finger between her shamelessly slick folds and immediately found a spot that made her knees weak as he caressed it. “You’re so wet.”
“Is that a bad thing?”
He choked out a sound, part chuckle, part groan.
“It is the best thing.” And to prove that, he used just the pad of his talented, wicked index finger and her moisture to create unspeakable amounts of pleasure.
Then, each time that she thought that it could not possibly feel any more wonderful, he gently increased the pressure and the tempo until she was writhing and bucking against his hand.
A curious soul could not read one of Kitty’s scandalous books and not touch herself, so Portia knew where this was going, but it had never felt this intense or so utterly sublime before.
Whatever peak Leo was taking her to was one that she knew she hadn’t yet visited, and all at once she was in a hurry to get there.
As if he sensed that, he twisted them both so that she faced the long mirror in the corner where he watched her intently as she began to come apart.
Oddly, even though she had never bared herself like this in front of a man and would usually balk at the idea of being so vulnerable before one, she wanted his eyes on her.
Wanted him to witness what he did to her. What he was doing to her.
Why was that?
“Oh my god, Leo…” She was so close. So dangerously close.
And then it hit her.
Wave after wave of sensations that pulsed from her core and radiated ruthlessly down every single nerve ending. A cascade of ecstasy that left her tumbling back against him, witless, as she cried his name like a benediction.
When she finally floated back to earth, his reflection in the mirror was awed but smug. And so hungry for her that it took her breath away all over again. “I am going to explode unless you are naked and on your back right this minute.” Oddly after what had just happened to her, so was Portia.
“Then get me out of this stupid dress.”
He set to work on her laces with gloriously clumsy fingers that made Portia feel powerful. As his frustration built, so did hers, and she tried to help him but the fastenings appeared to have fused themselves closed thanks to all the water he had doused them in.
“They’re stuck bloody fast!” She adored that he sounded so desperate.
“I hate this damned dress.” He stepped back, his breathing erratic, and raked an agitated hand through his already mussed hair.
“I fear desperate times call for desperate measures.” He stalked toward his nightstand where the bellpull was.
“Please tell me that you are not going to call for help?” Because that would be mortifying.
“Don’t be daft, woman.” He snatched something up and stalked back to her, then right in front of her wary eyes, he flicked open his razor.
“I’m going to cut you out of the damned thing.
” Then, before she could argue, he spun her around and did just that.
The blade was so sharp that it sliced through her sodden laces like butter, and before she knew it, her cumbersome court gown was a puddle at her feet.
He didn’t bother even attempting to untie the ribbons at the front of her tight stays, and simply sliced through them too.
Closely followed by the shoulder seams of both that and her thin chemise.
With a wolfish grin, he snapped the razor closed and tossed it, then ripped every stitch of her undergarments away.
Instinctively, Portia almost covered herself with her hands, but the way Leo’s gaze appreciatively raked her body made her just stand there while he took it all in.
“Bloody hell but you’re beautiful.” The reverence in his voice made her believe him. “Come here.” She wasn’t usually one who responded well to an order but she liked that one. Liked more how utterly divine it felt to finally feel his skin against hers.
When he kissed her, it was with a hunger that she had never experienced before and he thoroughly plundered her mouth as they staggered to the bed.
He pushed her backward onto the mattress, his hungry eyes still raking her up and down as he dispensed with his breeches.
His uncaged erection drew her eyes like a moth to a flame and held her gaze for the longest time before she dragged it up to his face, wondering why he still hadn’t joined her on the bed so he could put it to excellent use. “What’s the matter?”
“I’m just giving you time to change your mind.… Are you sure you want to do this?”
His thoughtfulness both humbled her and melted her heart. “I am going to explode if we don’t.” She reached out her hand and he smiled as he took it, then laughed as she yanked him onto the bed on top of her. “But you should probably know that you are my first. Just in case you were wondering.”
He stared deep into her eyes and swallowed as if that humbled him, before his dimples slowly emerged on either side of the most sinful smile she had ever seen. “And you should probably know that I fully intend to be your last too. Just in case you were wondering.”
His kiss felt both decadent and poignant and Portia happily lost herself in it as fresh desire kindled anew.
He tore his lips from hers to worship every inch of her with them instead.
He started with her breasts, which died and went to heaven as he suckled her nipples to sharp points.
Then he kissed his way down her abdomen, the inside of her thigh and her calf on one side, before he went back up the other way on her other leg.
His tongue found that wanton, greedy nubbin of nerves at the precise moment it screamed for more attention, and in no time she was writhing against his mouth with one of her hands tangled in his hair while the other fisted the sheets.
Unbelievably ready to climax again despite just experiencing the most monumental one of her life.
She was right on the cusp when he shifted position and completely covered her with his body and his breathing was just as labored. But because the wretch was noble to his core, he once again hesitated. “You need to invite me in, Portia. I need to know that you are sure.”
“Take me,” was all she said and he did. Sliding into her with one smooth but gentle thrust.
Bizarrely, despite expecting it to, the intrusion didn’t hurt at all.
She was too wet and too ready for her body to more than register a moment’s shock that he was buried all the way inside her.
That evaporated the second he began to move inside her and all she could think was how perfect it felt.
How perfectly they fitted together. Moved together.
Melded together. Almost as if she had been made for him and him for her because even their hearts seemed to beat in complete synchronicity.
Then all at once, any thoughts at all became impossible because nothing else mattered beyond where their bodies joined and how that joining made her body rejoice.
Only this time, when she tumbled into exquisite oblivion, he was right there with her.
Staring all the way into her soul and calling her his darling as they touched heaven together.