Chapter Five #2
She plunged her fingers into his hair, dislodging his mask.
He made a sound like a laugh and pulled it from his head.
She could run her fingers over his face now, the strong brow, the sharp, high cheekbones, the long lean slope of his cheeks and that arrogant jaw, the skin there slightly grainy beneath her palms. His tongue in her mouth, his lips moving against hers, the hard hot press of his body, all of it melted her like wax.
Everything else disappeared—her reserve, her worries, her history, her fears. She had one purpose in life and she had discovered it in this moment: to stand in this man’s arms and lose herself in this heat, this pleasure.
He moved them backwards, walking her with his body until her back pressed against one of the stone columns that held up the overhang of the porch.
Jasmine hit her nose, sweet and heady, twining with the rich cedar and musk of the man leaning against the length of her body.
A restless ache stirred between her legs, a sensation long forgotten but roaring to life now with the desperation of a need long denied.
Joining. Completion. If she had one night left to her, she wanted to follow this pleasure as far as she could.
He made low, deep sounds, like murmurs of satisfaction, and that fed her madness.
She felt powerful. Desired. He broke from her lips and she hauled in air, only to lose her breath again when his hot mouth trailed along her jaw to her ear, then down her neck.
He arched her back over his arm and swept his burning mouth across the skin exposed by her gown, nibbling along a collarbone, then downward.
Her breasts grew full and heavy, her nipples taut, aching.
Then he tugged with an artful hand and her stomacher was suddenly loose enough that he could reach in and scoop one heavy breast out of her stays.
Her nipple puckered and she gasped at the exposure to air, then gasped again as his lips came down and his nipple was in her mouth.
She gave a long, keening cry that they no doubt heard inside, above the music.
He lifted his head. His voice was ragged, as if his control hung by as slender a thread as hers did. “I hurt you?”
“Don’t stop.” She cupped her hand around her back of his head and tugged him toward her. “Don’t stop.”
He chuckled, but his voice held a note of awe. “Ma Reinette. You are magnificent.”
Magnificent didn’t begin to describe what she felt.
She was ten feet tall, a goddess. She radiated light.
She basked in the waves of it as his tongue laved her breasts and she pushed toward him, mindless with need.
She was a hot wave of desire and she was shameless.
A fire roared from her core, an inferno she had never felt, and she wanted nothing but to be lost in it, to lose herself. With him.
She knew how. She unlocked her fingers from his back and swept a hand down over his chest, firm and warm, then slipped her hand beneath the hem of his long waistcoat. An iron rod strained against the fall of his old-fashioned breeches. She gripped him, and he moaned.
“We should go inside. Find a bed.”
Moving would break the spell. If they broke apart the cold air would come between them, and sense might return. This moment could be lost. She was riding a wave that lifted, lifted, and she did not want to let him go.
“Here,” she murmured. “Beneath the moon.”
“Moon.” That might have been a smile curving his lips against her skin. He murmured something else, a language she didn’t know. “Ya Qamar.”
She unfastened his fall front and slipped her hand inside his breeches. He went taut as an arrow nocked in a longbow.
“You are certain?”
She squeezed, and his cock throbbed against her palm. An answering pulse came from between her legs. She didn’t even care if it hurt like before. Her need was greater.
She pulled at her skirts—it took an effort, there were so many of them—but at last she was bare to the open air. She tried to press herself against him.
“I want—” The words caught on a sob. She didn’t know what she wanted. Only for this to end, this restless fire, and for it to go on forever, the closeness, the kissing, the warm wild weight of him in her arms.
He lifted her by the waist and settled her rump on the balustrade, pulling her hips so she tilted back, and then he was between her legs, one arm clamped around her back, one hand gripping beneath her knee.
“You,” he said, his voice ragged as he pressed a kiss to her lips. He sounded almost surprised. “It’s you.”
“Come to me.” She curled a hand around the back of his neck, urging him closer.
This was nothing like the rough fumbling of her marriage.
He slid a hand between her legs and found her entrance, and with a few strokes of his fingers, she was wet and ready.
She opened her mouth to tell him how different this was, how she wanted him inside her, but then he was inside her and she couldn’t form words.
She was nothing but one leaping flame of heat and light.
He moved, and she catapulted to a place she’d never known, a place of pulsing stars and swirling dark and radiant, obliterating pleasure that rippled through her, wave after wave.
He moved some more, shuddering, made another low sound, and then lay against her, heavy and solid and present, a force in the world. Louisa wrapped her arms around him and closed her eyes and decided to stay in this perfect moment forever.
If only she could. After a long moment, he stirred and withdrew. He produced a cloth from somewhere and patted himself with it, then reached between her legs.
“You will tell me if there is a babe.”
“A bay…” An arrow speared her, the pain taking her by surprise. There had never been the least sign of a babe in the years of her marriage. She had put aside that hope long ago. “There will not be a babe.”
“I spent inside you. I meant to pull out and…I didn’t.”
His voice was tight, his body taut, as if he hadn’t a moment earlier been lying against her spent in bliss, swirling softly with her among the stars and outer planets. The tide was receding, that glorious pleasure already turning into an echo. She would never have that again.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said, her voice hollow. She didn’t sound like herself. The old Louisa had been blown away, just like she’d once shed Eloisa.
Who was she now?
“It does matter. You will give me your name and direction,” he said, his voice gruff as he refastened his falls.
She had only to drop her skirts and it was as if the moment had never been.
As if he had never been inside of her, his body joined to hers.
As if they hadn’t together drunk from that exquisite cup.
He did this all the time. He felt this all the time. Only she was changed, her own body strange to her as she pushed her bosoms back into place and refastened her stomacher.
“Ah, yes. Now you will help me, because I paid your price.”
“Reinette.” Suddenly he was close again, his body pressed against hers, crowding her against the pillar. She wanted to throw her arms around him and kiss him again. She wanted to bite him and push him away.
“I wanted this. You. I want you again.”
“How convenient for you.” She’d wanted it too, and now she’d tasted this devastating pleasure. Been obliterated by it. She was surprised her feet held her as she pushed away from the balcony.
He reached out for her arm. “I promised my help.”
Louisa stared at his hand, and every particle of pleasure and joy she’d felt turned to ash.
He wore a ring. A signet ring. A carved ruby in a setting of gold, and though the porch was in shadow, she saw the flaring lines and the points of claws.
The seal. The blackmailer’s seal.
“No. We are done here. No one can help me.” She wanted to weep, to scream, to rage. She was so alone. The only person in this world who knew her name, who had just taken her soul with him to the most glorious heights, was her enemy.
“It is over,” she said, grateful that her voice was somewhat steady, as were her legs as she walked down the porch, into the gardens, and away. Leaving behind the dream of the one thing she’d ever truly wanted in her life, seeing that dream dashed and broken and stolen from her.
Again.