Chapter 21
“Do you know anything of what happened to Lord Ingram?” Helena asked, wringing her hands together as she stood with Evander by his bed.
With the wedding and reception over, and the last of the guests finally departed, they had gone together to his room, but her mind was still snagged on the man’s bandaged hand and terrified expression. “He looked… out of sorts.”
“I ensured that he had a little accident,” he explained. “Something to teach him the importance of not putting his hands on you or your mother ever again.”
“What did you do?” she asked.
“I kept you safe,” Evander replied, an unintended edge sliding over his words. “As I promised.”
“You… hurt him?” Helena asked.
“I have never claimed to be a good man, Helena,” he said gravely, tracing his gloved fingers down her arms. “I know firsthand what it is like to suffer at the hands of others, and I will never allow anyone to put you through such a living hell. Not while I still draw breath.”
He watched her carefully, bracing for whatever fear his confession might bring to her eyes. Some part of him expected her to shrink away, to finally see him clearly and realize the terrible mistake she had made in marrying a beast like him.
“Are you afraid of me?”
Instead of pulling away, Helena wrapped her arms around him and pressed her cheek to his chest.
“No,” she murmured against him. “I would never be afraid of you.”
Relief eased the tension in his chest, and he gently kissed the top of her head, then pulled back to look at her face, noticing the still-pinched line between her brows.
“Then what troubles you still?” he asked, cupping his hand over hers.
Helena looked hesitantly at the floor for a moment, then swallowed.
“I hate that it is him that I am thinking of in this moment,” she confessed. “I still cannot believe that this ordeal is finally over.”
“Then let me try to take your mind off such things,” he murmured, his hand sliding to cradle the back of her neck.
He could see the questions still forming in her eyes, and he found he did not want their wedding night spent speaking of his torment, or hers, when there was so much pleasure and passion waiting to be had. So he dipped his head and stopped her questions with a kiss before she could ask them.
Pleasure and relief roiled through him as he felt her relax into his arms, and as he gently parted her lips with his tongue, he slid his hands down over the long trail of pearl buttons that followed her spine.
He thought, for a moment, about ripping it; about sending those infernal buttons scattering all over the room, but he had already ruined one of her dresses.
Tonight, he wanted to worship her the way she deserved.
“Are you ready for this?” he asked, his voice coming out hoarse and raw with need as he pulled away from their kiss.
He grazed his knuckles lovingly over her cheek, and he reveled in the way she nuzzled into his touch.
“I am very eager,” she whispered, then pressed a tender kiss to his knuckles. An adorable blush stole across her cheeks as she added, “In fact, it is something I could not stop thinking about ever since you first kissed me. I… I do not know what to do, but I know I want to please you.”
Evander could not help the rasping groan that was released from his throat as he heard her words.
“You please me,” he assured her, brushing his lips over hers. “You please me more than you can imagine, Helena.”
He deepened their kiss then, swallowing every whimper and sound of pleasure Helena made as she pressed herself tightly to his aching body.
His hands trembled with need as they began to slowly release the buttons down her back one at a time, and when he finished, he trailed his gloved fingertips slowly down her naked spine.
Desire coursed through him as he felt her shiver at his touch, and when he pulled away from their kiss, he nearly groaned again as he saw equal desire reflecting in Helena’s eyes.
“Remove your gloves,” she implored, curling her fingers around his lapels as she slid her body against his. “Please. I want to feel your skin against mine.”
Though he hesitated for a moment, he obliged, stepping back to pull them off and set them aside. As he stepped toward her again, he allowed her to drag his jacket down his shoulders, but when she reached for the buttons on his shirt, he grabbed her hands, stopping her.
“Such beautiful eyes should not ever have to look upon such ugliness,” he said as her eyes filled with questions.
Her breath hitched as her curiosity shifted to determination.
“Do not say such things about yourself,” she commanded. “You are the most handsome man I have ever seen. I want to see you. All of you.”
He wanted that, too. More than his heart could take. Yet as he contemplated all the scars that marred his flesh, he knew he could not give in to her request.
“Tonight is about your body, your pleasure,” he replied.
He released her hands as he kissed her again, using his lips to coax out her soft moans as his hands drew up to the shoulders of her dress and slowly dragged it down her body.
He kissed every inch of her skin as he made her bare, and then, when she was completely naked before him, he stood back and marveled at the realization that after years of missing her, wanting her, Helena was finally his.
“Do I… Do you like me?” she asked hesitantly.
Evander’s eyes snapped up to hers as he let out a husky chuckle.
“My darling, you are God’s perfection made real,” he replied, sweeping her up into his arms bridal style.
He laid her gently atop the bed, pressing one more passionate kiss onto her lips, before he got up to snuff out the candles.
“Leave them,” she implored, but Evander continued, suffocating the small lights until the room was shrouded in cool darkness. He could not take the chance of his scars scaring her away.
“Do you not trust me?” Helena asked as he slid his body next to hers.
He answered by gripping her hips and dragging her down the bed until she lay flat beneath him, his mouth finding her throat with a hunger that had her gasping.
“I trust you. But I have thought of this for years,” he growled against her skin, working his way lower, over her collarbone, the curve of her breast, the soft plane of her stomach. “I am done being patient, Helena.”
Her curiosity for his body seemed to fade as he showed her just how much he wanted to focus on hers, and he let the sound of her moans and the undulation of her body guide him to where she wanted to be touched the most. He gripped her thighs and spread them apart, settling his broad shoulders between them with a rough sound of satisfaction, as though he had waited an eternity to be granted this exact position.
“Evander,” she breathed, trembling as he softly blew a warm breath on her sex.
“Fingers?” he asked, stroking his fingertips down over her stomach, her pubic bone, until he felt the dewy warmth of her pulsing sex. He drew a lazy circle there, reveling in the way she bucked and whimpered under his teasing. “Or tongue?”
His cock strained and pulsed beneath his breeches as he heard Helena’s moaning words. “How could you possibly make me choose?”
“Both it is then,” he groaned, and as he swirled his tongue around her taut bundle of nerves, he slowly slid his middle finger between her dewy folds. He moaned as her flooded sheath gripped his finger tightly, clamping down and suckling him as if her body needed him to survive.
He did not tease her for long. Whatever restraint he had shown before seemed to have finally snapped entirely, and he set a hard, relentless rhythm with his mouth and his hand, thrusting his finger deep and curling it just so, dragging choked cries from her that she could not have silenced if she tried.
“You are taking it so well, my love,” he rasped against her, feeling her thighs begin to shake around his shoulders. “Give it to me. All of it.”
There were words, so many words he wanted to say to her as he felt her draw closer to her release, but all remained caught in his throat as he found himself unable to draw his tongue away from her sex.
Her taste, her scent, was headier and addicting than his dreams had ever let him imagine, and even after her first climax tore through her with a force that left her arching clean off the bed, he could not stop.
He added a second finger, working her through the aftershocks without mercy, chasing her pleasure as though he meant to devour her whole, and he wondered, as he slowly and relentlessly built her second release, if a man could survive on pinnacles alone.
“I want to feel you,” Helena whimpered as Evander once more gently pulled her hands away from the buttons of his shirt and pressed them into the bed.
“So greedy, my love. You have felt quite a lot of me already,” he rasped, dragging his body up and over hers until their hips were flush.
Her sex pulsed with post-release sensitivity, her skin still humming with heat, and when she felt the thick, naked length of him settle against her, a fresh wave of want crashed through her, sharper than anything that had come before.
“I want more,” she breathed. “I want all of you.”
“Careful what you ask a beast for, Helena,” he growled against her ear, and the desire in his voice sent a fresh throb of heat straight through her core. “I have wanted you for so long. And now that I finally have you, I do not know how gentle I can be if you keep saying things like that.”
“Then do not be gentle,” she gasped.
A rough sound broke out of him, and he caught both her wrists in one hand, pinning them above her head as he settled his weight fully over her.
“You do not know what you are asking,” he rasped, though his hips were already notching against hers.
“Show me,” she said, arching up to meet him. “Please, Evander, I cannot bear this waiting any longer.”