Chapter 5
Chapter Five
Still half-dazed by her own desire, Althea stared at Nev’s rigid back, at the hands he held clenched at his sides. What had happened? What had she done? One minute he was stealing her will from her and the next . . .
Dragging her gown up to cover her breasts, she sat up. “What do you mean, you can’t do this?”
When he answered, his voice was tight. “I want you. God knows how much. But I want you to want me, too. To care for me as I do for you. You think this is merely another seduction for me . . . one more woman to add to my string of ‘victims.’ So tomorrow you’ll hate yourself for giving in.”
There was no mistaking the pain in his voice.
Or that he meant what he said. It touched her deeply, for this wasn’t the protest of a rake, but the heartfelt need of a man who wanted more than lovemaking.
She could never understand the rake . . .
but she understood the man very well. No matter what she’d heard about him or the facade he wore, she knew Nev needed something more in his life.
Was she that something more? She didn’t know. But she couldn’t finish the evening without finding out, and for her that meant giving herself to him.
Without stopping to think, she rose from the sofa to stand before him. He stared past her at the wall, a muscle in his jaw twitching.
Reaching out, she took his hand and put it on her waist. “I do want you, Nev. I’ve always wanted you, ever since I was eleven and you were the handsomest, most charming boy I knew.
I’ve wanted you each time Isabella told me of her fine, hard-working brother, who spent as much time tending his estates as in wild living. ”
She reached up to stroke his square jaw. “I wanted you even when Uncle Winston said you were a blight on society.”
His gaze shot to hers, uncertain, perhaps even angry. “He said that?”
“Aye. But we both know he lies, don’t we? And I shan’t let his lies keep me from doing what you suggested for my stolen night. You were right. Seduction is the perfect choice.”
Every muscle in his body tightened as his eyes blazed. “Seduction? You weren’t so sure of that earlier. Or is this merely a way to strike back at your uncle for lying to you? Are you trying to act like him to punish him?”
His angry words made her flinch. She shouldn’t have mentioned her uncle at all, but it didn’t change anything. “Nay. You know I’m not foolish enough to relinquish my virtue in a petty act of rebellion. You said yourself that I want you, so you know it’s true.”
Her voice shook a little. “And . . . And what you said about my future husband. That’s true, too. I can’t bear never having a man of my own choice make love to me. I can’t bear never having you make love to me.”
She could tell her words had affected him, for he gave a great shudder and tensed all over. But he did nothing, said nothing, obviously fighting her for reasons of his own.
She added in a soft, taunting voice, “Perhaps you lied when you said you wanted me. Perhaps you were merely toying with me, trying to see how far I’d go.”
With an oath, he grabbed her hand and forced it to his breeches, pressing it against the hard ridge there.
“This, my beauty, is how much I want you. I ache with wanting you. But once I have you naked beneath me, I don’t want you drawing back as you did by the bannister.
Once we’ve begun, I don’t think I can stop for your virginal protests. Not this time.”
She knew he was deliberately being crude to scare her, to make her reconsider what she was doing.
But she’d come this far, and she couldn’t go back.
She didn’t even want to. Her eyes locked with his as she curved her hand around his aroused member.
“I thought we’d already begun,” she whispered as she leaned up to press a kiss to his mouth. “Was I wrong?”
That was all it took. He hauled her into his arms, a groan erupting from his throat as he brought his mouth down on hers, possessing it, stabbing his tongue over and over inside it.
After that, all consideration of past and future was gone.
There was only the present . . . and the man who was devouring her mouth like a starving animal, his hands roaming freely over her body to unclasp her gown and petticoats.
It briefly occurred to her that he knew quite well how to undress a woman, but he drove that thought right from her mind with his soul-deep kisses.
Suddenly, she felt him shove her gown and petticoats down over her hips, leaving her wearing only her corset and shift. And feeling strangely naked.
With a shyness she couldn’t help, she stepped backward, out of her clothes and away from him. He kicked them aside, then halted, his eyes hot on her, as if he waited for her to back farther away and prove that all her passionate words were lies.
As she met his uncertain gaze, she forced herself to speak boldly and move back to him. “Shouldn’t you take off your clothes, too? I-I want to see you in the flesh.”
Surprise flickered over his face before he relaxed and gave a low, wicked chuckle. “Do you now? And which part of me do you wish to see first?”
With trembling hands, she took hold of his shirt, undoing the ties.
At first, she could barely manage them, but as she bared more and more of his chest, a hunger built in her to see the body she’d only envisioned in her dreams. His breathing grew heavy as she pulled the shirt off of him, exposing him from his wide shoulders to his waist. Then she trailed her hands over his naked chest with its sprigs of dark hair sprinkled generously over an expanse of taut, well-knit sinews, and her heart pounded with anticipation.
She’d never seen a man’s nude body before.
And all her half-formed, innocent imaginings hadn’t prepared her for the pleasures of it.
She’d never dreamed it could be so thrilling to touch the skin raspy with hair or to feel every tightening and undulation of muscle beneath it.
But when she reached the waistband of his breeches, she paused, her throat going dry as a sudden embarrassment assailed her.
“Don’t stop there,” he said hoarsely as he took her hands and pressed them to his buttons. “Don’t you want to see for yourself if the old wives’ tale is true?”
It took her a moment to remember what he meant. Then she blushed furiously. But she couldn’t deny that she’d wondered about that part of him even before he’d told her the ridiculous tale about a man’s size. Even before she’d noticed how long his fingers were.
The very thought made her tremble. With shaky hands, she worked the first buttons loose, but it took her so long that he brushed her hands aside before undoing the rest and yanking his breeches and his drawers down, then stepping out of them.
To her utter mortification, all she could do was gawk at him, her curiosity getting the better of her. He seemed to grow before her eyes, the sleek member thickening in a way that fascinated her.
She reached out to touch him, but he caught her hand. “If you touch me there, I fear you’ll find yourself still a virgin in the morning.”
“What do you mean?”
“Never mind. Turn around.”
She did as he asked, thinking he was embarrassed to be seen by her. Then she felt his hands at her corset, loosening her laces, and she knew that wasn’t it at all.
He dragged the corset off with a new urgency, burying his face in her neck with a groan. Slowly he swept his hands up from behind to clasp her muslin-covered breasts, to rub them with the heels of his palms, making a pleasurable ache erupt in her belly and radiate outward in ever warmer circles.
“You’re not like any other woman I’ve ever known,” he whispered in her ear. “Did you know that?”
“Is that good? Would you rather I was more . . . sophisticated or—”
“God, no.” He swept her hair aside to plant kisses over the place where her neck joined her shoulders.
“You’re perfect as you are.” He lifted his hands to draw her shift off her shoulders, dropping soft kisses on every inch of skin he bared as he slid her shift down with a sensuous stealth that had her blood racing.
When he’d moved her shift past her hips, he let it slither to the floor in a whisper. She could feel his breath move down her body, and when he turned her to face him, she found him on one knee, looking up at her with that crooked dimple as he added, “Absolutely perfect.”
With a shy smile, she rested her hands on his shoulders.
Swiftly he untied her garter and slid the stocking down.
It unnerved her, having him kneel at her feet, his face so close to a part of her no man had ever seen.
And when he drew her stocking off, only to plant a warm kiss on her inner thigh, she dug her fingers reflexively into his shoulder.
“Nev?”
“Yes, darling?” he whispered as he removed the other stocking.
“This is . . . very embarrassing.”
He kissed her other thigh, much higher up and closer to the thatch of hair between her legs. “Is it?” Then his fingers actually parted the hair down there.
Her ability to breathe seemed to have disappeared entirely. “V-Very much s-so,” she stammered, but anything further she might have said was cut off by her gasp when his tongue darted out to caress her in the most intimate way she could imagine.
“Neville!” she exclaimed, meaning it for a protest. Instead it came out like an enticement to go further.
And he took it as such. He buried his face between her legs, kissing the delicate folds that his fingers had unveiled. His hands gripped her hips and held her against his hot mouth as his kisses grew bolder.
She melted. If he hadn’t been clasping her so tightly, she would have collapsed right there.
His tongue found the little bud nestled in her petals of skin and flicked over it like the licking flames of the hearth fire.
With a cry, she squirmed against him, wanting more, wanting less, wanting it all and not knowing how to get it.
The longer his mouth caressed her, the more heat pulsed through her, sparking wanton fires.