Chapter 23
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
“It is me,” he whispered through his kisses.
His hand smoothed down her chin to her throat, and with the pressing of his palm, he measured her heartbeat. For several more seconds it continued to thrum against his hand like a hummingbird, but then, with another kiss, this time pressed to her brow, her heartbeat finally began to slow.
“It is me,” he whispered again, looking down at her. Sweat slicked her brow, and a flush had taken over her from her cheeks all the way down to her breasts. She might be calming down, but she was still feeling the terror he had instilled in her with his lesson.
A sob ripped from Ellen’s throat, shredding his heart to pieces. He had wanted her to fight. To be able to push past the barrier of politeness she and so many other women were raised to respect so she could defend herself, but he had pushed too far.
“Ellen, I am sorry,” he rasped.
She only let out another sob as she began to tremble in his grasp, and he could not take it.
He swept her up, sliding one arm under her knees as the other cradled her back, and carried her to the couch where he’d thrown her on the day he’d caught her lying in the rain.
This time, though, he was gentle, sitting down with her and cradling her in his arms.
“The way you froze last night,” he began to explain. “The way you closed your eyes and held your breath as you accepted that he was going to touch you—I do not ever want that to happen to you again. I do not want you to give in and accept whatever awful thing is about to happen to you.”
Ellen sniffled, then lifted her head from his chest. Fresh tears erupted over his heart as he saw blue eyes glistening with tears.
“I understand,” she breathed, smoothing her palm over his chest. He hissed in a breath, hating how quickly his body responded to her touch even after such a battle.
“But I—” she rasped, trailing her fingers over the rip in his shirt that she had put there.
“I lost myself. Truly lost myself as I was fighting. I did not see you anymore. Your voice was not even yours. It was his voice, his face that I could see, and even when you told me to stop, even when a part of me recognized you, I could not, and I—”
Her glistening eyes went wide with horror as she sat up a little straighter in his lap.
“Oh, God, what if I had killed you with the poker?” she asked, her pitch almost rising to a squeak on the last word.
Laurence chuckled. He did not mean to, but the sound burst from his chest, low and thick.
Ellen’s brows furrowed in confusion.
“I could have stopped you any time,” he explained, tucking her loosened tendrils behind her ear. “I train. Solomon and I, we train for attacks such as this. I could have blocked every blow if I’d wanted to. I just did not want to stop you. I wanted you to defend yourself.”
Ellen's confusion shifted to irritation as she sat up a little straighter. She swiped at her tears and glowered at him.
“You let this happen to you?” she asked, dropping her gaze down his body.
Laurence followed, taking in the rips in his shirt, the scratches on the back of his hands and his forearms, his jacket thrown onto the back of his desk chair right before they’d started.
There was still a bit of sting ebbing in his right cheek from her last slap, and there was a throbbing pain in his groin from where she’d landed another successful kick.
“I did,” he admitted, raising his eyes back to hers. “And it was worth it to see you fight for yourself. Next time, if Benedict has you cornered… If he reaches for you, you will not freeze. You will fight, and that makes me proud.”
Laurence watched as several emotions passed through Ellen’s bright eyes. Gratitude. Fear. Triumph. Irritation.
“You cad!” she yelled, slamming both of her palms into his chest.
Laurence expelled a laughing breath as the force of her push caught him off guard, but he smiled as he rubbed at his chest.
“Maybe a bit,” he admitted with a sheepish grin.
She glowered at him for a moment longer, then she closed her eyes as a breathy laugh broke from her lips, and she shook her head. Then she snuggled back into him, laying her head on his chest as if it was something she’d always done as her arms snaked around his waist.
He could not help himself. He drew his arms tighter around her, and dropped another kiss to her forehead in a startling act of comfortable familiarity. Settling into the cuddle, he began to stroke his fingers languidly up and down her back.
“This is not going to end, is it?” she asked after a moment of comfortable silence. “Not for a while, at least.”
Laurence’s fingers stilled.
“I am afraid not,” he muttered, looking down at her. “We might want to take down the auction. But Benedict? He wants you. He made that clear last night, and I do not believe that he is going to give you up so easily.”
Ellen’s brows furrowed, pain and confusion flashing through her eyes.
“I do not understand why,” she sighed. “Why me? He cannot love me, can he? A man does not strike or sell a woman he loves, does he?”
“No,” Laurence quickly replied, rage lancing through his veins for just a moment. “No, he does not. But there is a difference between love and obsession, and I believe your cousin might feel the latter.”
“But why?” Ellen asked, sitting up in his lap. “Why be obsessed with me? There is nothing special about me. I was not—I am not—I was the laughing stock of my courtship years!”
“Did you ever think that they were laughing at you because they did not know what else to do with you?” he asked, his grip tightening around her.
Ellen’s answering look was one of pure confusion.
“You are kind, sweet, and capable. And you do not indulge in self-importance as the others do. Your differences mirrored how shallow and empty they felt,” he said, a hard edge slipping into his voice.
Ellen’s eyes widened.
“I am not,” she whispered.
“You are everything they want to be but cannot,” he urged on, sliding his hand from her back to her throat. He felt her pulse quicken beneath his palm, and it throbbed through the wall he’d firmly built between himself and his growing lust.
“You are special, Ellen,” he rasped out, gliding his thumb over her pulse point, up her chin, and to her bottom lip. He caressed the plump flesh there, and his muscles tensed as her lip obediently parted for him. He swallowed, trying to rein in his growing need.
“More than you know,” he murmured, pushing his thumb gently past her parted lips.
His breath hitched as her small tongue, warm and wet, slid slowly over the tip of his thumb.
He gritted his jaw as he hissed out a low breath, fighting the primal urges that had come roaring back with a vengeance.
He drew his thumb away and closed his eyes, willing himself to maintain control.
“I believe we have had enough lessons for today,” he choked out. “You should go. Relax for the rest of the day.”
He tried to ease her off of his lap, but Ellen’s arms tightened around him. He opened his eyes, thinking that if he glared at her, she would jump off him freely. Instead, he was met with blue pools of sparkling desire and challenge.
“The lesson was to teach me to say no when I wanted to, yes?” she asked, her soft voice dripping with sensuality as she stared boldly up at him. “To ask for what I desire instead of just taking whatever I am given?”
Heat laced through his veins, eating away at his lingering rage.
“Ellen,” he rasped.
“Answer me,” she breathed, sliding a hand up his chest to the rip that bared his muscled chest. His breath hitched as her bare palm slid off his warm muscles, his entire body jerking at her touch.
“Yes,” he choked out, feeling his manhood throb and grow beneath her backside.
She turned and drew the tip of her dainty nose up the column of his throat, then pressed her lips to his jaw.
“Then I want you to make me forget again,” she breathed.
Laurence let out a tortured groan as her soft, pink tongue darted out and flicked against the spot on his jaw where she had just kissed.
“…Unless you do not wish to.”
He did not bother with a response. Instead, he snaked his hand into the hair at the nape of her neck, and pulled her head back. He greedily swallowed her moan as he kissed her plump lips with brutal need, giving in to his desire and rewarding hers.
Ellen shifted in his lap, moving so that she straddled his hips, but before she could sink, Laurence lifted her and laid her down on the couch, their lips and tongues still intertwined in a deep kiss.
He smoothed his hand down the side of her body, taking in her shapely curves until he reached her ankle, then hitching it over his lower back.
He did not just want her in his lap this time.
He wanted to feel her completely pressed into him from lips to toes.
He groaned at the closeness as he lowered his chest down to her breasts, reveling in the way her softness pillowed his hardness.
This was wrong. It was going a step too far with their contract, but in that moment he did not care. Judging from the way her small fingertips dipped into the rip in his shirt and yanked until it tore down his middle, neither did she.
“That’s it,” he praised, his voice low and hoarse with need as he trailed kisses down the column of her throat. “Take what you need.”
Ellen moaned at his words as her hands dragged away the ruined shirt from his shoulders and down his arms. He rose to his knees, just long enough to be rid of the thing, then came back down to her, caging her onto the couch with his muscled arms. Ellen gripped the sides of his face as she leaned up and kissed him, taking control of her own wants as her lips melded and her tongue teased.
He groaned into her mouth as her hands slid from his face to his back, and he broke away from the kiss and buried his face into her neck as she dragged her nails over his hot flesh from his shoulders all the way down to his lower back.
How long had it been since he’d been touched this way? Had he ever allowed a woman to take such liberties? He couldn’t recall, and as he bit and nipped his way down to her collarbone, he realized he did not care. All that mattered in that moment was Ellen.
Laurence drew his nipping kisses further down, trailing from her collarbone to the valley of her breasts until he met the fabric of her bodice.
For a moment he was torn between sitting her up to untie her dress or simply ripping it, but then Ellen demanded he tear it apart with a needy plea, and his decision was made for him.
It was new, this gown. But he would buy her another.
He would buy her a hundred if she asked.
After the way she’d fought him, she more than deserved it.
The sound of ripping silk and corset was nearly as sweet as the sound of Ellen’s moans as he hungrily kissed and nipped at her breasts, then every inch of flesh he exposed as he dragged the ruined dress down her body.
When he finally reached her legs and freed her from it, he flung the ruined thing away, not even realizing that it had landed in the fire burning in the hearth across from them.
Laurence caught her ankle, and kissed the rounded bone there.
Ellen gasped and shivered at the sudden gentleness; her reaction only spurred him on.
He willed his need to cool just enough so that his kisses grew soft and tender as he made his way up her calf and to her inner thigh.
As he kissed the porcelain white flesh there, her legs immediately parted a little further for him, and he groaned at her readiness.
Whatever will he had to deny himself was completely gone now, and all he cared about was hearing her moans of release again.
It wasn’t about want anymore. He needed to taste her. Laurence burrowed his head between her thighs, starved for her taste, and inhaled deeply. He drew in the sweet notes of her desire and groaned in approval as he wrapped his hands possessively around her thighs, and then he licked.
Pleasure burst through his tongue as he tasted her wetness—so powerful it made stars burst behind his eyes.
He lost himself to that hunger, slurping and licking at her as if she was the only thing he ever wanted to taste again, and it was only after several moments of self-indulgence that he realized Ellen was writhing in pleasure as she moaned for more.
Her hands, he realized, had slid into his hair.
She was gripping the strands tight—as if doing so was the only way to keep her from levitating off the couch.
“Oh, love,” he rasped, willing his need back into control. He slowly slid his tongue over her quivering mons, eliciting a whimper from her. “Oh, love, I lost control. Forgive me.” He pressed a tender kiss to her clitoris, earning him another shiver and whimper.
“It…” she panted, her grip on his hair slowly easing up. “It’s alright.”
“No,” he cooed, reaching up to slide his fingertips through her pretty pink slickness. “No, it is not.”
A breathy whimper broke from her lips as he rubbed gentle circles over her clitoris, soothing away the assault he’d just committed on the most sensitive part of her body.
“I will make it up to you,” he murmured, feeling her taut body slowly sink into the couch as he took a more tender approach. “You do not deserve something so brutal.”
Ellen moaned as her grip on his hair turned into a caress, and he looked up just in time to see her lashes slowly lower over her eyes.
With a grin on his shining lips, he moved his fingertip in another lazy circle, reveling in the way her body trembled at the light touch.
Then he slid his finger down, stroking over her dewy petals with forced tenderness until he reached her opening.
He groaned as he found her entrance flooded with her juices, and as he slowly thrust into her tight sheath, he lowered his lips to her precious bundle of nerves.