State of time, p.21
Daring Done Right, page 21
She laughed, a breathy huff that lifted her spirits.
And she did as he said, opening her hand and curving it about herself, teasing her nipple with her thumb.
His eyes darkened. “You’re no stranger to this.”
Another huff of laughter. “I have heard that women can… I have tried to myself, but…” Blast. Why was it so difficult to speak about the body, her body, with him?
She knew much about human anatomy. She knew how to remove a man’s clothes, at least from her own form. She knew of the pleasure that could exist between a man and a woman, had heard it could be achieved alone, had tried. Had failed. Not till he’d painted his touch everywhere he could reach beside a public road yesterday had she experienced it for herself.
If she were to take a professional objectivity, perhaps she could.
This was different. What they were about to do was not merely biology and chemistry, action and reaction. They were about to jump into the unknown together, to grasp hands and take a flying leap into the air, plummet into the turbulent depths below.
She could recede into the objective observations of her textbooks or plunge into the heat of experience at his side.
Hopefully, they would not sink but help each other float, help each other breathe. She’d never embraced help before, but this did not feel like weakness or failure. It felt like strength—diamond, adamantine, unbreakable.
Shaking his hand away, she let her fingers seek out the ridges of his ribs covered by linen.
He hissed, and she surged up to take his lips. She made good use of his breath, pulling it into her with each fervent kiss she pressed upon his mouth.
He kissed her with a reckless adoration, nipping at her bottom lip, then dragging his warm mouth across her jaw and tugging at her earlobe. She gasped and moaned and threw her head back as he licked the line down her throat and, with hot, rough fingers, pulled the wide neck of her shift down her shoulder. She scratched her fingernails down his back until she reached the edge of his breeches where his shirt disappeared beneath. She fisted her hand in the fine linen and tugged and tugged, drawing the garment up his back, freeing it, tugging it higher until it caught under his arms and would go no farther.
He lifted himself, one leg braced on the floor, one knee braced on the bed, and pulled the shirt over his head, tossed it aside. She thanked the heavens that he had formally divested himself of his waistcoat and his cravat.
“Good thinking,” she murmured, tugging at her own hair, biting her lip because she could not seem to control the feelings rolling through her that made her wish to roll her hips into him. This was the biology that led animals to rut in the barnyard. Not one of the things she’d learned in her textbooks, but something every girl who grew up in the country knew quite well.
She dropped her arms to the bed, wishing again for those thousand flickers of candlelight, for the moon’s light to dance through the window so she could see him better.
She curled her fingertips into her palm because they wished to explore the contours of his body, and that shyness returned. Irritating creature, flickering in and out, taking peeks and retreating.
“Touch me,” he demanded. “You want to. I see it. Never seen anything better. Your desire is perfect. Touch me.”
She bristled at his tone, commanding and offering no other options.
But then the most fascinating word slipped out of his lust-roughened lips. “Please.”
Her shyness fled, then, in the face of such humility, and the bold woman who wore the wig and the mask and knew no fear stepped in. But those implements meant to hide the self were nowhere in sight. She stood bold and open before him. No masks. And yet she still dared.
Sarah curled her lips into a smile as she tapped the wool clad knee of Xavier’s standing leg. He must have understood because he lifted the leg and brought it to the bed as well, so he knelt above her, one leg on either side of her overheating body, his arms knotted with muscle, hanging tight and ready at his sides. Good thing she’d not asked for a fire. They’d be in Hades by now between that conflagration and the one sizzling between them. She walked her fingers up his thighs and settled her palms about each of his hips. The bone jutted out, and the muscle curved in, all hard lines and angles.
She followed those angles up, letting her hands explore first the outer edges of those muscles called the obliques. So much… more than sketches in textbooks, so much warmer than marble. The first time she’d touched and perused a man’s musculature with an intent other than to study. But she wanted to study his body, too. She ran her fingertips to the center of his abdomen, over the rectus abdominis, that band of muscles that kept the guts contained. His were tight and hard, a prison wall covered by a light, crisp layer of hair. She chuckled. That was quintessentially Xavier. Iron muscle containing all the softer bits, building a sentinel wall around them, then decorating it with spikes.
But he had opened the door for her and let her in, so she scooted until she could sit up, her breasts pressing against that protective abdomen. It constricted.
She rubbed her hands over his shoulders, around the back of his neck. “Tell me what to do.” She’d had an anatomical education, but she needed guidance of a new kind, and he would be the only teacher she would accept.
His hands gripped her waist.
“Tell me what you want,” she clarified.
His eyes flashed in the glow of the candle, now so faint as to offer very little sight at all. But she saw him anyway. And she hoped that he saw her.
“What I want?” His thumbs skimmed along her ribs right beneath her breast, tracing an arc of stars along that sensitive flesh never touched by another’s hands. “The only damn thing I want is you.”
And that, more than any of his other exclamations or actions, ruined her entirely. No. They built her back up again. This was no ruination. It was a rebirth.
His hands roamed the expanse of her back, wandered lower, possessing, caressing the curves of her backside, dipping a thumb between the globes. Her muscles clenched with surprise and something darker—raw need. For him alone.
She kissed him, a seal, a promise, a sweep of her tongue into his mouth to tease him. The kiss became an inferno, his hands hard coals on her body, his lips brands.
Then he ripped it all away, put her at arm’s length. “Stand.”
She crawled toward the edge of the bed and placed each foot gingerly on the floor. Standing before him, she pulled up to her full height and tossed her chin up. The shoulder of her shift he had pulled down hung loose past her elbow and though the night was warm, she shivered. He circled her, his finger starting at the tip of her chin, then curving down her neck and collarbone, then around her shoulders, crossing the spine to repeat the pattern backwards and end right back up at her chin.
He tapped it. “You are a goddamn wonder, Lady Sarah Hampton.”
Under his gaze, she felt it.
“Remove the shift.”
She bent at the waist and reached for the hem. She lifted the garment slowly, her breath ragged. Few had seen her like this before. She’d not thought to let a man do so. But she liked the way he saw her, so much better than she saw herself. In a single quick arc, she lifted the shift up and let it fall. It shivered to the floor around her feet.
He stepped back, crossed his arms over his chest, and let his gaze roam over, devour her body.
She could devour, too. She’d always admired how his musculature had pulled the wool of his jackets tight against his body when he crossed his arms over his chest, a perpetually grumpy habit of his. But now no wool hid him, and she enjoyed this position even more than before. It bunched his muscles into tight, large knots she wished to… lick? Bite? She warmed, every inch of her going hot as a windless summer day. She wanted to see more than the hills and dips of him afforded by a melting candle’s final moments of light.
A moan growled up into the night, a guttural sound from his throat as he stepped toward her and took her in hand, one large palm cupping her backside and the other landing on her ribs, his thumb stroking the sensitive underside of her breast.
“I need some damn light,” he said.
She laughed, tipped her face up to him. “I was just wishing for the same thing.”
“Hell,” he muttered, and then his lips clashed into hers with a force of a storm coming in off the sea, blowing entire houses and trees over, flooding bridges, flooding her soul, flooding her body with tidal waves of pleasure. His hand on her backside clenched, pulling her more tightly against his hard, long length. She was very curious about that part of him.
“Finish undressing me,” he demanded.
Before he could finish the command, her fingers were at his fall, popping open the buttons.
“Clever woman,” he chuckled, assaulting her neck with kisses.
Once each button had been undone, she pushed his riding breeches down over his thick, muscular hips, and they fell, his shaft springing free. He stepped away from the breeches and kicked them behind him, then he surged forward to sink deep into the kiss once more, his large, rough hands sure cradles for her face.
But with the long length of him trapped between their bodies, burning into the skin of her belly, a surge of hesitancy rolled back in on a wave of shyness.
None of her books mattered now. She was still a virgin, inexperienced and untouched. Her fingers did not know how to trace paths of pleasure down a man’s skin. They knew what they wanted to do, what paths they wished to trace, and she rather thought this man would let her go anywhere, make him her anatomical model of study.
Yet, she hesitated, pulled under by that wave.
His touch, which had been hard and needy before, softened. He bent, laced one arm around her shoulders and the other under her knees, and lifted her, cradled her in his arms as he turned them both toward the bed and laid her gently on the mattress. He brushed the hair off her forehead and joined her, laying his body alongside hers, nestling her cheek with his nose.
The gentlest of gestures as he laid hard words between them. “Touch me.” A more… specific request than before.
She laid her fingertips to his chest, then flattened her palm against his beating heart. “I’m not sure I can.”
His eyes closed, and his lips formed new words. “You can. Remember who you are, Queenie. Lower.”
Down the ridges of his abdomen.
“Lower,” he growled.
She acceded but took a detour over the curve of his hip tight with muscle. She liked the backside bit of him. Very much.
“More center, Sarah.” Another growl.
She managed to smile, playfulness pushing the hesitation out. She raked her fingernails across his rear.
He hissed and rocked his hips against her, continuing the soft nuzzle of his lips and nose against her cheek. He continued, setting feather-light kisses on her chin and temple.
The gentlest of touches. “My cock, Sarah. Touch it.” The hardness of words.
Tentatively, she touched her palm to the front of his shaft, then ran her fingertips up and down the hard, surprisingly soft and thick length of him, brushing her thumb over the head where a most curious drop of dew rested at its tip. She knew from the textbooks what it was.
She knew, too, as most women her age did not, what it could do to her. Nine months with a swollen belly, then a child. A little boy with hazel eyes who she could teach to love. She would teach him that love, not just duty, was meant for him, too. She risked that consequence with her actions tonight, but in all the images glowing haze, it seemed less consequence and more… delight.
“Love,” he moaned in her ear.
She went breathless at the word.
“Grab it, love,” he demanded.
She did.
“Stroke it,” he ordered. “Up and down.”
She did.
He wrapped an arm underneath her shoulders, trapping it between her and the mattress, and he turned them both on their sides, folding their bodies together like two squares of paper in a book. With his bottom hand, he caressed her breast. The other hand stroked a line between her breasts, over the curve of her belly, and dipped between her legs.
“Tell me to stop if there is anything you do not like. And tell me to continue if there is anything you do.” His fingers raked through her curls.
She threw her head back against his chest, the intensity of his touch ripping her open. She opened her eyes, saw his hard ones like green starlight above her.
“What I want,” he said, “is your pleasure. Not an easy task the first time. But I’m certain between the two of us, we’ll manage. We’re a force, you and I.”
“Yes.” She arched and pressed her rear against him.
His one hand played at her breast, and the delight he spun with each flick and caress spiraled out to the rest of her body. His large frame cocooned her entire form, telling her one thing—he would protect her. In this. In everything. And his hand between her leg, stroked, circled.
Then dipped inside her, his long, strong fingers stopping with the hitch of her breath and waiting till she wiggled, moaned, encouraged him further. In and out, mimicking the way they’d kissed earlier, mimicking what she knew would come. His thumb played with her nub, making it ache, making her every muscle clench in demand for more.
Then air hit her back as he moved.
“No.” She reached for him.
But he moved too quickly, and he had her flipped onto her back before she could object more than that single syllable. He kissed her breasts, his fingertips massaging her scalp, his tongue flicking against her nipples in the most exquisite pain she’d ever felt.
He kissed a line down her body, and his hands moved, too, resting atop her breasts for several seconds of pure pleasure as his mouth licked and sucked lower. Lower. Then, where his fingers had worked magic moments before, his tongue did now. His fingernails raked down her ribs, stopping at the indentation of her waist and corseting her there, setting a chain about her body with possessive fingers. The chain would never let her roam. She did not want to.
His palms claimed her hips, pressed fingertips hard into her skin, and all the while his kisses brought her to a gasping, writhing melodic clash that threatened to pitch her to the heavens.
She never wanted him to leave that very spot, his breath warm on her inner thighs, his hands snaked around to her backside to hold and tease, his lips and tongue transforming her. But she needed to touch him, and he seemed too far away, though he was closer than she’d let anyone get to her before.
She grasped for him, hands curling around shoulders. Pure muscle. Silk over boulder, hard and soft, just like him.
“Xavier,” she moaned, and then she broke, sent plummeting over the edge into the unknown because he touched her, and she touched him, and they saw each other. Entirely. Utterly.
In the unknown, she floated with feather lightness among ocean-drenched stars.
His fingers slipped into her as her muscles clenched uncontrollably, delectably.
“Christ, you’re wet. I was worried. First time.” He snaked his way back up her body.
She found the strength to raise one hand, heavy as salt water-soaked ropes, to his back and trace her love in spirals on his skin. With the other hand, she reached between them. He’d said to do as she pleased, and she wanted to touch every bit of him, to bring him to pleasure, into the unknown as he’d brought her. It was his turn to leap. She grasped his shaft and did as he’d told her before. Stroked, squeezed lightly, tugged, brushed her fingertips over its head.
“Now,” she said in a dazed voice not her own. “Now.”
His forehead rested on hers, and she opened her eyes. Her heart ached for more light to see him better, fully, to see his outer self as well as she now saw his inner self. His dark hair hung in sweat-heavy clumps, and his sweat-slick chest rested against hers.
“I should use oil. To make the way easier for you.” His brow creased. “I have none.”
“I don’t care. Now,” she pleaded.
He kissed her soft and languid, as if they had world enough and time to conquer it. A distraction? He could not distract her from the thrill of him positioning himself at her opening, of him bracing himself on the mattress, his strong body hovering above her. She traced the outlines of the muscles she could not see. She breathed in his gentle kiss. She rose up to meet his hips as he thrust into her.
And she cried out at the snug fit of him, the feeling of being stretched. His hips stilled, though he kissed her harder, faster. A distraction. His hands found her breasts again, and she could not deny it. He knew how to distract and well. He began to move, pulling away from her, almost pulling out, then returning, a slow motion that eased the discomfort. When his hips met hers, she felt that spark, the deep curling pleasure, and moaned.
She dug her hands into his shoulders once more for the space of a breath and a squeeze of delectable muscle, then she ran one hand up his neck to the nape of his hair, pulled him away from the kiss.
“Your hand. I need it. Between us. There.”
His eyes, shining even in shadows, lit brighter with understanding, and he snuck a hand between their bodies, found the throbbing center of her, and played with it as he stroked in and out. She clenched around him, arched, and raked nails down his back, scoring his skin on either side of his spine.
“Bossy termagant. I love a woman who knows what she wants. Goes after it.”
She surged up, bit his shoulder. “Mine.” No other doubt or reality outside of that word, outside of the miniscule space between them. Hers—his every word and look, his every grumble and kiss. Hers.
“Hell,” he snapped the word like a twig and pumped faster, faster, faster, his muscles cording, banding, and her own pleasure rising, rising. Then he threw his head back with a shivering groan and a final thrust, and she lifted her hips to meet him, to take him. When the convulsion seemed to have passed, he looked down at her, a feral creature, not done with her yet.
“I am yours,” he said, “and you are going to come again.”
She closed her eyes. I am yours. Lovely. Everything, really. She wrapped her arms around his neck and tried to pull him down atop her. But his fingers worked methodically on her body.
