And then finally, delicately, gently he swept those red-gold strands away, his own hand shaking a little from all that he held in check.
He felt like an animal. He wanted to mount. To ravish. Devour.
He warned her of this. Into her ear he confided, each word soft with amazement, scorching with intent:“I want you.”
She turned up to him a heavy-lidded, fully surrendered, lust-drunk gaze, pupils black as the hearts of pansies.
Her eyelids dropped. Her lashes shivered, casting shadows on her cheeks. Her lips were parted; her breaths were uneven. He watched, mesmerized, the lift and fall of her breasts, her nipples already ruched and hard against her bodice. He took her earlobe between his teeth, lightly, as he unlaced her dress with a pickpocket’s vanishing touch. Then dipped his tongue into her ear, softly tracing its contours, chasing his tongue with his breath, until her head fell back on a helpless “oh.” Then he dragged his lips to the silky hollow where her pulse thudded and opened his mouth to place a hot kiss there. He could feel the little skip in her breath as he dragged her bodice down, down.
And she turned to him, nude to the waist, her arms reaching to wrap around his head. Her head fell back to meet his lowering lips, and her moan hummed against his lips as his hands filled with her breasts.
The sweetness of holding this particular woman’s body against his. The sheer bloody luck of it. It seemed this unsatisfied craving for her, just for her, had lurked in him a lifetime.
The warm, silky weight of her breasts nearly did him in. He stroked; his fingers teased her until her breath was sawing. She reached for his trouser buttons; they gave beneath her fingers. She found the jut of his cock beneath the folds of his shirt and wrapped her hands around it as their mouths met in slow, carnal kisses. She dragged her fists over him again, and then again, then paused to trace the dome of it with a delicate finger, teasing. He hissed in a breath; his head dipped to touch her forehead, then fell back again as he struggled to accommodate the ramping pleasure.
He urged her back against the settee. His miles of shirt were in the way, and her skirts threatened to impede, but they were, to their everlasting relief, somewhat naked, positioned groin to groin, lips clinging to lips, hands searching for bare skin to savor, to conquer, to arouse.
He dragged his hand down her softly fuzzed thigh and slipped it between where the skin was tender as a petal, his fingertips cherishing the feel of that as they skated down, down, until they dipped into the satiny, hot slickness hidden by damp curls. His eyes never left her face as he teased at first, stroked and withdrew, circled lightly, watching her eyes go hazy, her lids slit, her neck arch back. The lust was a madness, a pressure in his head, pulsing in his veins. Their eyes locked, both in thrall to the pleasure she took and he gave; her sighs evolved tattered edges, then became moans, then oaths hoarsely whispered against his lips.
“Oh, James . . . oh God . . . please, James . . .”
She came apart with a silent scream, her body whipped upward; she pulsed around his fingers.
He hovered above her, the muscles of his arms all trembling from coursing need. She wrapped her legs around him, locked them about his back, to pull him close, as he thrust himself into her.
The glory of that tight fit, of moving in her for the first time. The triumph of watching her eyes go dark yet again when the pleasure banked. The wonder and amazement and ferocious want evolving in her expression as she felt another release building. He teased both of them at first, or tried; he kept his rhythm deliberate, leisurely; oh, but it cost him. Need had its claws in him. Her hands dug into his shoulders, until she slid them down to his bare hips and gripped him, arching to urge him on, to take him deeply. “James . . . let go. Please . . . oh God . . . I need . . . I need . . .”
It was the permission he sought. Their bodies colliding and arcing as he drove into her, driving them both to the brink and over it into that shattering bliss that blacked his vision.
He went still. He buried a roar against her throat. He pulled from her just in time. She clung to him while their bodies quaked, the bliss still rippling through them.
It was a moment before his sense re-met his body.
He lowered himself carefully beside her. Turned so that her body was half-draped over his, and held her. So she could use his chest as a pillow.
There was nothing quite like the texture of quiet with a woman’s soft, sated weight against his body. He drew a finger along her quivering lashes. Her mouth curved in a little smile.
Her cheek rose and fell with his breathing. His heart thumped against her skin.
This was like the moment after waking, before all of the things of the world sifted in.
They lay still and listened to the clock softly bonging twelve times.
She stirred, and he sat up.
She gave a soft laugh. “Your hair,” she said. “It’s every which way.”
He went to smooth it with his hands.
“Don’t,” she said. “Not yet. I like knowing how it got that way.”
They smiled at each other. With a certain awe-filled caution.
There seemed no need to review what had happened: Sex! Gosh! There’s nothing like it, eh?
But he had never before experienced sex—or himself—or a woman—as an uncontrollable and irresistible force. It had owned him.
There was really no smooth or direct route back to dignity after a sexual frenzy. He found a handkerchief and handed it over. She cleaned her thigh. She pulled up the sleeves of her dress and he, without asking, did up her laces while she held up her rummaged hair. She did the best she could with it.
He suspected he was going to have an affair.
With, to boot, perhaps the most notorious woman in London.
Although he was certain that they would both spend the rest of the night reviewing the wisdom of everything that had just transpired. Wisdom was never present when a man and a woman were naked together in a dark room. The light of day might reveal some stark truths to both of them.
He only hoped she did not and would not regret this. He found he did not dare ask if she did. And this—the not daring, because there had never been a thing he hadn’t dared—was new, too.
“Thank you for the Italian lesson,” she whispered.
He gave a soft laugh.
Her cheeks were still flushed. Her hair was still a bit anarchic, albeit re-pinned. Her lips were rosy and a trifle swollen.
And then gently, almost tentatively, she laid her hand against his cheek. They looked into each other’s eyes, solemnly, in a sort of wary tenderness.
He turned his head to lay a hot, lingering kiss in her palm.
He closed his eyes and breathed her in.
And then he threaded his fingers through hers and stood, and pulled her to her feet, and released her hand.
He found her candle, and handed it to her.
And by tacit agreement, she slipped silently out of the door.
As she made her way through the darkened house, she balanced the candle in one hand lest a stray draft douse it. She carefully closed her other hand into a fist.
As if the kiss he’d put into her palm was another tiny flame she needed to delicately tend and keep until she reached her room.
She slept with her fist against her cheek.
Chapter Thirteen
Mariana awakened feeling as though her little room was filled with sunlight.
Given that this was London and her room was on the non-duke side of The Grand Palace on the Thames, the one without the water view, this seemed unlikely.