She had placed the extinguished candle on the table next to the lamp, so she stood there looking uncertain and alone, her hands knotting in the folds of her dressing gown. “Not precisely. I think I wanted you close to me without really understanding why. But now that I think about it, I believe this was inevitable.”
“Helena.” The very act of saying her name soothed him somehow. Her eyes widened slightly as he approached her and took her face between his palms. Her pupils were dilated, making her eyes seem so deep and bottomless he wanted to dive into her and never come up for air. He kissed her with reverence, hoping to make up for his ruthlessness earlier. Yet the moment their mouths touched it lit a torch to the heat that constantly smoldered between them, until soon the kiss burned out of control and he was all but devouring her against the wall.
She pushed at his chest, and he pulled back thinking she had changed her mind, but she was trying to push his dressing gown off his shoulders. He helped her, untying the belt to let it drop to the floor in a heap.
“I want to see all of you tonight,” she said.
Her words burned through him like a wildfire.
“All right.” His hands went to the waist of the drawers he wore as she slipped out of her own dressing gown and crawled into the curtained bed, each lush curve put on display as the light flickered over them lovingly. He was still in that position when she turned back to him, having been rendered immobile by the sight of her. Her pink-tipped breasts rose and fell with each of her breaths. “My God, you’re beautiful.”
She smiled, not looking nearly as lost now as she slipped her legs beneath the covers, hiding the glimpse he’d had of dark gold curls between her legs, and settled back against the pillows. Stepping out of his slippers, he pushed his drawers down and watched as her gaze greedily soaked in the sight of him. Her eyes widened as he took his erection in hand and squeezed slightly to alleviate the pressure. He’d wanted her too long.
She didn’t protest when he pulled the blanket down so he could see her.
“You’re even more beautiful than I remembered.” That night in her drawing room had been hasty and impulsive. Tonight he planned to take his time with her.
She watched with parted lips as he climbed up from the foot of the bed, letting his tongue and his lips taste her on the way up. He had one goal in mind as he moved up her body and pressed a kiss to the nest of curls at the apex of her thighs. He’d bet anything that her husband had never kissed her there. He paused, breathing in the scent of her desire for him. “I said I wanted to taste every inch of you.”
Her eyes widened even more if that was possible. “There?” she whispered, too shocked to say anything else.
“Has no one ever kissed you between your pretty thighs, Helena?”
“No.” She visibly swallowed, but then a smile hovered around the corners of her mouth. “Max, no.” She bit her lip as she contemplated what he wanted, as if she’d never before considered it.
He grinned at how scandalized and intrigued she looked, the threads of her ladylike demeanor fraying. He pressed a soft kiss to her left thigh and then her right, nipping her softly in encouragement. In response she spread her legs a little. He ran the tip of his index finger down the slit that was revealed to him, playing in the slick heat of her need, and drawing it up to ease his way as he circled her clitoris. “I want to lick you and suck you until you come, but you have to tell me that’s what you want first.”
Her eyes widened as did the space between her thighs. Half in shock, half out of her mind with need, she nodded. “Yes, please, yes.”
He groaned in satisfaction as he settled between her thighs and licked at her with the tip of his tongue. He’d been prepared to go home never having this closeness with her again, but here she was making his every wish come true. She cried out, her fingers tightening almost painfully in his hair to hold him to her as he sucked her swollen clitoris into his mouth. Satisfaction crashed over him in waves at the way she writhed beneath him, drunk on the combined power of tasting her desire for him and knowing that no man had ever had her this way.
When her hips moved of their own accord to the rhythm of his tongue, he tenderly pushed a finger inside her. Her body grasped at him, and he pressed a second one in to join the first, curling them upward to find that rough bit of flesh that made her body jolt when he rubbed it.
The sound of his name on her lips filled his ears, and he didn’t care if anyone heard her. She was his and he was hers and he wanted everyone to know it. It wasn’t long before her cries reached a more frantic pitch, and then she was coming, her sweet passage clasping at his fingers as she trembled.
Only after she came down did he place a kiss on her stomach and remove himself from her by degrees as he slid off the bed.
“Max.” Her plaintive voice followed him to his discarded dressing gown where he retrieved the tin of rubber sheaths he’d brought with him. His hands shook as he opened it and drew one out, letting the tin fall to the floor in his impatience. Fitting it on, he turned back to her, and she held her arms out to him, her eyes wide in the same desperate excitement that had him shaking with need.
He crawled over her and took a pink nipple into his mouth. After laving it with sufficient attention, he moved to the other one. By the time he was finished, she writhed beneath him, holding him against her as if afraid he might change his mind.
“Jesus, Helena,” he whispered as he settled between her thighs.
He’d hardly dared to imagine he might have her again. As he looked down at her, I love you was on the tip of his tongue, but he didn’t say it because she wasn’t ready to hear it for reasons he couldn’t fathom. Reaching between them, he reverently caressed her with his thumb, eliciting a gasp of pleasure, before guiding his cock to her and pressing inside. He groaned at the sheer bliss of the tight heat surrounding him. White stars exploded behind his eyelids as he gave a thrust of his hips to fully seat himself within her. When he opened his eyes, she stared up at him with such a look of awe and affection on her face that he knew he’d remember it forever.
“Max.” Her breath caught as she reverently touched his face, her thumb sweeping over his brow in that way he was coming to like so much before cupping his cheek. “I . . .”
He kissed her palm. It might have been the scotch flowing through his veins, but he would have sworn she almost said she loved him. “Shh . . . let me love you,” he whispered when a sheen of unshed tears brightened her eyes. He didn’t know if he meant sex or what would happen afterward. It didn’t matter, because all his focus was on her. On showing her how he felt about her. Tomorrow fell away and it was just them. Now.
He moved within her, slowly at first, drawing soft sighs from her lips, but as with everything between them, the heat quickly burned out of control. His fingers laced with hers, holding her hands captive and pressed in the sheets above her head as he thrust into her over and over. The way she said his name on a gasp as she tightened her legs around his hips added fuel to the fire within him, building their desire into a firestorm of need, until nothing existed but her tight grip around his cock, the salt of her skin on his tongue, and her sweet cries of pleasure in his ears. Finally, she trembled around him, the frenzied and tight clenching of her body nearly sending him over the edge as she came apart in his arms. He held back, letting her writhe on him as she came, waiting for her to come down. Only then did he follow her over, need twisting and coiling inside him until it erupted, and he poured everything he was into her.