Nor did he stop kissing her when he kicked an offending chair away in order to set her on the far edge of the table, away from their abandoned dessert plates.
He hiked up the hem of her skirts to her thighs and settled his hips between them. The worn muslin of her gown pooled between her legs, yet it was not softness that she felt rubbing against her. The hardness of his shaft jutted against the fall of his trousers, its stiff length nestling perfectly against the apex of her thighs.
She wrapped her legs around his hips to draw him even closer and reveled in the sensation of his rigid shaft stroking against such an intimate part of her body. Her tender flesh seemed to pulse, to swell, to want. She could not stop the urge to rub against him as they kissed. The heady friction made her breath quicken and her body hunger for even more.
His hands were at the cording between her shoulder blades, loosening the ties until her gown slipped from her shoulders, exposing her bosom straining against a ribbon of her whisper-thin shift just above her stays.
“What’s next?” she whispered breathlessly.
“Next, I take off every stitch of your clothing. And mine,” he added.
“Then don’t,” she begged. “Make love to me with our clothes on. I don’t want to wait.”
He lifted her breasts free from her chemise and lowered his head to take one into his mouth. She gasped with pleasure at the sensation of his hot mouth suckling one breast whilst his expert fingers played with the nipple of the other.
A pressure began to build inside of her. Pressure she had only previously relieved with her own fingers late at night when she was alone with her imagination. She wasn’t alone now. Instead of her fingers slipping into the slickness between her legs, she rubbed that part of herself against the length of his shaft, grinding faster and harder until her legs spasmed against his hips and the climax tore through her.
Before the pulsation could fully cease, he lifted his mouth from her breast. She mourned the loss only briefly. He dropped to his knees before the table and lifted her skirts to place his tongue exactly where she wanted him most.
Pleasure flooded her anew. She threw her head back to tilt her hips toward him. The pressure was right back as though it had never eased, tempting her closer to the precipice anew. All of a sudden, there it was: the edge, sending her tumbling into the stars as his hungry mouth swallowed a second climax every bit as powerful as the first. More so, because of the direct contact and new sensations.
She tried to commit every single nuance to memory. From now on, the best stories would not be the ones she made up, but the stolen moments she had spent with John. Nothing would ever surpass it.
She curled her fingers around his collar and tugged him back up to her. “I want you to feel as you have made me feel. What can I do?”
“We’ll do it together.” He loosened the buttons of his fall and his shaft sprang forth, tall and erect.
Before she could reach for it, he slid her gown up to her waist and nestled between her thighs just as they had done when they were fully clothed. This time was even better. Skin-to-skin, hot flesh to slick dampness.
He thrust his fingers into her hair and kissed her as though he drew life from her very lips. This time, it was he who stroked against her, rubbing the full length of his shaft against her core gently, then demandingly, until her body quickened again with wanting.
Only when she was impossibly close yet again to the precipice did he slide his shaft down and nudge the tip within her.
“Do you want this?” he growled.
“Yes,” she panted against his cheek.
“You’re absolutely certain?”
In answer, she thrust her hips forward, impaling herself on his jutting shaft. They gasped in unison. Him, in pleasure. Her, at a sharp stab of pain followed by a not-unwelcome sense of fullness.
“This is definitely not the next step,” he informed her as he tilted her spine back toward the supper table in order to feast upon her nipples as his shaft stroked within her.
She propped herself up on her elbows, determined not to miss a single erotic moment of the moonlit sight before her. The rhythm of his hips as he drove within her. The glistening of her hard nipples, wet from his mouth and straining for his touch.
It would not hurt when the holiday was over, she assured herself. He would be gone, but she would have the memory of joining as one with the man she loved to cherish forever.
The man she loved.
Her inner muscles spasmed with the realization, ebbing and flowing like the waves crashing on the shore outside the window. His body jerked against her, pulling her deeper into uncharted waters. He withdrew all of a sudden, fumbling for a clean napkin to spend himself into as he shuddered against her.
When the cloth fell from his hands, she pulled him to her. He kissed her thoroughly, then scooped her back into his arms and carried her straight to his bed.
She didn’t leave his embrace for the rest of the night.
Chapter 20
The evening of the ball, Allegra’s stomach fluttered with conflicting emotions. Unlike the first ball, when her cousins had dressed her like a royal princess, tonight Allegra would be attending as…well, Allegra.
She had not seen her cousins since the night Uncle Townsend tossed her from their lives. She’d thought about haunting the round tables at the entrance to Siren’s Retreat, but as much as she yearned to see Portia and Dorcas, Allegra felt no such draw to run into Uncle Townsend.
She’d hoped the girls might put in an appearance during her morning hours in the rented music room, but that hadn’t happened, either. No doubt Uncle Townsend had forbidden them from stepping anywhere near the assembly rooms if there was any chance of Allegra being inside.
Or worse, perhaps Portia and Dorcas had a humorless new chaperone. One that would sniff her nose at the thought of crossing paths with a poor relation. Young ladies had their reputations to consider.
Even if no one knew Allegra had spent the past several days in John’s apartment—and slept every night in his bed—her presence was unlikely to lift Dorcas and Portia’s social standing.
What if that night at Mrs. Oswald’s soirée was…it? The last time she would ever see her beloved cousins? What if they were already betrothed and gone, or if Uncle Townsend had packed them off to Scarborough or Yarmouth, or decided to try their luck in Bath?
Might this have been his plan all along? To encourage Allegra’s spinsterhood until the last possible second, and then abandon her without any means to travel to London to claim even her reduced portion of the trust?
Strong arms wrapped around her from behind. “You look beautiful.”
“I do not, you flatterer,” she scolded him, turning to give him a kiss.
She was dressed in the same unflattering hodgepodge she’d been wearing when they’d first met over a month ago. The look of heat in his eyes stole her breath. He was not flattering her, she realized.
John had told her he’d wanted her at first sight. He’d been too far away for her to gauge his interest in that moment—or perhaps she’d been too busy flailing and shrieking whilst trying not to trample him—but there was no denying the truth glimmering in the intense gray eyes before her.
He wanted her. He’d proven it time and again over the past several days and nights. It didn’t matter what she was wearing or not wearing. Whether her hair was brushed or an early-morning rat’s nest. When he looked at her, he did not see aging-spinster-in-rags. He saw her.