A Matter of Sin (12 page)

He turned his face and his mouth claimed hers, softly, gently. When he drew back, she opened her eyes and looked up at him. Pleasure had stolen her ability to speak, but she was stunned when a tear escaped her eye and trickled down her cheek.

Seth leaned back further, his taut expression of desire and smug male knowledge of pleasure vanished immediately.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered as he pressed a kiss to her temple. “I was too vigorous. I hurt you.”

He shifted, and Isabel realized he intended to leave her body, to roll away. Her arms tightened around him and she held him as tightly as she could to keep him with her.

“No,” she hastened to say as she leaned up to touch her lips to his with the same gentleness he had used on her. “No, you
didn’t
hurt me.”

“But you’re crying,” he said, smoothing a lock of hair from her face.

She shook her head, unsure she would be able to express herself properly and explain the emotions that were now swelling inside of her. Uncertain she
wished
to do something that would make her so vulnerable to a man who she hardly knew and with whom she could share no future.

Finally she simply said, “It’s been a long time, that’s all. Since someone was so tender to me, since someone brought me pleasure. I’m sorry for my tears, I know they make me a fool.” She blushed. “But they weren’t from pain, rather from…from
wonder
. I had forgotten—”

She cut herself off with a blush. It was too much. She had gone too far.

Seth stared at her for a long moment and she couldn’t read his suddenly intense stare. Like her, he was covering his emotions and for a brief moment she felt sorry for that. Sorry that neither of them could offer a deeper glimpse into themselves beyond a pleasurable joining of bodies during a clandestine meeting.

But her thoughts faded when he smiled. “And we’ve only just begun.”

She didn’t answer. She couldn’t, for as soon as he had spoken, he flexed his hips and moved within her again. This time he had more purpose. She recognized he wasn’t only working toward her second orgasm, but his own. She arched to greet his thrusts, grinding her hips in slow circles and pressing hot kisses along his neck, his chest, his lips, anything she could reach and taste.

His hips moved erratically, his neck strained, and just as her own pleasure exploded a second, powerful time, he let out a ragged, animal cry and withdrew to spend himself away from her body. Then he flopped down on the bed next to her, wrapped his arms around her, and for a long while, everything was still.

Chapter Thirteen

“It may seem an odd thing, to want a man’s mouth on you intimately, but to be feasted upon is one of life’s greatest pleasures.”
—The Ladies Book of Pleasures

Just a few short hours before, Isabel had been embarrassed by her nudity and tried to cover herself. But after the shattering lovemaking they had just shared, she no longer felt the desire to hide her body from Seth. Not when she was tangled in his arms.

He leaned up on one elbow and looked down at her with a sideways smile that made him seem less like a stern, responsible marquis and more like a man without a care in the world. That was far from the truth, but she liked the impression nonetheless.

“We are still askew on this bed,” he said with a soft laugh. “Not that I’m complaining about how we got so cockeyed. It was—” he leaned down to kiss her neck, and Isabel was shocked that her body lit with fiery desire immediately, “—most pleasurable.”

She smiled, though she found herself trembling. “Would you like to move so that you don’t lose the feeling in your arm?”

He nodded, the twinkle still bright in his eyes. “Indeed, for I have many plans for this arm that involve you and that wonderfully responsive body of yours.”

Isabel couldn’t help but laugh at his playfulness, even as she tried not to imagine all those wicked things he wished to do to her. For her.

“
You
are a cad,” she said as she began to maneuver so that she was actually lying with her head on the pillows.

But as she turned, she noticed something lying on the floor. Seth’s copy of
The Ladies Book of Pleasures
had apparently fallen there during their passionate joining. She’d been so caught up in sensation and pleasure, she hadn’t even heard the clatter of it hitting the floor.

She reached down and snatched it up before she rolled onto her stomach with one of the pillows propped beneath her chest. With Seth beside her, reading over her shoulder, she opened the tome to the first few pages. It was a table of contents that had each chapter name. Together, they read them in silence.

“Oral Explorations”, “A Lady’s Guide to Self-Pleasure” and “A Tryst in Public” were just a few of the naughty chapters contained in the book.

“It is quite a thing this ‘lady’
has
written,” Seth said with a low whistle.

“Indeed.” Isabel looked at him from the corner of her eye. “So what
do
you think of the book, Seth? You have had far more experience than I.”

He chuckled as he reached out and began to trace a pattern along the bare planes of her back. Isabel shivered and barely suppressed a little moan. That light touch rocketed through her like summer lightning, making her sex throb and her nipples tighten again.

“You keep going on about my experience,” he said softly. “I’m not exactly a libertine, you know.”

“Are you not?” Isabel gasped as his fingers crept into the dip that was the small of her back and just tickled the top of her buttocks suggestively. “Tonight I certainly feel as though I’m with a very wicked man.”

His laugh grew louder and richer with real amusement. “Ah, the lady gives a compliment. That will obtain you your every desire if you keep this up.”

“Oh, that sounds very promising.” Isabel shot him a quick look and a smile before she said, “Truly, though, I
do
want to know your thoughts on the book. I assume you’ve looked at it since I returned it to the library that night.”

He nodded. “I admit I glanced through it, hoping to discover which parts had aroused you most.”

She blushed and kept her eyes on the pages before her.

“And I think,” he continued, “that it was written by a person, a
lady
, who wishes to shock the
ton
and knows exactly how to do it.”

She glanced at him, surprised. “So you think it is truly written by a woman of rank?”

He shrugged. “Perhaps not, but the author’s point of view is decidedly feminine and the language is of someone highly educated. So it follows that she may be exactly what she claims.”

Together, they looked at the book again. Isabel turned the pages to the middle of the book and stumbled upon a section called “Sin in Another Language” that contained erotic pictures from other countries. The one on this particular page was of an Indian woman, dressed in beautiful robes, her breasts bared and one leg lifted high against her body as a man took her from behind.

“It
is
stimulating, whoever wrote it,” Seth added, his voice a bit more gravelly.

He stroked his fingers through her hair, pulling down what was left of her earlier style and combing the auburn locks around her back and her shoulders gently.

“But in all my research of your delightful little book—” he whispered.

She laughed. “Technically,
your
delightful little book. I stole it, if you recall.”

He smiled. “In all my research of
my
book, I never struck upon the spot where you might have read. You are a very tidy reader—there was not a bent page or broken spine left behind as a clue.”

She smiled, though her heart was beginning to quicken with anticipation. “I have never misused my books, no.”

“Normally an admirable quality, but not when an investigation is taking place.” He shook his head. “So I am forced to interrogate you directly: Where
did
you read, Isabel?”

Isabel shifted as she stared down at the erotic picture on the page before her a second time.

When she had been silent a moment too long, Seth whispered, “I told you before that I wanted to use this volume as a guide to your pleasure. Help me to do so.”

Isabel tensed. Seth was offering her permission to do and have done to her everything she had ever dreamed of in her lonely bed.

And why not? She was here, wasn’t she? This affair was happening. And since it might very well be the only one she ever indulged in, she had to make it perfect or else she might regret what she
hadn’t
done later.

Her hands shook as she turned the book back to an earlier chapter. “Oral Explorations” was written as the title in scrolling letters.

“This,” she admitted softly as she pointed to the page without looking at it. “I read this.”

Seth’s eyes widened. “I see. And have you any experience with such a thing?”

She hesitated. “I-it seems wrong to speak to you about the kind of lover my husband was. As if you’ll judge him…or—or me when you hear the details.”

Seth nodded and his face was serious. “I understand. I never wished to force you to betray a man you loved and married. I won’t ask you about your past again.”

She nodded, happy she wouldn’t have to admit that Hartley had never done such a sinful thing as the one she now asked for. That she hadn’t even imagined
wishing
for such a thing until after his death.

“Roll over,” Seth whispered as he slipped the book from her fingers and placed it on the side table.

Isabel did so, settling her back against the pillows as she tried to calm her racing heart. Was this truly about to happen? Would Seth really put his mouth on her in such an intimate place? Would she even
like
such a thing?

“Breathe,” he whispered as he pressed a brief, warm kiss to her lips. “And allow me to grant you this desire.”

She closed her eyes and nodded, surrendering herself to him as his mouth glided down the apex of her body with aching slowness. He seemed determined to taste every inch of her as he nuzzled her neck, stroked his tongue over her chest and then settled his mouth over her breast for the second time that night.

She couldn’t believe the sensations that intimate kiss inspired. The release she had experienced earlier with his lovemaking immediately rushed back to her, bringing her to the edge of ultimate pleasure. He wasn’t even touching her sex and she felt like she could explode as he licked her nipple with long, languid strokes of his rough tongue.

She moaned softly and turned her head on the pillow as he shifted to the opposite breast.

“
You
are the most responsive woman,” he murmured against her skin. “I wonder if there is anything in that book about how much a man can torment a woman with his touch? How long he can keep her right on the edge of release without allowing her pleasure?”

Isabel’s eyes came open at the idea of such a thing, and she found Seth looking up her body at her with a wicked smile.

“Perhaps the next time we’re together, eh?” he asked, and then he returned his mouth to her skin and continued his slow voyage down her shaking body.

He sucked gently as his mouth moved over the pale flesh of her flat belly. He even dipped his tongue briefly into her belly button. Her hips arched like they would have if he had done the same to her sheath.

Lower and lower he glided, tasting her like she was a feast for a starving man, taking his time almost as if he had the rest of their lives to explore her and wanted to take full advantage of every moment.

They both knew that was far from true, but in that stolen moment, Isabel could almost forget and see being like this forever.

But finally he pushed her legs open a fraction and settled between them, his face just inches from her wet and ready sex.

She squeezed her eyes shut as she awaited the moment and he
made
her wait, dragging out the seconds by blowing hot gusts of breath against her sensitive flesh. She twitched each time he did so, reacting violently to the bursts of pleasure that resulted from that action.

Finally, gently, he peeled her open and revealed her fully to him. She opened her eyes, watching as he examined her. All the humor, all the teasing they had engaged in earlier was gone. It seemed like he had changed, for the man who was looking at her, the one whose warm hands were resting against her thighs, holding her open for examination…
this
man was a dangerous predator and she was his prey. This man
would
torment and toy with her all night if he chose to do so and she would be at his utter mercy.

Even now she begged. “Seth,” she whispered, and her voice cracked.

He glanced up at her, meeting her eyes. He held her gaze for what seemed like forever, then smiled and lowered his mouth to her.

Isabel’s blood burned as he dragged his tongue over her sex from one end to the other in a languid, lazy stroke. Over and over, he licked her, using just the right level of pressure against her tingling flesh.

She stifled a deep groan of pleasure. Great God, she had been right to ask for this act. It was the most intensely pleasurable thing she had ever experienced.

She fisted her fingers against the sheets, swallowing her mewls and moans of wanton delight. As if he sensed she was holding back, he increased the tempo and pressure of his mouth on her, spearing her sex with one stroke and sucking gently on her sensitive clitoris with the next.

Isabel began to shake out of control as the wave of pleasure eased toward her. Unlike earlier when she had been hit with it like a thunderbolt, this time it crept and inched, heating her skin, making her legs shake, forcing her to lift her hips wildly as he dragged her into and through an intense orgasm.

Finally, she couldn’t stop herself from crying out, thrashing her head against the pillows, tightening her thighs around his shoulders as he drew more and more passion and release from her. When she thought she could give no more, he took it until she was weak against the pillows, her tremors fading until they were only the occasional burst of flickering pleasure.

He pressed one last warm kiss to her flesh and then slid up the bed. She wrapped her arms around his neck and drew him down until his lips met hers. He tasted sweet and salty, and she realized with a start that it was
her
flavor on his lips. He deepened the kiss and she relaxed, drowning in the lazy arousal he brought forth in her yet again.

But instead of taking her, instead of plunging into her body or asking her to fulfill one of his fantasies because he had done the same for her, he drew back. His gaze was intense on her as he smiled.

“We should go back,” he whispered.

She blinked, uncertain she had heard him correctly.

“Why?” she asked before she thought of the consequences and implications of that question. It revealed far too much to him about her feelings.

He brushed hair away from her cheek with the back of his hand. “Because it is after two. And while I cannot complain at all about the hour or why we are away so late, I wouldn’t want to utterly exhaust you on our first night together. Nor would I wish to make the others suspicious when we both come to breakfast with bleary eyes tomorrow morning.”

Isabel froze at that thought. If anyone ever knew what she had done…

“I suppose you’re right,” she whispered with reluctance as she struggled to sit up.

She looked around. Her clothing was scattered all over the floor where it had been tossed during the heat of their passion. As she slung her legs over the edge of the bed, she blushed.

Slowly, she bent to pick up her gown. The blue muslin had never been her favorite, but she realized, as she held it before her, that every time she wore it from now until it was shredded and unwearable, she would think of tonight.

“Do you need assistance?” Seth asked from behind her.

She turned and saw he had already pulled his trousers back around his waist and was fastening them. She found she was disappointed that he was half-dressed. That meant the night was truly over.

“Isabel?” he asked with a quirk of a smile.

She shook her head. “No, I should be able to manage. My gown fastenings are in the front, if you recall.”

He took a seat perched on the armrest of one of the chairs set by the fire across the room. “Ah yes, how could I forget such a delightful detail?”

Isabel slipped her chemise over her head and then looked at him as she began to step into her drawers. He was still watching her and had made no move to finish putting his clothes on.

“What are you doing?” she asked with a blush.