AWAKENING THE SHY MISS (15 page)

Chapter Nineteen

S
he was out of her mind and it felt wonderful! For her, for him. He was well aware she was undressing her first man. Her pupils were wide with desire, her jaw set to stubborn. She wanted this, she wasn’t going to give herself an inch, not a single chance to back down from her choice. And he wasn’t either. He was enjoying this, enjoying
her
far too much now that the seduction was underway. How long had it been since he’d been a woman’s first anything? How long had it been since he’d let sex be making love? Had he ever allowed it to be that? Today it would be and the consequences be damned.

He held still, letting her fingers work the knot of his red workman’s neckcloth; he let her tug the shirttails out of the waistband of his trousers. He felt her hands falter, unsure what came next, unsure how to execute it. Dimitri did not let her hesitate, did not give her an excuse to stop. They would both be disappointed if she did. ‘Allow me.’ He grabbed his shirt by the hem and pulled it over his head in one swift movement, gratified when Evie inhaled sharply.

‘You’ve seen my chest before.’ Dimitri gave a low laugh.

‘I think I could see your chest a thousand times and still be amazed.’ Evie’s honesty made him rock hard. He knew she meant it. Discovering her beauty seemed an endless, infinite exploration for him. There was always more to see, more that caught his eye. ‘I had no idea a man could be so beautifully made.’

‘There’s more to do than look, Evie.’ He raised her hand and placed it on his chest, his eyes never leaving hers. She had touched him before, but never like this. There’d been pleasure given beneath his robe, but there’d been no time for exploration, for revelling, only pleasure. Today there would be time for both.

‘Touch me, Evie.’ That’s when he knew: Evie was an instinctive master of the seduction game. In the short time it had taken to remove only some of his clothing, she’d managed to make him a partner in this seduction. He’d become complicit in the very thing he’d resisted for so long.

She took the invitation, almost reverently, tracing a circle around one flat nipple, a coy smile on her lips. ‘You’re like an atlas, all planes and ridges.’ Her voice was quiet, her hand starting to move. His body was taut, savouring her touch, his mind already racing ahead to what else she might touch. ‘I think you might be a map of Kuban itself. This is your famous river that gives the country its name.’ Her finger drew a line down the centre of his chest, stopping at the ridges of his abdomen. ‘Perhaps these are the Caucasus, the mountain ridges of your kingdom.’ She splayed her hand over the flat of his stomach. ‘The Steppes.’

‘Travel south. There is more,’ Dimitri murmured, warming to her game. His hands lingered at the waist of his trousers. ‘My “country”, as you put it, is bigger than that.’

Evie cast him a dramatically sly look, eyes dancing. ‘Bigger than this?’ She might be untried, but she was
not
timid, not with him, and it pleased him inordinately when she took the initiative and flicked open the flies of his trousers, running a hand inside, tracing his length through his smalls. ‘Very disappointing.’ She sighed. ‘I thought for sure you were a man who forwent smalls.’ She shook her head in mock disapproval and issued the most provocative command he’d experienced to date. ‘Take off everything.’

Dimitri cocked a brow. ‘You’re a greedy miss.’ But he complied.

* * *

Boots, trousers
and
smalls fell to the ground, but Evie spared no glance for them. Her eyes were rooted on the sight before her—naked man in his most natural state. There was no robe, no rush, no hurried pleasure to get in the way of her enjoyment. It was as if his entire body was designed to draw her eye to the centre of him, the very core of his masculinity. The lean taper of his waist, the sculpted ridges of his muscles all led to his proudly jutting manhood, strong and large and...promising, as she knew it would be. It was perhaps one of the most primal sights she’d ever seen.

‘Do you like what you see?’ Dimitri’s voice was a low, seductive prompt.

‘I do.’ Her own voice was little more than a reverent whisper. ‘It’s beautiful.’ No wonder mamas cautioned their daughters to keep their eyes on a gentleman’s face. If daughters knew what lay beneath a gentleman’s clothes, London parties might indeed be quite different. They’d certainly be less boring.

‘Evie?’ The word was softer now, not a command but a question. She heard the unspoken question: Why him? Why now when there were limits on what they could be together?

‘Signs of life,’ Evie whispered. ‘I feel more alive with you right now than I ever have before.’
And might ever feel again
. It was both a joy and a fear to feel this way.

Dimitri’s forehead came down to rest against hers. ‘That might be up for debate. I think you could very well be the death of me, Evie Milham.’ They stood that way for long moments, foreheads touching, her hand about his shaft, simply together. Evie thought the moments were quite possibly the most peaceful moments of her life, their serenity transcending the usual calm. She would have been content to stand there for hours. But Dimitri had other ideas. His voice whispered low at her ear. ‘Now, it’s your turn. I want to see you. Take off everything.’

Evie stepped back from him, giving his gaze full access to her, her own gaze locked on him, both of them realising the solemnity of the occasion, the beauty of a woman disrobing for her man for the first time. She gave the robe a shrug, sending it down her body in a slide of silk. This had stopped being about discovering what men and women did together and had become discovering what Evie and Dimitri could do together, what they wanted together. She wanted to be naked with him. She did not worry if she was pretty enough, well made enough to match such a perfect man. She was. The look in Dimitri’s eyes as the robe slipped down her body held her answer.

‘I was not wrong when I thought you were a Botticelli goddess.’ She felt his eyes sweep over her. His gaze lingered on her lips, her breasts, her belly, and lower still to the russet valley between her legs. Her own heat rose in response to his gaze, a tingling warmth spiralled outward from her core. ‘It is such a difficult decision,’ Dimitri murmured, ‘to choose between stepping forward and touching you with my hands, or touching you with only my eyes.’

It was not a difficult decision for her. Evie knew precisely what she wanted. She stepped towards him, arms encircling his neck. ‘Touch me with your hands, Dimitri, with your mouth.’

A small grin settled on his lips. ‘As you wish.’

Dimitri Petrovich knew how to make a girl burn. It started slowly enough with a kiss at her collarbone, another at the notch of her neck, but the kisses didn’t stop there. It might have been the hard kiss on the mouth that undid her, she did so love those, or it might have been the warmth of his hand sliding up her rib cage to cup her bare breasts, his thumbs running over her nipples in tantalising strokes. It wasn’t important that she decide. She only knew she was grateful for the support of his body since her own bones were no longer interested in doing the job.

‘We’re going to need a bed.’ His voice was gruff with his own desire. ‘There are other ways I want to kiss you, other places.’ She knew those other places. They were already weeping in memory and in anticipation of having that memory renewed.

She managed a coy whisper. ‘I once wondered what sort of man slept in the decadent bed beyond the curtains.’

‘Come find out. Come to bed with me, Evie,’ he murmured against her ear.

Part of her wished he’d carry her and part of her understood he couldn’t. This walk to the bed made it her choice to be there, her choice to lie among the silken pillows. He came down beside her, stretching out the length of his body.

He moved over her, his mouth and hands making one of his slow trails down her body, kissing, licking, sucking until a moan escaped her and she arched up, her body recognising he had no intentions of stopping. What had once been the culmination of their pleasure would now merely be foreplay to something grander.

He moved to her navel, feathering it with a kiss before his mouth kissed the nest of her, the kiss a supplicant’s offering to the altar of her feminine core. Evie shifted beneath him, giving him access, knowing what came next. Only today, it didn’t come.

He came up over her instead, his eyes a glittering obsidian. ‘I have it on good authority passion is to be shared. Today, we’ll take our pleasure together.’ He was entirely the Cossack warrior as he looked down at her, wild and untamed, granite hard, his arms braced at her head, muscles flexing as he lifted above her. It was not his mouth but his manhood at her entrance, pulsing and hard.

She arched up again, inviting, assuring him of entrance, of reception. This was what she wanted. From the feel of it, he wanted this too. He pushed forward, big and thick and strong, she remembered all too well how very large he’d been in her hand. But his progress was steady and her body was sure where her mind doubted. Her body shifted, adjusted, accommodated, granting entrance inch by inch until there was no more sting of pain, no more discomfort and he was well seated in her. A victorious smile took her face. She had all of him.

‘That is just the beginning, Evie,’ he whispered, his body starting to move; rocking slowly, his shaft retreating and returning only infinitesimally at first, each thrust took him out further from her core, only to come into her harder upon his return. Not unlike the tide, she thought somewhere in the recesses of her mind where cognition still lived, nearly extinct.

He was indeed a tide, a crashing, erotic tide that came to her hidden shores, withdrawing to only crash again and she welcomed each crash, each wave of his advance breaking against her shore, each wave larger than the last, pushing them towards some unseen destination with each sweep. There would be exquisite pleasure at the end, she knew this now, but this pleasure was far more intense, far more encompassing than the little pleasure of his mouth that had preceded it. Her hips drove into his, her body eager to claim that pleasure, unsure how much more she could withstand. They had reached pleasure’s limits and then exceeded them.

Above her, Dimitri’s muscles strained with the effort. He gave a guttural utterance, part-agony, part-ecstasy. She cried out, unable to hold back. They were pushing boundaries now, her legs wrapped about him, holding on to him, the only anchor she had. He thrust once more, hard and complete and deep, and they broke, together; her cries, his groans mingled with the half-choked sobs of disbelief and wonder that they’d been to these far shores and they had survived. What came next didn’t matter.

* * *

Dimitri Petrovich was the most beautiful man alive, even when he was asleep. She didn’t envy him his sleep. She was the lucky one. She got an unadulterated, unlimited look at him—
her lover
. Evie stared unabashedly, memorising every angle of his face from the straight plane of his regal nose to the sharp slant of his cheekbones. She wanted to hold these moments in her mind. Perhaps later, she would draw them, capture this man on paper. She wanted to capture the essence of him. He was more than the sum of his handsome features. Did others see that when they looked at him or did they see only the Prince? A man capable of carrying the burdens of many on those broad shoulders. Did anyone see just the man? There was a furrow between his eyes even when he slept that proved he was human after all.

Out of reflex, she reached a finger to smooth it away. Whatever had been bothering him when he’d entered the pavilion was bothering him still. She would erase those cares for him if she could, if she knew. What other burdens did he carry? She wanted to know. She wanted to know it all. In the wake of the physical intimacy between them another craving for another kind of intimacy had sprung up. She wanted to know
him:
the little things like his birthday, his favourite colour, his favourite drink, and the big things too. He’d shared about his baby sister, about how much his family meant to him. She wanted more of that. She would carry his burdens with him.

Dimitri stirred beside her, waking up slowly. He smiled at the sight of her. ‘Have I slept for long?’ He reached for her, tucking her close against him, and she went willingly into this new, easy physicality of being close to him.

‘Not long.’ She pushed his hair back away from his face.

‘Are you all right, Evie? You look, ah, what is the word? Pensive?’ He smiled sleepily and her stomach flipped with longing. If she wasn’t careful, he would break her heart without meaning to. She had her precautions in place, she’d been through all the warnings to self before she’d decided to leap, but now that she’d leapt, those precautions were flimsy barricades against a look, a touch, the memory of his lips on her and the pleasure that followed.

‘I am wondering what causes you to frown when you sleep.’ She traced the line between his brows with the tip of her finger.

‘Was I frowning? I’m sorry.’ He sighed. She had the impression he was debating what to say next, what to tell her. ‘I’m going to tell you something, but you can’t tell anyone, not even your family.’

Evie lifted up on one arm, hair falling over one shoulder. Now she was worried. ‘This sounds serious?’

‘It might be. I think there’s a thief at the site. A few more items have gone missing since the comb and the hair clips.’

This was horrible news. ‘Who?’ Evie sputtered.

Dimitri chuckled. ‘If I knew, I wouldn’t be worried. I have a plan, though, and I am certain the thief will be brought to justice before long. I just wanted you to know. You should be aware of any strange behaviour in cataloguing, of anyone who might approach you with a request to look at the collection, and perhaps you might encourage everyone to be extra-vigilant about locking things up at night.’

‘You think it’s someone here, then?’

Dimitri sighed. ‘I suppose it’s possible there are two different thieves. The spearheads went missing right after the lords’ visit. Perhaps someone took them on a lark as a souvenir. But the hair clips and comb were missing long before then. If I had to guess, I would say it’s someone here.’