Lorelie Brown (17 page)

The right to touch her was much more important than any concern with who’d gone before. She was no less stunning, no less responsive under his every touch. When he skimmed the slender tendon at the juncture of her thighs, she jumped toward him.

Velveteen, springy curls gave beneath his touch. Her mouth opened on a silent gasp. Those almond-shaped eyes were wider than he’d ever seen. Her hips twitched, and she gave a tiny sound that dove straight into his brain and shook him up.

“Right here,” he said. “Your sex. You’re already wet for me.”

She nodded. Her lips trembled a little. “You did that. Or we did.”

He liked that, he really did. His smile spread against her skin. The rake of his teeth over her softness made her surge into his grasp. “Yes, we did. And now I’m going to lick you. This spot. All over.” He punctuated his words with a gentle circle of the bud of nerves and mystery that topped her sex.

“Oh, I bet that will feel marvelous,” she breathed.

Enthusiasm, thy name was Charlotte. She grasped life with both hands, and if she did so as a lifeline to escape the things she feared, who was he to deny her. Not when it brought him such delicious opportunities.

Despite the thrumming, surging eagerness that tightened his stomach and made his chest burn, he moved slowly. Her skirts were pushed up, out of the way, baring her legs, but he didn’t look down. Not yet. He kept his gaze fixed on hers—or maybe it was the other way around because he sure as hell felt held by her.

“After I make you come, I’m going to keep your stockings in my pocket as we leave.”

She shook her head as if in automatic reaction. “But why would you do that?”

He smiled against the inside of her thigh. Satin and down. Her skin made him think of absurd things like kittens and clouds. Entirely too childish for a man of his stature and for
this
wicked moment, but they seemed somehow invested with goodness. With a level of happiness impossible to explain.

He drew his tongue over the seam of her lower lips. At the very top, her clitoris peeked through like a tiny pink promise. He set his lips there. Soaking and tasting. The wetness gleaming over her lips was sweet.

Bloody hell, she was intoxicating. He wanted to take her. Fully. His thumbs rubbed up and down her damp, soft lips. Spreading her apart a teeny amount at a time. The first lick burst her flavor over his tongue like sparkling wine. He licked and sucked and took her flesh into his mouth. There was no such thing as too much of Lottie.

And then she moaned. Good. Exactly what he was after. He wanted to make her mindless with desire.

After all, to be on his knees as he indulged in her body, he had to be mindless. Completely so. He wanted her as wrecked as he. One way or the other.

Chapter Thirteen

Lottie was not ignorant about sex. She couldn’t afford to be. After all, if babies had made her mother run mad, Lottie needed to avoid them like the plague. In turn she had to know how they were created. Hence several purloined scientific manuals and one rather astounding chapbook that described rather naughty scenarios.

In none of them had there been a hint of this. Searing pleasure that left her adrift and lost in the clouds. Though her hands cupped the back of his head, somewhere along the way she’d gone wandering. Floating outside her body as shocking, tingling pleasure wound through her.

Wet didn’t come close to describing his mouth. Nor did heat nor did the fact that he was at turns first gentle, then hard. Firm strokes. Nips that flashed sharp tingles.

He’d found a wicked and reckless spot that made her head jerk back and strange, quiet noises come from her throat because it felt so damn amazingly good. Waves and jolts took her over.

She caught hold of his hair. She tried to pull his head back, away. She didn’t know what to do with the bursting sensations rocking through her. But he wouldn’t be moved. He licked straight up her center.

His thumbs stroked and circled her. Pleasure at top and bottom. His mouth stayed open and wet and sucking.

Then she switched, pushing him closer to her body. She was not letting him go under any circumstances. She needed whatever he dangled out of reach. Her fingers twisted and tightened in his hair. She hooked her knees over his shoulders.

He was solid. Steady. Though he looked slender and elegant in his proper suits, underneath there was a man who could take her bare heels digging into his back. He shifted in a subtle rocking rhythm that matched the way her blood surged and released.

Her breathing locked down, slipped away. She stopped panting long enough that multicolored stars bloomed behind her eyes. She was sensation and no more, all wrought by his touch.

She cracked open into a million sparks. The joy rocked out from her middle and washed over her. Taking over her.

She felt
good
. Which seemed so unsubstantial, so insufficient, but it was true. Her body, her mind and her soul were bound together in happy joy that took her completely in a tingling surge. She was right with herself for a little while.

She eased back into her limbs, finding herself more comfortable than she’d been in ages. Ian helped by lengthening his licks and softening his assault to gentle kisses. Her muscles and bones fit together perfectly. A draught from the badly fit window frame tickled her soles.

He rubbed his wet mouth against the inside of her thigh, leaving a streak. “There. I don’t know about you, but I feel much calmer now.”

Her spine melted and melted until she leaned against the wall. She giggled in a way unlike her. “I don’t see why. You were the one doing all the work.”

“And reaping all the rewards.” His eyes were hot, fired with arctic ice.

“I could argue that point, but I’d do myself no favors.” Her hands curled in the heaps of her petticoats, her fingers gone slightly numb. She felt less like herself than she ever had before, but also strangely
more
.

“How so?” But he didn’t give her a chance to answer. He stood, leaning in toward her. His mouth tasted like something more sweet and slick than before. She realized with a tiny startle that it was her own flavor. She should have been appalled. Instead, she licked the inside of his bottom lip.

He liked that. Or she assumed so, since he gave a throaty growl and nibbled at her top lip.

She was smiling when she pulled back. “Because if I convince you that I’ve the best of it and you’re wrong, you may decide not to repeat the act.”

He gripped her knees, thumbs gently rubbing over the tender flesh of her thighs. He cocked an eyebrow at her, that smile tucking up only on the left. “You could try. I’m not likely to be convinced. You taste like a lick of heaven.”

Heat flared across her cheeks in a blush. “You’ve no need to talk so rough.”

“This from the wild child?” He drifted close enough to brush his mouth over the column of her throat. “I feel like I’ve won a prize.”

She pushed him and slid down from the dresser she’d perched on. She scooped up her dress and had to twist the sleeves into place from where her impatience had flipped them. As if her dedication would keep away the embarrassment, she kept her gaze pinned on the pale purple fabric. “I’m still allowed to be offended.”

“You are. If you actually feel so.” He leaned against the dresser, watching her pull the dress on as if she were there for his amusement. His every look stoked her flames higher. “But this time at least it was only an act. And therefore a surprising one.”

He was completely wrong, but she couldn’t make herself simply
tell
him. In truth, she was disappointed he didn’t already know after what they’d just shared. She presented him with her biggest, brightest smile and her wide eyes. Her fingers flew up the line of her buttons. They sealed up as if nothing had happened. As if she didn’t still tingle and the inside of her thighs weren’t damp under her petticoats. “Our whole world is one big act. It’s what makes everyone get along.”

His head tilted. “Haven’t you anyone to whom you tell the whole truth?”

She wanted to be able to say yes. She wasn’t without friends entirely. Sera and Victoria were her heart, her closest. But she’d never told them all of it. She’d mentioned how terrified she was and how much she worried about her mother. Certainly that.

She’d never mentioned the anger. The guilt. The way she got almost a little
relieved
when her mother entered one of her sad periods, because it meant she’d take to her bed and not embarrass anyone for a while.

And how very ugly an emotion that was.

She held her smile up so tightly that her cheeks pinched. The corners of her eyes felt tense. “You must be a nicer person than I, if you can reveal every single thought and emotion.”

He came close enough to trace his knuckles over her rounded cheeks. She didn’t want him to see through her. Nothing else would leave her as vulnerable. “It’s got nothing to do with how nice I am and everything to do with how much I trust my friends. My family.”

“Tell me who you talk to.” Her voice was raw.

“My mother.” His smile was endearing, and she wanted to taste it again, but it didn’t seem right where their conversation had wandered. “And my sister. I know, it’s unbearably saccharine, but there you have it. I’ve two close friends from school as well. I don’t see them nearly enough. Usually for hunting trips in the fall.”

She wanted a part of that life. It spiked through her, washing away the experience he’d given her. This moment wasn’t meant to be kept. Not the miraculous things he knew. Not the kindness and gentleness with which he spoke of his family.

She was jealous. She was so very envious she thought she might lose her grip on her senses. How close she tread, everything simmering beneath the surface. Barely in control, layered over with bright smiles. Her fingernails curled into her palms.

She’d take him. She’d have him. Full use of his body, however she liked. Because he’d be the closest she ever got to that kind of indulgence and connection. Denying herself that taste seemed ridiculous. Should she walk alone through the difficult world without ever having experienced it once?

She had never been the self-sacrificing type. There was no reason to start now.

But there certainly was business to see to first. She shook her skirts smooth and peeked into a smoky mirror to tuck back her hair. Her tumbled curls hid a wealth of reckless activity, since they never looked neat and orderly. “On with it, shall we?”

He presented his arm. “Tell me,” he said as they stepped out onto the landing. “What will we do if Patricia makes an appearance this evening?”

A sea of heads and cawing laughter and round faces with eyes turned red by drink made up the crowd beneath the banister. Cards were shuffled, markers passed. This was the sort of world she knew and yet one she didn’t. She surveyed it all with an easy assurance that no matter what happened, she’d have the man whose arm she held at the moment. She’d feel the strength currently under her fingers turn into a force that would leave her mindless. Again.

“At this point? Whatever is fastest, if I have my way. The better to leave quickly.”

How strangely surreal this all was. Ian looked down on the crowd with a sense of detachment that lifted him above the rabble. Except his was pure luck. He was no better than the rest of them, but for narrow accident of birth and dint of will. Parlaying his father’s beginnings, he’d turned a fairly profitable mine into a hefty income for what remained of his family.

What was the point if not to build more family?

He wasn’t any better than the people who gambled and drank below. He was luckier. Throwing that away would be foolish.

If anything, he should be looking to marry.

Not dallying in a whore’s rented room. He hadn’t stooped so far as to play with those so much less fortunate than him. The woman on his arm was dazzling. She was an amazing example of English womanhood, including her recklessness. That edge of hers conquered nations and made the empire grand.

Now, when she’d been an orgasmic puddle not ten minutes ago, she stood with her chin up and her spine a casual, shallow curve of attitude and arrogance in a feminine package.

He was coming to rather like the combination.

“Fastest,” he said, drawing the word into a slow promise. “I’m curious. Have you somewhere better to be?”

She kept her face turned outward, toward the crowd. “Under you.”

She’d have felt his response in the full-body jolt that wedged out from his ribs. He’d almost been able to forget his body. He was hard, yes. That became almost secondary since he knew he’d receive relief eventually. Besides, he sometimes liked the slow torture of unrequited excitement. Best to revel.

Not this time. He wanted. Now. He folded his hand flat over hers where it curled around his biceps.

“You think it’s so simple as that?” He kept his gaze averted as well. His lurking laughter grew in direct counterpoint to the pull of his lust. “You’ve tried me before and I turned you down.”

“True.” She leaned enough that the side of her breasts rubbed against his fingertips. “But that was before you tasted me.”

“True,” he echoed.

Her mouth curved. Her neck was a white column of tendons and softness mixed together. Locks of red hair curled around her shoulders. “You see?”