The Next Best Bride (18 page)

After the meal, she took out her sketch pad, certain that he would take it from her and try to make love to her there in the grass. To her surprise, he made no objection. He watched indulgently when she sketched. Every so often he would insist she take a new drink of wine, but he made not one attempt to kiss her.

Her thoughts wandered as she sketched the dower house. She knew he was disappointed that she left his bed each night after they made love. But the safety of her heart required such a move. Just as she resisted his attempts to get her to climax. Even if it were possible for some women to do so, she did not think she was one of them.

Unfortunately, her resistance seemed only to encourage him further. Perhaps she should pretend, so that he would not be so disappointed each night? So that he would not continue to try to show her the passion he wanted her to feel?

She had no idea what pretending to this over the edge sensation would be like. Should she gasp? Shudder? Moan aloud? Those were all things Rand did when he climaxed. But he was a man. What on earth did a woman do during such times? Dare she ask him? She thought not.

And then she wondered where these giddy thoughts had come from. Was he purposefully giving her more than her share of wine in order to get her drunk. He would have to if he wished to convince her to make love here, in the open. Even then, she could not imagine agreeing to such a daring thing.

The windows of the house looked out onto their picnic ground. The thought of Mrs. Robson catching them...

But she did not get drunk. Just pleasantly, warmly, dizzy. Enough so that she could no longer trust her hands to draw as she commanded. "Shall we go in?" she asked, packing up her supplies and the remains of their picnic.

He did not move. "Wait."

She eyed him warily. His gaze was searching and she had the impression he was assessing how much the wine had loosened her normal sense of propriety.

Apparently, he was not certain enough to simply begin kissing her. For he remained where he reclined on the blanket he had brought for their comfort as he said, "I think this is an excellent place for the lesson of the day."

Though his words carried no immediate threat of her amorous husband seducing her in full view of the dower house, she could not help reacting with a touch of panic. "Here? In the open? Where others can see?"

"There will be nothing to see, my little prude."

She bristled. "So what is the lesson to be?"

He emptied the last drops of wine from the flask onto his tongue and licked his lips as he watched her. He enjoyed her impatience, she was certain of it. "I want to show you how the tongue can be used to heighten loveplay."

Helena went hot. "Then you are intending us to make love here?"

She thought of one of her 'lessons' as they traveled — how to use the tongue to kiss. What else would he use his wicked tongue for?

"No." He smiled as if he thought himself brilliant. "To anyone who might spy us — from a window, let us say — we will simply be two people having a conversation."

"A conversation?" Helena felt oddly disappointed. They would talk? They did that every day, how could that bring the kind of pleasure he meant?

"Yes."

She shrugged. "I suppose I cannot object. I have talked all my life, there's no reason to object to doing so now."

"Good." He leaned up on one arm and plucked a tiny blue wildflower from the grass near his head. "Why don't we begin with the subject of a woman's climax. You say you do not believe a woman can achieve orgasm. Why not?"

Had he somehow known what she had been thinking earlier? He couldn't... "A woman is not built like a man."

"And men everywhere are grateful for that wonderful truth." He smiled. "So grateful that we have spent centuries discovering ways to give women as much pleasure as the female form gives a man."

"Then how does a woman..." She had not imagined having the courage to ask that question when they lay in bed in total darkness. Helena marveled that she asked it with the sun shining upon her face, and the home where her servants worked within sight.

He did not seem at all shocked by her question. "You know a man is driven by his cock."

"His lord of pleasure?" She smiled.

He laughed. "I know it seems a grand name for something that so far has not met your expectations —"

She did not want the conversation to end in another attempt for him to get her to feel what, to be blunt, frightened her. "I expect nothing, my lord. Except a child. We are talking in the hypothetical here."

"Very well, this hypothetical woman could gain her pleasure by any number of means. Sometimes just the friction of a man's organ as he pumps himself against her..."

"That is pleasant enough," Helena admitted. "But I cannot say that I have ever felt I might go over the edge — whatever edge that might be."

With one finger, he brushed the petals of the tiny flower he held. "Perhaps you are one of the women who needs a man to stroke her."

"Where?" She didn't need to ask, though. There were so many places that tingled as if he had stroked them rather than simply spoken of the possibility.

"The breasts —" He twirled the little flower by it's stem, like a child's toy. "A woman's nipples are much more sensitive than a man's." The flower dropped from his fingers. "And between the legs there is a little pearl of pleasure."

Chapter Fourteen

"Pearl of pleasure?" The wine had relaxed her sufficiently that she laughed aloud, although a bit breathlessly, at the silly nickname. "Is that the feminine version of a lord of pleasure? If so, I am sure I was made without one."

He grinned. "I suspect you are mistaken. I remember too well how tightly you clenched when I stroked you that morning."

Her stomach tightened and went warm in reaction to a rush of memory. "The morning with the maid in the room? The morning when you continued your lovemaking as if you did not care that we had an audience?"

"Be fair. We had no audience for what I did. A simple brush of my fingers? Did it not please you, to be stroked in that place? If the maid had not been there, I know—"

"The maid
was
there." She closed her eyes, the embarrassment of the moment rushing through her anew.

"Believe me, Helena, if she had not been there..." He paused, glancing at her as if to judge whether his words would shock her too much to be spoken. "I could barely contain myself. I wanted to shout, I wanted to move, to thrust against you until your...pearl of pleasure...made you shout in response."

"I am grateful you did not, then." She understood how much concentration he must have exerted in order to ride through his orgasm without the usual thrusts and plunges such activity required.

"What did it feel like?" She imagined that it had been painful. Not that she was an expert. But in the past three weeks she had learned what a man did to find his pleasure with a woman. And lying quietly was not something the wicked earl did while he made love.

He threw himself flat on his back with a rushed breath of laughter. "You cannot imagine my sweet Helena. You cannot know. I cannot describe it." His arms spread wide, his fingers combing through the grass with restless strokes. "Think of it as if you were to have the most pleasurable experience and yet be able to speak of it to no one."

So it had not been painful, after all. She watched her husband through a haze of desire. She wanted him to touch her. And yet at the same time she did not.

"I cannot imagine such a thing." Though he had come close to showing her, with his words alone. Why was it that these lessons of his, seemingly so simple, bound her to him tighter and tighter with a web of desire that stole her free will? Her common sense? She wanted to give him her heart, though she knew she would regret it if she did. She wanted to give him her body, to give herself permission to feel this orgasm he spoke of. But the very core of her warned her that to do so would jeopardize her soul.

"I want to show you how such ecstasy feels." Rand watched her as closely as she watched him. Looking for her response to his words. But she had the advantage of him, she realized.

"I think you are more concerned with your own desires." He stretched flat on the ground. She could see his erection, though they were both fully clothed and not touching.

"There is doubled pleasure when both are able to reach the ultimate pleasure Helena." Was that true? She had nothing to give away her own growing desire. She could rise and walk back home and he would never know whether she had been touched by his words.

"How many women have you brought to climax." She wished she hadn't asked that question. She thought of his eight bastards. She was very glad he could not see how that unpleasant thought had dimmed her glow.

Whereas, with one glance, she knew now that he was close to the bursting point. "All but one." His eyes were dark with want. "And her gates, I hope, will soon fall under my onslaught."

She understood in a flush of heat that his want was caught up with the need to bring her this flood of sensation. With her refusal to allow herself to be seduced into such abandonment.

He had been right when he told her that a woman who understood a man's desires might rule him. And to think that she had done it all without touching him once.

Something deep within her responded to the way he wanted her even when they had not touched, or kissed. Only talked of a woman's pleasure. And how a man might give it. Nevertheless, she had no intention of experiencing such a thing in the near future. "And if you are disappointed in your hopes today?"

"There is always tomorrow." He grew restless, turned one way and another as if finding no place comfortable. Helena understood the reason for his discomfort and reveled in the knowledge. What would he do to end this conversation?

Finally, he jumped to his feet and held out his hand to help her up. "Let's walk. I have been sitting for too long."

She was not fooled by his innocent smile. She knew what he wanted. "Is it a walk you want, my lord? Or a ride?"

He laughed as he pulled her to her feet. But he did not take her into his arms. "Do you offer me a mount, then?"

Speechless at his bold words, dizzy from the sudden change in position, she could only laugh with him.

With a glance over his shoulder at the little house at the bottom of the hill, he tugged her toward the nearest stand of trees.

The time for talking was done, it seemed. She knew what he wanted. But she was not as sure of her own desires.

She followed him into a nearby copse. But panic began to claw at her throat. They were outside, where anyone could happen upon them. It was too reminiscent of —

"Stop." Her feet refused to move. She pulled back on his tugging hand. She could go no further. Rand stopped and turned. Despite the raging fever that shone bright in his eyes, he heard the panic in her voice, saw the fear in her expression. His disappointment was palpable.

"I'm sorry," she said quietly. "I can't do this."

"No? Why not? We have done this before." His look was intense. Burning her with desire. "Would you truly object to my touching your breast?"

"Rand —"

"I thought you found it pleasant." He took a step toward her. "Through your clothing, perhaps? There is nothing too disagreeable with that idea, is there?" His voice was cajoling, like a child asking for a sweet he knew he shouldn't have but wanted past all reason.

Helena could find no reason to refuse that request, though she took a step backward involuntarily. If she were dressed, no one could fault them. "I suppose not."

"And kissing you." He moved a step closer. His lips were parted. "My lips on yours." He smiled. "That is innocent enough, is it not?"

Innocent. He knew nothing of innocence. "If it is only a kiss." Again she moved a pace away from him.

Another stride brought him near. "And if I wanted to peel away your clothing to expose your breasts to my eyes, and my eyes alone, would that be a sin?"

She could not think. Could not move. He had backed her against a tree, breathless, without a touch. And now he meant to kiss her.

He bent forward, but then paused, gazing at her in a puzzled manner. "You're pale as milk. It's not as though we've not done this before, Helena. What is the matter."

She glanced around at the serenity of the copse, trying to calm herself. "Someone might come."

He shook his head, freeing her breasts to his view. "No one comes here." She did not trust the assurance in his voice.

She should not agree, that she knew somewhere, faintly. But she wanted to so badly... Just as she had with William. But Rand was her husband. "Perhaps." She rubbed her hips against his. Through her skirts she could not feel his erection but she knew her movement would incite him. "If you were quick."

He sighed against her breast, a cool breeze over the heated nipple his tongue had laved. "This is not meant to be quick, Helena. Not if you are to find release."

Urgency made her frantic. "I am not the one who needs release — you are."

He moved with her, slowing her rhythm to a sensual grind. He continued kissing her, continued caressing her breasts. At last he lifted her skirts and she thought he would soon be done. But no, he acted as though they were locked in their bedroom, safe from prying eyes. His fingers played along her thigh as though he meant to take hours with her.

"Hurry," she said at last, reaching for him.

Rand felt her fingers hurrying him along and pulled away from her. "Damnation, Wife. Even a stud is given enough time to do the thing properly."

She was pale and more panicked than impassioned, he noted. "I cannot help but —" She looked around at the quiet trees, as if they all had eyes. She was clearly losing the mood as quickly as she had when the maid interrupted them.

For a moment he conceded defeat. And then a solution to the dilemma occurred to him. "Come with me."

He led her by the hand, rushing more than was wise with the twisted roots and fallen branches on the ground.

At last he stopped. "Here. Here, blasted woman. No one will see us here if we take the rest of our lives to enjoy our pleasures."