The Pursuit of Pleasure (11 page)

“So many things to do with you.” He made the words low and soft, the complete opposite of the tense coil of need spiraling through his groin. No one was going to stop him this time. He would explore her to his heart’s delight and learn every last secret of her body. He could at long last replace fantasy with reality.

She moved a little apart, out from under his hands, aroused now, but still unsettled. He let her go, forcing his desultory attention to return to the cupboards. He had made her a promise. This one at least, he could and would keep.

Lizzie pulled a slatted basket off a shelf. “What about sea sponges? Collected from the beach, I suppose. Will they do?” Was there a hint of urgency in her voice?

“Perfect.” He picked out a small damson-sized sponge and held it up for her edification. “There you have it, Lizzie—the means to your seduction.”

“That? Seduction?” She tried to steady and shield herself with that veneer of worldliness. “You’d be better off with your little flask of whisky.”

Ah, now they were in familiar seas. He set his hands about her waist and lifted her up onto the table. She weighed nothing, a bare handful of a woman. Her apricot-ripe mouth came almost level to his, as did several other, more pertinent parts. Perfect.

“Is that what you’d like?” He reached slowly into the inner pocket of his coat as it hung off her shoulders, making sure the back of his hand brushed lightly against the flutter of fabric covering the peak of her breast. He drew the flask out and uncorked it. “Then by all means, have a wee dram.”

He had meant to arouse her, and judging by the flush heating her neck, he had, but the feel of her soft, warm skin through the insignificant barrier of fabric left him scorched, dazed and thirsty for her.

She had to tip her head back to drink and he feasted first his eyes, and then his hands, on the long slide of her neck leading down to the ripe swell of her breasts. He ran the backs of his fingers lightly along the top edge of her shift, toying with her nipples and reloosening the tie. He had to see her.

As Marlowe carefully peeled back the fabric to reveal the luscious pink tips, he felt Lizzie’s breath shiver out on a shaky, uneven sigh of pleasure. So responsive, his Lizzie. So beautiful, so vivid and fresh. Her nipples were the same pale pink as the inside of a strawberry, and suddenly he was thirsty for more than just the taste of whisky on her lips.

He moved to stand between her legs, pressing her knees wider and pulling her heat to the edge of the table. His erection strained against the confines of his breeches, and he eased himself for just a moment by pressing his restless cock into her belly and mound.

God, it felt good. So good. Heat poured out of her core. He was nearly wild to yank up the hem of her shift and show her all, here and now.

No. Virgins needed to be wooed gently, in a soft bed, not taken by flyer or initiated into coition on a stillroom counter. And this was Lizzie. No matter their history, no matter what experience she had, or hadn’t had, she needed proper handling. Because he wanted more from her than a quick tupping. He wanted nothing less than her complete and total surrender.

Marlowe heard the words echo around in his brain: seduction and surrender. They were tied up together in his mind. He could not pursue one without the other.

It took an effort to ease his cock away from her heat, but he was compensated for the loss by the erotic sight she presented. She was a delectable gamine, wearing his dark, masculine clothes: all tumbled ginger hair and soft luminous skin, her breasts framed by the rumpled, translucent shift, which barely veiled the riot of darker curls there, lower, where her waist slid in and then flared back out over her slim hips and long, God they were endless, legs. So perfect, he could not have conjured such a vision even from his deepest, darkest dreams.

“God. Look at you.” He put his hands on her knees and spread them infinitesimally wider, and then flipped up the hem of the shift so it rucked up over the junction of her soft white thighs.

She clamped her hands down on top of his to stop him, her knuckles white with shock and thwarted, suppressed need. Trying so hard to keep control of her curious, inexperienced body. She opened her mouth to speak but no words came, only the tense, almost ravaged sound of her breathing.

He smiled, in sympathy or perhaps encouragement, and watched the play of conflicting emotions scatter across her mobile, expressive face. Such a study in contrasts: she looked both vulnerable and avid. Needing to be convinced.

“I want to look at you Lizzie, all of you.”

Her breathing became shallower in reaction, her shoulders up in anticipation and confusion. “Why?”

“Because you’re beautiful. Everywhere. Because we were talking of seduction. Seduction and surrender. All you have to do is surrender to your desires.”

She tried again to cover her shock of arousal with worldliness, though her words were nothing but a breathy little whisper. “I’m going to need more whisky for that.”

“No more whisky, love. I want you lucid. I want you to feel and understand and remember everything.” He held the sponge up between them. “I want you to show me how it feels when I take this cool, wet sponge and press it up inside the heat of you.”

He lowered his hand and pressed it gently against her mound, over the gauzy layer of her shift. She gasped, and he felt the ripple of her desire undulate through her body.

This time, when her hand came down on his, it was as an accomplice, a co-conspirator in her seduction. She closed her eyes and guided his hand over her, letting the ripples of desire lap against the edge of her need until she began to move and sway, slightly at first, tentatively, testing the way it made her feel to appease the want growing within her.

And then in the next moment, she fisted up the material and raised it, baring herself for him.

“Lizzie.” Her name whispered from his lips: both a benediction and prayer.

His hand was on her mouth, his thumb tugging at her lower lip, opening her mouth for a rough kiss. He kissed her hard. He kissed her the way he’d always wanted to: with nothing but need and want between them. No barriers or pretensions, no rank, no prohibitions to correct behavior. There was ten years of waiting and wanting in that kiss.

He cupped her face in his hands, staring into her fathomless eyes.

“Do you know, I think I’ve gone about this all wrong. Here I’ve been thinking you need all sorts of consideration because you’re a virgin, but you don’t really want to be a virgin, do you Lizzie? You, so quick and curious, so eager. Your maidenhead must be rather a burden to you at this point. And since you don’t want to be a virgin, I rather think you don’t want to be treated like a virgin. Certainly a virgin wouldn’t ask her lover,or God forbid, her husband, for a precaution. Only a woman with experience, a woman who knew what it was like,” he leaned in beside her ear and whispered, “for a man to come between her legs and fuck her, would do that. And I think that’s what you really want.”

The coarse, improper word shot through her like an arrow tipped in lust, unleashing a flood of dark, forbidden thoughts and sensations. The low cadence of his voice was as evocative and effective as a touch. Each word, each deep vibration of his low tone, hummed through her.

And other words as well, the ones he had said before:
I promise to make it worth your wait.

And she had waited. Impatiently, it was true, but she had waited. He had left her hovering on the brink of something dangerous. Wanting more. But she had waited out her curiosity and frustration. For him. For Jamie. For
this.
For the dark pleasure he brewed in her like strong, almost bitter chocolate, flowing and swirling through her veins.

And she was lost when he looked at her with those eyes, those pale, gray, all-seeing eyes. Did he not know there was nothing she would not do when he looked at her like that? As if nothing else mattered to him but her. As if he could see into the depths of her soul and he loved her anyway.

“Surrender, Lizzie,” he whispered.

Did he not see she already had? She was trapped by her need, pinned by his icy hot gaze as he put his big hand on her belly and urged her back and down, flat on the counter.
Yes. Oh, yes.

He followed her down, leaning in to kiss her mouth once more before he whispered, “Surrender, to me.”

She watched through half-closed eyes, fascinated and aroused by the sight of him looking at her breasts, at her body. By the exquisite feeling of his dark, masculine hands stroking her pale, white breasts. And by the bliss bursting across the surface of her skin and then diving deep into her belly, when he lowered his mouth to take first one, and then the other breast into his mouth. The pull of his lips on her nipples created a tight, needy heat between her legs.

His hand stayed, pressing his warm palm into her belly, holding her still as he sucked and nipped at her, teaching her body to arch and reach up to him. Teaching her to want more. “Yes,” he smiled gently. “Give in to the pleasure. Surrender.”

Her hands were on his face, along the strong line of his jaw, brushing into his soft hair. Her fingers burned where they touched him, pain and pleasure running riot under her skin. Lizzie closed her eyes and let go, spreading her arms open wide in invitation and surrender. To him. To the bliss.

She let all thought, all decision, slide away into nothing. She opened her eyes to watch again as he circled his thumbs on the soft, vulnerable skin of her inner thighs, readying her, waiting as the soft rush of sensation broke over her, sending anticipation quivering through her body. She watched as his possessive gaze ran slowly down her body until he came to her open sex.

He stirred the backs of his fingers lazily through her curls, and she felt her body draw taut and ready. Ready for the delight he offered her like a gift.

“Look at you. You want me to touch your breasts again, to kiss you, lick you, don’t you? But I’m not going to.” His low voice was softly insistent. “I’m going to kiss you
here.
And lick you and suck you here.”

Yes, she thought again. She had no hesitation, no caution left within her. His words and his hands encouraged and emboldened her.

He parted her folds with his thumbs and blew a soft warm breath across her. “You’re wet.”

“I’m sorry.” Although she had no idea what exactly she apologized for. She just knew she didn’t want to disappoint him.

“No.” She heard his sly smile in his warm voice. “It’s good. I like your wet little quim.”

Another thrill of forbidden pleasure at his words. Her skin prickled in anticipation as his sea-roughened hands slid ever closer to the tight heat at the junction of her thighs. There. Her quim, Jamie had called it. Now she knew. He made it sound lush and erotic. And suddenly, she understood him, when the tip of his tongue slid into her and she could hear the soft, hungry sound of pleasure hum out of her throat and the answering murmur from his.

She felt lush and erotic. She felt open and free, flying away on a gust of pleasure.

The warmth of his mouth was both arousing and soothing, lulling her with wave after wave of sweet, gentle delight. Until he drew away for the briefest moment, and then, with one precisely delicate touch, licked her,
there.
In a spot that sent heated shivers coursing outward throughout her body, loosening and tightening the tense, unholy heat within her.

She moaned, a strangled, desperate sound, drowning in her pleasure. But her body told him what she could not.

“Oh, yes, there,” he answered. She felt the vibration of his mirth somehow from within her.

Jamie did it again, only different, his tongue swirling through her, scattering her thoughts out to the farthest reaches of her nerve endings until she could feel nothing but his mouth, his hands, there.

And then there was something new, and, oh God, he’d slipped his finger inside her, touching her deeply, stroking lightly and powerfully at the same time. A burst of almost painful bliss blossomed out of her chest and radiated deeper, feeding the nameless craving, this desperate yearning for something more. She realized her hips were arching up when she felt the stern pressure of his hand holding her down.

A wordless groan of frustration and want hissed through her teeth, but he heard her and understood. So understanding, so generous with this flaming joy he could ignite within her. Another finger followed the first and she felt full, engorged by the abundance of her desire. Drawn tight, inflamed, and nearly, nearly …

His tongue flicked over her one last time and she cast herself off, out into the welcoming oblivion, flying, soaring through her bliss, and then floating back and forth upon the updraft of her desire, to land softly back down, with Jamie.

She opened her eyes to find him waiting above her, watching the pleasure steep into her bones. She felt dazed, surprised even, stunned and boneless with relief. He said nothing, only watched her. The only sound was the frantic rush of her spent, ravaged breathing.

“Jamie.” She sounded drunk, and she was, intoxicated by the bliss he had given her. She couldn’t keep her joy contained.

He smiled back, his eyes still roving over her body, coming to rest on her lips. The pad of his thumb brushed lightly against her lower lip: a suggestion of a kiss. She drew it into her mouth and bit down slowly, exploring his callused finger with just the tip of her tongue, breathing deep to let the growing pleasure refill her lungs.

“Oh, yes.” His mouth followed his hand with a deeper kiss. He was right, she did not want gentle. She wanted the heat and light, she wanted him. She wanted to consume and be consumed by him.

“Please.”

Jamie nodded slowly and tightened his hands on her hips, still standing between her open legs. And then his hands were fast at the buttons of his breeches.

“Yes.”

Yes. Her body leapt inside her skin in anticipation. Yes, she wanted more. She wanted him. She wanted everything his words, his eyes, and his clever hands had promised.

A bell jangled harshly: an unwelcome intrusion of reality, nearby. The kitchen doorway.