Georgie had been kissed before, but she had not kissed. A lady did not take the lead in such matters. Until she did, it seemed. She was a little unsure for a second, but then sensation and instinct took over. She brushed his sensual lower lip with hers, and then tasted it more fully. She opened her mouth a little wider, and deepened the kiss. His lips were warm and surprisingly soft, and she felt the slightest prickle of evening stubble under her palms as she cupped his face. She feared he would never respond to her – perhaps she did not please him – but just as that thought was about to freeze her into mortified immobility he made a low sound, almost a growl, against her lips, and everything changed. He came alive under her mouth, and an electric current seemed to pass between them.
An instant later they were devouring each other, open-mouthed, and she felt his big hands slide to her buttocks, capturing them, pulling her closer. She should have beenshocked by his presumption, by the sudden intimacy of his hands on her, but she was not. She liked it, all of it. She moulded her body eagerly to his and fastened her hands deep in his hair, giving herself up to the embrace and the sensations it aroused in her.
When at last their lips separated, they were both breathing hard. He did not release her, but held her still in a firm grip. His hands had slid up to her back now, under her jacket, warm on her skin through her thin shirt, and their faces were still very close. She could feel his breath on her cheek. He smelled of sandalwood and leather and spiced orange soap. He smelled edible.
‘And was that what you wanted?’ he whispered, and she thought that despite the ever-present note of mockery his voice was not quite steady. He had a great deal of control over himself, it seemed, but it was not quite perfect.
‘Yes.’ It certainly seemed as though it was.
‘And was thatallthat you wanted?’
It was not enough for him – she could feel the evidence of it, pressing hard against her belly. It did not frighten her; it gave her a dangerous and illusory sense of power. But still he would not take control from her; still he would make her choose and state her choice.
This was the true moment of no return, she thought.
‘No.’
He smiled; a new smile, a wolfish one. ‘Say it,’ he whispered against her mouth, and she shivered at the feather touch of his breath. ‘You need to say it.’
‘No, it was not all that I wanted. I want more from you than just a kiss.’
‘I’m not sure I would call that “just a kiss”. Perhaps it was otherwise for you; I found it highly memorable. But very well,madam. I am entirely at your service. What do you require of me?’
As if in a trance, she heard herself saying, ‘I cannot do anything that would risk…’
‘Of course you cannot; I understand perfectly. But that still leaves a wide enough field of endeavour, after all, as I am sure you know.’
She did know, if only in theory. Georgiana had been cautious with Captain Hart, despite his increasingly insistent entreaties. Caution: it seemed laughable now. They had not gone further than kisses and caresses, which had been pleasurable enough in all honesty. He had told her, of course, what more they might do, in the hope of inflaming her passions so that she lost her senses, and had exerted an insidious sort of pressure besides. If she really loved him, he had said… But Georgie was stubborn, as a girl blessed with five brothers and no sisters must be, and perhaps when all was said and done she had simply not wanted it enough to take the terrible risk, had not wanted him enough.
Yet in this room, with this utter stranger, a man whose name she did not even know, who thank God did not know her name, somehow, it was different. She reached out a finger – she did not have far to reach – and traced the classic lines of his mouth, the sculpted upper, the surprising fullness of his lower lip. He let out a breath, perhaps in surprise, and then his lips parted a little, as if in invitation, under her touch. And then she boldly pushed her finger between them – he did not attempt to resist her – and ran it along the moist tender flesh inside. And his clever tongue came out to meet her exploring finger, and lick it, suck on it, and she shivered as he tasted her. The moment stretched. The most insistent of Captain Hart’s caresses, his hands on her, had never made her feel anything like this. She remembered some of the shocking things that people, men and women both, had proposed to her a few minutes ago, before she had comeinto this room with this man. Oh, they had shocked her then, those whispered suggestions. It seemed a lifetime had passed in a few moments, and she wasn’t shocked any more. Forbidden delights suddenly seemed much more tempting as they stood close together, her finger in his mouth, his tongue caressing her skin. She withdrew from him slowly, and said in the lowest of whispers, ‘Yes. Your lips, your mouth, I want you to…’
Something flared in his eyes. ‘Once again you have surprised me,’ he said. ‘I congratulate you, for it is not easily done.’
‘I am glad. May I have my reward, then?’
‘Oh, yes,’ he said. ‘Oh, yes, I think you may.’
9
His hand went to the buttons at the fall of her breeches. Even then he halted for a moment, as if in question, and she made a low sound of impatience that set him smiling. He undid them deftly, and slid his hand inside. She gasped as she felt his warm fingers slip between her nether lips and gently, very gently cup her sex. She felt dizzy at the intimacy of the action, and was surprised by a sudden fierce urge to press herself against him, to move in the hope that he would move too. He made no further motion, though, but kissed her quick and hard as he held her, and murmured against her mouth, ‘Perhaps you will be more comfortable sitting down?’ He was right; with his hand on her she felt lightheaded, liquid, flushed with heat and tingling with the promise of fulfilment.
There was a velvet sofa just a step or two away, and he drew her across to it, his fingers still on her. She had no thought to do anything save go with him. He took his hand from her, slowly – reluctantly, it seemed to her – and she had just self-control and wit enough left to her to make no protest at the sudden absence. Then he fell to his knees before her in one graceful movement, drawing her breeches down over her thighs, and as he did so shesank helplessly into the soft cushions. ‘Alas,’ he said, ‘adorable though you are in this garment, I think we will both do better if I relieve you of it.’ He undid the buttons at her knees and in a moment she was naked below the waist. Apart from… ‘Shall we keep the stockings?’ he mused, settling back on his heels to regard her with glittering eyes, eyes that made her shiver with desire and anticipation. ‘I think we shall. The black is excessively becoming. They undoubtedly add… a certain something.’
Then his hands were on her legs, spreading her with a gentle but inexorable touch. ‘Although you might have noticed that I like to talk,’ he said, setting his hands firmly either side of her hips, ‘and talking to you has been enormously stimulating, I believe that now the time for talking is done. So I will not make myself tedious by asking you again if you want this. Indeed, you have given me every reason to think that you do. I hope I will find ways to please you, my Rosalind.’
And then he lowered his mouth to the side of her thigh, just above the knee, and began tracing his way slowly upwards. She leaned back against the sofa cushions in a sort of daze and looked down on his silvered head, wondering if she had run stark mad. But the sensations he was evoking soon drove every coherent thought from her head. When he reached the most sensitive and fullest part of her inner thigh, he kissed it lingeringly, and then to her enormous surprise bit it gently. A bolt of pure sensation shot to the hot, wet core of her; she gasped and arched her back. He laughed, a private sound, triumphant. He kissed where he had bitten, then withdrew a little and retreated to her other thigh, and once again he edged his way upwards with great care and deliberation. This time the anticipation heightened the pleasure, for she instinctively knew what he would do next. She was right: when he reached the point once more where her flesh was softest and most tender, therewas another long kiss, and then a bite, a little harder this time. She thought she cried aloud.
Then his mouth ventured on further, and she was truly lost. He settled forward on his knees and slid his hands under her naked buttocks, clasping her tightly and positioning her so that she was entirely exposed to him. She raised herself a little in shameless mute appeal, and he buried his face in the curls at the junction of her thighs, and set about devouring her.
His wickedly clever tongue explored her innermost folds and found her nub. When he fastened his lips on it and sucked it into his mouth, once again she cried aloud, and grasped the sofa cushions with each hand and bucked under him, pressing her core against him. Then he released her, but before she could moan in protest his tongue was sweeping along her crease to find her entrance, and laving around and around it, then pushing on inside her in the most intimate action she had ever known in her life. And then it all blurred together and she could no longer distinguish one thing from another; she merely knew that he was carrying her away on a rising tide of pure pleasure such as she had never known or imagined possible. His lips, his tongue, his face buried in her, his hands on her, holding her so tightly… She threw back her head and abandoned herself to it utterly.
When the great waves of sensation broke over her, she closed her eyes and let them take her. He did not stop, his mouth, his tongue still busy worshipping her, still drawing out exquisite sensations from her almost unbearably sensitised flesh, and as she returned slowly to what was left of her wits, she was for a moment unsure if she would die if he did not stop, or die if he did. But at last it was too much, too intense to bear any longer, and she moaned wordlessly in feeble protest. He seemed to understand her, for he drew away instantly, though he did not take his hands from her, but still held her possessively. Shewas still exposed to him, had no thought of covering herself, and he looked up at her in obvious appreciation, his desire for her obvious, his mouth wet and glistening. He was smiling beneath the mask that he still wore; his black and silver hair was wildly dishevelled and his eyes dark as sin, his pupils dilated. ‘I do not think that I would easily grow tired of doing that,’ he said, his beautiful voice caressing. ‘And nor, I think, would you. And now the question once again must be, was that enough for you? Or do you still want more, as I must confess that I do? And if indeed you feel the same, what next can I do to please us both?’
Something he could read in her face gave him sudden pause, though, and he released her then, sliding his hands from beneath her and reaching up with one long finger to capture a tear where it trembled on her eyelashes. ‘I had not known…’ she whispered brokenly, hardly aware of what she was saying, all her proud, false defences shattered into a thousand pieces.
‘I perceive that you had not,’ he said in a low tone, and was silent for a second. ‘Tell me,’ he went on in a more conversational tone, ‘had anyone done this to you before?’ She shook her head, any thought of lying to him far beyond her now. ‘And are you, in point of fact, a widow, or even – God help me – a wife?’
‘No.’
