“But,” he continued, his voice gone husky, “to add a bit of safety…”
He went to one side of the window, grasping the gossamer drapes there, pulling them across the expanse of the wall so that only the most brilliant of the chandelier lights reached them.Then, taking her hand in his, he pulled her with him farther into the shadows before, snaking an arm about her waist, he drew her flush against his body.“No one can see in,” he murmured.“Anything can happen in this room, and no one will be the wiser.”He smiled again, and she felt it down to her toes.“I even had the wherewithal to lock and bolt the door.”
Sheshouldsay something witty or clever to distract him.Sheshouldpush him away and ask all the questions she needed to about this private area of the club, a place she had hoped, in her seduction of him, that she would be invited into.
She, however, did neither of those things.Instead she reached up, grabbed his face in her hands, and dragged him down for a kiss.
It was all the encouragement he needed.Groaning into her mouth, he stumbled his way to a couch tucked in the darkest corner, then dropped down onto it, pulling her astride him.Then his hand was between them, opening the fall of his trousers, and he was guiding himself inside her.
“Bloody hell,” he ground out through tightly clenched teeth as his fingers moved to her hips, bringing her down fully on him.
It was a sentiment Heloise herself would have willingly echoed, had she not been completely devoid of a voice.They stayed that way for a time, breaths ragged.Her inner muscles pulsed around his shaft, and he jumped inside her in response.
“Our game is still not done,” he suddenly said, breath hot on her neck.
Still focused quite thoroughly on the feel of him inside her, she did not immediately understand what he said.When she finally did comprehend it, she pulled back and gaped at him.“You still wish to play that game?Are you mad?”
He laughed, the sound strained.“Most likely.I have never in my life done something like this.But it’s my turn, is it not?”
“Yes.”She gasped as he shifted beneath her, angling himself even deeper within her.“W-what do you want to ask of me?”
With the small portion of her mind still capable of coherent thought, she half expected him to request something intimate in nature.But instead he asked, “How many have there been for you after your husband?”
“Just you,” she breathed.“There has only been you.”
“Oh God, Heloise,” he groaned a moment before, hand hooking around the nape of her neck, he dragged her down for a kiss.And it was not just any kiss, but one of desperation, of need.It branded her, that kiss, as surely as a hot poker pulled from her forge would.
Nearly mindless now, her fingers began working desperately at his clothes, tugging and pushing them from his body.His fingers were busy, too, moving with impressive dexterity down the long column of buttons at her back.Soon the only articles of clothing left on her body were her silk stockings.
She should feel wicked, naked in his arms as she was, with half the men of the ton on the opposite side of the thin pane of glass.Instead, as he pulled her tight against him and the hard, hot expanse of his chest pressed againsther sensitive breasts and quivering stomach, she found she could only think how deliciously right this was.
“You feel like heaven,” he breathed.
She smiled and kissed his shoulder, a thrill going through her when he groaned and buried his face in her neck.Snaking her arms about his back, she pressed her fingers into the broad expanse.But the skin beneath her fingertips wasn’t smooth.In fact, it was rough, a veritable map of ridges.She frowned, momentarily distracted from the feel of him filling her…
Until he pressed an openmouthed kiss to her collarbone.His hands were tight on her hips as he began to move her on him, and she had no more time to think.
“Ride me, sweetheart,” he pleaded hoarsely.
She did as he begged, holding tight to him, her hips moving seemingly of their own volition, the friction at the very heart of her building.His low moans and harsh breaths and large hands on her body played in concert with the sensation, and she quickly came apart, splintering into a million pieces.She had no sooner descended back to earth than Ethan lifted her from his member, quickly spending himself in a handkerchief before pulling her back into his arms, holding her more tenderly than she had ever been held in her life.
Some time later—it could have been minutes or centuries for all Heloise knew—she shifted in Ethan’s arms, achingly aware of their hearts slowing in concert with one another’s, as well as her body’s utter unwillingness to move.And so, snuggling closer, smiling as his arms tightened ever so slightly about her, she began a slow, languorous stroking of his sweat-slicked back—only to feel those peculiar ridges against her fingertips again.
She frowned, tracing them, trying to deduce what theycould be.Which was perhaps too obvious; he suddenly stilled beneath her.His hands, which had been doing their own slow exploration, stilled as well, splaying across her back.Face heating, she was about to blurt out an apology when he spoke.
“It’s your turn, you know,” he murmured, his lips brushing against her neck in the most maddening fashion.
She blinked.“What?”
“Your turn.For our game.”He took her shoulders in his hands then, gently pushing her back far enough that he could look her in the eye.“You can ask me something.If you wish.”His lips quirked then, his eyes sparkling ruefully in the low light.“If you’re not fainthearted, that is.”
“You can be assured,” she declared automatically, “I am not the least bit fainthearted.”
He lifted one eyebrow.Yet she saw the glimmer of something vulnerable beneath it all.He was giving her permission to ask him something that must be quite sensitive, offering to open himself up to her.Her heart swelled.
Even so, she found it difficult to outright ask why his skin was so marred.He must have seen her hesitation; after a pause, he sighed softly and set her on the couch beside him before turning slightly so she might witness what she had only felt.
How she managed to keep from gasping in shock, she would never know.She had seen her fair number of wounds and scars, of course.Working in her uncle’s smithy for so many years, she had been witness to countless burns and cuts, not to mention the broken bones her uncle had set and the gashes he had stitched, a blacksmith’s job not stopping at mere metalworking.
