Reuben could not believe his good fortune in having her pressed up against him here and now. If he hadn’t allowed himself a maudlin moment to get lost in the past, if he hadn’t reached out and pulled her to him that night in the statue garden, he would never have known just what it was he’d truly been missing all these years.
He couldn’t allow her to disappear from his life like that other young lady had long ago. Now that he’d found the person with which he could imagine himself passing blissful day after pleasurable night together, he could not possibly go back to how things were before. He had no interest in hunting ballrooms for prey. The only woman he wanted, the only person he needed, was right here in his arms.
He was suddenly, viciously glad Gladys was no longer a practicing courtesan. He held no rancor toward her past clients, but he could not bear the thought of the woman he loved forgetting all about him and opening her arms to—
Oh, shite. The woman he loved.
He held her closer. One night would never be long enough. What he really wanted was forever.
Chapter 17
Gladys knew better than to allow herself to believe there were real feelings driving this blaze of passion, but her damnable heart surged in hope all the same.
For five long years, she had prided herself on her unwavering commitment never to develop feelings for any of her clients. It turned out, she could not have given her heart away if she’d tried: it already belonged to someone else.
Love was for fools, and she was the biggest fool of them all! She knew what Reuben was: a butterfly, a bee, a feckless, careless rake. He’d made no attempt to hide that his interest in her was physical. That every action was calculated to seduce, not to woo.
And yet, even knowing all this, he had managed to make her feel courted as well as seduced. She was kissing him with abandon not because it was the next step in an elaborately planned vengeance stratagem, but because she wanted to kiss him, burned to kiss him, was desperate for any part of him that he would let her have.
She still had enough wits about her to know that whatever this was, it would not last beyond tonight. Reuben was infamous for not giving his past conquests a second look, and Gladys… Well, she was achieving several goals at once: scratching a half-decade-long itch to finish what they’d started in that garden all those years ago, and showing Reuben just what he’d been missing. What he would keep missing, once she rolled out of bed and strolled off without so much as a fare-thee-well.
“Bed” being a figurative term, in this case. The way things were going, he was just as likely to take her here against this wall as to bother searching out a horizontal surface.
They were too busy kissing to waste time on conversation. Reuben seemed as inflamed and as desperate to have her as Gladys felt about him. His hands cradled her face, roamed her body, gripped her midsection, hauled her to him. His arousal was evident between them, hard and hot and insistent against her belly.
He swung her away from the wall and toward the sofa. Her skirts tangled with the tea table, sending the rest of the playing cards flying, and her trusty little hourglass tumbling to the floor.
There it was, then: no safety net. There would be no way to know when the hour was through. Walking away would be up to Gladys and whatever was left of her self-control… and self-respect.
Reuben laid her atop the sofa cushions with surprising gentleness, as if taking great care not to break this new toy before he’d had the opportunity to fully play with it.
Gladys knew what came next: up with the skirts, down with the trousers, then several dozen sweaty thrusts before a loud grunt, followed by a shuddering collapse into semi-consciousness.
She was right about exactly one of those things.
Her skirts came up, and Reuben’s head went down. He knelt between her legs like a man at prayer, whose only wish was to worship what he found before him.
She gasped in shock and pleasure at the sensation of his tongue licking and swirling against her. She hadn’t thought she could feel more desire for him than she already did, but with every intoxicating lick and swirl, her blood pumped faster and what was left of her brains evaporated altogether.
“Do you like it like this?” he murmured against her cleft between sensual licks.
Did she… like it like… this? She could barely think from pleasure, every limb simultaneously boneless and yet tensed in anticipation of the impending climax that teased ever so close to release.
No one had ever asked her if she liked what they were doing before. Her wishes weren’t even an afterthought. They didn’t signify. Her pleasure was as inconsequential as her opinions on the matter.
The fact that Reuben cared enough to ask was almost enough to push her over the edge.
“Y-yes,” she stammered, when she found her breath. “I… like.”
“Hmm,” he purred against her trembling body. “Let’s try to find something that you love. How about this?”
Without ceasing his tongue’s expert seduction, he slid his hands up her thighs and pulsed a finger inside her.
She shattered at once, her thighs clutching his shoulders as she came apart against his face.
He did not stop until the tremors faded, then made his way up her body, kissing her midsection, her bosom, her neck. He pulled her to him, limp as a rag doll, and chuckled softly against her ear.
“Might I unlace your gown, or are you too knackered to continue?”
