At her cry he swept her up into his arms and laid her down on the couch. Kneeling beside her, he suckled first one breast and then the other until she could breathe only in short, panting gasps.
“Tell me how you feel,” he whispered, trailing his mouth with agonizing slowness down her belly, up again to her breasts, along her collarbone and up her throat before capturing her mouth again.
“On fire. Please, Lucien.”
“Please what?”
The only term she knew for it was the one he’d used earlier. “Make love to me.”
He smiled. “As you wish.”
Turning to sit on the floor, he pulled off his boots. Alexandra kissed his shoulder blades and ran her palms around his waist and his flat, well-muscled stomach. Shifting up on one elbow, she kissed and nibbled his ear. He groaned again. Encouraged, she slipped her hands down to assist him with unfastening his breeches, using the opportunity to explore the hard, straining bulge there.
“Wanton,” he rasped, setting her hands away from himself as he shrugged the breeches down to his thighs and then kicked out of them.
“It’s your fault,” she retorted, fascinated and hot and terrified at the sight of his full, hard erection. With a slight grin he let her look, and then lay down along the deep couch beside her.
She reached for him again, and this time he endured her heated, fumbling exploration for several moments, his jaw clenched, before he pushed her hands away.
“Good God,” he moaned, and shifted atop her.
Again her body seemed to know what to do, even if her mind had lost the ability to produce any kind of rational thought. She bent her knees, welcoming his hardness pressing at her thighs. “Now,” she said, pulling at his hips.
He kissed her again, deeply and roughly, and shook his head. “Now we go slowly,” he countered, every muscle tense.
She knew instinctively how tightly he was holding himself, how difficult this would be for someone as used to bedding women as he was. “Now,” she repeated, and lifted her hips.
Pain shot through her as his length filled her. She would have pulled back, but he clasped her hips to his. “Wait,” he commanded in a hissing breath.
He held her there for a long moment as the pain faded away. She could feel all of him inside her, as though he were touching her and holding her everywhere at once. “Lucien,” she whispered again.
With another deep kiss he began to move his hips slowly, and then harder and faster as she found and matched his rhythm. Her body tightened and clenched and shattered inside, and she cried out in pure ecstasy. A moment later he buried his face in her hair and groaned, holding himself tightly against her before he collapsed.
Trying to regain her breath and her senses, Alexandra ran her hands along his back, welcoming his warmth and his weight. “So that’s what Byron was writing about,” she said, more intensely satisfied than she could ever remember being in her life.
He chuckled, the sound resonating in her own chest, and raised on one elbow to kiss her again. “Now you see why young, virginal females aren’t supposed to read him.”
“I’m nearly twenty-four,” she replied, kissing him back, “and I don’t believe I’m virginal any longer.”
“I should say not, thank God.”
Having his skills at sex compared to Byron’s poetry was not a bad way to conclude the evening, Lucien decided—though he had no intention of ending the evening yet. Alexandra Gallant had an extraordinary wit, beauty, courage, and passion. She’d befuddled him from the moment he had first seen her in his study, and he wasn’t through with befuddling her.
As his breathing returned to normal, he sat up. Alexandra looked three-quarters asleep, for which he could hardly blame her. Given that tonight had been her first experience with sexual intimacy, she’d been spectacular.
“Do you think Lord Belton will offer for Rose?” she asked, sitting up beside him to pull on her shift.
No hysterical tears and cries of regret from his Alexandra. She took what the world gave her and dealt with it. Lucien smiled.His Alexandra. Now, what would she think of that? “Robert’s got more sense than that. He’s just trying to ruffle my feathers.”
“In that case, you definitely need to hold a birthday celebration for your cousin. Mrs. Delacroix was right.”
Lucien sat back on the couch and looked at her, noting that she seemed to have retained her fascination with his nether regions. “Back to business as usual? Parties and dinners and what to wear to luncheon on Thursday?”
She made a face at him and knelt on the floor to find her stockings. “Beg pardon, my lord. You are the expert at…what comes after making love. What are we supposed to discuss?”
He took a quick breath, wondering how much he should tell her of what he’d decided that evening, and about his belated realization that he’d already found and interviewed the woman he wanted to marry. “How about your future?”
Alexandra paused in the middle of gathering up her dress. “Are you telling me to leave?”
