She nodded, pushing away the ache those words caused. “I know,” she said. “But you could give me something else, Baldwin. I-I want you. And I know I’ll never have this chance again to want someone and have that wanting returned. To trust someone to give me what I shouldn’t ask for as a lady.”
“Whatareyou asking for?” he murmured as he traced her cheek with the tip of his finger.
She caught her breath and forced herself to be brave. “You, Baldwin. I want you.”
Chapter Fourteen
Baldwin burned as she said those words. The ones he knew were coming, the ones that made him come back to life after years of being dead, buried in pain and betrayal and failure.
This ache that he felt for her, it only grew deeper now that he knew her story. Now that he heard her strength.
“You’re asking for an…affair?” he asked, wishing his voice didn’t waver.
Her cheeks brightened with high color, and he shuddered as he recalled the same heat entering them when he brought her to completion the night before. Even slightly wobbly, it was a powerful memory he savored far more than he should.
She wrung her hands and he felt her struggle. Men of their sphere were allowed to explore their desires. Expected to, even. It did not harm their future, assuming one was prudent about it.
He recognized how different desire was for a woman. Ladies were very often taught that desire was a point of shame. That pleasure was not to be expected. And if they were ruined…
Well, Helena’s situation summed up the consequences perfectly. She had been assaulted, but the blame was laid at her feet. Somehow she’d had the strength to pull herself through the trauma of that night, but she had suffered for it.
The idea that she would trust him, gift him, with her reawakening…well, that was the most powerful thing of all.
“An affair,” she repeated softly, as if hearing those words in her own voice would help her decide if that was her path. “Y-yes,” she stammered at last, and looked at him with clear eyes. “I do want that.”
He moved even closer to her on the blanket. Now he felt the delicate warmth of her skin against his. Now he felt the way she trembled ever so slightly. He traced his thumb across her cheek and she shivered with the touch.
“You know what I can and can’t offer you,” he said, hating that he had to say those words. “The idea of taking advantage of you is abhorrent.”
She held his stare. “Everyone else gets what they want, Baldwin. I know the limitations. I understand the reasons why. But if we both agree, if we both understand, then no one will take advantage, will they? And this is that chance to get this one little thing that we want.”
With that statement, she was a siren. He was a sailor, only he saw the rocks, saw the danger. He saw it all and he didn’t care. Because what she offered was so fucking sweet.
He tilted her face up and kissed her once more. She opened to him right away, and her enthusiasm dissolved any remaining hesitance he might have. He wanted her. She was offering him a chance to have her. And with that chance, he would not only take. He would make sure that this affair was only pleasure to her. That it helped to mute her painful memories. That it would create new ones they could both recall after it was…after it was over.
He shoved that future away and laid her back on the blanket. He rolled to cover her and shivered when her arms came around his back in welcome and surrender. He had needs, such powerful needs. But right now he didn’t care about those. He wanted her to enjoy this.
He deepened the kiss and she let out a shuddering sigh against his lips. He drove inside, tasting every inch of her mouth, thrusting with his tongue like he would eventually do with his body. When he felt her relax against him, it was only then that he touched her. He let his hand glide up her side and cupped one breast through her silky gown.
She arched beneath him with a gasp that broke their kiss, and he drew back to watch her in her pleasure. Last night he’d been too tipsy to really gauge all her reactions well. Right now he reveled in the way her eyes widened and her pupils dilated. In the way her breath hitched when his thumb traced the outline of her nipple. In how she lifted her hips to his, and he doubted she even knew she was doing it because she was lost in his touch.
“I want to take you, Helena,” he murmured as he kept circling that nipple over and over again. “You cannot fully understand how much I want that.”
She gave a jerky nod. “I think I understand a little.”
He smiled. “I’m not doing it here.”
Her face fell. “No?”
“I want this affair, I do. But I recognize fully what a gift you are giving me to offer it. After what you’ve experienced, I’m not going to treat you like some scandalous tup that means nothing. It means a great deal.”
He had continued to swirl his thumb around her nipple as he spoke, and she was nodding, but he could see the pleasure was distracting. Good. He wanted her distracted by pleasure every time he touched her. He wanted her trembling with it. Weak with it. She deserved that.
She deserved far more.
“Right now I’m going to make you come,” he promised.
She stared at him. “Come?”
