The tenor of the kiss shifted slowly. It had started out gentle, explorative, but the need in it shifted the longer they stood there. His lips grew rougher, more insistent, and she met him with her own pulsing desire. He grunted out pleasure as she clutched his lapels and tugged, smashing herself tighter against him.
He pivoted, spinning her so that her back was to the sideboard. Leaning into her so she felt the length of his body and his cock pressed firmly to her stomach. She wanted them both so very badly.
She snaked a hand into the tight space, letting her palm stroke over him through his trousers, feeling him shudder when she did so. He yanked away and stared down at her. His expression was fierce, no longer the playful lothario with all the time in the world to seduce and pleasure.
No, this Ellis was a man driven. A man who feared to lose. A man who needed to forget, and she was willing to be the one who helped him do just that. He leaned in, his mouth finding her throat, sucking there, biting gently, and she arched at the unexpected flash of pain amidst the pleasure.
Pain she actually liked, given the way her sex throbbed in response. He smiled at the jolt of her body, licking where he had nipped, and then his hands came to her hips and he lifted her up onto the sideboard.
Glasses rolled away, the bottle of whisky rocked, and she squealed at the unexpected movement. “Ellis, we’re making a mess,” she protested.
“Not yet we aren’t,” he grumbled, and then he cupped the back of her head and drew her down for another kiss. She grabbed his cheeks, her fingers fanning across the rough evidence of beginnings of a beard. She lost herself in full lips, a rough tongue, the way he whispered her name as he reached down to unfasten his trousers with one hand even as he cupped her head with the other.
The front fall dropped away and she broke the kiss to look down at him, already hard. Already waiting. She could see now the value of being placed on the sideboard. It aligned them perfectly.
She worried her lip before she parted her legs, before she gathered her skirt into her fists and slowly pulled it up. He shook his head, his cheeks bright with color, his eyes dark with determination.
He stepped into the space she’d created and placed his hands on her thighs. He slid them upward and the fine fabric glided up, revealing her stockings and her drawers.
“Wider,” he ordered.
She didn’t have to ask what he meant. She pushed her legs farther apart and the drawers gaped at the slit. He nodded, his gaze transfixed on the pink of her sex as it peeked out from the fabric.
He cupped her hips and dragged her forward, sliding her to the very edge of the table. Then he leaned up to kiss her as his hand came between her legs. His fingers tiptoed into the fold of the fabric of her drawers and brushed her sex.
She was wet. She already knew that, but he smiled against her mouth as he discovered it. He maneuvered her a fraction more, matching the head of his cock to her entrance, and then he surged forward.
She was still a bit tender from the first time, but the pain was gone as he seated himself in one wild and reckless thrust. She gripped her thighs around his waist with a cry and clung to his shoulders.
That seemed to be the permission he needed because he began to move in earnest. He thrust, circling his hips on every movement, grinding against her so that the pleasure mounted and mounted every time. She dipped her head back and he took advantage, tracing patterns on her exposed skin with the tip of his tongue.
And he took. His fingers dug into her body through her dress, the table creaked and the bottles shivered with every hard, powerful thrust. Harder and harder, building them both toward release. She reached for it, rising to meet him, gasping for breath as the waves of pleasure built in her. And just when she felt she might not be able to take anymore, he pressed his hand between them again and circled her clitoris with his thumb, ’round and ’round, harder and harder.
She cried out his name, jerking against him as sensation overtook reason. Pleasure tore through her, out of control and wild, and she chased it, surrendering as he dragged her into madness. But at least she wasn’t alone. His face contorted as he watched her come, his fingers digging harder and the cords of tendons in his neck tightening as he reached his own edge.
When he fell, he roared and jerked from her body to come into his hand. They were gasping together as he rested his forehead on hers, wordless and soundless except for the sharp intake of their breath that slowly matched.
She wanted this to last forever. This abandonment of the rules she had followed her entire life. She wanted to chase him into oblivion, to stop worrying over all she had to change and repair and instead give into all the pleasures the world had to offer. Chiefly the man who was now stepping away from the circle of her hips.
He stared down at her as he wiped his palm on a handkerchief and then rebuttoned his trousers. “Too much?” he asked, his voice rough from passion.
She shook her head as she smoothed her dress back down and carefully pushed down from the edge of the sideboard. “Exactly what you promised me, I think,” she said. “And exactly what I wanted, Ellis. You didn’t take advantage.”
He rubbed a hand through his hair as he walked away. “Angel, I have been taking advantage from the first moment I laid eyes on you. Let’s not pretend otherwise.”
“Why do you do that?” she asked, and all the old habits rose up in her.
He pivoted and speared her with a glare she supposed was made to make her nervous. It didn’t. She saw it for the shield it was now. “Take advantage?” he growled. “Because I’m a bad person, Juliana.”
Her lips parted. “No, dothat. Talk about yourself so meanly. You have certainly done some lamentable things, I won’t pretend you haven’t. But you clearly aren’t a bad person. I’ve heard how you protected Rook as a child. A bad person would have simply left him to his fate. You are a man who did the best he could with the circumstances he was thrust into.”
“And why doyoualways try to make me into a hero?” he asked, folding his arms across that wonderful broad chest. “I’m not one of your projects, angel.”
She flinched at the harshness of his tone. “Then what are you? If not a villain and not someone who can be helped, what are you, Ellis Maitland? Why are you so desperate when it comes to finding Winston Leonard? Why are you so driven?”
He stared at her and briefly she thought he might simply kick her out of his house. Send her home in his carriage to explain herself to her angry family. Prove that he was the bastard he so desperately wanted her to believe he was.
But then his expression softened a fraction. She saw the real man behind the mask. The one she liked so much when he allowed her a glimpse. The one who she knew instinctively could be andwasmore than what he pretended to be with his false smiles and lies.
