She expected him to take it further. To drown her in all the sensation until there was nothing left but it and him. But he didn’t. To her surprise, he stepped back and stared at her with wild eyes full of question and something darker. Something deeper.
She smoothed her skirts, trying to find purchase in a world he seemed to so easily turn on its head. “Why are you looking at me like that?” she whispered.
He didn’t say anything for a beat, and then he took her hand. “I know we agreed we couldn’t do this anymore. I know we both have reasons why whatever attraction exists between us cannot be explored. It has no good end.”
She moved to tug her hand away, but he held firm. “Wait, please wait,” he pressed. “What that man did to you is a crime. What he took from you is a crime. Not your virginity, though that was needlessly cruel and manipulative.”
“He didn’t take anything else,” she insisted. “It was Hugh’s money, not mine.”
“Not the money, Elizabeth,” he said sharply. “I’m talking about making you think that what you feel is wrong. That what you want is wrong. That when you feel that ache low in your belly, the one that makes you dream of being touched, the one that wakes you sweating, the place between your legs throbbing…that you are wicked for feeling that.”
Her breath came short and hard. It was as if he could see into her soul in that moment. More than any other time he had pushed past her defenses and seen everything.
“But I can’t go back,” she whispered. “You seem to think what I experienced that first time wasn’t how it should have been.”
“It wasn’t,” he said, his jaw setting. “If it had been me, I would have made it so good for you.”
Her sex pulsed at that thought.If it had been him.“Are you offering to make it good for me now?” she whispered. “Out of some kind of pity?”
“Not out of pity.” His voice was rough. “And if you asked me to, I could most definitely make it good for you now.”
She stared at him, unable to blink, unable to move in shock. “You—you’re talking about taking me?” She shook her head. “No. No I can’t. I can’t make that mistake again.”
“Not everything is about taking you. Though God knows I will only think of that for the rest of the night.” He squeezed his eyes shut. “I shouldn’t have said anything. No matter how unfair what he did to you is, I shouldn’t have said anything. I’m sorry.”
She watched his mouth move and her head spun. When he touched her, it was everything. When he kissed her it was earthshaking. But what he was suggesting was something…more. Would it erase the past? No. She wasn’t fool enough to believe it could. But she still felt a longing for what he could give. A need that she hated herself for, but couldn’t deny. Didn’t want to deny when she was so close to him in this small parlor.
She was shaking like a leaf ready to fall from a tree in an autumn breeze. “Y-You said not everything is about taking me. So how would you make it good for me if you…if you didn’t?”
His eyes went wide. “Are you asking me to?”
“Tell me how,” she repeated. “Sh-show me how.”
Now he swallowed, and there was an almost pained expression on his face. A war he was battling. A war she saw him lose as he bent his head, shook it slowly and then sighed. “I would…lock the door.”
She watched as he backed toward the door, his gaze never leaving her. He reached back and turned the key in the lock with a quiet click. Her breath hitched, but she didn’t tell him to stop.
“Then I’d come back to you,” he whispered, and he moved toward her. “And I’d kiss you again. Because I know you like it when I kiss you. Don’t you?”
She nodded, unable to speak. What were words when his mouth was coming toward hers? He did deepen the kiss then, as he hadn’t earlier, and she wrapped her arms around his neck with a shuddering sigh of pleasure.
He pulled away from her mouth just as she was lost, but he didn’t release her from his embrace this time. He backed her toward the settee in front of the fire and lowered her back across it gently. Then he knelt before her, his mouth seeking hers once more.
“Then,” he said against her lips. “I would touch you. Not take you, Elizabeth. Touch you.” He drew away and met her gaze. “But only if you want it. I’m not like him. I won’t be angry if you say no. I’ll stop if you’ve changed your mind.”
Her lips parted. This was her chance to refuse him. Her chance to forget this had happened, walk away from it and from him and from all the confusing, maddening, terrifying things this exchange made her feel and want.
Instead she whispered, “Where would you touch me?”
He didn’t speak again. He just rested a hand on her right breast. Gently, with almost no pressure, but it was there and she flashed briefly to a night long ago with a very different man. His fingers had dragged against her skin. Almost rough. She’d been too embarrassed to enjoy that touch. But this…this was different. Morgan kissed her as he stroked his fingertips so gently against her breast, plucking at her nipple beneath her gown. It hardened beneath his attention, rising against the fabric, and causing a friction that made her sigh with the echo of pleasure she felt deep inside of her.
His mouth broke from hers and she heard the desperate rasp of his breath. He kept his gaze locked on hers as he slid his hand lower. She braced as his fingers glided over her stomach, across her hip, and then he placed his hand between her legs.
“Then I’d touch you here,” he whispered. “First through your dress to let you grow accustomed to it.” As he spoke, he moved his fingers lightly, grinding between her thighs, gentle but insistent on her sex.
Aaron hadn’t touched her here. Not with his hand. He’d kissed her, stripped her, squeezed and plucked her breasts a bit, and then he’d just…taken. Pain and humiliation had been her strongest emotions that night.
She didn’t feel either now. She felt waves of sensation, tingling and heated and oh, so very pleasurable, that seemed to spiral out from wherever his hands touched her. Right now she throbbed between her legs and he added just the right among of pressure with his touch to make that throb all the better.
