Chapter Thirteen
The instant Rosemaryhad walked through the door and laid her eyes upon Sterling, her anger had faded and her doubts had drained away. She’d never seen anyone, human or animal, in such blatant misery before, and all she’d wanted to do was comfort him. To heal his hurt. To hold his hand. To let him know that whatever agony he’d chosen to endure, he didn’t have to travel the path of it alone. She was here now, and she wasn’t going anywhere.
Even when he tried to convince her that he wasn’t worth saving, she remained resolute in her resolve to stay by his side. Because a relationship between two people wasn’t always pretty, and if you wanted the good then you had to be there for the bad.
“For a wallflower who hasn’t seen much of the world, Rufina, you’re very wise.” A half-smile took hold of his mouth as he traced the arch of her cheekbone with a bent knuckle. Their heads remained pressed intimately together, their legs connected ankle to hip, their shoulders touching. Even when they were kissing, they’d never been this close; connected on a level that went beyond the physical…while still leaving plenty of space for Sterling’s teasing.
“Rufina?” she said skeptically.
“I may be running out of names,” he admitted.
“You could always use mine.”
“I could, but what would be the fun in that?” A long, heavy sigh and then he slumped back against the bench, kicking his feet out in front of him as he gazed at the ceiling. “I’m glad that I met you, Rosalind. Even if I thought you were Lady Emma Crowley.” A hint of the roguish charm for which he was renowned rose to the surface as he glanced at her out of the corners of his eyes. “You would make a smashing blonde.”
Scowling ever-so-slightly, Rosemary touched her hair. “If you’d prefer to marry Lady Emma–”
“God no,” Sterling interrupted with a shudder. “Have you ever heard her laugh? The sound of it would make a hyena cringe. Besides, I’m not about to anger that furry-tailed rat in your pocket by reneging on my proposal. He’s already brutally attacked me once. I am not about to give him an excuse to go after me again.”
“Are you referring to the painless nibble Sir Reginald gave you in the tree?”
“Painless nibble?” he said incredulously. “Is that what we’re calling it? You should consider yourself lucky that I’m not a eunuch.”
Inadvertently, her gaze flicked to his lap, and she blushed when he boldly patted himself there.
“Not to worry, love. All is in working order.”
“I…I wasn’t worried.” Her blush deepened. “That is, I haven’t given that area of, ah, your anatomy much thought one way or another. But I’m glad to hear everything is…everything is, ah, functional.”
He leaned in close, brought his mouth to her ear, and purred, “I can assure you it’sveryfunctional.”
As the heat from her face rapidly transferred to other parts of her body, Rosemary resisted the urge to squirm. She’d been more at ease when they were discussing the death of his brother. Grief and guilt. Love and loss. Those were concepts and emotions that she somewhat understood. But passion, lust, and desire? Completely foreign entities, save what she’d already experienced in the arms of the man beside her.
He slowly skimmed the tips of his fingers down her arm and encircled her wrist, the callused pad of his thumb hovering above the frantic flutter of her pulse. “Nervous?” he murmured, and she gave a hard jolt when he kissed the side of her neck, his unshaven facial hair rough and prickly against her smooth skin.
“I…I….I did not come here to be seduced,” she said in the firmest tone that she could manage given the circumstances.
“Didn’t you?” His breath, warm and smelling faintly of coffee grounds, tickled the hairs at her nape as he reversed course and returned to the shell of her ear to run his tongue, hot and wet and wicked, along the outer edge.
“No. I came to see where you’ve been for the past week and why…why you haven’t called upon me,” she said weakly, clamping her thighs together as a damp heat trickled between them. She felt both wide awake and incredibly drowsy, a reminder of the time she’d snuck a glass of wine at one of her grandmother’s luncheons. After drinking it far too fast, she had spent the rest of the afternoon dozing in the shade of a mulberry tree, her head pleasantly light and tingly.
“Have you received a satisfactory answer?” Easily untying the laces that held her pelisse closed, Sterling slipped his hand inside the cotton-lined garment to massage her breasts while simultaneously drawing her earlobe in his mouth.
“What answer?” she said, her head too muddled to remember what they were talking about. Something in regards to why she was here, and what he’d been doing for the last seven days, and oh–oh, that feltsplendid.
On a mewling sigh she turned into him, draping her arms on either side of his neck when he grasped her waist and lifted her onto his lap. With an alarmed squeak Sir Reginald dove out of her pocket and scurried off in search of higher ground, but Rosemary was too distracted to notice her pet’s abrupt departure as Sterling’s hands had shifted to cup and squeeze her bottom.
He muttered a curse as he shoved her various skirts and undergarments up past her knees, and they both moaned in pleasure when he settled her directly upon his hard, hot arousal, leaving only a few pieces of linen to separate their pulsing cores which wasn’t nearly enough to prevent her from feeling the enormous length and width of his swollen member.
Given her rudimentary knowledge of sexual intercourse–having once caught a cow and a bull in the act, she knew the basics of what went where–Rosemary found herself discomfited by the knowledge that all ofhimwould have to fit inside ofher. A sheer impossibility, given his size. But then he kissed her flush on the mouth, his tongue sliding almost lazily between her lips to lick and taste, and any concerns regarding anatomy were swept away on a torrent of desire.
Her legs automatically tightened around his hips when he reached inside the waistband of her drawers and raked his short, blunt fingernails across the curved globe of her buttock. Before she could decide whether she liked being touched in such an intimate area–she did, most certainly, although she wasn’t sure whether it would be sinful to admit it–that devilishly clever hand of his wandered to the front of her unmentionables and he stroked the downy thatch of ebony curls tucked away between soft, pillowy plump thighs.
Probing deeper, he used a single fingertip to rub a slow circle around the small, sensitive nub nestled within the curls, alternating the pressure until she was slick and wanting and ready for…ready for what, she didn’t know, but whateveritwas she craved it like a bird craved the air and a ship craved the sea.
She rose higher on her knees, bracing them against the rigid slats of the bench as he continued to fondle and flick, expertly timing the rolling motions of his wrist with the languid thrusting of his tongue. Her breaths grew harsh and uneven. Her entire body, from the tips of her toes still encased in her walking shoes to the rigid set of her brows, went taut; a bow ready to be set free from its quiver.
Then his finger dipped smoothly inside of her while he bit down on her bottom lip and, with a gasp, her eyes flew open and her back arched as sensation after sensation washed over her in a wave of sensual gratification that left her sprawled in a boneless heap upon Sterling’s chest.
