Both their breaths caught.
“A wide mouth,” she whispered, tilting her head and leaning forward. “With soft, beautiful lips.”
She wasn’t for him. His father had told him so and he’d acknowledged that truth.
But at the moment Trevillion knew only one thing: he no longer cared that he couldn’t have her forever as his. He had her right now, and when, inevitably, she turned from him, he’d cherish this memory.
Forever.
He leaned forward and kissed her.
Chapter Fourteen
Corineus drew his sword, kicked the sea horse into a gallop, and charged Agog. The giant swung his club, but the faery horse leaped the blow, her cloven hooves flashing. Then such a fearsome battle ensued I can scarcely tell you! Agog swung again and again, each blow gouging great holes in the cliffs, while the sparks flew from the sea horse’s cloven hooves and Corineus rent the air with his battle cry.…
—From The Kelpie
Phoebe shivered at the touch of James’s mouth. He was so hot, so sure. There was no hesitation as he drew her closer into his arms and it occurred to her that something had changed.
That this time he wouldn’t stop.
She trembled uncontrollably at the thought.
Above the seagulls called. The waves still crashed to the shore, and she tasted salt on his lips and hers. She spread her fingers on his face, touching, wanting to absorb this man into her very bones. She could feel his hair drawn back from his face, the curve of his ears, the velvet of his tongue in her mouth, and she clutched him closer.
Until she pulled away, gasping. “Untie your hair. Let me feel it.”
His arms moved, muscles bunching, clothing rustling, as he took off his coat and then his waistcoat before reaching up to untie his hair. She followed his hands, feeling as the strands came undone. He’d had his hair in a tight braid and the hair was wavy beneath her fingers. She drew it forward, stroking, even as he bent and kissed her temple, trailing his lips down her cheek, nosing up her chin to kiss her jawline.
Another shiver racked her body.
“Are you cold?” he asked, his voice rasping.
“No,” she gasped. “Not at all.”
How could she tell him that his touch was almost overwhelming, when he’d not even gotten below her neck?
But he seemed to know. He chuckled darkly, pulling her fichu from where it was tucked into the edge of her bodice. The fabric slowly slid over the tops of her breasts, whispering a caress.
He bent suddenly and opened his mouth on her collarbone, hot and wet.
She gasped and grasped his head for balance, to keep the world from spinning.
He raised his head, his lips at the corner of her mouth. “Tell me right now if you wish me to stop.”
She licked her lips and he nipped at her tongue, making her gasp again.
“I don’t…” She swallowed. “I don’t want you to stop.”
“Then I won’t,” he said, low and intimate.
His fingers were at the laces at the front of her bodice, deft fingers pulling free the strings.
Undoing her.
“Lift,” he murmured, and she obeyed, raising her arms so that he could draw off her bodice. Her stays followed.
And then he stopped.
She waited, her breath shuddering in and out. “What is it?”
He groaned, the sound almost inaudible. “Do you know what you did to me each night when you wore only this chemise?”
His fingers trailed over the top edge. It was a simple garment, far less fine than the ones she usually wore. The neckline merely had a line of decorative stitching. No lace, no fancywork.
Yet she felt as if she wore silk and gold thread as his fingertip traced the chemise. Her skin felt sensitized, her breasts swelling.
“I can see your nipples, did you know that?” he asked, and his voice sounded almost angry.
She knew what he felt wasn’t anger.
“Yes,” she said, bold as any Covent Garden soiled dove. “I know.”
He grunted what might’ve been a laugh. “They’re a deep pink, so sweet, so round, and every time I saw them, they were pointed, as if they wanted my attention. Wanted my mouth. As they are now.”
She swallowed a moan.
He slowly cupped her breast, his palm cradling her without touching her nipple. “Is that what you want? My mouth on your nipple, Phoebe, sucking until you scream?”
Oh God.
“Y-yes,” she said, and though the word came out more a squeak than anything else, she simply couldn’t care because he did just that.
James bent his head to her breast and drew her nipple into his searingly hot mouth right through the thin lawn of her chemise.
She arched her back at the sensation—like nothing she’d ever felt before. A yearning sweetness so intense it was nearly pain. She gasped, and he steadied her, his hands at her back, holding her even as he drove her nearly mindless.
He suckled tenderly, using his lips and tongue, and then he drew back and before she could speak he was on the other breast, mouthing it as well. The lawn of her chemise was sodden from his mouth and the wind blew across it, tightening her nipple, making her swallow and push up against him.
“Shh,” he murmured, and she realized she’d been moaning without even knowing it. “I’ll take care of you.”
He plucked at the ribbon holding her chemise up and untied the bow. He spread the chemise, drawing it down over her breasts, exposing her fully to the sea air until she was bare to the waist.
“So sweet,” he murmured, kissing between her breasts, nowhere near where she really wanted his lips. “So very lovely.” And he licked up to her collarbone.
Was he attempting to drive her mad?
“Please,” she said, sounding less ladylike and more demanding. “James!”
“Yes, my lady?” he asked, innocent, nearly disinterested. “What would you like?”
“You know.”
He trailed teasing fingers around the sides of her breasts, not quite touching her nipples. “This?”
“N-no,” she stuttered. “My…”
“Yes?” he whispered in her ear, his hot breath making her shiver. “Tell me, Phoebe. Tell me what you want me to do to you.”
“Oh, please,” she moaned. “Oh, please touch me.”
“How?” The one word was stern. Commanding.
“With your mouth,” she whispered. “Suck my nipple.”
He moved immediately, drawing her nipple into the heat of his mouth. Oh, and it was so much better without the chemise in between. His tongue was on her bare flesh, teasing her, arousing her, making her shift restlessly.
“You’re so beautiful,” he murmured. “Your breasts wet and red from my mouth. I could do just this all afternoon. Hold you here and feast on your nipples.”
She arched her back at his words, offering herself, and though he seemed the one teasing, tempting her, she heard him swear beneath his breath.
He wasn’t as in control as he wanted her to believe.
She smiled then, secret and feminine, and let her own hands drift over his head, his hair, as he turned his attention once more to her oversensitive nipples. He still wore his shirt and she yanked at it, wordlessly asking.
He pulled away from her for a second and when he came back, his chest was bare. Oh, how she delighted in all that warm skin! She ran her palms, flat, fingers spread to feel as much as she could, over him. His strong neck, his hair brushing the backs of her hands as she trailed them down to his shoulders, bunched with wiry muscle. His arms, with those intriguing muscular bulges in the upper parts. His chest with that hair that she so loved. She ran her fingers through it, touching his nipples, running her thumbs over them.
He tongued her nipples, flicking them back and forth, and she wondered if she could do that to him as well. Would he like it as much as she did? For she couldn’t help it, her head was falling back, exposing her neck, her vulnerability to him. He was wrapping her in
sorcery, beguiling her with his lovemaking.
“James,” she moaned, her hands at his waist, pulling him toward her. “I want… I want…”
“What do you wish? Tell me and I’ll do it.”
“Take these off,” she said boldly, tugging at his breeches. “Let me feel all of you.”
Oh, she should be embarrassed to be so wanton! To ask a man to strip naked so that she might enjoy his body. But she couldn’t find it in herself to be ashamed. If he would let her, she’d discover all of her James. Find out what a man was really like, at base.
He drew away from her and she wished—oh, how she wished!—that she could see what he did. How he unbuttoned the placket of his breeches and slid them down his thighs. What he looked like in only smallclothes.
What he looked like after he’d taken his smallclothes off.
She might give the use of her right hand to see James Trevillion naked in the sun. Just once. Just one small glimpse to hold forever within her.
But that wasn’t a bargain she could make.
So when he came back to her, all warm, smooth skin, smelling of the ocean and the sky and her sandalwood and bergamot scent, she had to restrain herself from grabbing with needy hands.
“Can I…” She swallowed, for her mouth was dry. “Can I touch you?”
“Anywhere,” he murmured into her mouth.
She clutched him. At lean hips, over muscled buttocks, feeling that patch of hair just above his cleft, hard thighs tightening and flexing as he pushed her legs apart. The hair on his legs.
She laughed aloud. She’d never felt a man. A man with his hips between hers. A man intent on making love to her.
“Take off my skirts,” she said, suddenly pushing against his broad chest. “Let me be nude with you.”
And he was gone a moment. Just gone. For that was what blindness was: a great void. One could hear sounds, sense things nearby, but without sight, without touch, nothing was truly there, was it?
Blindness could be a great loneliness.
But then his big hands were on her again, anchoring her, and she knew she wasn’t alone anymore. Wasn’t lonely. Not with James here with her.
He helped her as she wriggled and gasped and even cursed, taking off her skirts. Then she was as nude as he, lying on a scratchy blanket in the sun on a beach in Cornwall.
His body covered hers, hard and male and foreign and here with her. Just them and the seagulls and Regan, munching on grass somewhere.
“Put it in me,” she said, impatient. She wanted him to make it real. “Now. Put yourself in me.”
He gasped a laugh, his hand sliding between them. She could feel him—his penis. His cock. That was what it was. The thing that made him male. A cock. Thick and hard and rather bigger than she’d thought it would be. She was surprised that he had to take it in hand, to guide himself as he put it into her wet folds. Somehow she’d thought he could do it without his hands, for horses did, didn’t they?
But then he was pushing, pushing in and she wasn’t wide enough, she could tell. It burned a bit and she froze and thought he might stop. Might call it off as an impossible thing.
Instead he shoved hard, breaching her entirely, and the burn intensified.
And then… and then he was inside her.
She gasped, catching her breath. How strange! He’d impaled her almost violently. This wasn’t a gentle act—a reverential act. This was animal. This was mating.
He pulled out slightly, grunting, and she smelled sweat and sex, just before he shoved back in, joining with her, moving in her. She gripped his thrusting buttocks, feeling him as he labored on her and she wanted something… longed for something… just out of reach, a shining, exquisite thing.
He turned his head and caught her mouth, thrusting his tongue in. She could taste the wine they’d drunk, taste his basic want for her. She arched up, not knowing if she should try to move or if she should shove back. She widened her legs, pulling them up, giving him room to move in her. He thrust, slow and steady, the very inevitability of his rhythm driving her higher.
“Please,” she sobbed. “Please.” Not even knowing what she pleaded for.
He grunted, his body slick with sweat now, and let his head fall beside hers, his cheek rubbing next to hers, and she felt a quaking within him, a seizure of the soul.
He stilled, his cock still in her, and she gasped for breath, tracing the indentation in the middle of his back.
Suddenly he withdrew from her, rolling to the side, and she thought, Is it over?
Wetness seeped between her legs.
But then he did something odd.
He placed his palm on her belly, simply let it lay there, warm and still, and kissed her. His mouth was tender moving over hers, nipping, licking.
She stirred restlessly, her legs moving. She wanted that thing she’d felt in their bed at the inn. That wonderful bursting.
As if understanding her desire his hand slipped downward. Into her damp curls. Farther. Into that place where he’d just plundered her.
Somehow it seemed more obscene for him to put his fingers there than his cock.
“What?” she asked, her voice cracking.
“Don’t think,” he said against her lips. “Just feel.”
His thick fingers dipped and found a small part of her—so very tiny—and yet, apparently, the center of her body. The place where her blood rushed to, the heart of her pulse. He touched her there on that small nubbin and she trembled, feeling exposed. Feeling hot with want.
He held her in his hand.
He took her mouth then, thrusting in his tongue as he delicately played with her below, plucking and tapping and flicking his fingers on her flesh until she thought she would burst.
Until she did burst.
It rushed up, crashing over her like one of the waves on the beach, washing up everything she’d ever kept hidden inside.
In that moment she was his, completely and utterly. But she knew something more:
He was hers as well.
EVE DINWOODY SAT staring at the white dove Val had given her. The dove stared back. Of all the useless and usually quite eccentric gifts he’d presented to her, the dove was perhaps the most useless. It didn’t even sing.
“You ought to name it,” Jean-Marie offered from the door.
“If I name it, I can’t let Tess cook it for supper,” Eve replied dourly.
“You’re not going to have Tess cook it for supper anyway,” Jean-Marie said.
He was probably right.
Eve frowned at the dove as it let out an adorable cooing sound and pecked at the grain on the bottom of its cage.
“I should,” she muttered. “I really should, just to teach him.”
“He’d care not at all if you ate that dove,” Jean-Marie said gently, “and you know it well.”
Which was the problem with Val right in a nutshell. He didn’t care for other people’s opinions or, for that matter, for other people. Eve wasn’t even sure he cared for her. How else to explain his involving her in what she suspected was a very nefarious plan—and then lying to her face when she went to confront him about it? He’d looked so innocent in the firelight, offering her Turkish delights and proclaiming his ignorance.
Eve snorted to herself. What else had she expected from Val?
Someone knocked at the door.
Jean-Marie lifted his eyebrows at her.
Eve shrugged.
He left to answer the door, returning a short while later, his expression all that could be correct in a butler. “Mr. Malcolm MacLeish wishes to call upon you, ma’am.”
This was unexpected. “Show him in.”
Mr. MacLeish looked strained as he came into her sitting room, though he was trying his best to keep a cheerful smile upon his face. He wore a light-brown suit and carried a black tricorne. “Miss Dinwoody, thank you for consenting to see me.”
She nodded. “Not at all, Mr. MacLeish. It’s nice to have company of an afternoon. Would you like to si
t?” She gestured to one of her rose silk chairs.
He perched on the very edge and shot a wary glance at Jean-Marie, who had taken up his post next to the sitting room door. “I was wondering… er… well, I’d like to speak to you.”
She smiled.
Mr. MacLeish cleared his throat. “In private.”
Eve considered this. Usually she didn’t like being alone with men—Val and Jean-Marie being the only exceptions—but her curiosity had been aroused.
She nodded to Jean-Marie and he left the room without a word, closing the door behind him. She knew, though, that he’d be right outside it, listening for her call.
Eve looked at Mr. MacLeish and spread her hands. “Yes?”
“It’s about the Duke of Montgomery,” he said abruptly. “You have a special relationship with him, I think.”
Eve merely watched him, neither confirming nor denying his statement.
Her lack of response seemed to make him more nervous. “That is, I hope you are a confidant of his, because he’s blackmailing me.”
At that Eve did stir. “Val blackmails a great many people, I’m afraid. It’s rather a hobby of his.”
Mr. MacLeish barked a laugh. “You say it as if blackmail were like breeding hunting dogs or collecting snuffboxes.”
“I assure you I do not mean to be flippant,” she said gently. “I don’t particularly approve of his hobby. It hurts people.”
“Yes, it does,” he muttered. “Can you speak to him for me? See if he’ll let me go?”
“I don’t hold sway over the duke. He does as he wishes—he always has.” She spared a glance for the dove, asleep in her cage.
Mr. MacLeish closed his eyes. “Then I’m lost.”
Eve pressed her lips together. “Can you not simply ignore him? Whatever information he has about you, surely ’tis better to be free than to let him control you?”
The young man shook his head, the sunlight from the windows glinting off his red hair. The light also revealed the lines beside his eyes. “I can’t. There are others involved.”
She waited, watching him sympathetically.