Lifting his lids, heavy and weighted, he focused on her face, only inches from his. His hand was still caressing her naked back, which courtesy of those slippery laces was steadily becoming more naked.
Her lids rose a little, just enough for her to stare dazedly at him. She wet her lips; her gaze dropped to his mouth. “I don’t want to stop.”
But they had to. “Lydia—”
“No. Don’t argue.” She leaned in and brushed her lips, swollen and shining, over his. “Just kiss me and show me—I want to know.”
More an order than a plea; Ro struggled against the promptings of his baser self, only too eager to suggest that if she wanted to, then it would only be gentlemanly to oblige.
He knew his baser self all too well and didn’t trust it.
But before he could gather his wits enough to form any cogent argument, she framed his face and kissed him again, this time more deeply, more alluringly—more determinedly sirenlike than before.
Under the heat of that kiss, the deliberate if innocent warmth behind it, the resolution he’d assembled started to melt…he pressed back, shifted, broke the kiss. Tried to sit up, but she was leaning over him, her forearms resting on his chest; to sit up he would have to grip her and set her back, but his hand was spread over her naked back—gripping didn’t help. He dragged in a breath. “We’ve got Tab’s letter—we should leave.”
He inwardly cursed; his voice was hoarse, the words more suggestion than directive.
“Not yet.” She pressed down more firmly across his hips, all soft warmth and sleek, silken heat, the promise of a fiery haven between her thighs blatantly explicit; he had to swallow a groan. He was aroused to the point of pain; when he’d jigged her, he’d clearly made her aware of that, and now she was curious.
He could read that in her face.
Lydia looked down at him, and knew beyond question that here, now, was the time. The only time for her—the only chance she might ever have to know, to experience, what she’d dreamed of for years.
Innocent dreams originally, progressively less so, but now…after reading all Tabitha had written in her letter, all her younger sister had described in minute and glowing detail, she couldn’t live any longer without knowing, without experiencing it all herself.
Here, with Ro, the only man she could imagine being intimate with.
Now, in this room where they knew they would be private, with her in this dress specifically designed for the purpose, designed to arouse and then facilitate the culmination.
Now, when he was momentarily, at least, thinking along similar lines.
And their unusual position gave her some chance of capitalizing on that, of persuading him and overriding his innate honor, his resistance.
“We can leave…in a little while.” Of its own accord, her voice had lowered to a sultry murmur. Rising up just a fraction, she held his gaze, and slowly, deliberately, took advantage of the loosened laces at her back; crossing her arms over her breasts, putting each hand to the opposite shoulder, she slowly, smoothly pushed the small lacy sleeves of the gown down her arms…if she wanted to succeed, drastic actions were necessary. She had to be bold; fortune favored the brave.
His eyes widened, the gray gleaming silver below his long lashes. Beneath her, between her thighs, she felt him react.
Slowly she pushed the sleeves down, then released them and drew her forearms and hands free, let the bodice slump into folds about her waist. She didn’t look down at her breasts, fully exposed to his fixed silvery gaze; instead she watched him, watched the silver in his eyes heat, watched the planes of his face shift, hardening, becoming more sharp-edged, watched his jaw slowly clench.
He drew a long, slow, tight breath.
Before he could speak, she murmured, still sultry and low, “Don’t try to tell me that you don’t like what you see.” She shifted, pressed down just a little more, provocatively brushing the rigid line of his erection with her lower belly, the movement displaying her breasts, moving them closer to his face. She felt like a wanton. The hard bulge pressing up beneath the junction of her thighs hardened even more, felt even more like hot marble, even through the fabric of his trousers.
His eyes fixed on her breasts, he swallowed, then licked his lips. “Lydia…”
Ro couldn’t believe what was happening. Nor could he believe the effort it cost him to lift his eyes from the fabulous ivory mounds presented so blatantly for his delectation. One part of him was frankly amazed he managed it at all. His hand was still trapped against her silken back—held there by the tactile sensation he couldn’t bring himself to lose. The other had fallen from her face as she’d moved; it now gripped her waist, but weakly. His arms, his body, seemed to have lost all strength, all ability to act as he kept trying to.
He gritted his teeth, tried to keep his eyes on hers. “We can’t do this.”
Her big blue eyes opened wide. “Why not?”
His jaw was going to crack. “Because…” He hesitated for only an instant, frantically searching for suitable phrases, but she smiled understandingly and helped.
“Because I’m not the sort of lady you customarily engage in such activities as this with?”
He nodded. “Precisely.” Thank God she’d grasped that critical point. “That is the reason in a nutshell.”
Unfortunately she didn’t react to that reason in the way he’d hoped. Pressing his coat wide, sliding the buttons of his waistcoat free, she pushed the halves aside; setting her hands, palms flat, to his lower chest, to the fine linen of his shirt, she ran them slowly upward, pressing down, patently savoring all she could feel.
Her lids lowered; her eyes gleamed cornflower bright. “Perhaps, in the general way of things, that would be an adequate reason for stopping, for not doing what both of us wish to do.” Her voice remained soft, sirenlike, a whisper of temptation. “But, Ro, I’m a year or so away from being an acknowledged ape leader, and there’s little to no prospect of anything changing that. So…”
Her hands had reached his shoulders. Lifting them to his face, she framed it and leaned close, settling on him, her elbows on his collarbones, resting her glorious breasts, naked, on his shirt-clad chest. Through the fine linen, he felt their warmth, their elemental female bounty, felt everything primitive within him stir.
From a distance of mere inches, she looked into his eyes, searched them. He couldn’t breathe—couldn’t risk even trying to move his hands. If he did, he’d lock his arms around her, lock all that warm and willing female flesh to him—and then he’d be lost. Lost to all reason. Lost to all sane thought.
Lost to her.
He wasn’t sure he already wasn’t.
She held his gaze, and he couldn’t look away, then she quietly stated, “If I’m going to die an old maid, I want this time—at least this one time—for me, with you. Please Ro—don’t make me beg.”
He told himself he was strong—strong enough to withstand this. To withstand even her. The muscle in his jaw shifted, bunched as he tried to find strength enough to say, then do, what he felt he should.
But then she smiled—a gentle, wistful, oh-so-understanding smile—leaned closer still, closing the last inches, and gently, wistfully, kissed him.
“Please, Ro.” She breathed the words over his lips, then drew back just enough to meet his eyes. “For whatever I meant to you all those years ago, when you waltzed with me in the orchard and kissed me…please do this for me here and now. Please…just show me.”
What could he say?
Some inner, wiser part of him inwardly sighed, resignedly, as if this had been inevitable from the start and he should have known.
Should have known that he could never deny her.
That there was no longer any point in doing so, in even trying.
He suddenly saw that not yielding and doing as she wished, giving her all and more than she was asking for, would simply be denying the truth, that truth he’d known for ten long years, and had never been able to escape.
That was the reason he had never wed. Perhaps that was why she, too, had never walked to the altar.
A thought to ponder, but for now, this minute, he had other things to do, other things to which to turn his mind.
“All right.” At his gravelly surrender, a fine frisson of expectation raced through her—like a Thoroughbred waiting for the flag to fall. He finally let his hands, palms burning, grip; he savored the feel of her held poised between his hands, then raised his lips to hers. “As you wish.”
And more.
He kissed her, and let the caress and the heated exchange that grew from it carry that message, make clear his intentions. She shivered, quivered in his arms, but her grasping hands only tightened, fingertips pressing in, trying to grip his muscles, holding him to her. Urging him on.
He needed no urging.
His hands roved her back, learning the texture of her, the supple planes, the indentation of her spine. Then he reached once more for her head, spilling pins and untwisting the knot, letting her long, silky tresses free to fall and slide and writhe over and through his fingers.
Bringing his hands forward, he framed her face, held her still, angling his head as he plundered more deeply, more evocatively, taking as much as he wished, giving her as much as and more than she’d asked for.
Releasing her face, he set his palms to follow the long lines of her throat, down over the swell of her breasts, fingers artfully trailing while he listened to her breath hitch, catch, lungs tightening as he circled her nipples.
He cupped her breasts, took one firm mound in each hand and kneaded, possessed, knowing full well that that wouldn’t be enough, not for her, not now. She gasped through the kiss, then she kissed him—ardent and needy, wanting…
Lowering his hands, he grasped her waist and urged her up, releasing her lips to trail his down her throat, following the line his hands had taken, burning a path to the base of her throat where her pulse galloped and raced, then down over the swell of one swollen, flushed breast to the peak.
He traced a circle about it with his tongue, listened to her frantic breathing, then he opened his mouth, closed it over the tightly furled nubbin, and drew it deep. Suckled as she cried out.
She tried to mute the sound. He drew back enough to growl, “No one can hear. The dining room is at the other end of the house.”
He’d liked the tiny scream, wanted to hear more, set himself assiduously to draw more from her.
Giving more, taking more.
More, far more, than Lydia had expected. More than she’d dreamed.
But no more than she wanted.
One hand fisted in his hair, eyes closed against the sight of him feeding at her breasts, she held him to her and drank in every sensation, let it sink into her parched, deprived senses, felt them swell, burgeon, and flower.
Opening to him, wanting only more. More of all he made her feel.
More of him.
Every tactile sense she possessed felt heightened, alive; her nerves were strung tight, quiveringly taut, twanging at each touch, then waiting, expectation stretching, for the next. Heat flushed beneath her skin, welled, swelled, and washed through her, a seductive fire running down her veins, coalescing low in her belly.
She shifted against him, felt him stiffen, then she felt the silk skirts ruffle and lift; his hand, sliding beneath, found her thigh. From her garter just above her knee he followed the back of her thigh higher, his hot hard palm to her skin, until he found her bottom. He caressed, squeezed gently, explored…distracting her while his other hand also slipped beneath her skirts, long fingers trailing up the inside of her thigh; he reached her curls, stroked, then reached further.
Touched, caressed, then evocatively probed.
She quaked, felt as if she stood at the edge of some precipice waiting to jump, then he suckled more fiercely, his hand shifted between her thighs, and one long finger pressed into her.
What little air she had left in her tight lungs came out in a soft moan, then his finger took up a repetitive rhythm of thrust and retreat that stoked the flames inside her…until they roared.
Until she couldn’t wait any longer.
Releasing his head, she placed her hands on his chest and pushed up. Opening her eyes, she looked down, frantically pushing back her skirts to find the buttons holding the placket of his trousers closed.
With his hands trapped beneath frothy layers of silk skirt and petticoat, he couldn’t retrieve them in time to stop her from slipping the buttons free—but as she did, he swore, gripped her hips and lifted her forward so she straddled him higher across his hips, unbalancing her so she tipped forward and had to put her hands back on his chest to brace herself.
“Ro!” She infused the syllable with all the pent-up pleading in her soul. She knew what she wanted and she wanted it now, wanted no argument—
“Yes, I know.” Ro bit the words out, had no idea if she understood, but there was no reason she should look, and possibly decide to ask questions—such as how could this work?—questions he didn’t have sufficient brain free to deal with. “Just wait a minute…”
She half sobbed with frustration and need, but she was heated and wet, so very ready, and so was he. No point in prolonging the torture.
He positioned the blunt head of his erection against her entrance, raised his hips to nudge a fraction in, as beneath the silk skirts he clamped his hands about her hips, and drew her slowly down.
She gasped, caught her breath on a sob, then followed his direction of her own accord, slowly lowering herself, impaling herself upon him.
He stopped her when he felt the resistance of her maidenhead, eased her up, then guided her back down. The look on her face as, eyes closed, she felt him slide inside her again, stretching her virginal flesh, was one of sheer wonder.
She understood, caught the rhythm; she rose up twice more, then he gripped harder and she plunged down, breaching her maidenhead as she took him fully, as, a cry strangling in her throat, she sank fully down, enclosing him in slick, scalding heat.
A sensation so intense it had him gritting his teeth, muscles locking against the urge to lift her and bring her down hard again, to thrust into her willing and oh-so-tight sheath. But the look on her face, the fleeting tension of pain washed away by sensual delight, was one that struck to his soul.
“Gently,” he murmured, guiding her again.
She followed his lead, carefully at first, then with increasing eagerness, increasing enthusiasm as she realized the pain had faded and only pleasure remained.
Pleasure, it seemed, she was intent on claiming, and equally intent on sharing.
She cracked open her eyes, found his. Breathlessly, imperiously, demanded, “Show me how to do this—how to please you.”
“You are pleasing me—immensely.” But he kept hold of her hips, kept hold of the rhythm, of their joint reins, and set the pace—let it build, escalate, until need broke through and drove them.
On a desperate gasp, she bent forward and found his lips with hers. They kissed deeply, without restraint, tongues twining and probing to the same plunging, insistent rhythm with which she rode him. He thrust upward and met her, gripping her hips and holding her down to penetrate her more deeply…until the dam broke and passion’s fire poured through and seared them.
Filled them, consumed them.
Until there was only heat and that driving, relentless rhythm. Until reality fractured and they flew through the void, tense nerves unraveling, senses spinning…
Until, like a sunburst, ecstasy broke upon them and shattered them.
Leaving them drifting, wracked, sated, buoyed on dreams come true, safe and content in each other’s arms.
He’d been taken advantage of. He’d been accused more than once of taking advantage of ladies—usually by the ladies themselves afterward, and always falsely—but now he, Rogue Gerrard, had been seduced.
He’d been swept off his feet and into an act of intimacy he’d never before engaged in. Had been f
orced to surrender and be ravished.
Gazing up at the ceiling, Lydia a warm bundle of boneless sated female slumped on his chest, his arms locked around her holding her in place, he couldn’t stop smiling.
He’d always suspected that those ladies had protested too much.
The sky outside, gray, overcast, heavy clouds louring, seemed to his eyes to be rosy and glowing. All he now needed to make his life complete was to find some way to break it to Lydia that she wasn’t destined to die an old maid.
And that, as he’d now accepted, resistance was futile.
Chapter Four
An hour later, Lydia let Ro hurry her across the unkempt lawns of Upton Grange and into the cover of the surrounding trees. It was close to five o’clock and already dark; once swallowed by the gloom of the wood, Ro slowed, and they walked on, his hand beneath her arm as he steadied her over fallen branches and through undergrowth until they reached a path.
Ro turned down it. “This is the way we went back to the inn this morning.”
Lydia nodded. Her mind still wasn’t functioning in its usual reliable way; she was perfectly aware, yet felt as if she were detached, floating…as if none of the day-to-day, ordinary worldly things truly mattered.
Ro said little, making her wonder if he knew of her mental distraction. Perhaps mental disconnection was a well-known aftereffect of the activity they’d so recently engaged in. If so, he would undoubtedly know, although it didn’t seem to have afflicted him; he was calm, collected, and decisive.
She looked at him, watched him glance behind them, watched his eyes rake the surrounding trees and the shadows pooling beneath. There was a tension in him, one she recognized as stemming from protectiveness, but it seemed heightened, intensified. She looked forward. Perhaps the effect on males was different.
Regardless, she still felt buoyed, had to fight to keep a silly smile from her lips; she wouldn’t have bothered fighting if she’d been alone and able to wallow, to hold the glorious golden glow to herself and examine and delight in it in private.