A Spring Deception (Seasons Book 2) (26 page)

But unlike that night in the out building, tonight he didn’t focus his attention there. Oh, he teased, yes, ratcheting her breath higher and making her tremble, but he never focused, never drove her toward release.

“You are tormenting me,” she panted.

“Indeed, I am,” he murmured, letting the tip of his tongue circle her clitoris. “For when the release finally comes, I will make it so powerful, so complete that you will remember it when you are eighty.”

His words gripped her just as he swirled his tongue around her yet another time, and in that moment the pleasure hit its crescendo. Waves of sensation smashed against her and she lifted into his mouth, crying out his name as her body convulsed against his seeking tongue.

He sucked her clitoris as she shattered and doubled the release an instant. But at last the waves slowed, her body twitched and she went limp on his pillows. He moved up her body and pressed his mouth to hers, letting her taste her own passion. When he drew back, he chuckled.

“
That
was supposed to be much more drawn out. Had I known that words could send you over the edge, I would have forced myself to remain mute.”

She reached up to cup the back of his head, pulling him in for a second, deeper kiss. She sighed as they parted. “I will remember that even if I forget everything else, I assure you,” she whispered. She looked upward, toward the heavens as she tried to calm her heart, and her gaze caught something unexpected on the ceiling above her. “Er, Aiden?”

“Yes?” he asked, his fingers smoothing back and forth over her shoulder in a rhythmic motion.

“Why is your ceiling covered with naked people?”

He shook his head and laughed. “The
real
Clairemont’s ceiling is covered with naked people. For a recluse, the man was something of a libertine. He had that piece carved so he could look at all the things he wanted to do, I suppose. It is a bit distracting.”

She wetted her lips as her gaze flitted over the erotic images. Men with women bent over, being taken from behind. A woman riding one man while she took another in her mouth. Women with women. Couples in every position one could possibly imagine and a few she wouldn’t have thought were possible.

She cast a quick side glance at Aiden and found he wasn’t looking at the images above, but at her. Judging her reaction. Heat flooded her cheeks.

“Can you really do all those things?” she asked.

“Can I? Or can anyone?” he asked with a chuckle as he wrapped an errant curl around his finger.

“Either one,” she said, wondering at how her body felt hot and tingly all over again. Looking at those carved images while he touched her made them even more impactful.

“I’ve done a few,” he admitted, his gaze holding hers. “I’d like to try at least three of them tonight with you.”

“Which three?” She jerked her gaze back to the ceiling, trying to determine the answer.

“One we’ve done. Twice now,” he said, his voice low and seductive.

She searched the images and found a few where a lady was being pleasured by a man’s mouth. “I see.”

“The others will be a surprise,” he said, and leaned in to kiss her once more.

She closed her eyes, forgetting the erotic art, forgetting everything but his taste and how his rough tongue slid so gently over her own. How his hands gripped her with passion and smoothed her skin with tender care. Nothing else mattered at that moment. Everything else she trusted him to make right.

He broke the kiss at last and pulled away, backing toward the fire.

She sat up partially, watching him go. “What are you doing?”

“Removing the rest of my clothing,” he said, his voice low and seductive as he finally shucked off the shirt she had opened what seemed like a lifetime ago.

She watched his muscles move beneath his skin and bit her lip as her sex began to tingle with need once more. How could he do this so easily to her? Whether he touched her or looked at her or just stood there being…being
him
…it seemed he was irresistible to her. A force that drew her in completely until she would give anything and everything to be in his arms.

His arms. Her gaze flitted to his arm, the one that had been injured earlier in the day. There was a dark red mark slashed across it, proof of how dangerous a man this was.

“Does it hurt?” she whispered.

He glanced down at the mark and then shook his head. “No. It’s minor, I assure you.”

She bit her lip. “But—”

“Shhh,” he said, smoothing a thumb over her cheek before he stepped back.

He met her gaze as his hands moved to his trousers. Slowly he unfastened them and then glided them down his hips. She tracked as inch by inch of flesh was revealed and finally the erection she had been aware of so many times since he first touched her bobbed free.

She caught her breath as she sat upright. Rosalinde had told her a little about a man’s…cock, she thought she’d heard it called. When she was to marry Stenfax, the idea of it was terrifying. Tonight, looking at Aiden, seeing the swollen, heavy, utterly masculine proof that he wanted her…well, it was still terrifying. But it was also exhilarating.

This man wanted her so desperately that his body hardened, rising like a divining rod meant not to find water, but to seek her out. It rose proudly against his stomach, and she stared blatantly.

“Is this the first time you’ve seen a man’s cock?” he asked.

“Unless you count the ones carved above me, yes,” she murmured. “I’m a lady, you recall. We aren’t exactly taken aside and given intense lessons on the subject.”

He nodded, but she thought she saw the flicker of a frown cross his face. He approached her slowly and let her get a closer look.

“May I…may I touch it?” she asked.

He was laughing and shaking his head at once as he purred, “Please do, Celia. I would like that very much.”

She reached out and traced his length with a fingertip. She was shocked to find that the flesh over that steely, very male organ was silky soft. She cupped him with her palm and stroked once from base to tip.

“Goddamn, woman,” he groaned, his head tipping back. “You will have me undone before we even begin properly.”

She snatched her hand back, though she could still feel the weight of him in her palm, a phantom pleasure. “We haven’t begun properly? With the removing of our clothing and your…your…
licking
me?”

He laughed. “Appetizers, all,” he said as he took a spot next to her on the bed. He drew her closer, placing a hand on her thigh and lifting to drape her leg over his. The fine hairs on his legs tickled her smooth ones, and she found herself lifting into him with a soft sigh of pleasure.

He kissed her and she sank into him, surrendering completely to whatever he would do now. He would take her, of course, she knew about that. She also knew it would likely hurt the first time. And since the first time was the only time they’d ever be together, she wanted to take all the pleasure she could in the meantime.

And he gave it, in spades. He rolled her on her back, continuing to touch and kiss and stroke her. His thumb flicked her nipple even as his other hand kneaded her backside, pulling her body against him firmly. His cock pressed hard against her belly.

All of it was so good, so right, so utterly overwhelming. And she never wanted it to stop. She wanted to remain in this moment for the rest of her life. Where there was nothing and no one else in the world. Where the lies were gone and it was just the two of them.

His hand glided lower, lower, until he cupped her sex. She felt him spreading her open, teasing the sensitive flesh even as he kept kissing her and kissing her. His fingertips brushed her entrance and she moaned with pleasure at the touch.

When she did, he pulled back. His eyes were wide and his breath was short as he looked into her eyes. “Are you sure?” he said, his voice cracking.

She stared back up at him. “Sure? Of you? Of this?”

He nodded. “Once I take you, Celia, it will be irrevocable. Your body will be marked with proof that you are no longer an innocent. There may be consequences in the future, when you find another, when you marry—”

She lifted her fingertips to his lips. “Stop, Aiden. Stop. I thought we were forgetting about tomorrow.”

He pressed a kiss to her fingers, then moved them away. “A wonderful thought in theory, but reality must still color what I do. I want to be certain that you truly want this before I continue.”

She lifted up slightly, cupping his face gently. “I understand the consequences, I understand the impact it will have on the future. But I don’t want you to stop,” she said, calmly, evenly. “I want you to take me, to make me yours. Is that clear enough?”

He swallowed hard and she saw how difficult this was for him. He wanted her and yet he warred with his honor, with not wanting to hurt her. And she loved him for that, as deeply as she had ever loved him before.

He bent his head and kissed her once more, lowering her back on the pillows as he rolled over her, bracing his arms next to her head so that he wouldn’t crush her with his body weight.

She wrapped her arms around him, smoothing her hands down the rippling planes of muscle on his back, gliding them back up his sides. He shivered as she touched him, making a little sound of possessive pleasure deep in his throat.

“Ready?” he asked, sliding a hand between them to position the head of his cock at the slickness of her sex.

She nodded before she squeezed her eyes shut and tensed in preparation for the pain.

“What are you doing?” he asked, nuzzling her throat.

“Getting ready,” she said, opening one eye.

“You look like I’m about to stab you,” he said with a low chuckle.

She rolled her eyes. “I’ve heard told it’s nearly the same thing.”

“No, sweet,” he promised, kissing just the tip of her nose. “Not like that. Slowly, now.”

As he whispered the last he pressed against her. To her shock, the narrow channel of her body stretched to accommodate him, welcoming him as he breached her. At the very beginning there was a ripple of pain, and she sucked her breath in through her teeth.

The moment she did so, he stilled, waiting, his breath held, as she grew accustomed to the merging of their bodies.

“Do you know how much pleasure this act can give?” he murmured, kissing her neck as he held still, cupping her breast and thumbing her nipple over and over.

Pleasure shot down her body, settled where his cock was buried, and she flexed out of instinct, drawing him in a few more centimeters.

“I don’t know,” she moaned.

“Let me show you,” he said and thrust a bit farther. The pain was gone now, replaced by a strange, yet wonderful feeling of fullness. Of belonging. Of pleasure and beauty and ancient rightness.

She lifted against him, and he seated fully within her and held perfectly still once again. He kissed her and slowly circled his hips. His pelvis hit her clitoris and her eyes flew open at the wild spark of pleasure that lit deep inside her body.

“Yes, see,” he said, circling again, again, so many times that she lost count.

She clung to him, rising to meet him, trying to force him faster, grunting out pleasure when he refused her body’s pleas and instead slowed his pace. He was so good at this, like they were made to be joined, like she was made to accept him and surrender to his will.

And surrender she did, at last falling into the rhythm he created. When she did, every fiber of her being grew focused as pleasure mounted, growing as it had with his mouth. Yet it was a more intense sensation because he was inside of her. He was taking, she receiving, protecting, holding him in the most intimate of ways. And she wanted it to last forever.

But he wouldn’t allow it. His thrusts grew more focused and purposeful and the pleasure that was growing within her increased accordingly until at last she was flying again, her body rocking against his as she cried out pleasure into the quiet room and dug her nails into his back to keep from vanishing in the swirling vortex of release and love that flooded her every sense.

In that same moment, he drove harder, his neck straining. Then he shouted her name and suddenly he was gone, turning away as he spent away from her body and collapsed back over her, smoothing his hands over her and murmuring her name again and again.

Clairemont smoothed his hands over Celia’s bare back, loving how her beautiful dark hair fanned over his chest as she lay against him. In the aftermath of their incredible joining, it was impossible to deny how madly and deeply he loved this woman.

And equally impossible to deny that what he had just done was so wrong. They could never be together and yet he had selfishly claimed a piece of her because he was too greedy to let her go as he should. He had never hated himself more than he did in that moment.

She rolled over, resting her hands on his chest and her chin on the same hands. She smiled up at him, her eyes bright and free of regret.

“How did you become a spy?” she asked.

He tensed. He wouldn’t give her his name, but she wanted his story. The story was far more intimate, and yet he wanted to share it with her, to give her a piece of himself that had never and would never belong to another, just as she had done with him. Her gift was physical, his was something else.