Beyond A Wicked Kiss (28 page)

Ria's fingers trembled slightly as she turned the page. She regarded the next drawing for a long moment before she spoke. "This one is just like the one before it. I fail to understand the point of that."

"Not
exactly
like the one before." He reached for the book again, and when she was hesitant to give it up, he asked for it. "May I? I promise to return it." He plucked it from her hands when she held it out to him. Angling it until her view was better, West grasped all the pages between his thumb and forefinger, then let his thumb slip from the edge of each successive page so they flew by quickly.

Ria blinked widely, fascinated and a little frightened as the figures of the man and woman were set into motion by the rapidly flipping pages. The woman was pulled forward, swallowing the man's erect member as deeply as Ria recalled the Gypsy taking in the fiery sword. "To the hilt," she said under her breath, scarcely aware she had spoken aloud.

"An apt description."

Ria took the book back and held the pages just as he had, then let her thumb slip. The movement of the figures was jerky, almost comical, but there was no denying their purpose. "How is it accomplished?"

West chuckled. She was more curious about the method the artist used than the content. "As I said, each page is not identical to the one before. There are subtle differences that account for the movement when the pages are thumbed through quickly." He directed her to open the book to an illustration that was at the midpoint. "You can see the differences between this one and the one at the beginning. Now look at the final illustration. The woman has released him again."

"You must allow that it is very clever."

"That is what South said the first time he saw a book like this."

"How old were you?"

"Eleven. Perhaps twelve."

She nodded, sighing. "And I am twice that age. Boys are more fortunate, I think, to know of these things early."

"I do not remember having that opinion when we were caught out."

Ria smiled. "Well, perhaps twelve is rather young. Still, girls would be better able to secure their place in society if they knew what they might be asked to embrace or endure."

"Embrace or endure," he said softly. For all that Ria was inexperienced, he thought she had neatly captured a woman's dilemma. It had certainly been his own mother's. He watched her face as she riffled the pages a third time. Her features were no longer awash in color, and every aspect of her countenance was set in concentration. There was a fine crease between her fair brows, and her eyes had narrowed a fraction. Her lips were flattened and twisted slightly to one side. He had no difficulty imagining she had applied the same formidable intelligence and consideration to her studies in the schoolroom, a student much prized by her teachers.

Ria turned the book around, understanding at last why the other illustration was printed in the opposite direction. Grasping the fore edge of the paper between her thumb and finger, she let it fly past. Even though she knew what to expect, it was still startling. The man thrust himself into the woman and pumped himself in fits and starts between her open thighs. The woman's head was thrown back first, then her fair-haired lover's.

West managed to catch the book before Ria dropped it on her head. He closed it and put it aside, out of her reach. Turning on his side, he rested on one elbow while he regarded her. "Have you seen quite enough?"

Ria felt a peculiar quickness to her own heartbeat and a queer, unsettled feeling deep inside her. The response she made was a trifle breathless. "Quite enough, I think. It looks to be a rather clumsy business."

"It is." West was happy to encourage this line of thinking.

"It seemed as though it might be painful."

"A perfect agony."

The glance she cast in his direction was suspicious. "It cannot be so terrible, else no one would ever engage in it—even for procreative purposes."

"One endures a great deal to continue the species."

"I don't believe you."

West shrugged.

"I liked it well enough when you kissed me."

"Kissing is meant to lull the senses to what comes afterward."

Ria was a trifle less certain than she had been moments earlier. "What about giving and receiving pleasure? You mentioned that before."

"I may have overstated that aspect. In truth, there is precious little pleasure to be had."

"The poets speak favorably of it."

"They speak of love. You are speaking of..." His voice trailed off as he searched for the proper word. "Mayhap you should continue this discussion with Lady Tenley."

"Coward." Ria turned toward him. "Can you not say
fornication?
That is what the couples are doing, are they not? Fornicating. You may as well say so."

"Of course," he said with an ironic lift to his brow. "I seem to offend your sensibilities when I least mean to do so."

Ria's expression was grave. "I know you have respect for me," she said quietly. "It is not necessary to consider your words so carefully."

"Ria, you flinch when I say
bloody hell."

It was a valid point, and she did not deny it. "It is just that sometimes you think I do not know my own mind. That is what I find truly offends my sensibilities. I wish you would not try to protect me from myself. I wish your respect for me was not predicated on a fact of biology. I am a woman, true enough, but that might be cause for celebration, not a reason to set me from you."

"And it is not because you are a woman that some distance is in order. It is because you are a lady."

"Bloody hell."

West's laughter rumbled softly at the back of his throat. "It will require more than colorful language to make me treat you like a strumpet."

Ria sat up and drew back the blanket. His erection made a tent of the fabric of his nightshirt. Before he knew what she was about, she straddled his legs and pushed the material upward as far as his thighs. "Then mayhap this will be enough to encourage you."

Chapter 8

West caught Ria by the shoulders as she began to bend toward him. The centers of his eyes were so dark and large, the emerald edge of his irises had almost disappeared in response to wanting her. His heart hammered in his chest, and the thundering he heard was the roar of blood in his ears. "You don't know what you're—" He stopped because Ria was shaking her head slowly, and he knew he was lost when it took no more than this subtle movement to set him from his own course.

"Then you'll have to teach me," she said. "Or allow me to learn it for myself."

He had no doubt that she had deliberately misinterpreted what he'd meant to say, but neither was he proof against that soft and sumptuous mouth or the way her words parted it. His hands fell away, and he watched her continue her downward descent. At the first touch of her lips, he felt his entire body go taut. It was too much and not enough. His hips jerked as she opened her mouth around him, drawing back his foreskin with her hand so that her tongue could sweep over the silky, sensitive head of his cock.

Her pale braid fell forward over her shoulder, and the tip of it brushed his thigh, swinging back and forth like a pendulum as she moved over him. Her hands went to his hips, and she stroked him with her fingertips, running them lightly across the firm flesh of his buttocks, using her thumbnail to score his skin with a pale pink line.

He wanted to close his eyes. He wanted to watch her. It was erotic either way, and for a while he did one, then the other, until she drew back at last, her breathing husky and slightly ragged, and asked for more. At first he did not understand, but then her eyes fell on his arousal, and he realized it was more of him that she wanted. Like the illustration. To the hilt.

He sat up and turned to the head of the bed, drawing off his nightshirt. The room's chill did not penetrate now, not with his blood heated to the temperature of molten lava. He leaned back against the headboard and held out his hand to her, inviting her to come to him as he had not done before.

Ria knelt before him, and this time when she bent to him she started at the smooth curve of his neck and shoulder and worked her way down. His skin was warm and taut, the muscles defined by planes and angles that seemed carved with a sculptor's eye for detail of the human form.

She drew her mouth along his collarbone and made a damp trail with the edge of her tongue. The taste of him was both unfamiliar and tantalizing. Sweet and salty, musky and humid, it seemed to Ria that she should know it, yet it was wholly new to her, a combination of tastes and scents that teased her own senses. Her skin prickled and her nostrils flared. She felt something hot and sweetly urgent uncurl in the center of her. Ribbons of sensation followed the path of her blood until her fingertips tingled. Between her thighs she was damp. She felt a pressure there, but also a void, and the effect of both was that she wished he would touch her.

He did not, though. His fingers curled in the sheet on either side of him instead.

She ran her fingertips down the length of his arms until they reached his wrists, then they curved like talons, and she took him captive while her lips and tongue, and finally her teeth, made a separate exploration.

Her head dipped lower. She felt the catch of his breath and then the vibration of his hum of pleasure. She took him in her mouth again, and everything about the taste and scent of him here was more intense. This act of giving pleasure struck her as profoundly intimate, a thing done in which she was both master and supplicant, at once powerful, yet in the service of him.

It seemed to her that he sensed these things as well, for it was no different for him. He could command that she stop or surrender to her. The pull of both kept him exactly where he was, straining slightly under the pressure of her hands and mouth, but not so much that he would remove her. He was still except for those movements he could not help, and the fact that she was responsible for each small stirring excited her almost beyond bearing.

She suckled him more deeply this time, helped by their altered positions and his hoarsely whispered instructions. The cry she wrested from him was her own name, and the sound of it was so pleasing to her that she determined she would hear it again.

West slipped his wrists free of Ria's loose grip and lifted her hands to his hips. With no more encouragement than that, her fingers trailed along his inner thighs. She found the base of his cock and added the rhythmic massage of her hand to the steady suckling of her mouth. One of his hands captured her loose braid and wrapped it around his fist; the other found purchase in the sheets. He felt the change in the cadence of his breathing. It was ragged now, and harsh. Things that he wanted to say came to his mind in disjointed phrases; words simply lodged in his throat. His hips surged upward, and then she had all of him, and his fist around her hair held her just so. He knew himself to be incapable of removing her at that moment. He was riding a wave of pleasure so sharp that its crest was like a finely honed blade. It was not beyond the realm of possibility that he would be split from balls to brains by it—then thank her for having done it to him.

There was something about this last that caught his sense of humor. Whereas laughter usually left him weak, this time the effect was exactly the opposite. His pleasure was so whet by it that he felt the quickening of his pulse and the urgency for release more acutely than he had moments before.

Swearing softly, his words hardly intelligible to his own ears, he lifted Ria's head away and guided his seed to the sheets, aware all the while of her surprise and deeply fascinated study. Feeling rather like an insect with its wings pinned back for examination, West yanked on a blanket to cover himself as he set his feet over the side of the bed. Without a word, he disappeared into the adjoining dressing room.

West poured water into a basin, though whether he should use it to make his ablutions or drown himself was not entirely clear. He stared at his reflection in the mirror above the washstand but saw nothing there that helped him understand what had just transpired. His sense of honor was deeply offended by what he had allowed Ria to do, yet there was no denying that his pleasure at her hands and mouth was unlike any he had ever known. Other women had shown greater skill—the barmaid at the inn, for one—but none had been so determinedly interested in every aspect of his response. Perhaps it was Ria's very innocence that made her curious, but West suspected it was more than that. From the outset, she seemed to be aware of him in a way few people were. She was sensitive to his mood, to his wayward thoughts, even to his contrary humor. Was it so unlikely, then, that she would be so keenly perceptive about what gave him the sharpest pleasure?