Embracing Ashberry (29 page)

Ashberry lowered his head, his reply just
barely a murmur. “Perhaps you’ll have more definite feelings about
this.” His mouth closed over her nipple, then, his lips circling
the aureole and breathing hot air against it. She moaned and he
smiled, tasting just for a gentle instant with his tongue. When she
cried out, the noise low and needy, he repeated the caress until
her fingers clutched him, in his hair.

“Yes, yes,” she squirmed.

Ashberry’s masculine chuckle was pure
delight. Without hesitation, he took her nipple between his teeth
and teased it with his tongue until she was practically begging for
him to suckle, her back arched up, her hands urging him closer.
“It’s not only about pleasing me, Ellie,” he finally murmured,
lifting his head despite her objecting sigh as he referred to her
earlier statement. “You do that with every smile, with every tear,
every time your eyes are on me. You please me by belonging to me,
trusting me with your worries and your joys, by being mine. All
mine.”

His hand squeezed her breast, drawing
another soft gasp from her lips even as she stared at him,
wide-eyed. “It pleases me—arouses me—so much that you trust me with
this,” he continued, then lowered his hand to her belly, “And
this.” His hand felt her skin burn through the silk when he stopped
at the crux of her thighs and laid his hand gently on top of them.
His voice dropped to a barely audible gravelly sound as he
finished, “And especially this.”

His mouth took hers again while his free
hand drew the silk up from her feet, exposing her knees, then
higher, nearly to the top of her thighs. Fired by the kiss, she
barely noticed, not even when Ashberry’s hands began to caress her
sleek skin, to wander over her legs in an intensifying pattern.
When he pulled back, it was only as far as her hands in his hair
allowed, and he whispered against her chin and cheeks as he dropped
small kisses to her lips. “This, this is about pleasure so intense
it will blind you, belonging so powerful that the world ceases to
exist outside of our embrace, the satiation of all your
senses.”

Ellie had no reply. She was busy
assimilating how her thighs were beginning to relax, open naturally
for him to trace patterns inside her knees and higher. He pressed
his palm against her and she obediently opened another inch,
allowing his fingers to curl ever higher against her inner thigh.
Just when she lifted her head, seeking his lips, he shook his and
lowered it further, capturing her nipple again in his mouth. Her
gasp echoed in the quiet room and she couldn’t have said later how
she found her feet braced against the chair arm, her knees high and
bent and apart, Ashberry’s hand between them, fondling the baby
soft skin inside her thighs.

When his fingers dared further, to caress
the curls that adorned her woman’s flesh, the gasps became a
strangled cry. She nearly lifted herself from his lap when his palm
rested against her, rubbing rhythmically in circles. To her
surprise, she realized the wetness there was from her, that
Ashberry’s caress was turning her middle to hot pudding while his
mouth, burning through the silk, traced a fiery path from her
nipple to her navel that Ellie’s own hands had often followed with
much different intentions.

Ellie splintered in Ashberry’s hands soon
after. His thumb slid easily between her juicy folds, finding the
nub there. He pushed against it as his mouth found her other
nipple. Ashberry held the aching aureole between his lips as Ellie
felt the world convulse around her, drawing her into a vortex of
sensations.

When she surfaced, Ashberry had set her up
on his lap, was holding her head against his shoulder. Ellie
grasped the state of her nightgown even as she realized how gently
her husband’s hands were circling on her thighs. The top of her
gown still fell down over her breasts, and at the bottom it was
rucked up around her hips. “Better?” he murmured.

“What happened?” Ellie asked, truly
wondering. “I thought that you, that ... “

Her voice died away as Ashberry’s chest
rumbled. “I am. I will. We’re not even half way there,
darling.”

She looked at him then. “Not even?” Her
blush was pink in the light as he lifted her and stood, carrying
her to the bed. He set her gently on it, but then turned her.

“On your stomach, Ella love,” he whispered,
lifting one knee to the bed beside her. When she settled
comfortably, her head resting on her arms and facing away from him,
he pulled the nightgown up at the back, uncovering her thighs, then
her rump. It gleamed in the candlelight, shaped in gently sloping
spheres and hopelessly irresistible. Ellie nearly fainted when his
palms rested against it and stroked downward over the curve to her
upper thighs.

Wildly, she uttered a mental sentence of
gratitude to her mate, who had the foresight to lay her down; Ellie
was certain that she couldn’t have supported herself.

Ashberry took his time in learning the
roundness, stroking first up and down, then running a nail down the
dark crevice between her lower cheeks until she shivered. “I have
to know all of you, here, too,” he murmured, his fingers pinching
her gently, his mouth loving the shapely curves.

Without more words, he bunched the sheer
gold silk in one hand and lifted it still higher while his other
fingers meandered up her spine. When she gasped quietly, he
unfastened his robe and let it fall to the floor before quickly
moving behind her, kneeling with a knee on each side of her hips.
In this position, she was less capable of intense pleasure without
the help of his hands, he knew, but he would find it difficult to
penetrate her too deeply either. More than anything, even more than
their pleasure, he was unwavering in his commitment not to hurt
her. Reaching beneath her, he eased the silk over her stomach. She
lifted herself to help, sighing deeply when his thumbs passed over
her nipples.

When the gown had been pulled from her, when
she was finally nude beneath him, he slid his hands around her and
cupped her breasts in his hands, trapping her nipples between two
fingers on each hand. Leaning down, Ashberry laid a kiss on the
back of her neck.

Beneath him, Ellie couldn’t help herself.
She could feel his heat behind her, needed to know desperately how
his skin would feel against her. Her body lifted up, pressing her
back to his chest. The movement had unexpected consequences,
causing Ellie to realize almost immediately that his skin against
her fired her insides as much as one of their passionate kisses.
The surprise was against her bottom, hot and heavy and probing.
Ashberry’s voice was hot and heavy too, the words hoarse with
shock. “Ellie, dear lord, why did you do that?”

He lowered her to the bed, his hands
brooking no resistance from her. Still, her bottom squirmed, and
Ashberry’s control was rapidly slipping. He rubbed himself
helplessly against the curve of it, not assuaging the ache but
focusing it, feeding it.

“I want to feel you,” she objected, pushing
her bottom up to him.

He took her firmly by the hips, holding her
down as he trailed kisses from her neck to her bottom. The need in
him was too uncontrolled, too wild. “Tomorrow,” he muttered,
flattening one palm against her rear.

With the other, he reached around her,
sliding his hands into her curls, into her flesh. He held her there
beneath him, stroking and rubbing, while she rocked, until she
begged, “Stephen, please, do something.”

What he did was probe her, slide into her
just slightly, one hand still locked against her throbbing pubis.
She was flaming hot, tighter than he thought he could bear but he
didn’t back away. He waited until her astonished gasp faded into a
moan, courtesy of his fingers rubbing against her, then eased an
inch deeper. He couldn’t prevent himself from sliding out and
pushing back in, just once, as his free hand rode up her side and
beneath her. When her body pushed against his hands, forcing her
nipple through his fingers and her clitoris against his thumb, he
thrust again, then again, each time riding her frame a bit harder
against his fingers, pushing a bit more deeply inside her.

At least until her cry, muffled by the
pillows, indicated that she had once again entered the whirlpool
and her body fractured beneath him. He thrust deeply as his own
currents carried him away, until his eyes glassed over and his body
drained.

Ellie was still dazed when Ashberry lifted
himself from her and eased her legs beneath the blankets. He took
his time dousing the candles in the room, except for the one by the
bed, where Ellie finally set up and began to watch him, drawing
only the sheet over her. When he came back, he started to don the
robe, but then dropped it as their eyes met, climbing onto the bed
just as he was.

Quite seriously, he asked her, “How are you,
Ellie?”

Her smile was sleepy, and she yawned even
before she managed to answer. “I didn’t know humans were capable of
that,” she whispered, blinking.

He was amused. “Go to sleep, darling,” he
whispered, helping her climb down under the sheet. “I’ll be here
with you.”

Ellie’s answer, simple as it was, delighted
him. “I know,” she murmured. “You won’t leave me.”

“Never,” he promised, watching as she
settled into the pillow, her head cradled by the soft bolsters.

Only after he was sure she slept, only after
the quiet murmurs of her dream left her curled against him did he
pull back the sheet.

He held the candle in hand, taking in his
first sight of her scarred stomach and ribcage. Anger, so violent
and black that he tasted its waters as it flooded him, overtook the
dam he had built up over the last weeks against its simmering
threat. He remained there, contemplating first her and then himself
until the candle began to sputter in the black room. Eventually,
though, he drew the blankets up over her form, sliding down beside
her in the bed and pulling her against him, kissing her forehead
and closing his eyes. It was only the tears that leaked through his
eyelids and onto his cheeks that gave away his grief, but in his
arms Ellie slept safe and dreamless, until at last Ashberry joined
her in the void.

* * * *

“I would like to know,” Ashberry said,
clearly amused, “Why you locked the doors to our suite.” Griffin,
he reflected, had been gleeful when Ashberry had finally answered
his rapping, still shrugging on his robe and clearly half-aroused.
“Did you think to slow me down if I tried to run away from
you?”

Ellie flushed, still flustered by the new
awareness between them, by Ashberry’s passionate familiarity during
the morning. “I, I’m not sure. It’s just that I guess I was, was a
little nervous, I guess.”

Ashberry couldn’t help himself. He kissed
her forehead and rocked her closer against him, his hands rubbing
her side and spine. The marquess delighted in having her on his
lap, despite the demure, heavy gown she wore for warmth. Ellie had
woken early, and her stirring as she tried to leave the bed had
roused Ashberry. Instead of letting her crawl out of bed, he had
cupped his hands behind her thighs and pressed her beneath him
until her hands had wrapped around his head and her mouth pressed
fervently in return. Griffin’s timing, Ashberry reflected, had been
abominably bad.

“Are you sore?” he had questioned as the
noise persisted, not surprised when she grimaced.

“I’ll ask for a bath, my dear,” he told her,
an amused twist to his lips. His finger had rubbed her lip while he
added, “I can enjoy you later.”

He did enjoy her later, though the intimacy
between them had been unfamiliar and uncertain for Ellie. Ashberry
smiled as he remembered her blushes when he had come to the
dressing room, dismissing the housekeeper with a nod of his head.
Ellie had already risen from the bath, but it was Ashberry who
finished drying her in front of the large dressing room mirror,
Ashberry who had insisted she arrange her curls in a manner easy to
release later. He had watched her dress, stopping her from donning
the corset, taking it from her physically when she frowned.

“You’ll be more comfortable,” he insisted.
When Ellie didn’t appear convinced, he had drawn her close to him,
his palms flat against her sides. “I’ll be able to touch you more
easily,” he murmured, kissing her until she softened against him,
until her hands clutched his shoulders. She had said nothing else
when he tucked the stiff whalebone in her bag, as he helped her
fasten the high-necked navy blue gown from the base of her neck to
her waist. “This one isn’t nearly as accessible,” he had teased,
tucking two fingers inside the buttons and touching the inside of
one breast through her chemise.

Ellie laid her head on his shoulder, just
resting against him. It was true, she acknowledged, that she had
blushed constantly since she woke. Ashberry had hardly taken his
eyes from her, hardly been farther away from her than he could
reach with his hands. And he had reached. Often. In fact, since he
had lifted her into the carriage over an hour ago, he had done
nothing but cuddle her close to him, stroking her hair, rubbing her
cheek. She had no objections, though, and on the thought, she slid
a hand inside his coat, pressing it against his shirt.

The warmth there reminded her. “Why,” she
asked, “did you tell me I could touch you today? Why not last
night?”

The question made him chuckle. She looked
up, her face serious and he sobered, understanding quickly that she
truly didn’t understand. “Ellie, I was trying desperately to
control my basest urges so that I wouldn’t overwhelm you, so that
you would feel the same pleasure I knew I would. Your, your
luscious behavior nearly ruined all my intentions and it would have
made the thing not nearly as memorable for you.” His hand stroked
down to her hip while he loosened her hair, stroking it while it
flowed over her shoulders and down her back. “Tonight,” he
promised, “You can touch me before I’m nearly out of my head.”