My Darling Gunslinger (13 page)

With a growl, Ty took her nipple into his mouth, his lips clamping around her flesh. He sucked the peak deep into the heat of his mouth, laved her with his tongue, pulled, suckled, drew on her nipple as if seeking substance.

Charlotte cried out, the pleasure so acute it bordered on pain.

Ty lifted his head, his eyes fixed on her face as it to read her reaction. She saw a flicker of doubt flash in his dark gaze.

“More,” she begged, her hands tugging his hair.

“You undo me,” he murmured before dipping his head to gift her other breast with the same pleasure. And more. He used his teeth, gently abrading her sensitized flesh. The suction of his mouth took on a fierce rhythm, one that had her panting and moaning as her entire body pulled tight and heat gathered between her legs.

She squeezed her thighs together seeking relief. Ty’s hand on her backside flexed and shifted to the center, right over the crease. One long finger delved into the space, dragging over the tender skin. Down, down it went, questing, seeking, until he found her center. With just his fingertip he circled, dipped inside, circled again.

Without warning he withdrew his hand from her body, from her flesh, from her drawers altogether. Gently he lowered her to the velvet coverlet and placed his hands beside her shoulders. He dropped his head down, his hair falling forward to shield his face.

“Ty?” she whispered.

“Give me a minute,” he replied between panting breaths.

Charlotte smiled and Ty looked up, almost as if he sensed it.

“Nice and slow,” he reminded her. Or himself.

He straightened her bent legs, trailed his fingers from her ankles to her knees, slipped around to fondle the undersides, and glided his palms up her thighs. When he reached the edge of her drawers, he skimmed over the ruffles, a smile lifting the corners of his lips.

“So feminine,” he said. “So fragile.”

Charlotte wondered if he referred to the thin cotton undergarment or her.

“Not so fragile,” she replied.

He tugged at the ribbon, pulled it loose, then skimmed his fingers beneath the fabric, his knuckles caressing low on her belly.

Charlotte sucked in a breath, let it out on a shivery sigh.

She lifted her hips, and Ty slowly drew her drawers down her legs, his eyes sweeping over her exposed limbs, leaving a trail of heat in their wake.

He rose to his knees, his hands falling to the fly of his dungarees.

Charlotte dropped her gaze, watched in anticipation as the buttons popped free, one by one. His erection, nestled in a thicket of dark hair, sprang free. Before she could take in more than a flash of the engorged head and long shaft, he fell to his bottom. He tugged impatiently, pushing his trousers down and tossing them away.

He turned to find her watching him and froze, a flush spreading over his cheeks. “Nice and slow.”

Charlotte lifted her hand, beckoned him with her wiggling fingers.

Ty crawled over her, wedging his knees between hers, spreading her legs. Determinedly keeping a soft smile on her face, she sighed. She’d thought…oh well. All those preliminaries had been wonderful, and if he was now ready to get down to the main event, who was she to complain?

He came over her, his hands braced on either side of her head. Slowly, he lowered his body until his weight rested on his elbows, carefully pushed his hands beneath her head, his fingers cradling, his thumbs rubbing circles against her temples, across her cheeks.

He looked down at her from eyes like polished silver in the afternoon sunlight streaming through the windows.

Charlotte wondered what he saw upon her face that made him frown. Surely she’d hidden her disappointment.

He dipped his head and kissed her.

Expecting nothing more than a quick peck, a prelude to what came next, Charlotte was surprised when he lingered. He feasted on her lips with long, slow kisses, with swipes of his tongue. He suckled her bottom lip, traced his tongue to the corner of her mouth, setting out to seduce her mouth once more.

Charlotte brought her hands up to his back, trailed her fingers over his spine, and gave herself up to his lingering kisses. As if her capitulation had set off a bell in his head, the kisses changed, became deeper, wetter, hungrier.

Caught up in the building pleasure, she bent her legs up to cradle his hips. With what sounded like a growl of relief, Ty lowered his body to hers. His chest came down to brush against her breasts. She arched her back and rubbed her nipples in his curling hairs, seeking the remembered friction.

With a groan, Ty lowered his hips, his shaft brushing against the curls between her spread legs. Charlotte’s hips gave a quick jerk in anticipation and Ty completed the movement until they were pressed together from lips to hips.

She sighed out her relief, her delight, as his weight settled against her. It was delicious, arousing and comforting at the same time. His body above her, pressing her gently into the velvet at her back, was intimate in a way that went beyond mere coupling. In that moment she felt a part of him yet separate, weak yet powerful. And very, very feminine.

“Oh, that’s so nice,” she whispered into his mouth.

“God, yes.”

Charlotte caressed his back, his shoulders, his backside, anywhere she could reach.

Ah, the feel of all that warm muscle and strength beneath her fingers.

When he shifted down and the head of his cock nudged her folds, she opened her legs wide to receive him.

Ty broke their kiss, rose above her, and captured her gaze.

Slowly, oh so slowly, he glided into her until he’d seated himself to the hilt.

He let loose a stuttering breath, his big body trembling above her.

“Good God,” Charlotte breathed in wonder. He was so deep inside her. Surely he was touching her womb. Their first coupling had been so rushed, so furious, she hadn’t had time to truly savor the wondrous feeling of being filled by him.

Ty began to move. He eased gently out of her body before sliding back in, effortlessly, steadily. And all the while he watched her. She could see the effort he made to go slowly. It was evident in the clenching of his jaw, in the slight frown pushing his plump lower lip out so that she wanted to lean up and pull it into her mouth.

Instead she kept her eyes glued to his beautiful, dark face.

Charlotte lifted her hips to meet each thrust of his hard shaft, undulated slowly, pressing her aching flesh to his. They found a rhythm that had Charlotte moaning with each downward stroke, sighing with each retreat until they were moving together as if they’d been making love to one another for years.

Her orgasm built slowly. In no hurry, she let the sensations grow and expand, content to have Ty moving above her, within her. She curled her legs around his hips, dragged her feet over his thighs down to the back of his knees, all the while rolling her hips, taking him deep into her body, glorying in the press of flesh to flesh.

“Christ, that feels so good,” Ty whispered.

“Yes,” she sighed.

“I’ve wanted you for so long.”

“Yes.”

Ty shifted his hands from beneath her head to cup her cheeks, his thumbs drifting over her lips. Charlotte captured one of those trailing thumbs and pulled it into her mouth. Gently she suckled it, twirled her tongue around it.

“Charlotte,” he growled low in his throat.

As one, they increased their tempo, his thrusts gaining speed but losing none of the exquisite glide of heat and pressure.

Charlotte released his thumb and arched her neck as the first tremors of release took hold of her. Still she kept her eyes locked with his until she could no longer control even her eyelids. They drifted shut as all the blood in her body seemed to coalesce between her legs, on the delicate ball of flesh Ty slid against with each thrust and each withdrawal, and deep inside the center of her body.

“Ahhh, Ty,” she moaned as pleasure, piercingly sweet, achingly dark, gripped her. She dug her fingers into his back for purchase as she fell into the swirling mists of an orgasm so glorious, so decadent, she lost all track of time, all sensation beyond the terrifying bliss of their joined bodies.

“Thank God,” Ty grunted above her and Charlotte forced her eyes open to watch him throw his head back as he thrust into her harder, deeper. Then he went still, buried deep inside her. His entire body shook with the force of his climax. A low, gravelly groan fell from his lips and echoed about the room.

He fell forward, his back heaving and trembling, to his bury his face in her neck.

They lay together panting and sighing. Charlotte turned her face into his, pressed her lips to his rough jaw, and simply held them there, too satiated, too blissfully tired, too wonderfully content to move.

Show me a woman who doesn’t expect something in return for the pleasure of her company and I’ll show you a woman who’s honed her craft to an art.

Molly Morgan

Ty pried his eyes open when Charlotte rolled from her position pressed to his side, her head resting over his heart. With a gracefulness that was as much a part of her as her expressive blue eyes, she rose to her feet and stretched her hands above her head. He swept his gaze over the curve of her spine, over her lush, round backside, down her long legs.

“What’re you doing?” he asked as she walked toward the back of the luxuriously appointed railway car. He’d looked around the quiet car while she’d slept after their first round of lovemaking, amazed by the decadent splendor of silk and velvet and gold. He’d imagined the interior of the car a hundred times since he’d watched her step onto the train depot platform all those months ago. The reality far surpassed his most wild imaginings.

Much like the lady.

“I’ll be right back,” she called over her shoulder before disappearing behind a narrow door of heavy, dark wood.

He closed his eyes, drew air into his lungs. Her scent filled him, part sweet, flowery perfume and part earthy woman.

Jesus, who would have thought so much passion resided within the lady.

Or such a temper.

When he’d come upon her in her frilly undergarments, her long, pale limbs glowing in the shadowy car, he’d been shocked by the wild look in her eyes. She’d looked as if she wanted to pummel someone, to pound someone into a pulp.

Apparently that someone was him.

I will annihilate you
.

She’d done that and more. Imagine a tiny, delicate lady like Charlotte Green believing she could take him down. She was quick, he’d give her that. But she hadn’t the skills or the instincts of a fighter. Thinking she could hurt him with a swipe of her open hand, with her feeble attempt to bring her knee to his groin. She was lucky he hadn’t taken her with him when he’d lost his balance and flown over her crouching form.

But damn, the look in her eyes as he’d approached her. He’d seen the exact moment rage had turned to desire. He could no more turn away from the naked yearning in her eyes than he could halt his own erratic breathing. He’d taken her hard, used her roughly against the wall like some common whore. And she’d loved it, digging her feet into his back when he’d tried to slow things down, to get a grip on the lust that had raged through him.

Jesus, it had been good, slamming his pulsing cock into her tight heat.

But nothing could compare to making slow, careful love to Charlotte. Ty had never felt anything as perfect as the moment he pulled her to her knees and she’d wrapped her arms around his back, pressing her bare breasts to his chest. He could almost convince himself there’d been real affection in that embrace, in the way her hands had pressed into his back urging him closer still. If he tried he might even convince himself love had shone from her eyes as she’d held his gaze while he’d slid slowly, gently into her body.

Ty opened his eyes to find Charlotte standing above him, her gaze traveling over his prone form, pausing momentarily at his shaft hanging heavy and semi-hard between his legs.

Without a word she knelt beside his hips and he saw that she held a small glass jar in her hands.

“Ointment for your wound,” she explained with a lopsided smile. “May I?”

It was all Ty could do not to chuckle. After all that had transpired in the last hours, only Charlotte would feel the need to ask his permission to touch him now. Only a true lady.

Instead he kept his lips firmly closed and gave her a quick nod.

The ointment was cool on his heated flesh—cool and minty. Charlotte’s hands were soft and warm. With her fingers she traced the new scar across his chest, liberally coating the wound with the soothing lotion, sending a shiver of mingled desire and contentment through him.

“You’re lucky you didn’t reopen the wound,” she said, her head bent to the task before her. “You shouldn’t have exerted yourself so soon.”

When he made no reply, she peeped up at him through her lashes and Ty saw the blush that swept across her cheeks.

“Not that I’m complaining,” she continued with a dimpled smile. “That was…”

“What?” he prompted.

“Curious,” she replied as she dipped her fingers into the glass jar once more.

Ty chuckled before wrapping his hands around her waist and lifting her.

“What are you doing?” she yelped as he moved her to straddle him, her bottom resting low on his abdomen, her thighs close against his sides.

“Moving you into closer proximity,” he replied, grateful he’d had occasion to look up the word months ago when he’d heard a shopkeeper instructing a new clerk as to the proper distance to keep from the customers in her small mercantile. “So, curious, huh?”

“I’ve never…that is…I hadn’t realized two people could…” Her words drifted away as she slathered the minty ointment across his chest.

“Fuck against a wall.” Ty regretted the words before they’d left his mouth.

Charlotte lifted her head, pinned him with her eyes, sending shame coursing through him. “Is that what we did? We fucked?”

“Damned if you don’t sound like a lady even when…” he muttered.

“Even when I’m conversing like a…”

“Do not say it,” he ordered.

“Dock worker,” she finished, that lopsided smile flashing across her face. “That was certainly curious. But I was actually referring to the other. Was that fucking, too?”

She looked so young, so innocently wanton straddling him, her fingers idly circling his nipples.

Ty hesitated, weighed just what he wanted to say to this beguiling woman, part innocent lady, part ravished woman. “That was making love.”

“It was very pleasant,” she replied before running her fingers over his shoulders and down his arms. “Curiously so.”

“You were married, you have a son.” Ty moved his hands from her waist, coasted them over her narrow hips and down her pale thighs.

“Yes.”

“You must have found pleasure with your husband.”

She tilted her head as if contemplating the question. “Yes, it was pleasant after a time.”

“After a time?”

She waved one hand in the air in a gesture he was coming to recognize as an indication she was unsure of herself. “Westlockhart…that is George and I barely knew one another when we married. It took some time to become accustomed to one another in the marriage bed.”

“You married a man you barely knew?” Well, that was interesting. He’d imagined her married to a man she’d loved whole-heartedly.

“Ours was an arranged marriage.”

Ty hid his surprise, not wanting to offer offense where none was intended. He waited for her to continue the story of her marriage.

“We’d met only a handful of times prior to our wedding.”

“He didn’t court you?”

“Court me?” She blinked down at him. “I suppose he did, after a fashion. Naturally we danced together at various balls. We went riding in the park once. And of course he sent me lovely bouquets of roses. Pink roses.”

From the slight frown that puckered her pretty mouth, Ty would bet she didn’t particularly like roses.

“How long were you married?”

“Four months,” she answered quietly.

Jesus, she’d been a widow almost as soon as she’d been a wife.

“One might think we would have overcome the initial awkwardness in short order,” she said, her voice taking on a lilting, almost musical quality, as if she were simply musing aloud rather than offering him insight into her life. “But I imagine George was under the impression he owed me a certain consideration in that regard.”

“Consideration?” he repeated in confusion. Her husband should have been considerate enough to bring her pleasure.

“He was a gentleman. And I was quite young, barely nineteen, and rather a naïve nineteen at that. Naturally, he attempted to shield me from his more earthly needs.”

“He held himself back, you mean?”

“Precisely,” she agreed. “He was ever mindful of my delicate sensibilities.”

“I see.” As far as Ty could see, her husband had been a fool. To have her luscious body, her full lips, her soft hands at his disposal and not take the time to seduce her from her delicate sensibilities was a crime.

“It wasn’t until we left on a delayed honeymoon trip that we began to…that is he sought to show me what pleased him. And I began to find a measure of comfort in our bed.”

“Comfort?”

Charlotte raised her arms, her fingers diving into the coil of braids atop her head. The movement arched her back, filling his vision with her uplifted breast. She had beautiful breasts, small and pert and tipped with pale pink nipples that begged for his attention.

Ty coasted his hands up her thighs to her hips, intent upon claiming those perfect breasts.

Then one long braid fell from atop her head, slithering over her shoulder and down her belly, the end trailing over his ribs. With nimble fingers she slowly unwound the other braid until it fell to brush against his stomach.

With a little shiver she brought her hands down, began to fiddle with the end of one of those long, golden plaits.

“When we returned to London, I worried things between us would go back to the way they’d been before,” she continued with a soft smile.

Ty tried to concentrate on her words, but he was riveted by the deft movement of her fingers, by the bright curls falling in their wake as she released them from their binding.

“But George gave his mistress her conge.”

“What?” His eyes darted from her fingers to her face to find her looking down at him with a serene smile upon her lips.

“Her conge, her departing gift,” she explained.

“Your husband had a mistress?”

“Yes.”

“When he married you?”

“And for the first two months,” she clarified, her hands stilling halfway up the braid. “When I’d learned what a wife must know to please her husband, George parted from Mrs. St. Germaine. I must admit I wondered if it was a permanent separation or a temporary one which would end when I found myself enceinte.”

“You knew he had a mistress when you agreed to marry him?” Ty couldn’t believe the wild tigress who had greeted him in her corset and drawers, rage vibrating along her limbs, would quietly accept such an arrangement.

“Not specifically.” Her fingers began to move again, speedily freeing the remainder of her braid. Her hair shimmered around her in a half-halo of bright gold curls, the long tresses trailing over her shoulder and down to cover one breast before spilling over her thigh to pool on Ty’s stomach.

“I knew he likely kept a mistress as most gentlemen do,” she continued, reaching for the end of the other braid, her fingers whispering over his ribs. “It wasn’t until we returned from our honeymoon that I learned who she was. She was not happy with their separation and none too discreet about voicing her displeasure.”

“Shit,” he murmured.

“Yes, well, then he died…drowned… And she made terrible a scene at the funeral. Looking back I suppose I should have realized then, when he did nothing to stop her.”

Ty opened his mouth to ask what she meant, who did nothing to stop her, when Charlotte’s hands disappeared into her unrestrained hair, her fingers rubbing over her scalp. She closed her eyes and let out a little sigh of satisfaction followed by a tiny moan of relief. Giving her head a quick shake, she lowered her hands. Her hair flew out in every direction like the first burst of sunlight over the horizon.

“Jesus, Charlotte,” Ty whispered in awe. “Your hair.”

Charlotte giggled, a pretty blush painting her cheeks. “I know vanity is a sin, but I must admit to being terribly vain about my hair.”

Ty smiled at the confession, while every nerve ending in his body came alive. Charlotte Green laced up tighter than a gunnysack was beautiful. But naked with her hair flying around her and trailing past her hips, she was mesmerizing.

“When I was a girl, just before I was to have graduated from plaits to the sophisticated twists and chignons of a young lady,” she said, her hands coming to rest on his chest once more, “I fell from a tree and hit my head on a rock.”

“Poor baby,” Ty murmured, entranced by the sight of her, by the rhythm of her speech, by the ease with which she shared her life history with him.

“The physicians were forced to shave half my head in order to close the wound.” She laughed softly, never mind the memory sounded anything but funny. “You should have seen the way Mother carried on when she saw me. Of course I could not go about with half a shorn head, so Nanny Bettelheim shaved the other side.”

“Shaved bald?” he asked with a grin.

“You would not believe the teasing I endured from the other children.”

“Your brothers and sisters?”

“No, I haven’t any siblings,” she replied with a frown. “It was nearly a year before I was allowed to leave my bedchamber without a bonnet pulled over my head, and another before my hair grew long enough for the intricate coiffures all the other young ladies at…of fashion wore with such pride.”