My Pleasure (31 page)

“I watched you while you were sleeping.”

He could scarce countenance it. He slept lightly. He always had. His life had often depended on it, but some portion of his brain must have recognized her and let him sleep on, feeling safe. Ha. If this was safety, he ought to have preferred peril. For there was nothing harmless in her devastating touch. It exposed him, revealed him, made him aware of how starving he was.

“I saw this. It’s a rose, isn’t it?” she murmured, her fingertips playing lightly over his flesh, his life.

“Yes.”

“You were…”

“Branded. In a prison.”

“Why?”

“The warden claimed it was to encourage me to remember. Ultimately, he was right. The rose does help me remember. But not the things he asked for.”

Her touch was mesmerizing, her voice a warm current he wanted to drown in. “What then?”

“It reminds me to stay out of dungeons.”

She hadn’t expected that. He heard a sharp intake of breath and then a surprised laugh. She linked her hands around his neck. “That is a pity. A rose, so exotic and lush, should remind you of other pleasures.”

“Are you tempting me?”

“I certainly hope so.”

What was she playing at? He was tired of games. His dreams had chased him from the memory of death to heart-pounding wakefulness, and his body celebrated, heavy with desire, growing harder with each moment. He was impatient, frustrated, and the self-control he so carefully maintained did not hold nearly as well here, in the dark, with her body under his.

“And how am I to respond?” he asked coolly, though his hands of their own accord, slipped beneath her shoulders, lifting her a little.

“As a man,” she answered breathlessly.

“Oh, I can assure you, on that count you will not be disappointed.” He smiled into the darkness. She would be glad not to see it. “No, what I meant is what mien would you have me adopt? Whom shall I be in this dark room?”

“I don’t understand,” she said with a trace of confusion.

“Do you prefer the polished swordsman, the sophisticated rake, the disreputable habitué of low places? Shall I be tender or careless? Rough? Interested only in my own pleasure? Shall I fill your ears with compliments? Or oaths?”

She pulled back. He could feel her inner recoil as well. “I don’t understand you. I came here at your bidding. You said if I ever wanted a lover I should come to you. Now you mock me.”

“And here I thought you were mocking me.” He found the fastening of her coat and nimbly opened it, lifting her arms and pulling her out of the restrictive garment. Idly he unwrapped the cravat she wore and let it slide to the floor, returning to open her shirt. She did not resist. With a slow, inexorable tug he drew it over her head and fingered the fabric beneath. Thin as gossamer, warm and subtly scented. A chemise.

“How…how so?” Her words struggled out. Her hands gripped his shoulders more tightly now, as if she needed an anchor. He ignored the implicit trepidation in those clenched fingers. He ignored the impulse to lift her from his bed and set her on her feet and send her on her way.

“Well,” he said, plucking at the bows at the top of the chemise until he’d pulled it undone and the fabric fell open. He spread it wide and felt the instant the night air raised the flesh on her chamois-soft skin. “You are the one who comes to me in the darkness, still clad in your boy’s clothes. Still in disguise.”

He lowered his head until his lips touched the very base of her throat and opened his mouth over the fragile skin. Her pulse fluttered rapidly under his tongue.

“Since you are playing a role, I thought you would like me to play one, too.” He traced a line with the tip of his tongue along the delicate collar bone. “I have, as I outlined, a certain proficiency with many.”

She trembled. He released her and her hands fell away. Sitting back, in one movement he dragged his nightshirt over his head and tossed it aside.

He looked down at her shadowy figure and, seeing just enough to find her arms, clasped her wrist and set her hand on the middle of his chest. At once, realizing he was naked, her hand clenched into a fist. “Well”—his voice was thick—“what do you want of me? What guise am I to assume?”

Her hard little fist slowly relaxed against him, the tension in her body releasing in a sort of final capitulation. “Love me.”

The words, no more than a breath, cautious and uncertain in the dark, warm room, speared through him, as decimating as any blade, as transforming as any brand.

He descended upon her like an incubus, dark and hungry, hovering over her, braced on his arms. He bent his head and kissed her, buffeting her temples and her eyes with little kisses, her smooth brow and the angle of her jaw, the bridge of her nose and the curve of her cheek, with warm, burnishing caresses. Her hand opened like a flower against the dark crisp hairs covering his chest and spread flat, absorbing his heat, the rhythm of his pulse, riding the heavy rise and fall of his chest.

“Love me,” she repeated.

With a groan he sank down, settling his body over hers. Soft breasts yielded as his hands flowed down her shoulders and followed the narrowing column of her ribs to the small waist and the sweet, feminine flare of hips. The velvet pantaloons got in his way. He worked the front placket open and skimmed his palms down her hips, peeling the pantaloons off, pulling first one leg up and then the other until he’d freed her of her boy’s clothing.

His head swam with the feel of her beneath his hands. He rolled sideways, pulling her with him, his palm beginning a return journey up the velvety skin of her outer thigh, pushing up beneath the thin chemise and finding her breast, plump and hard-tipped. With devastating deliberation he molded it to his palm, kneaded it, played with her, while like a thief with his ear to a tumbler lock, he listened, attuning himself to the slightest variation in her breathing, each little hitch, each gasp, until he heard the second he’d unlocked her defenses and she surrendered to pleasure with a quavering sigh.

Then he lowered his mouth and suckled.

She squirmed restlessly, not knowing what she wanted, how to ask, what to give in return. Virgins, thought Ram, with a brief flicker of humor, and then with a little cry she arched into the pleasure he gave her, her hands tangling in his hair, holding him tight. His heart thundered in response, his thoughts thickened with the scent of her, the feel of her, the taste of her.

Somehow he managed to summon some semblance of restraint, the need to go slow imperative, more urgent than the need to bury the rod that swelled between his legs. He released her swollen nipple, trailing a long, moist kiss down the nether curve of her breast, to the shallow basin of her belly, pausing at her navel to swipe the little knot with his tongue and send a shiver racing through her. Stroking her arms and sides and thighs, he moved lower.

“Please,” she whispered, her voice raw and vulnerable. “Please, Ram.” Her fingers dug into his shoulders as if she might be ripped to shreds by the force of the sensations that assailed her and sought some anchor in the storm that moved over her, in her, through her.

His hands abruptly dipped beneath her, cupping the round, womanly buttocks and lifting as he shifted his shoulders, forcing her thighs apart.

“Ram?”

“Trust me. Let me make what will come easier,” he whispered, blowing his words softly across a thatch of silky curls.

“That’s wicked!” she breathed, scandalized, trying to squeeze her thighs together. Failing.

“Yes,” he said and settled his mouth over her. She bucked, and he held her tighter, holding her down as he languidly traced the soft feminine fold along the narrow opening to the small bud at its top.

“This is sinful—Ah!”

He flicked his tongue against the little kernel. She shuddered. He sipped it delicately into his mouth. She reacted instantly, twisting away from and then bowing against his mouth. He lifted her closer, dragging his tongue more firmly against her this time, setting up a rhythm.

“No…oh, please.” Her words were muffled, her body damp. “You can’t…no, please. Make it…What is?”

He tongued her more quickly now, feeling the tension building in her, in the long thighs that bunched with muscles, the fingers digging frantically into his shoulders. Desire tore him, raked him across coals far hotter than any the LeMons dungeon had ever offered.

Blood roared in his ears. His muscles clenched in his belly. Not yet. Not yet. She must know there was pleasure at the end. Not just pain.

He closed his eyes and mated her with his tongue.

“Oh…oh!…No. Yes!” Her body quaked. Tension hummed through her like a blow on steel. She arched up, suspended for one long moment. She didn’t breathe. And then a sob. Another. And then she was sinking back, the tension ebbing from her limbs, her body melting into the mattress.

And she laughed.

Helena laughed because she feared she might cry. Oh, Lord! No wonder! All the things Kate had told her. Oh, she understood now.

“Generally young ladies do not respond to my love-making with laughter.” Ram’s silky voice slipped like warm brandy over her thoughts, heating them again almost at once. Was that to be her fate now? A few words from Ram and her skin heated, her breasts grew heavy and sensitive, and her mouth ached for his?

She lifted her arms and found him braced over her, the hard, dense musculature, the lean flanks, broad shoulders, and narrow hips. He went very still, breathless in anticipation. Of what? Her touch?

Her hands slipped from the broad shoulders down his chest, combing through the soft curls, testing the idea. He shuddered but remained motionless, suspended above her while she traced the rose brand with her fingertips. She wanted to kiss him, and in this dark, magical sphere she could do whatever she wanted.

She wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled herself up, kissing his lean, still face, the roughness of his morning beard tingling against her sensitized lips. She kissed his chin, she kissed his throat. She moved lower, brushing soft buffeting kisses along his breastbone and over the angry, raised welts of the rose brand.

“I am accounted, by almost all who know me, a most temperate man.” His voice did not sound temperate. It sounded harsh. The honeyed brandy tones had gone raw and smoky. “But you are challenging that notion, my love.”

“Am I?” she murmured, nipping now. His skin was so deliciously warm, veiling the strength of sinew and tendon so gorgeously. A light dampness covered it. Proof of the self-restraint he’d claimed.

“I wanted to make this easy for you. Gentle.”

“What?” she asked, trying to pull him down on top of her, suddenly overcome with the need to burrow into him, to meld her body to his, to be absorbed by all that beautiful, potent masculinity.

“This,” he said and swooped down. She met his lips with an open mouth, her tongue seeking his. Wet, passionate, they traded kisses with drunken abandon, his body pressing down on hers, his shaft a thick, hard presence throbbing against the inside of her thigh.

He reached between them, spreading the folds he’d drenched with her climax, finding again that acute, nerve-rich little piece of flesh and brushing it with his thumb. Her hips canted upward, wanting more, clinging to him as he tormented her with rough, shaking hands, pulling her legs apart, setting his knees between them. He replaced his finger with something blunt and hard.

“More. Ram,” she begged raggedly.“Please.”

He thrust into her. Her eyes flew open, the spiraling buildup of sensation fleeing before this sharp intrusion. She shrank away from the thick presence pushing into her, stretching her. He caught her hips in shaking hands.

“No!” he grated out. “Be still!”

She bit down on her lip, forcing herself to remain motionless. She could hear his breathing, harsh and uneven. His head dropped, his forehead coming to rest against her shoulder. She waited, tense and a little frightened. She knew it hurt most women, but she’d thought, because of what had gone before, she’d assumed—

He kissed her throat. He angled his head against hers and kissed the skin beneath her ear, a gentle brush of lips. She flinched. His clasp gradually eased, though that part of him still buried deep within her body gentled not at all, but stayed hard and thick.

“I am sorry,” he said and kissed her lips with exquisite care, with thought-blurring tenderness. “I have never done this with a virgin. I am…I am not…” he trailed off, his voice raw. “I would have done this better if I but knew how.”

She loved him.

She reached up and cupped his cheek with her hand. He turned his face into her hand, kissing her palm, kissing her wrist. Desire fluttered within her. She shifted, the feeling of him inside her no longer so painful, and the movement pulled a chord of pleasure from her. “This is making love?” she asked.

He moved, slowly withdrawing his shaft. She did not want him to, and that surprised her. She followed his retreat.

“No,” he said. “Like this.”

He eased himself back inside, the drag on her feminine fold bringing a jolt of reawakened hunger. He started a deliberate return, and this time she met it, lifting her hips to accommodate him, as want began to take hold of her.

“Dear God,” he muttered thickly and began thrusting, his hips taking on a slow, possessive cadence that caught the most sensitive part of her feminine flesh against the ridge of his erection. She wanted more. She wanted to feel him hilted all the way within her, his body flush with hers. She spread her legs wider, angled her hips, answered the increasing pace of his thrusts. He growled low in his throat and he grasped her legs behind the knees and notched them over his hips, making his possession deeper, each thrust demanding more.

Her body welcomed it. Welcomed his rough ride, his sweat-slicked torso moving against hers. And when he caught her hands and braided her fingers with his, stretching her arms high over her head and holding her pinned there, she recognized the thundering pulse that spiraled in ever tightening circles. She felt him in her, on her, strong, virile, a riptide of sensation…pleasure spearing through her…a harsh cry of masculine release and…there…there…ah! there!