The Lover (4 page)

Anticipation coiled in her breasts and lower abdomen.

Each released button revealed more and more of the thick, dark hair that matted his chest and arrowed down his stomach. She could feel him underneath the lined silk of his trousers. He was long and thick and hard. His penis pulsed with a life of its own.

Breath bated, she peeled his trousers down over his hips… his thighs…

And sucked in blistering heat, the faint scent of soap, and the musky scent of a man's sex.

The muscles inside her vagina clenched.

In desire.

In fear.

He had been right. She was not prepared for the reality of such a vital man.

Her gaze leaped up to his.

His violet eyes were waiting for hers.

"You said that you brought every woman to orgasm."

"Every time," he agreed silkily.

"Even when the woman was a virgin?"

"I have never had a virgin."

He had never had a virgin.

She had never had a man.

If she took him inside her, she would not be the same woman that she now was.

Anne fought to keep the rising panic out of her voice. "If you have never had a virgin, how do you know you will be able to give me pleasure?"

Calmly, methodically, he pulled his trousers back up, walked over to the bed, sat down, and proceeded to remove his shoes. One soft thump followed another. The socks made no sound at all.

His bare feet were long, large as his hands were large, the same dark, dusky brown color as was the rest of his body.

Except for his manhood.

Jutting out of the opened vent in his trousers, the thick, fleshy stalk bulged with blue veins, the tip a purplish red hue, like a garden-ripe plum: hearty and heavy. Black hair peppered his testicles. They, too, were striated with blue veins.

"How do you know?" she repeated shakily.

Standing up, he shucked his pants off and walked toward her, six feet of dark, hair-studded skin and sinewy muscle. His engorged manhood swayed with his approach.

He stepped so close that the bulbous crown of his erection prodded her silk gown, and underneath that, her lower stomach.

It throbbed.

She throbbed.

The very air throbbed.

"I will please you,
chérie
." Scorching breath feathered her upturned face. "You must trust me."

How did men do this, take their pleasure with women who were strangers to them?

"If I may borrow a robe, I will undress in your dressing room," she offered stiltedly. "You may extinguish the light and wait for me in bed."

A dark, scarred hand lifted, sifted through the tight bun that she wore her hair in, found a pin. "I think not,
chérie
," he murmured, hot breath abrading her cheek.

The pin slid free and dropped to the oak floor, a tinny
plink
that was inordinately loud over the thrumming of her heartbeat.

She did not know what she was supposed to do… or how she was supposed to act.

Anne stood still, as she had learned to do when surrounded by the ton who deliberately mistook her ignorance for clumsiness.

Anger came to her rescue. "It is my money, monsieur. You will do as I please."

Another pin fell to the floor. "You are paying me to ensure your pleasure."

"Yes. And disobeying my wishes does not bring me pleasure."

Yet another pin slid free; her bun sagged. "It will,
chérie
."

She grabbed his hands, her fingers impeded by her hair. "Please do not do that."

He did not stop, using both hands to free her bun. "There is no pleasure in being a pincushion."

The hard thrust of his penis rubbed against her stomach, a tantalizing tease, frightening in its proportions—in its base masculinity.

Her hair slithered down her back.

No man had ever seen her hair loose.

Desperately striving to retain a semblance of control—
she was not the gauche eighteen-year-old girl who had inspired ridicule among the ton
—Anne awkwardly rested her hands on his lean waist. His muscled flesh was as hard as it looked, the corded skin blistering hot. "I have never been naked in front of a man."

She had never been naked in front of anyone save her old nursemaid.

He thrust his fingers into her hair, working out the tangles. His scar-roughened flesh grated against her scalp. "I assure you, you have nothing that I have not seen before."

But he had not seen a woman like her before.

He had never seen a thirty-six-year-old virgin spinster…
not like this
.

"I'm not young."

He forced her head up. Darkness shadowed his face. Only his eyes were alive. "Neither am I."

Tears pricked her lids. "I'm not beautiful."

His fingers tightened in her hair. "Neither am I."

"Your eyes are. They burn. With need."

Something like pain flashed across his dark, tense face. "So do yours,
chérie
."

He lowered his head and would not let her turn aside as he lightly licked her lips, tongue a silky tease of liquid fire.

Her fingers dug into his waist. His muscles were hard, unyielding. "I do not know how… to take a man's body inside my own."

"It is like a kiss," he whispered, breath searing her saliva-coated lips. "I will taste you. Lick you. Tongue you. And then I will penetrate you."

Her control was slipping,
slipping
. "With your tongue?"

He released her head. Grasping her right hand, he dragged it between them and closed her fingers around throbbing flesh that was both hard and soft, pliable yet rigid. "With this."

Uncontrollable lust sparked through Anne's body. She couldn't move; she could only feel.

And marvel at the miracle that was a man's arousal.

Nothing in her life had ever compared to Michel des Anges—not her erotic dreams, not her sexual fantasies, certainly not the long, endless hours she had nursed her father.

He was softer than satin, harder than steel. Far longer than the width of her palm. Thicker than the circle of her fingers. He pulsed in time to her heartbeat.

Anne gulped air. "Please turn out the light."

"I can't do that."

She opened her mouth to protest—it was her money that paid for their union—only to be silenced by scalding heat.

He licked her. He tongued her. And then he pierced her.

Lightning bolted through Anne.

He caressed her tongue, the roof of her mouth…

Too much
. Knife-sharp sensation stabbed through her breasts.

And still the flesh inside her fist pulsed and throbbed.

Her lungs ached with the need for oxygen.

He gave it to her, only to suck it inside his mouth—along with her tongue.

Michel des Anges suckled her.

As he had promised he would.

First her tongue, her breasts, and then her clitoris.

Her clitoris, breasts, and tongue pulsed and throbbed in time with the satiny-smooth flesh in her hand.

The tight constriction around her chest eased; the waist of her dress drooped.

Sound vibrated inside her mouth. "Raise your arms."

Squeezing her eyelids shut, Anne turned loose the thick male appendage that mirrored her heartbeat and raised her arms.

Her silk dress snaked up her torso, over her head. She could feel his stare all the way down to her slippered toes.

"Tell me your name, mademoiselle."

Her eyelids snapped open.

"Anne. Anne Aimes."

She immediately remembered that her solicitor had warned her to remain anonymous in this venture, a silly warning. What was more dangerous than this ache that stripped a woman of everything but raw, animal need?

Deft fingers untied the tapes of her bustle.

"You may call me Anne," Anne blurted out, cringing as the words left her mouth but unable to stop them. "May I call you… Michel?"

The bustle fell with an audible plunk onto the wooden floor.

"We are going to be close, Anne Aimes." Deft fingers untied the tapes of her top petticoat. "As close as two people can get. You may call me whatever you wish."

The petticoat fell about her feet, a soft swish of sound and motion.

Anne clenched her hands at her sides lest she struggle to retain the remainder of her clothing. Desperately she concentrated on his voice.
We are going to be close… as dose as two people can get
. "You said this was not a romantic interlude."

"Nor is it." The second petticoat joined the first, creating a mound of wool. "There is nothing romantic about lust."

He cupped her derriere, his fingers perilously close to the seamless vent in her wool drawers. "Lust is earthy."

Suddenly his hands were inside her drawers, a rasp of scars and calluses. "Lust is primal."

A rough finger mapped out the valley between her cheeks. "We will sweat. We will groan."

Hands sliding down, he tested the plumpness of her soft buttocks, simultaneously pressing her against his groin so that she tested the hardness of his manhood. "We will fight each other for your pleasure. And when we climax, we will be one body, joined by our sex."

His violet eyes trapped hers. "
That
is what will happen when I take you to bed, mademoiselle."

Anne's spine was so brittle it felt as if it would snap. Desperately she tried to marshal her thoughts. "Do you always join a woman in climax?"

The harsh drag of his fingers inched up and out of her drawers, grasped the ends of the tape to her corset, proceeded to unlace it. "When the time is right."

The whalebones collapsed, like a deflated accordion. The corset fell to the oak floor. Its loss restricted rather than aided her breathing.

"How do you know when the time is right?"

"When a woman's screams echo in my head." His breath serrated her cheek. Holding her gaze, he lightly ran his hands over her breasts, lingered infinitesimally over her painfully engorged nipples. "And she is so swollen and exhausted that she cannot reach another climax.

"Lift your arms," he abruptly ordered.

Anne had no choice but to comply. The linen shift was jerked up and over her head.

Cold air. Hot skin.

His fingers weighed her naked breasts, kneaded them.

The sensation was too intense. Too painfully personal. The look in his eyes was too discerning.

She had not known it was possible to want a man this badly.

Even as she thought it, she knew it for the lie that it was.

She had wanted him this badly eighteen years ago when she saw him dancing with Countess Raleigh, a beautiful, rich woman fifteen years her senior. And she had known, for all that Anne was one of the richest heiresses in England, that he would not so much as glance at her.

And he had not.

She squeezed her eyelids together to buffer the truth.

He would not be here with her now if she could not afford him.

"Open your eyes, Anne."

She reluctantly did as he bade.

"Don't close them again. There's nothing to hide from,
chérie
. I know what you feel. I know what you need."

How could this man—this perfect man who did not drool when he kissed or tremble with passion when he stood naked before her—how could he know about a spinster woman's needs?

Anne fought to speak, to rationalize instead of palpitate like the bundle of raw, exposed nerves that he had reduced her to.

She did not want to be this vulnerable.

"How do you know what I feel?" The words were torn from her throat. "How could you, of all people, possibly know what it feels like to want someone to touch you so badly that you pay for it?"

Emotions that she could not even begin to fathom darkened his eyes. "We all have needs, Anne."

"Do you?" she harshly demanded.

He did not look away. "Yes."

"Have you ever needed to be touched so badly that you paid for it?"

The scars ridging his right cheekbone tightened. "Yes."

"
Why
?" Her hoarse cry echoed in her ears.

The darkness in his eyes deepened; at the same time the fire intensified. "For this,
chérie
." He brushed the rock-hard tip of her breast.

Air caught in Anne's chest. It escaped in a gasp when he lowered his head and sucked her nipple into his mouth.

Molten fire coursed through her breast and down her spine.

Her hands—
what did she do with her hands
?

Did she leave them at her sides?

Did she thread her fingers through his hair, as he had earlier done to hers?

Did she pull his head against her breast to make him take it more deeply inside his mouth, as she wanted to?

Her chaotic thoughts were interrupted at the invasion of scarred, callused skin. It breached the vent in her drawers, and then it breached the nether lips that only she had ever touched.

Her heart pounded so hard that her entire body shook from the force of it.

Would he penetrate her? Or would he touch her where she desperately ached to be touched?

Her legs instinctively widened, giving him the freedom to choose.

For long seconds he simply rested there, finger nestled between her swollen nether lips while he suckled and suckled her nipple.

A direct line of electricity arced through her body, breast to labia, labia to breast.

She tensed, waiting for something…
something
…

And then it came, the touch that she needed: the slippery glide of a hard, wet, scar-roughened finger.

Anne convulsively grabbed his head while her neck arched back in a silent scream of release.

A popping sound broke the single-minded enjoyment of her orgasm. Dimly she associated the sound with the release of her nipple. The chill spring air was almost painfully cold after the furnace of his mouth.

A harsh rasp of air drowned out the sound of her own ragged breathing. Anne opened her eyes… and stared straight up into Michel's.

"You didn't scream."

"No." Anne struggled to regain her breath. "That is not… dignified."

Especially in a spinster woman.

"I told you,
chérie
. This is lust, not romance. There is no room in my bed for dignity. And even if there were, I wouldn't allow it. You came to me for sex. Hot sex. Wet sex. The kind you won't find in the marriage bed, where a man's sole concern is producing an heir or satisfying his own needs."

His finger moved, a slippery descent to her vagina. He pressed inward so that both she and he could feel the membrane that was her maidenhead. "When I take this, I want you to cry out. I want to know when I hurt you. And then I want you to cry out again. To let me know that I please you."

His words were alarming, yet unbelievably arousing.

Her mother had been forty when she conceived Anne, her first and only child. Always a sickly woman, what little health she possessed had dwindled with the pregnancy and subsequent birth.

Her father had been ten years older than her mother.

They had not needed a child; they had needed a nurse. And they had gotten one in Anne.

She had never screamed. Never laughed out loud for fear that she would disturb their rest.

Every childish joy, every adolescent heartbreak, every adult need had been borne in silence.

"I don't know if I can," she whispered.

"I will make you scream,
chérie
." The words were gravelly, a promise of unimaginable pleasure.
Or pain
. "Before the night is over I will make you scream again and again."

Anne tensed; he throbbed against the unbreached portal of her femininity. "Are you going to penetrate me with your finger now?"

"Do you want me to?"

She firmed her chin. "Yes."

She wanted it all: his tongue, his fingers, his manhood. Everything he had ever given a woman.

Everything she was paying him to give her.

Suddenly the tantalizing threat of his hand was gone. Anne stood alone in her drawers and the aftermath of an orgasm that had not come from her own fingers.

And like all the ones that had come before,
it was not enough
.

"I brought a tin of French letters." She fought her body to keep her hands at her sides instead of covering her swollen breasts. "They're in my reticule."

Practiced fingers found the four buttons on the band of her wool drawers. Thick black lashes veiled his eyes. "I have my own."

He did not fumble with her buttons as she had fumbled with his.

She would not be dependent on this man. Nor would she be possessed by him.

She would prove that she was a woman in control of her emotions.

"I prefer we use the ones I purchased."

"But I do not,
chérie
."

She stiffened her spine; her hardened nipples stabbed the wiry hair covering his chest. Prickly heat rocketed through her womb. "Why not?"

Anne watched him as he watched the cream-colored wool glide down her body, knowing what he saw—hips that were too generous… a pale stomach that was rounded… a patch of brown pubic hair…

A dark flush outlined his high cheekbones. The white scars on his right cheek and temple stood out in stark relief.

The heels on her shoes all at once felt as if they had grown by several inches. Her pelvis jutted forward in a most unseemly manner, flaunting…
everything
.

Her naked body.

Her naked needs.

His thick, dark lashes lifted. She was pinned by his violet gaze. "It is a matter of size,
chérie
. My condoms are specially tailored."

Her fingers clenched into fists. "I wish to put it on you."

Michel held out his hand, palm upward; it was scarred both front and back. "
Tout ce que tu veux
. Whatever you wish. However many times you wish it."

Grasping the fingers that would soon penetrate her, she awkwardly stepped out of the hobble of her drawers and over the mound of her clothing.

Her hair tickled her buttocks. The garters holding up her cotton stockings bit into the tops of her legs. With her pelvis tilted forward by the heels of her shoes, her thighs rubbed together, creating slick friction. Never had she been more aware of her femininity or the potential consequences of her actions.

The brass bed with the turned down covers loomed impossibly large before her, beside her. The heavy, sweet scent of roses was overpowering.