A Scandal to Remember (37 page)

He did not disappoint. He kissed down her neck and over the sensitive skin that covered her collarbone, stroking her through the thin lawn fabric of her chemise, until she felt the heat and hungry intent within him soak down through her to her bones.

But she did not want to be passive and idle. She wanted his skin next to hers, his weight pressing down into her—nothing between them but pleasure.

She had to push his hands away to get at the half-undone buttons at the neck of his linen shirt, but he kept his mouth busy nipping down the sensitive side of her neck, pulling her thoughts away from her chore, wrecking her concentration while he let his hands play upon her body.

“Stop that,” she begged. She wanted to be able to do the same to him, to touch and arouse him just as he was doing to her.

“Stop this?” His clever hands brushed aside her chemise, and found the peaks of her nipples, rolling them gently between his thumb and forefinger. “Or this?” His mouth followed his hands, and his clever lips nipped and laved her breast until she abandoned his shirtsleeves, and concentrated on arching herself into the decadent pleasure of his even cleverer mouth.

“Or stop this?” While his mouth was busy, his hands had begun to gather up the long hems of her chemise and petticoat, sliding them higher and higher over her bare legs until she felt the cool morning air against her most private skin.

She could only watch through wide-open eyes, fascinated and undeniably aroused by the sight of him looking at her, at her body, and by the exquisite feeling of his dark, masculine hands stroking her pale white flesh. By the bliss burning low under the surface of her skin and spreading like wildfire throughout her body, turning her to needy licking flame from her fingertips to deep within her core.

“Oh, Jane.” His fingers stilled, and he drew back to look at her. The scowl was back, etching itself into two sharp vertical lines between his thunderously straight brows, and his voice was low, and full of anger and pity. “You’re
covered
in bruises.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, because she didn’t know what to say, and because she was angry too. Angry for all the reasons she had gotten those bruises—for being almost drowned and battered about. She was angry and she was frustrated, because she didn’t want his pity. She wanted his hands at her breasts, and his lips on her mouth, making her forget that she had ever been so abused. “They don’t matter,” she insisted. Scalding heat was pooling behind her eyes, and she squeezed her lids tight to shut the tears out. “Don’t let them matter.”

“But they do matter,” he said in a voice that was calmer, though no less insistent. “They mean I haven’t been taking proper care of you. I haven’t paid enough attention to all of you. A deficiency I mean to correct. Immediately.”

He braced himself on his arms above her, and slowly lowered his lips to her breasts.

Oh, clever, clever man. It was as if he knew the pull of his lips on her nipples created a tight, needy heat between her legs, because his broad, warm palm pressed low against her belly, letting her learn the gentle feel of his hands, teaching her to want him to touch her more intimately.

His kisses moved to the side of her face, pressing soft encouragement along her temple and down to that astonishing spot at the edge of her jaw. And she did the same to him, kissing across the prickly line of his strong jaw, brushing her fingers into the short crop of his dark hair, stroking her hands across the strong planes of his cheeks. Her fingers burned where they touched his skin, pain and pleasure mixing like an elixir in her palms.

And he had his own elixir. He circled his thumbs on the soft, vulnerable skin of her inner thighs, readying her, making her wait until the soft rush of sensation broke over her like a wave, spinning her round and lifting her up, until anticipation and want were tumbled together into a heady, breathless mixture as his darkly possessive gaze ran slowly down her body.

Jane twisted her legs together, trying in vain to stem the flood of embarrassment and want that pooled within. “Don’t,” was all he said, before he stirred his fingers lazily through the curls at the juncture of her thighs.

Her body drew even more taut, and more ready, impatient for the touch that would send her over the edge of simple pleasure and headlong into bliss.

“I want to kiss you.”

She wanted to kiss him too—she opened her mouth to him, hungry for the taste of his lips upon hers.

But he kissed her there. There, where heat and need had become almost painful anticipation.

Jane could feel him push her legs wider, opening her to his gaze and his touch, and her mouth stayed open, shocked and pleased and wanting. Oh, yes. There.

He parted her folds with his thumbs, and blew a soft, warm preparatory breath across her. “You’re beautiful.”

Jane felt a thrill of forbidden pleasure at his words. And for the first time in her life, she felt entirely beautiful, and entirely free. Free to choose, free to make love to this extraordinary man. Her skin prickled with bright heat as his sea-roughened hands slid closer to the tight heat at the junction of her thighs, and his thumbs pushed her soft flesh gently apart.

The warmth of his mouth was both arousing and soothing, lulling her into desire gently, until with one precise application of friction, he licked her in a spot that sent silver bursts of shivers coursing over her skin, shaking her to her core, loosening and tightening the tense heat within her.

And then he did it again, only differently, his tongue swirling in the opposite direction, pulling her deeper and deeper into the vortex of her own desire.

But she was not alone. He felt it too somehow, this unholy need, this compulsion to touch and be touched, because he slipped a finger inside her, touching her deeply, stroking lightly and strongly all at the same time, until a burst of bliss radiated out from her belly, warming her through and through so her breath felt light and hot, so she was mouthing inarticulate words of yearning.

But he heard and understood. He fed the need, and threw tinder upon the flame of her need by sliding another finger along with the first. She felt full and yet drawn tight, inflamed by the enormity of her desire.

And then his tongue flicked over her one more time, and she could no longer hold herself together. She could no longer do anything but give herself over to the crashing wave of bliss and let it take her into oblivion.

Chapter Twenty-two

Dance watched Jane’s breathing slowly subside, and resisted the urge to finish what she had started in undressing him. But he could not keep from easing his own need by lying down on top of her, and settling the weight of his body fully upon her. It gave him some semblance of control, made him understand his body’s power and strength and size, and made him more aware than ever of his responsibility to her. To them both.

A sharp stab of conscience rose like a specter in the back of his mind, but he was too full of the glorious sight and intoxicating scent and exquisite feel of her to become prudent now.

Instead he lowered his ear to her breast bone so he could be closer to her, and listen to the quieting beat of her heart, and rest his head between her pillowed breasts. But that pleasure was a torture of its own, for he could not simply lie there and not touch, not taste.

Her skin was unutterably soft beneath his callused, questing fingers. Incredibly responsive—quick to react. And in arousing himself with the tight budded perfection of her breasts, he had aroused her as well.

“My turn.” Her fingers were back at his buttons, swiftly undoing them in a clumsy manner that said more for her enthusiasm than her experience. But he let her. He rolled away, onto his back, and spread his arms wide in open supplication and surrender.

She rolled with him, straddling his lap, tugging his shirt free of his waistband, before she went for his breeches. Dance lifted his hips to assist her, clearing his arse off the ground, but pressing up into the soft heat of her in the process.

The look of astonished pleasure that widened her eyes, and had her gasping openmouthed for breath, had him doing it again, slower, and more completely. Thrusting his hips powerfully beneath her. And she reacted more completely, rolling her hips down into him as he pressed up, closing her eyes against the wave of pleasure.

But she opened those bright, inquisitive eyes soon enough, raking them over him, finding exactly what she wanted. She urged him to sit so she could haul his shirt off over his head. And her hands, her delicate, organizing hands sorted out all his pertinent parts, learning quickly the contours of his shoulders and neck, and taking great delight in finding that his flat nipples were nearly as sensitive as hers.

She was scientific in her approach, God bless her, meticulous in her attention to detail. He could feel his chest expand and flex under her delightfully curious fingers, and he took the opportunity to pull her more fully into his lap, and divest her of her remaining clothes just as she had divested him. Because he wanted nothing more than to make her lose all that intelligent, scientific aplomb. He wanted her naked and laughing and shrieking with unscientific pleasure.

In a minute. After he had unglued the lids of his eyes, and could see again, so blinded was he by the ravenous want that consumed him the moment Jane slid her hands into his breeches, and took hold of his cock.

He nearly came right then, so long had it been since he had indulged himself with a woman’s touch.

But she wasn’t just a woman. She was his steadfast, prepared, curious, scientific Jane, who was experimenting with her grip, and bringing him to the very edge of unspeakable bliss with her untutored touch. It was more than mere physical pleasure. It was a hunger for more than her body.

He wanted
her.
All of her.

He wanted her naked soul laid bare before him, just as he wanted to lay himself bare before her.

Dance shifted her off his lap, lifting her up onto her knees so he could peel off the last of her petticoat and chemise, shuck his breeches and kick them away so there was only the two of them, skin to skin, naked in Eden just as nature had made them.

He pulled her tight against him, so she could feel his arousal jutting between them. So she could know exactly what she was getting herself into.

She responded by wrapping her arms around his neck, and pressing her naked self to him from stem to stern, capturing his mouth in a kiss that left no doubt in his mind as to what she wanted.

“Jane,” he began, wanting to be absolutely positive.

“Yes.” She kissed the corner of his mouth, and set her teeth against the edge of his ear. “For Lord’s sake, don’t think to stop now. Please.”

It was everything he wanted to hear. He didn’t have anything more of patience within him—he felt pulled apart by the inexorable force of his desire for her. Right from the start, since the moment he had first laid eyes upon her, he had wanted her like this.

His. And his alone.

He rolled her onto her back beneath him, and came swiftly into her. He was nothing but impulse, giving way to the crashing force of need and primitive possessiveness. This woman—her face open and honest, her skin almost luminous in the pink and yellow cast of the morning sun—was his, and he would make her so in the most basic way possible.

He twined his hands with hers, and pushed them up over her head. He wanted nothing to interfere, nothing to stop him from taking possession of her beautiful, supple body.

She drew in a tight breath, full of wariness, and clutched at his hands where they pinioned her over her head.

“Jane.” He kissed her mouth, and down the slide of her neck to the hollow at the base of her collarbones, to ease her worry, and to ease himself into her taut, tight body. He pressed the head of his cock into her soft, slick heat, nudging his way forward, rocking her bit by bit as he made his way. “It will get better—easier. I promise. I’ll make it better.”

“I’m fine. It’s—”

He took her at her word, and let go of her hands, levering himself back a bit trying to give her room to breathe, but he felt as if he were looming over her, looking down at her body, pale and laid out before him on the beach like a pagan sacrifice.

She tried to cover her breasts with her hands, but he stopped her, pushing them over her head again. “You don’t need to hide from me. I want to see you. I want to see everything from the golden pink of your nipples to the gold hair that covers your sex.”

She shifted restlessly beneath him, her body rising in response to his words, and he held her wrists in one hand while he stilled her hips with his other, holding her as he took full possession of her tight, lush, inexperienced body.

She made a harsh, anguished sound, a sharp exhalation of pain that tore at him, but he could not stop.

“Oh, God. You liar.” His voice was as fractured as his mind. “You’re not fine.”

“Now you believe in God.” Her voice was strained, but her smile was a revelation—breathless and wicked and lovely and yes, yes, if she would look at him like that he would do everything he could to believe in God, because he obviously didn’t deserve her.

“I believe in you. In your smile. And in your beauty. In your lov—” He stopped himself before he made an idiot of himself. “And in your perfect breasts and in your sweet little arse, and in your lush little passage.” He suited his actions to his words, and touched her, cupping her beautiful breasts, and rounding her luscious bottom, and sweeping his hand around to delve into her soft hair where their bodies were fused together.

He could only swallow her pain on his kiss and murmur his assurances into her ear. “You gorgeous, terrible liar. But I won’t lie to you. I’ll make it good, Jane. I promise you.”

He promised her with his mouth and his hands and his body and his single-minded attention. Watching her, waiting for her body to ease into acceptance. Waiting for acceptance to grow into desire.

When she opened her eyes to look up at him, he smiled and kissed her, and let go of her hands so she could hold and stroke him. Her fingers reached the curve of his face, and he found himself turning his head, rubbing the bristles of his unshaven cheek into her soft palm, tamed to her hand like a dog at her command.