ColorMeBad (6 page)

The trembling motion of her body while she laughed proved to
be the final straw for John’s perishing self-control. He plunged one hand into
her still-damp hair and brushed his mouth against her cheek.

Hecuba went still. John teased his way to the hollow below
her ear, flicking his tongue out occasionally to catch droplets as they passed
across her skin. “It’s always water with you,” he said. “First the rain and now
this.” She hummed and tilted her head to the side, offering him more. He kissed
along the line of her neck and startled a gasp from her with a gentle scrape of
his teeth. Meanwhile his hands spread across the width of her back, slipping
beneath the blanket to rest against the steel in her spine.

“Tell me, Jones,” he murmured, “do you still mean to have
me?”

“Yes,” she said.

He smiled and pulled her up. “Let me show you the way.”

She retrieved her lost shirt while he extinguished all but
one of the candles. It was a meager light but it guided them well enough down
the main stairs. They moved softly to make certain none of the household were
stirring. Her hand in his had warmed now, a bold and possessive pressure as he
led her along a carpeted hallway and opened the door of his bedchamber.

He pulled the door shut with a click, extinguished the
candle, walked to the hearth and stirred the waiting flames into a blaze. When
he finally turned around, Hecuba was bending close to the wall to examine part
of the pattern of the wallpaper, an expression of wonder on her face. The
draping blanket and her leaning posture made her look like a mysterious old
woman from a fairy tale, the kind who helps the virtuous and curses the cruel.

“How old were you when you did this?” she whispered.

John smiled as she scrutinized the outline of a
knight-errant mounted on a white horse that his younger self had repainted with
zebra stripes. “I was just turned twelve,” he said, “and I stole my sister’s
paints to do it. My mother was livid but my father merely laughed and said he
would find someone to give me lessons. ‘If you’re going to do the thing, you
may as well do it properly,’ he said.”

Hecuba smiled at a housecat he’d turned into a tiger lurking
beside a tulip that had sprouted two pink ankles to become the tumultuous
upflung skirts of a tumbling lady. Her eyes briefly met John’s, warm and
conspiratorial. “You do the thing very properly indeed,” she said.

She was the daughter of a painter—a genius—and with a nasty
jolt John realized that he didn’t know whether she was attracted to him more
for his work or for himself. He’d put so much of himself into his art that he
had never really thought to make the distinction before. Not until Hecuba Jones
had come along and split him in two. Now the gentle movement of her fingers
over that tin-plate hero made jealousy bubble up within his heart, a slimy
tentacled monster in the deep.

But judging by how she’d stared at Hylas, he had certain
aesthetic advantages, if he were brave enough to employ them.

With deliberate, unhurried hands, John unbuttoned his cuffs
and pulled the charcoal- and paint-stained shirt over his head.

As he cast the garment to the floor, he noticed that he’d
succeeded in diverting her from the wallpaper. Hecuba Jones had straightened to
her full height again and was watching him with an avid gleam in her eyes.

John held out one hand.

“Oh no,” said Hecuba with a shake of her head. “You’ve
already seen me naked. I’m going to insist that you finish disrobing before I
get any nearer.”

It only took a single step for John to reach her. “Indeed?”
he said, grasping the edge of the blanket and pulling her closer.

She stopped him with a hand on his chest. He savored the
feel of her fingers spread out against him. “Indeed,” she said. Her voice
softened. “I want to look at you. All of you.”

John took a deep breath and stepped back, but kept his hold
on the blanket. Hecuba was compelled to follow him.

One more step back and John was able to sit down on the bed.
Hecuba stood before him, candlelight dancing in her eyes, hair tumbling around
her shoulders. He let go of the blanket and lifted one foot onto the bed,
sliding the white sock down from beneath his trouser hem.

Hecuba licked her lips and John had to catch his breath.
From just removing a shirt and a sock! What would happen once every scrap of
cloth was gone between them?

John removed the other sock and put his feet back on the
floor. The carpet felt impossibly soft against his bare soles.

He’d had women tease him this way before but he’d never
taken such time with the removal of his own garb. He was far more comfortable
observing than being observed—but somehow the strangeness now was exhilarating.
Beneath her gaze, the hair on his naked skin prickled with awareness. He
watched her watching him and desire curled low and hot in his belly.

John put his hands to the fall of his trousers, undoing them
in as leisurely a manner as he could stand. He rose as he pushed them down his
hips. They rustled and fell to the floor along with his smallclothes and
finally he stood in all his glory before the scrutiny of Hecuba Jones. The
crackle of the fire in the grate made a mockery of how cool the air felt, an
invisible caress on his overheated skin and jutting cock.

She took her time looking him up and down before raising her
eyes to meet his again. “That was a very accurate self-portrait upstairs,”
Hecuba murmured.

John bowed his head at the double compliment, more
embarrassed to be blushing than to be naked.

Hecuba slipped the blanket from her shoulders and it fell to
the floor. She removed nothing else, merely stepped closer and—finally—began to
touch him.

It was everything he’d wanted and more, her fingers like
tongues of flame against his flesh. She smoothed her palms along lines of
muscle and dragged her fingertips over his nipples, which hardened at once for
her. It required every ounce of John’s restraint to keep still and not reach
out to touch her in return, but he bit his tongue and reminded himself that she
was untried and it was best to let her take things at whatever speed she
willed. Later, he hoped, there would be nights when she would allow him to do
the same. Tonight he was entirely hers.

She leaned forward and pressed her mouth to the base of his
neck.

It was precisely the same kiss that had once made him beg
her to wait. It had the opposite effect now. John felt as though every vein in
his body lit up, drawing heat from her mouth like signal fires along a series
of mountain peaks. His cock, already hard, stiffened nearly to the point of
pain—and still his hands remained at his sides, though now they shook with the
effort of holding back.

One of Hecuba’s hands trailed down his hip, over bone and
tendon, to the sensitive skin of his thigh. She lingered there, either teasing
or timid—John didn’t care which—until a definitive motion brought her hand into
contact with his shaft.

John’s eyes drifted closed and he shivered.

At first she merely caressed him with the same slow tempo
she’d used on every other part of him. But then her hand closed tight and hot
around him and a single bold stroke tore a groan from his throat.

“You’re far more patient than I had anticipated,” said
Hecuba.

John opened his eyes to the mind-melting sight of Hecuba
Jones with his cock in her hand and an impudent grin on her face.

He let out such a filthy curse that even Hecuba gasped, a
shocked rush of air that curled over his lips as he claimed her mouth. She slid
her tongue against his as he pulled her tight against him, the cloth of her
trousers a delicious friction against his aching cock. She twined her arms
around his waist and he fisted his hands in her hair as the kiss turned dark,
almost feral—the wet curl of tongues, the velvet touch of lips, the bright,
sharp notes of teeth.

Then Hecuba Jones took his lower lip between her teeth and
bit down—not hard, but not gently either.

One moment they were standing, straining together. The next
they were tangled in the bedclothes, sprawled at an angle across the expanse of
the bed, still entwined, still kissing. John had no idea how they’d gotten
there. He had a vague memory that he had thrown her down and himself along with
her. There was no time now to sort out what had happened, because his fingers
were already slipping beneath the hem of that provocative chemise and pulling
it up to bare her breasts. He left the linen gathered around her shoulders,
bent his head and sucked one sweet nipple into his mouth.

Hecuba moaned and closed her eyes even as her hands went to
work on the buttons of her trousers. John moved to her other nipple, cupping
her breast in the heat of his palm and blowing gently across the wetness left
by his mouth.

Hecuba opened her eyes when she failed to open her trousers
quickly enough. “Damn buttons,” she muttered, still working to undo them. John
laughed and put his hands down to help. Together, gracelessly, they wrestled
the bulky garment down to her ankles and away. Her pantalets, however, were
still tied around her waist.

Hecuba was left in nothing but white linen and black
stockings.

John froze at this vision. Not of innocence—her red hair was
too wild, her breasts still naked, her stockings black as night. But there was
some quality in her that insisted on shining through and amplifying the effect
of whatever she happened to be wearing. Or not wearing. It was that same
quality that drew him to try to replicate her likeness on the page over and
over again, the same thing that he sensed would constantly bewitch him, whether
five or fifty or a hundred years went by.

In his bed, she lounged on her elbows like a goddess of
classical antiquity, a creature of light and flame and shadow all at once.
Purely and completely herself.

When he was still wordless and wondering, she put a hand to
his cheek. “Second thoughts?” she asked, not quite hiding her anxiety.

It was a fair question and one he’d answered differently two
nights earlier. Everything had changed since then. He turned and pressed a kiss
to her palm, reveling in the gentle pressure of her hand.

Hecuba smiled, relaxed and stroked her thumb against his
lips.

He tilted his head and bit the end of her thumb.

She sucked in a harsh breath and her eyes went dark.

John leaned down to kiss her again, his body bearing hers
down into the mattress. White linen shifted against his burning skin like
gossamer, an incitement to lust rather than a barrier. Hecuba lifted one leg
and wrapped it around his hip. John took advantage of the motion and settled
the shaft of his cock against her cleft, blazingly aware of her heat even
through the linen. He rocked himself against her, first slowly and then with
more force as she writhed and arched beneath him.

Finally it was too much for him. He raised himself away from
her, though his senses screamed at the loss, then tugged at the ties to her
pantalets.

She took his meaning at once and pulled the chemise over her
head while he untied the strings and slid the pantalets down from her hips.
Hecuba was left wearing nothing but a pair of knee-high black stockings—with
matching garters—that only made the rest of her look more profoundly naked by
comparison.

John leaned on one elbow looking down at her, torn between
the need to take her and the urge to stare. Though he’d had other lovers
before—some of them in this very bed—John knew that there was something about
this night that was going to mark him even as it marked her. It wasn’t simply her
first time—it was
their
first time.

She quirked an eyebrow at him and bent one knee. John’s
mouth went dry. “Does it always take so long to get oneself deflowered?” she
asked pointedly.

John laughed. “If you’re lucky,” he replied, but his smile
faded into something more tender. He traced a hand down her side, relishing the
curve of her waist, the softness of her. “It’s not a thing that happens every
day, Jones.”

“I’m still wearing my stockings.” She reached out.

He stopped her with a hand on her wrist. “Leave them,” he
said. She looked at him, flushing, while he savored the perfect curves of her
silk-clad calves.

He could have stayed that way forever, just looking, but
Hecuba had other plans. She framed his face with her hands and kissed him—a
sweet, soft kiss that shook him down to his bones.

He stole one hand between her legs and into the springy red
curls there. She was already wet—oh God, his cock throbbed at that—but he
wanted her more than ready, so he began sliding one thick finger along the
cleft of her lower lips, a light rasping friction along her clitoris.

Hecuba spread her legs a little wider and hummed low in her
throat, her eyes heavy lidded and glittering in the firelight. John skimmed his
lips over her shoulder as he played with her, attuned to even the tiniest
intake of her breath. After a little while he leaned over and whispered, “I’m
going to use one finger to start.”

Eyes closed, Hecuba nodded.

John turned his hand and slowly slid his middle finger into
the eager heat of her cunt. Hecuba let out a breathy cry that made him shake,
but he pushed his own arousal aside and kept his focus on her.

He began to thrust.

“Oh God.” Hecuba groaned. By the third stroke she was
already arching her hips up from the bed so John took the hint and increased his
pace. She welcomed this, inner walls clasping around him, a flush spreading
over her skin. Her breath came faster and faster and she began to tremble. John
reached up with his thumb and began stroking her clitoris in time with the
movements of his finger.

Hecuba came, one hand fisted in the bedclothes, the other
clasped tight against her mouth to muffle her cries. John nearly spent himself
at the sight.

And then…a tear slipped down her cheek.

John went dizzy with shock. He forgot his pleasure in her
pleasure and his own still-unsatisfied desire. His finger slipped free of her
body and he pulled her into his arms. “What’s wrong?” he whispered as she
wrapped her arms around him and held tight.

“I couldn’t hold back,” she said, the dark weight of regret
in her voice.

John rubbed soothing circles between her shoulder blades.
“Oh, Jones,” he said. “You don’t have to hold back.”

“I didn’t want it to be over,” she continued, her voice
muffled against his chest.

“It isn’t over,” John said. “Far from it.” She pulled her
head away to stare up at him and he couldn’t help the knowing smile that lifted
his lips. “Jones,” he said, “don’t you know you can do it again?”

She looked startled—then intrigued. “Prove it,” she
demanded.