Eve Silver (17 page)

Frenzied, she clawed at his shirt. She wanted to feel the warmth of his flesh, to run her tongue over the naked planes of his muscled chest, to taste the golden perfection of his skin.

“Shh. Shh.” He caught her wrists, holding her still. “Slowly. We have all night.”

He brought his forehead to rest against hers, their bodies flush. She leaned against him, pliant, and he let go of one wrist, and then shifted his hold on the remaining one so their fingers intertwined. With a gentle tug, he led her to the bed, then stood unmoving, gazing down at her. The edge of the mattress pressed against the backs of her legs. She knew an instant of panic, a desire to flee. From him. From herself. From the enormity of the choice she was about to make.

Perhaps he recognized her indecision, for he pulled his hand from hers, leaving her alone, unfettered, free to run away from him, away from the white-hot hunger that gnawed at her more viciously than any lack of food ever had.

She liked it, this hunger, this hard-edged pleasure. She wanted him, and that wanting, the strength and emotional depth of her compulsion made her afraid.

Her gaze slid to the closed door. Would he stop her if she tried to flee?

“There is still time, Darcie.” Damien's whispered words echoed her thoughts, even as the liquid silver of his gaze bid her stay. “Go while you can. I am not fit to be friend or lover.”

He battled his own secret demons. She read it in his eyes. He would not stop her flight, if that was the path she chose. Instead, his words encouraged it.

But her heart decided otherwise.

“What I give, I give freely, Damien.” She found it difficult to find adequate breath for speech. “Do you think that after living for so long on the streets of Whitechapel that I have no idea of the ramifications of the decision I make?” She paused. “You want to be my lover.”

“Yes,” he rasped. The sound of his voice, low and rough, stroked the heat in her belly until it cascaded through her.

“Yes,” she echoed.

Fisting her hand in his shirt, Darcie pulled him down to her and touched her lips to his. Her decision was final. She would not vacillate again, and she would have no regrets.

He kissed her back, his lips firm and warm, his tongue dancing with hers.

The hunger undulated in her belly, a live thing seeking to burst free. She swallowed, moving her legs restlessly beneath her skirt. The movement only served to fan the flames.

In a single fluid motion, he stripped the shirt from his body, baring the golden skin of his torso to her hungry gaze. He pulled her against him, and she inhaled the scent of his skin, touched the hard ridges of his abdomen.

Resting his palms against her cheeks, Damien turned her face upward and pressed his lips to hers, softly, gently. With a groan of frustration, Darcie pushed her tongue into his mouth, tasting him. She had no need for sweet kisses. She wanted the hard, lusty thrust of his tongue, the firm press of his mouth to hers. She wanted the wild desire that she could feel coursing beneath the thin veneer of his control.

With a growl, he gave what she demanded, angling his lips over hers, devouring her.

He tumbled her onto the bed so she lay beneath him. The hard ridge of his arousal pressed to the juncture of her thighs. Darcie wriggled against him, reveling in his response, his sharply indrawn breath, the hard pounding of his heart.

Their eyes met and held as he raised his weight on one arm, using his free hand to slowly unbutton her dress. She snaked her hand upward, her fingers closing around his wrist. The sensations he aroused were new and strange. Suddenly, she felt lost, uncertain of her place in this unfamiliar tableau.

He studied her, his expression unreadable.

“Have you changed your mind?”

She shook her head. “I am—” Shy. Uncomfortable. Wary.

He understood what she could not explain. “You are lovely. I want to see you,” he said. “Your breasts. Your legs. Your hair unbound and free, spread across my pillow.” His touched each part he named, dragging her hand with his as he did so, for her fingers were yet curled in a vice-like grip around his wrist.

Darcie bit her lip as he deftly drew the pins from her hair, freeing the length of it.

He trailed the tip of his index finger across her cheek, dragged it over her sensitive lips. She opened her mouth and sucked on it, laving the rough callus at the tip with her tongue. The glow from the coals was the only illumination in the room, casting Damien in shades of light and dark, accentuating the chiseled planes of his features. The chamber faded in the shadows. There was only this bed, only Damien, solid and warm against her.

Pulling his hand free of her grip, he leaned forward and caught her wrist, drawing her fingers to his lips. She thought he would imitate her actions, lick her, caress her. He did not. Instead, he bared his straight, white teeth and sank them gently into the mound of flesh at the base of her thumb.

With a low cry, she came off the bed, arching her back, extending her neck. Liquid heat coursed through her, throbbing at the pit of her belly. Her thighs pressed against each other. A burning pressure built in the wet folds of her feminine core. She ached for something she could not name.

A chuckle rumbled in Damien's chest as he let loose her hand, moving his mouth along the column of her throat where he licked and sucked until she felt as though her skin would burst into flame and she would be enveloped in an unquenchable blaze.

“Damien.” His name was a sigh, a whisper that escaped her.

The cool air kissed her skin as he freed her completely from the confines of her clothes. Looking up, she found him watching her, his eyes dark in the meager light.

“You are beautiful.”

She gazed at him mutely, unable to speak, to tell him that it was he who was beautiful. She had thought so from the very first.

He palmed her breast, running his thumb over the sensitive tip. She gasped as he shifted, replacing his fingers with his lips.

The rough lap of his tongue against her nipple sent an exquisite bolt of pleasure arrowing to the pit of her belly, making her liquid and warm. A keening cry escaped her as the tug of his mouth grew insistent, building the pressure inside her.

“I need—” What? She could not say. She could only tangle her fingers in his hair and hold him to her breast.

As though reading her most secret thoughts, he slid his hand between her legs, pressing his fingers between the wet folds of her feminine flesh. The part of her mind that was still sane cried out for her to move away, to close her legs against the foreign invasion of his fingers, but the part of her that was enraptured by his touch urged her to press herself against him. Bending her knees to allow him better access, Darcie ground her heels against the coverlet and allowed him to touch her body in ways she could never have imagined.

The sound of Damien's breathing, harsh and rough, stroked her senses as surely as his fingers caressed her, driving her towards some unknown destination.

Sliding her palms along the smooth skin of his flanks, she found him naked, his trousers gone. She couldn't remember when he had removed them. Every thought focused on the exquisite sensations he created, the reactions he coaxed from her willing body.

Darcie traced the curved bone of his hip, around to the front of his body where her fingers closed around the jutting length of his erection. She liked the way he felt, liked the sensation of his velvety skin, smooth beneath her touch. Slowly, she pumped her hand along the rigid rod, feeling the pounding of his blood as if it were her own. Perhaps it was her own. She had lost track of where her pleasure ended and his began.

Damien shifted over her, pulling himself from her avaricious grasp, seeking entry to her body as he replaced his fingers with his rigid member.

She could feel him
there.
Heat and pressure. Her eyes widened. Her body tensed.

He nudged and pressed, but did not enter. His movements touched her in ways that made her relax, then gasp and, finally, move with him. His thrusts became more insistent. Not just outside her body now, but stretching her a little more as he began to fill her.

She stared into his eyes and rocked her hips, inviting him to take what he wanted. He sank himself fully in her welcoming warmth with a single long, hard thrust.

She had expected pain. There was none. Instead, she felt only a pinch, a momentary discomfort as he sheathed himself within her body. And then she felt only the heat of him, the width of him, pulsing at her core.

He began to move, slow, languid thrusts that stroked her to a fever pitch.

“Oh. Oh! I don't think—”

“Don't think,” he whispered against her ear. “Feel. Let yourself go, Darcie.”

“Yes-s-s-s.” She sighed as he angled his hips, increasing the friction, the pressure, until she writhed beneath him, meeting each thrust, striving for some amorphous goal she could not name.

Her fingers curled, clutching his buttocks, pulling him closer, tighter. Her heels pressed against the bed and she thrust her pelvis to greet him.

Higher, higher she climbed. She could feel the tension in his body, and she sensed that with each thrust he was drawn with her towards the distant pinnacle.

Her senses narrowed until they were filled only with Damien. His touch. His scent. The taste of his skin on her lips and tongue.

He pushed deeper, harder, his hand sliding between their bodies, clever fingers touching and stroking. At last she flew, her soul crashing free of earthly restraint as the sky exploded into a million points of light. And she felt him there, with her, joining her on her glorious voyage. She was alone no more.

They were one.

o0o

“You are beautiful,” Darcie said some time later. She rolled onto her side, her bent elbow resting on the mattress. She propped her cheek on her palm, gazing at him in the light of the coal fire.

Damien lay on his back, unashamed of his nudity, legs splayed, one forearm resting across his eyes.

He laughed softly. “It is I who should say that to you.”

“I would love to draw you.” She ran one tentative finger along the hard plane of his chest.

Raising his head, he caught her hand and nipped lightly at her fingers. With a small cry, she snatched her hand away.

She watched the even cadence of his breathing, wanting to touch him again, shy to overstep. Shadows of insecurity gnawed at her. Because he was handsome and intelligent and wealthy—everything she might have once dreamed of before she fell so far.

“Why did you choose me?” she asked before she lost her nerve.

His arm snaked out and caught her, drawing her down against his side. She lost her vantage point for studying his form, but she enjoyed the sensation of being cuddled against his long, lean body.

“Why me?” She asked again, running the tip of her finger against his jaw, unable to stop touching him as she tipped her head back to look at him.

Cocking his head to the side, Damien sent her a curious glance. “I have asked myself that question since the night I found you, wet and starving, looking like you might not last the night.”

Darcie sat up, suddenly wary. “Is that why? Because I am some foundling you feel sorry for?”

Pushing himself up on his elbows, Damien regarded her with an amused smile.

“I feel pity for Mrs. Brightly with her drunken husband and her gouty great toe. Ah, and Mrs. Anderson. She's prone to fainting spells and fits of melancholy. Poor woman. There. I feel sorry for her as well.”

He flopped back down on the bed, and closed his eyes, leaving Darcie feeling that he had shared a wealth of information while at the same time giving no answer at all. She was not acquainted with the women he spoke of, but she had a suspicion that they were not women that Damien would fall desperately in love with. For that matter, neither was she.

She smacked him lightly on the shoulder. One eye popped open and he gazed at her balefully.

“That was no answer,” she said primly.

Damien sighed, curling upwards until he reached a sitting position. Darcie couldn't help but admire the play of his muscled abdomen as he carried out this attractive feat.

“I want you.” He leaned forward and kissed the tip of her nose. “You are beautiful. Intelligent. Brave.” He shrugged. “Yes, very brave.” He shrugged again. “I don't know. I have no explanation.” A question flickered in his gaze, a thoroughly uncharacteristic uncertainty. “Had I an explanation, an understanding of the fascination, perhaps I could have guarded against it.”

“There are other women. More beautiful. More intelligent.” Darcie bit her lip, feeling foolish and gauche. Instead of declaring her undying devotion and passion for him, assertions that hovered on the tip of her tongue, she was haranguing him like a crass fishwife.

His expression cleared and Damien shrugged once more, seemingly unperturbed by her behavior. “But I don't want them, Darcie. I want you.”

She bit the inside of her cheek, half offended, half amused that he did not notice the unwitting insult in his lack of denial of her assertions that there were women who surpassed her. Clearly, he did not think it mattered.

He rolled her beneath him, bringing his mouth to hers. She felt the stirring of desire, even as she felt his renewed hardness as he nudged her thighs apart.

“I want
you,
Darcie,” he whispered against her lips. “And with your sweet acquiescence, I shall have you.”

o0o

How very wicked she felt. Strange how being wicked was so wonderful; she would never have imagined.

Darcie rolled onto her back and stretched languidly. The sun streaming through the small attic window above her bed told her that it was morning. She lay there, listening to the silence, knowing even before she looked about that Mary was not in the room. That was for the best. Darcie wanted to savor her memories, to acclimate to the changes in both her body and her emotions, and that adjustment was better done in solitude.

Images of Damien floated with radiant clarity through her mind. She was a different woman than she had been yesterday. Her lips curved in an irrepressible smile. Recalling every glorious detail of the night she had spent in Damien's embrace, she wrapped her arms around herself, hugging the memories close.