Julia Justiss (28 page)

“Consulted her?” Helena said. “Oh, but I did! I’ve wanted to talk with her ever since I first saw her at the park. After my disgrace at the musicale, I decided my visiting her could hardly worsen the scandal. More than anything, I wanted to please you. I thought she would speak honestly of what happens between a man and a woman.” Her smile turning wicked, she traced a finger down Adam’s bare chest to circle one nipple. “And she did.”

With a growl, Adam caught her hand and brought it to his lips. “And what,” he asked, nibbling each finger in turn, “did the Divine Alice say about my pleasing you?”

The sensations evoked by his hot tongue and the nip of his teeth were swiftly eroding Helena’s powers of speech. “I didn’t…think…to ask,” she murmured.

Adam laughed deep in his throat. “Let me be your tutor, my temptress, and I shall endeavor to please you just as thoroughly.” Wrapping an arm around her, he pulled her against him and cradled her on his chest.

Helena snuggled under his chin, breathing in the scent of him, more deliriously happy than she’d ever been in her life. An overwhelming sense of having come home filled her, as if she had been made to be here, wrapped in Adam’s arms. She refused to listen to the tiny voice that warned how short-lived that happiness would be.

The maelstrom of sensations that had been building within her eased as she relaxed into his warmth. She’d almost drifted asleep when she felt his hands slipping under the hem of her night rail.

She reached down to stay them. “Adam—my back. I…I would rather not remove the gown.”

“Do you not know every inch of you is beautiful to me?” he whispered. “Every scar, an emblem of your honor and courage? I want to see you, touch you everywhere.” Leaning over to nuzzle her lips, he stroked his fingers over her skin as he slowly tugged the gown up.

Helena would have resisted, but the quiescent tension within her had tightened the instant his clever
fingers began their work. Before she could begin to worry, he gently pulled the gown over her head.

And then thought scattered altogether as with his other hand, Adam tipped her chin up and captured her lips, sliding his tongue within as she gasped at the pleasure of his mouth on hers. While he kissed her, his hand wandered slowly up her leg, kneading her ankle, smoothing over her knee, rubbing the tender inside of her thigh.

Groaning into his mouth, she widened her legs, offering him access to her hot, pulsing center. His fingers crept upward at a maddening pace, moving so slowly that she began to twist restlessly beneath his hand.

As his fingertips grazed the thatch of curls between her legs, he broke the kiss and moved his mouth to her breast. In the next moment, his finger parted her folds to caress the nub within while his mouth suckled her nipple.

Acute pleasure seared her where his mouth and fingers worked. She cried out as she writhed beneath him.

“Does that please you?” he whispered against her breast, continuing to slide his fingers over the slick nub.

“Oh, yes,” she gasped.

He moved to her other breast, suckling the nipple, teasing it with his teeth, then cupping the whole breast in his hand and nipping the tender skin. Meanwhile his finger slid lower, parting the lips to delve into her body.

The piercing pressure spiraled tighter and tighter until she felt she must explode or shake to bits. Just
when she felt she could not stand the torment any longer, something within her released, sending a paroxysm of unimaginable pleasure coursing to every nerve.

For a long time afterward, as the waves of sensation faded, she lay motionless, too drained to move or speak.

Smiling down at her, Adam kissed her forehead. “Did I please you, my love?”

She struggled to smile back. “I never dreamed…such feelings existed.”

“Only for you, my sweet,” he whispered. “For all of this night.”

And for the rest of that splendid night they lay entwined, Helena pillowing her head on his thigh, her hand cupping his spent member to coax him back to strength, or gathered boneless and breathless against his chest while his fingers soothed her satiated skin.

But after awakening near dawn to have the little voice she’d been ignoring cry insistently that their time was nearly over, Helena knew with desperate urgency that she could not leave Adam without tasting just once the fullness of union that, to protect her, he had been denying them.

Snuggling closer, she nibbled Adam’s ear while her fingers stroked down his abdomen. She felt his chuckle as his shaft rose to meet her teasing fingers.

“More, my insatiable darling?” he murmured.

“Always,” she replied, leaning up into his kiss.

Boldly she sought to conquer the fencing blade of his tongue, but he would have none of it. Chuckling
again, he rolled her beneath him, clasped her hands and pulled her arms above her head as he settled himself between her legs. Moving his hips, he pressed his hard length against her, stroking her sensitive center with the hot smooth head of his cock in time to the rhythmic sweeps of his tongue.

Knowing that continuing in this fashion, he would soon drive her beyond control, Helena turned her face away, breaking the kiss. “Can’t…breathe,” she gasped. Though it was truly not a lie, her plea achieved its aim, for Adam rolled her over and lifted her to straddle him.

Eyes glazed, chest sheened with moisture, his breathing rough, he gazed up at her. “This is…better. I can see…how beautiful your breasts are.” He weighed them in his hands as he spoke. “Nipples…pink from my mouth. See the curve of your belly. Touch you.” He pushed gently at her knees to widen the parting of her thighs.

Before he could return one hand to tease and stroke and send her crashing over the precipice, Helena thrust her hips quickly downward to capture the smooth tip of his rigid cock. Pushing downward again, she felt a slow burn as at last, at last, she eased him within her.

The moment of discomfort passed swiftly, succeeded by an amazing fullness that massaged and caressed from her throbbing nub down the whole of that sensitive passage.

Beyond thought or plan, instinctively she withdrew and thrust down again, crying out at the wonder and intensity of it. Vaguely she noted Adam catching her arms.

“No, my love, we—” he gasped before Helena leaned forward to cover his mouth with hers and press her knees against his sides as she drove downward, sheathing his length fully within her.

“Love me, Adam,” she whispered. “Love me completely.”

For an instant he remained rigid, resisting. But when she thrust against him again, with a growl he seized her bottom and pulled her closer, arching upward to meet her.

Though she’d had to trick him to it, he quickly took the lead. Slowing the pace of their movements, he let her drive him in deep, then held her still while he pulsed within her before allowing her to pull back for another thrust. Though he’d several times taught her to balance on the acute edge between madness and ecstasy, this time he held her suspended above the abyss until she was shrieking her need for fulfillment. Then, with an equally savage cry, he plunged in one last time and bound her against him as they both shuddered, spun and shattered together.

The intensity of it, similar and yet so different from the pleasure he brought her with his clever tongue and nimble fingers alone, robbed Helena of breath and brought tears to her eyes as she lay afterward on his chest, both of them spent and gasping.

One flesh. One heart, hammering in unison as they lay wrapped in each other’s arms.

But though she’d long sought to ignore it, she was forced now to acknowledge the pale light forming a ghostly halo behind the tightly drawn curtains, its in
creasing illumination beginning to rival the glow of the guttering candles. When Adam stirred, she sat up, every fiber of her being revolting against the thought of losing him.

She couldn’t sail away and leave him. Having experienced this ecstasy, she simply couldn’t imagine life without him. Her heart, her soul, couldn’t bear the loss.

“Adam, I did please you, didn’t I?”

He opened his eyes and smiled at her. “Did we not please each other?” he corrected, kissing her hand.

“Marvelously,” she acknowledged, returning his smile. “Then…though of course I do not wish to keep you from your…obligations, would it not be possible for us to…to salvage some time to be together? I could take a house outside London. Somewhere close enough for you to visit.”

His smile fading, he looked at her searchingly. “Are you proposing what I think you are?” he said at last. “Helena, I don’t want you to be my mistress! I want…” Almost at the point of uttering something more, he shook his head. “Let us not speak of it now.”

Her chest felt as if a giant talon had ripped it open. She swallowed hard and blinked back the burn of tears. “No, of course not. Excuse me for mentioning anything.”

Of course he didn’t want her. Hadn’t she caused enough havoc in his life? Why would he wish to take a scarred, ill-behaved, troublesome woman who tumbled from one scandal to the next as his mistress when, should he ever wish to indulge in a discreet affair,
with his breeding and charm he might have any woman in the ton?

The day was definitely dawning now, the rosy light at the windows brightening with every passing moment. Belowstairs, the servants were probably already stirring.

Feeling a chill that went to the bone and had little to do with the temperature of the room, Helena slid from the bed and fished her satin wrapper off the floor. “I expect you should go now, before the maid comes to make up the fire. I shouldn’t wish to distress Aunt Lillian by creating yet another scandal on my last night in her house.” She picked up Adam’s dressing gown and the long-abandoned shirt and held them out to him.

For a long moment he stared at the garments, as if reluctant to take them from her hands. Hating, as much as she did, that their night together was ending?

Finally, swallowing hard, he said, “I expect you are right.” Dropping the shirt on the bed, he stood and pulled the dressing gown around him. For a few more minutes Helena drank in the beauty of his naked body—the broad shoulders, flat belly, strong legs and now-flaccid shaft lying against his thighs. The body she had kissed and caressed, licked and fondled, pleasured in every way she could devise over the long hours of the night as he had caressed and pleasured hers—even, she recalled, her breath catching, the scars at her back.

As he turned to the door, she clamped her lips shut, stifling the aching need to confess her love in these last few minutes they would ever have alone.

Adam would probably soon feel guilty enough over the night she had coerced from him without adding to it the burden of her love. Better that he think her a wanton who’d decided she couldn’t leave his life without sampling the passion that had sizzled between them since that first night in the library. Just one more irresponsible, ill-bred act by a girl who had already committed so many.

Numbly she moved to the center of the room, eyes closed, waiting for the soft click of the closing door that would signal the beginning of the impossibly empty days that stretched ahead of her without him.

She sensed him walking past her—then turning back. Framing her face in his hands, he kissed her, so gently she had to bite her lip afterward to keep from weeping.

“You will stay at Lady Seagrave’s?” he asked.

She nodded. She couldn’t tell him everything she felt, but she could at least say this. “Thank you, Adam—”

He put a finger against her lips and smiled tenderly. “No,
I
thank
you
…my dear Helena,” he whispered, his eyes roaming her face as if to memorize every curve and line before he pulled her once more into his arms.

She had vowed to let him leave freely, but despite those noble intentions, she clung to him, her hands biting into his shoulders and her body molding to his as if to sear an imprint of him into her skin.

At length, he set her away from him. “Nothing is settled yet, so don’t do anything rash,” he said, one finger caressing her cheek. Then he turned and walked out.

Helena stumbled back and slumped onto the bed,
burying her face in the pillow he’d lain upon, which still carried the faint scent of his shaving soap. She had wrested from him her one night of passion. She now realized she would likely pay bitterly for it for years to come.

B
ARELY AN HOUR LATER
,
A GRIM
, tight-lipped Helena arrived at Lady Seagrave’s town house. After brooding on her love-ravaged disarray of a bed for a time after Adam left her, she’d sprung up with a fierce resolve to be gone from the house before any of the family woke. She didn’t think she could face Charis or Aunt Lillian without them immediately suspecting what had occurred.

And as for Adam—she couldn’t face him at all. She had thought she’d loved him before, but until last night she’d had no concept of the intensity of connection, the sweet purity of emotion one human being could feel for another.

And having felt it, she knew she didn’t have enough veneer of polite behavior to keep herself from approaching Adam again to beg that he reconsider taking her as his mistress. Too little maidenly restraint not to want to scratch out the eyes of Miss Priscilla Standish for daring to marry Adam. Adam—
her
Adam, whose body had branded hers, who belonged with her!