She cried out when she felt his tongue drive into her and taste her deeply.
He wrapped his hands around her thighs and spread her wider. “Yes, just like that, Lily. Tell me how much you like this.” He draped her legs over his shoulders and pressed a gentle, openmouthed kiss to the top of her slit as one finger slid into her.
Lily bit her lip and turned her head to the side. She closed her eyes and reached down to wind her hands into his hair. Oh, she did like this, and he was so very, very good at it. She felt his hair brush against the sensitive skin of her thigh as he sucked that tiny, hot bundle of nerves between his teeth.
He slid another finger into her, and she cried out again. She could feel the heat growing deep in her core, spreading through her. Sparkling white lights glimmered behind her closed eyes, blue and green, popping like fireworks on a royal birthday.
“Aidan!” she screamed as she exploded, her hands pulling at his hair. Before she could even start to come down, his mouth slid away from her. He kissed the inside of her trembling leg and knelt up on the bed.
Lily’s eyes fluttered open, and she looked up to find him watching her with glittering eyes. He slowly wiped the back of his hand over his damp lips.
“Do you want me, Lily?” he said, and she had never heard him sound quite like that, so dark.
She swallowed hard and nodded. She did want him, with a terrible desperation she had never known before.
She lay back on the bed and spread her legs wider in invitation.
He came down over her and kissed her, his mouth hard on hers, his tongue rough and deep, stealing away any thought and leaving only sensation. She felt his hard penis against her stomach, and she wrapped her arms around him to feel his sweat-damp skin under her fingers. His muscles bunched and shifted under her caress, all supple power, and she could taste herself on his lips. Everything went hot and blurry around her, and she was falling deeper and deeper into him.
He seemed to feel the same way. With a deep groan, he pushed himself back from her and braced his palms on the bed at either side of her head.
“I have to see you this time,” he said. “Have to watch your face.”
Lily nodded. This was the only way her husband had wanted to claim his marital rights, her vulnerable under his portly body as he lifted her nightgown and drove into her. Mercifully, he was always quick because the smothering feeling of being so overpowered made her want to scream in panic. She had never let anyone else take her like this, only from behind or her on top.
But now, with Aidan, it felt so very different. She didn’t feel as if she were drowning. She felt… safe. Surrounded by his warmth and strength.
He tightened his hips and moved into her in one strong thrust, sliding deep.
“Aidan,” she whispered.
“Lily, Lily,” he answered, her name like a supplication, a prayer, on his lips. He slowly, so slowly, pulled out and then thrust back in, to the hilt.
She wrapped her legs around his waist again and tangled her fingers in his hair as he kissed her, wet and rough. He fell to his forearms above her and wrapped all around her. He moved faster, deeper, their bodies sliding against each other in a hot, sweaty friction.
“More, please. Please,” she begged, and he thrust harder and harder. He reached down between them with one hand and rubbed over that sensitive little spot, circling it with his fingertip until she exploded again.
And suddenly he went still inside her. His head arched back, and she opened her eyes to see the muscles of his throat go tense, his eyes tightly closed. He shouted out her name, and she dug her hands into his taut backside as he clenched.
“Fuck it all, Lily,” he groaned, and fell to the bed beside her.
His head rested on her stomach as he shuddered in the aftermath of his climax, their legs tangled together amid the rumpled wreckage of the bed. Lily stroked his damp hair back from his brow, one gentle, rhythmic caress after another until she felt him relax. His deep, even breath told her he had fallen asleep.
She was almost into that dark oblivion herself when she realized Aidan had climaxed inside her—without a sheath.
Aidan held Lily against his shoulder as she slept, listening to the soft, uneven sound of her breath. She had been restless when she first fell down into sleep, tossing and turning, her brow creased as if she were haunted by disturbing visions in her sleep. But as he gently stroked her
hair, whispering soothing words in her ear, she slowly grew quiet.
The fire in the grate burned low now, the light flickering over her bare skin in red and black patterns. He traced a soft caress over her shoulder with his fingertip and buried his face in the loose waves of her hair to inhale her scent of violets and rain. It was intoxicating, and it made him want to drown in her, in this mysterious, complex, amazing woman.
Something had been freed inside of her tonight, something he sensed she had held tightly down in her soul for a long time. But she released it when he gave himself over to her, let her feel her power, and the look on her face had moved something in his own soul. He had always been adventurous in bed, ready to try almost anything just to see how it made him feel, but he had never experienced anything like the sudden connection with Lily St. Claire. Anything like what he felt as he moved inside her and looked into her eyes.
Aidan wrapped a long strand of her hair around his fist as she murmured in her sleep. He didn’t
want
to feel that connection. It was deeper, darker than anything he had ever imagined outside his writing, something he had always imagined was for other people, not for him. It made him want to shout at her, push her away, hurt her.
And it made him want to never let her go. To tie her down here to this bed so she couldn’t get away.
He pushed himself onto his side and propped up on his elbow so he could look down into her sleeping face. His backside gave a twinge as he moved, reminding him of what they had done earlier. Her hair spread out over the pillows, a shining dark river. He smoothed a swath
of it back from her brow, and her frown eased under his touch.
Aidan feathered a light touch over the shadows that lay against her cheek, the soft curve of her lower lip. Asleep, she looked so young, so vulnerable and open to him. When she was awake, she was always so guarded and careful. When they had sex, it was like being swept away in a storm. Here, in this quiet moment, it was just the two of them in their own still, perfect world.
He leaned down to press a soft kiss against her shoulder. She even tasted like rain, so sweet and clean. He traced his tongue over the soft swell of her breasts above the line of the sheet she had wrapped around herself. She stirred beneath him, and he felt her fingertips trail through his hair.
“Aidan,” she murmured.
“Shhh,” he whispered against her. The moment felt so fragile and delicate, like an icicle in the sunshine, and he didn’t want it to melt away. He had never felt like this before.
She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and held him close to her as he kissed her. He gently drew the sheet down and tossed it away so he could see her, her skin painted by the firelight. Her nipples were erect, dark pink from their rough lovemaking, so beautiful. It made him hard just to look at her, made him want her with a hot, urgent need all over again. That need never seemed to be satisfied.
There was a light pink pattern on her pale skin from the rasp of his beard, and he traced a soft kiss over it, trying to soothe the sting. She trembled, and her fingernails dug into his shoulders. He swept his tongue around the
soft areola of her nipple, and only when she sobbed out his name did he suck her nipple deep into his mouth. He rolled it over his tongue and caressed her other breast with his fingertips, cupping its weight on his palm. She arched up into him.
Aidan trailed his hand slowly down her body, savoring every inch of her, feeling every curve and angle, every hollow. His mouth followed, tasting the rainy coolness of her skin, the curve of her waist, the flare of her hip, her slender thigh. He wanted to know, to memorize every part of Lily.
He trailed one finger along her womanhood and dipped into the wet, hot silk of her. He tapped the tiny, hard bundle of nerves at the top of her sex, and she let out a ragged sob.
“Aidan,” she said brokenly, and her hands tangled in his hair again to draw him up along and over her body.
His mouth met hers, open and hungry, their tongues tangling. He felt her legs wrap around his hips and pull him even closer. He slid into her, thrusting slowly, steadily, until he was deep inside of her, their bodies pressed together, her soft breasts to his chest, her pelvis to his, their legs tangled.
He went very still and took her hands in his, their fingers entwined as he held them down against the bed. He rose up and stared into her eyes. She looked back at him, and for just an instant, they were completely open to each other. Completely bound to each other. It felt like the center of a whirling storm, a moment of perfect stillness amid the thunder and noise of the world.
Then Lily’s eyes closed and her head fell back, snapping the still moment. Aidan moved against her, thrusting
forward and sliding back, almost all the way out before he flexed his hips and moved deep again. Lily cried out as he slid against that one sensitive spot and he moved faster, deeper.
She still held on to his hands, and he pressed them above her head, leaving her open to him, her body stretched out beneath him. Her heels dug into his buttocks and urged him even closer. They moved together, the air growing heavy and humid around them, their cries and incoherent words blending and clashing.
Aidan threw back his head as he felt the familiar tight tingling gather at the base of his spine, felt his testicles draw up and tighten. His whole body grew taut with raw, pure pleasure, and he shouted out her name as he came, harder than he ever had before. For a moment, everything turned dark, and all he knew was the sound of her voice crying his name as she found her own pleasure.
He slowly sank down against her, his head on her breasts. He tried to catch his breath, to make his heart quit thundering in his chest. Their bodies were slick with sweat, and he felt her hands drift lightly over his back.
Slowly, he became aware of other things, the sound of rain hitting the window, the snap of sparks in the fireplace, the soft drift of her hair against his face.
He eased himself to her side so he wouldn’t crush her, but he kept his arm wrapped around her waist. He couldn’t seem to let her go.
She turned onto her side, her back to his chest, her hand curled around his arm. She let him hold her close as her body softened into sleep.
But Aidan couldn’t find sleep for a very long time.
“… Don’t you think, Aidan? Aidan?”
Aidan turned in his saddle, startled by the sound of his cousin Sophia’s voice. The look in her eyes told him she had been chattering steadily as they rode through the park, but he hadn’t heard her. His thoughts were far away, in that hunting lodge bedroom with Lily—again.
Damn it all, but he hadn’t been able to get her out of his mind since he had left her at the mews behind her house that night. He had never had a sexual experience that felt like that before, a connection so intense. He had never wanted it.
He did not want it now.
He shook his head hard, as if that would clear it of the smell of her violet perfume, the sound of his name as she cried out to him. He hadn’t been lying to her; he was a curious man and had visited a “French” brothel before. He had discovered it was not his usual sort of perversion. But when he saw the bright flash of pain in her eyes when she spoke of her mother, something in him wanted to do anything to take that hurt away.
But what they had done together had also released
something in
him
, some primal lust that had roared into fiery life and wouldn’t let him go. And now it wouldn’t be subdued.
It just wanted Lily.
“My, you really are distracted today,” Sophia said with a laugh. She drew her horse to a halt beneath the shade of a tree, somewhat out of the flow of the fashionable traffic, and Aidan stopped beside her.
“I’m sorry, Soph,” he answered. “I’ve been horribly inattentive. I don’t mean to be, not to you.” And he did not. Sophia was his favorite cousin, his uncle’s only daughter. He knew she was a trial to her father, a beautiful young lady with glossy black hair and violet-blue eyes, spoiled since birth, who now cut a careless swath through society with suitors cast off on every side. She and Aidan had long been partners in family mischief.
“Poor Aidan, forced by your father to play nursemaid to your silly cousin when there are so many more fun things to be doing,” Sophia said. She patted her horse’s neck as she ignored the stares of the men who passed by.
“I never need to be forced to spend time with
you
. It’s been far too long since I’ve seen you.”
“Because Mama insisted on taking me sea-bathing at Weymouth.” Sophia shuddered. “All those elderly people playing their penny-ante whist every night. I missed everything that was happening in London.”
“It’s been as dull as tombs here, I assure you.”
“Has it?” She tilted her head to study him from under her veil. “It’s never dull here for you, Aidan. Even all of Mama’s senile friends were clucking about what a shocking rogue you are. And you’ve obviously been up to something while I was away. What is it? A woman? A new
affaire d’amour
?”
Aidan laughed. “Are you sure you’re only nineteen, Soph? You’ve become quite shocking.”
Sophia shrugged. “I’m a Huntington. We grow up before our time. And you can tell me. Is it an Italian opera singer? A voluptuous young widow?”
“None of the above,” Aidan said shortly.
“No! Never say you have given in to your parents’ demands and found a demure young miss to marry.”
“Ah, Soph, you know me better than that. And I’ve been up to nothing out of the common way since you’ve been gone.”
“But you are still distracted. Perhaps you’ve been working on your writing again?”