She placed her hands against his upper arms, but she didn't push. She only emitted a sweet, despairing sound as he kissed the base of her throat. The gloom in his heart lifted a bit, though he knew it was madness to think this was anything but madness.
He kissed his way to her chin, to the soft spot just under her lips. There he hesitated. To kiss her on the mouth was to inform her, in exactly so many words, that she'd marry Lord Frederick over his dead body.
Beneath him, he felt her heartbeat, as rapid, erratic, and uncertain as his own. Did he want to go down that path? Did he dare? And what awaited him at the bitter end if he were to walk this avenue of folly?
“There is something I have to tell you,” she said suddenly, rupturing the moment of suspense. “There is no point to your sleeping with me. None at all. I am using a Dutch cap. I have been using one all along. You stand no chance of getting me with child, so you might as well leave me alone.”
When he was six years old, during an exuberant game of chase in the corridors of his grandfather's house, he'd run into a wall. The next thing he knew, he found himself flat on the floor, too stunned to understand what had just happened. He felt like that now. He didn't know what to make of her outburst, her abrupt decision to push things to the brink.
He gazed down at her. Her features were only half visible in the faint illumination of the moon, a shadow of a high cheekbone, a dark fullness of lips, and eyes like water at the bottom of a deep well, black with pinpoints of refracted starlight.
“Then why do you tell me? Why not go on duping me? That would have served your purpose better.”
“Because I can't take it anymore,” she said, lying very still. “I'm sure you are happily vindicated in your opinion of me. But it doesn't matter. I can't go any further.”
“Why?” He ran his fingers through her hair, the ultimate luxury. Her hair was heavy, smooth, glossy, and cool as morning dew. He never remembered another woman's hair the way he remembered hers. “What happened to your legendary ruthlessness?”
She closed her eyes and turned her face away from him.
His fingers felt ridiculously comforting against her skull. They moved with reassuring gentleness, coming to rest for a moment next to her temple, then sliding lower along her ear, her jaw, and finally her lips. The pad of his thumb skimmed over her bottom lip, rolled it down slightly so that he touched the moist membrane just inside her mouth.
His reaction confused her. She wanted to ask him, loudly, whether he'd heard anything she'd said—that she hadn't changed, hadn't learned her lesson at all, and had tried to deceive him again. But his touch hypnotized her. It was warm, curious, and utterly without rancor. She could not speak. She was all awareness—all deprived, hungry, unbearably keen awareness.
He kissed the lobe of her ear, the bone that hinged her jaw, the tip of her chin. He kissed her neck, her shoulder, and the indentation of her clavicle. She kept her eyes tightly shut. In that absolute darkness, he was all heat and sensation to her, his lips a source of cool fire that burned everything they touched, spawning jolts of desire that spiked through her body, leaving her mindless and weak.
Suddenly his mouth closed around her nipple. She gasped, a flabbergasted sound of pleasure. He licked her. She wanted to thrash and gyrate and beg for more. Her nails dug into the counterpane. His hand found her other nipple and rubbed it between his thumb and forefinger, with just enough force to make her abandon all efforts at quietness. She moaned out loud.
His hand moved lower, down her side, coming to rest a fraction of a second against her hip and then on to pry her legs apart. She made a feeble attempt to keep them together, but he only had to swirl his tongue slowly once around her nipple for her to forget everything.
He found her, probably the easiest thing in the world—he but had to go to the source of her wetness. And then his finger, no, fingers were inside her.
“Tell me to stop, and I will,” he said, just before he took her other nipple into his mouth.
Somewhere in the back of her mind, she realized what he was doing: dislodging and removing the Dutch cap. She might have objected had she been capable of coherent speech. But she wasn't, and the only sounds she emitted were choked whimpers of arousal.
He easily extracted the Dutch cap from her and tossed it to the side of the bed. She shivered.
“Now there's nothing between us,” he said.
A sudden flash of terror paralyzed her. She was utterly exposed to him—her womb, her future, her entire life. And just as suddenly, an overwhelming swell of desire inundated her. She wanted him inside her, to possess her, to shatter her, to fill every emptiness and destroy every defense.