Chapter 14
Jess awoke to the feel of firm fingertips gliding back and forth across her forearm. She lay on her stomach with one arm tossed over Alistair’s torso. Her body felt achy and heavy, well used. For a long moment, she lay there, absorbing the odd reality of waking up to a man beside her. It was surprisingly pleasant, reaffirming the intimacy established through lovemaking.
It was growing dark outside. The sunlight that had shone through the porthole earlier was dimmed now. Hours had passed, as had several shattering orgasms. She hadn’t known her body was capable of repeating a climax so soon, or that a man’s body was capable of such sexual stamina. Although Benedict had sometimes taken her more than once in a night, it was always with hours between one encounter and the next. Alistair had required little time for recovery … mere moments. He said that was because of her, because of his desire for her. Of course, he was younger than Benedict. Younger than she … but she refused to think about that.
The bigger revelation was that his fervency no longer frightened her. How could it when she felt equally fervent toward him? The gratitude Beth had told her she’d feel was only one of a dozen emotions swirling through her. Her affection for the man beside her was powerful enough to constrict her chest.
Shifting, she slid one leg over his and pressed her lips to his biceps. He made a low sound of approval. “If I’d known,” he said with glittering eyes, “that sex would make you so agreeable, I would have taken you to bed sooner.”
“A sennight wasn’t soon enough?” she asked, startled at the vocalization of how quickly he’d slipped under her guard.
“Several years preceded that sennight.” He caught the hand she had splayed across his chest and kissed her knuckles. “What softened your resistance and sweetened your temper?”
“I didn’t understand the many facets involved in our association. I could only see an entanglement between us as an unnecessary complication. I had no notion that a love affair was a natural progression for a widow, part of a process of healing that allows a woman to resume her life without her spouse.”
His grip on her hand tightened marginally. “You discovered this today?”
Jess nodded and slid closer, draping half of her body over the side of his. She felt comfortable with him. Safe. Free. “I am now prepared to enjoy you fully, knowing that when the time comes to part we’ll do so with fondness. And I will be stronger and more resilient for the experience.”
“So, I am to be an experience for you.” He sounded mildly contemplative. “When do you anticipate this time for amicable farewell will arrive?”
She shrugged. “I haven’t the faintest idea. And, frankly, the end no longer concerns me.”
She’d already changed profoundly because of him, in so many ways. He would not be merely an experience for her but an adventure, as fraught with possibilities as her voyage to the West Indies.
“What if it concerns me?” he murmured.
The casualness of his tone took the weight from his words. That pained her, but she endeavored not to show it. It was not his fault that she didn’t know how to conduct a casual affair, and she did not want to give him cause to regret becoming involved with her. “Fustian. We both know you will tire of me first.”
“To be clear, you’ll keep me as your lover until one of us no longer desires the other?”
“You know the etiquette of such things better than I.”
Alistair flipped her to her back in an economic, agile movement. He rose above her, kneeing her legs open and settling between them. The scent of his skin, now mingled with her fragrance, was as stimulating as always. “You do realize you’ve challenged me again,” he purred. “This time, to keep you enthralled with me indefinitely.”
She stared up at him, adoring the way his dark hair hung around his face, making him look wicked and sinful. Her fingers traced the arch of one of his brows. “You would swiftly grow bored with a fawning paramour, I’m certain.”
With a practiced swivel of his hips, he positioned his cockhead at the entrance of her sex and pushed a scant inch inside her. She was slick with his seed, filled with him. Yet she wanted more; it frightened her how much. He reached between them, finding her clitoris and stroking over it with a feather-light touch. Her breath left her in a sighing moan. She was sore and swollen, but that was no deterrent. She needed to lose herself to his skill and his focused pursuit of her pleasure. She needed to forget this talk of endings while she was still so enamored with the beginning.
His mouth hovered above hers, his sensual lips curved in a smile that didn’t soften his determined gaze. “I challenge you to prove it.”
Bearing down, he drove into her, making her cry out at the suddenness of his invasion. Alistair had been so careful before, giving her time to process every sensation before moving on to the next. This time felt like a claiming, a bold and undeniable possession. She writhed beneath him, trying to accommodate the thick, deep impalement.
“Fawn over me,” he coaxed darkly. “Lavish me with your attention. See what comes of it.”
Jess would have told him she had no desire to hasten his leavetaking, but he began to thrust. As fluid as his movements were, they were rougher than they’d been previously. Harder. Every downstroke hit the end of her, the thick club of his magnificent penis stroking over nerve endings in a contact that curled her toes. She clawed at his back, pulling him closer.
He brushed his lips across her temple, then rubbed his cheek against hers, sharing the perspiration misting his skin. “This time,” he whispered, “I’m going to fuck you, Jess. The way I’ve needed to fuck you all these years.”
The coarseness of his hoarsely voiced threat was opposed to his tender kiss. Her hunger sharpened. He caught the back of her knee and pulled her leg upward, opening her wider. His next hard lunge wrung a cry from her, the sensation of his endless penetration bringing a fierce pleasure bordering on pain. She bit her lip to stifle further sound.
“Let me hear you.” With his palms on the mattress, he supported his torso easily. His hips were held aloft by his knees, affording him impressive fluidity of movement. With her leg hooked around his biceps and her pelvis canted upward, she had no defense against him. His cock plunged and retreated with blurring speed, his hips lifting and falling, his heavy sac smacking against her in a swift erotic rhythm. “Tell me how much you like it,” he purred. “… how good it feels …”
Soft sobs of pleasure escaped her, spilling from her mindlessly. His large body mantled hers, dominated her, left her with no awareness beyond him. Everything she clung to faded away, leaving her with only base desire and heated yearning, every cell in her body attuned to the man who rode her with marked possessiveness.
“Jess …” He groaned. Sweat dripped from his hair as his hips pistoned against hers. “I will never tire of this. Of you. My God … I don’t think I can stop.”
“Don’t stop.” Jess slung her free leg over his hips and possessed him in kind, flexing into his pounding tempo. “Don’t. Stop.”
Her womb clenched desperately, the rush of orgasm licking across her skin like fire, whiplashes of pleasure cutting through the outer shell she’d lived in her entire life. The violence of his lovemaking rocked her to the core, leaving her defenseless against his relentless siege on her emotions. She felt herself unraveling, her eyes burning with a sudden wash of tears.
Alistair watched her as she fell apart beneath him, his azure eyes feverishly bright in the semidarkness. She shook with the violence of her climax, moaning when he thrust deep and rolled his hips, applying the perfect pressure to her clitoris to keep her coming and coming and coming.
She wrapped her arms around his nape and lifted to him, taking the connection she needed in a lush, fervent kiss. The swollen tissues of her sex rippled along the length of his throbbing penis, luring him to begin thrusting again.
Releasing her leg, he caught her up, his arms sliding beneath her shoulders and embracing her tightly. His lips moved across her cheek, his breath gusting hot and fast across her ear.
“My turn,” he growled, gripping her shoulders and lunging powerfully. “Hold me.”
Jess pressed her face into his sweat-slick chest and held on, absorbing the feel of his body flexing and working against her. The sweet friction of his plunging strokes threatened to push her over the edge again, but she resisted, wanting to experience Alistair’s race to orgasm. He’d spent the afternoon focused on her, restraining the sexual animal she knew was in him. Now, finally, he seemed to be losing his grip on his steely control, the ferocity of his passion betraying a depth of emotion that might rival hers.
She felt the tension grip him, heard his teeth grind as he fought it. “Come in me,” she urged, accepting the pounding of his hips and cock. All her reserve was burned away by the heat of his lust, leaving behind a woman brave enough and wanton enough to say the libidinous words that would incite him to madness. “You feel so good … so good …”
“Damnation,” he hissed, swelling inside her. The first hard, thick spurt made her gasp in delight. He jerked against her, shuddering with every wrenching pulse, his hands fisting in the bedclothes on either side of her head.
He came hard and long, groaning her name, rubbing his face and torso against her as if to mark her with his scent. Jess took it all, cradling him as he shattered like she had mere moments earlier, anchoring him in the midst of the storm.