Ten
Thank you, Jesus, Nick thought, sitting at Leah’s hip and reaching forward to undo the ties of her night robe. He knew when a woman was interested, and Leah Lindsey—soon to be Haddonfield—was far more interested than she wanted to admit, maybe even to herself.
“Nicholas Haddonfield.” Leah’s gaze was glued to his chest. “What are you doing?”
“We’re going to be intimate, Leah Lindsey,” Nick replied as his hands divested her of the night robe. He liked the sound of his own words: he was going to be intimate with her, to give her all manner of pleasure. “But we will not copulate. You have my word on that.”
“And if I want to copulate?” Despite her bravado, Nick knew she’d never said the word aloud before, probably never heard it spoken either.
His countess was a brave woman. Nick left his hand resting on Leah’s abdomen, one thin layer of cotton between his palm and her skin. “I cannot allow it, and I will not ask it of you ere you consent to be my countess, in any case.”
She raised unhappy brown eyes to his face. “You and your allowing. Can’t you see that’s the very thing I object to most strongly?”
His countess was also stubborn. He liked that about her too.
“You do not have enough information on which to base your decision, Leah.” Nick’s hand trailed down, so that his thumb brushed over the crests of her hip bones, then back up, to trace her ribs. “You see us, nodding politely when we pass on the dance floor, and that isn’t how it has to be.”
She watched his hand follow the same pattern, again and again, without pausing. Then, while Leah’s frown had shifted to a look of bewilderment, Nick lifted her against his chest with one hand behind her back. With his free hand, he gathered her hair and collected it to one side, his fingers brushing her neck, her collarbones, and the soft curve of her shoulders.
Oh, yes, they were going to be intimate.
“I have tried to consider how I might be your friend.” Leah got one entire sentence out and fell silent. Nick felt a gratifying sense of progress.
“I would like to be your friend too,” Nick murmured, easing her down to the bed again. “Tell me how to do that.”
“You can’t,” Leah said through clenched teeth. Nick trailed the backs of his fingers down her bare arm, from her shoulder to her wrist and back up again. “You are too cuddly.”
Cuddly. Nobody had accused him of this previously. He rather liked the notion, coming from her. “This is a problem, how?” Nick asked, stroking her arm with deliberation.
“You are always touching people,” Leah said in a rush. “You hug, and pet, and kiss, and clasp hands…”
“I do like to touch.” Nick leaned down and brushed a kiss over Leah’s forehead. He sat back up and smiled down at her in the waning firelight. She looked vaguely puzzled and disoriented. Like she was trying to recall what, exactly, had been coming out of her own mouth. Nick smoothed her hair back from her face and kissed her again, this time on the cheek.
“You smell good,” he murmured. “Like spring.”
“That’s another thing. You always smell delicious, better than a man should, and it isn’t just your shaving soap.”
“No?” She spouted the oddest, most endearing notions when she was flustered.
“No. You are clean about your person and in your habits.”
“And this disqualifies me from friendship?” Nick queried, his lips landing on the unbruised side of her jaw, slowly working their way up to her cheek before he lifted back up to sitting position.
“You smell too good to be just my friend,” Leah informed him desperately. “You kiss too well, your touch is too… too…”
“Yes?” He pressed a chaste kiss to her lips and retreated one half inch. “You were saying?” Lazily, he brushed her hair back again, his gaze following the caress of his fingers.
“Kiss me, Nicholas.”
“What are friends for?” Nick whispered, claiming her lips gently. He plied her with easy, relaxed strokes of his tongue, burrowing his hands under her shoulders and bracing himself on his forearms. He nibbled, he tasted, he teased until Leah’s tongue entered the lists and her fingers winnowed through his hair and her body began to shift on the bed in slow, needy undulations.
“Please, God… Yes, more…”
“Easy, lovey,” Nick crooned, drawing back one half inch again. “We have all the time in the world.”
They did not. If she didn’t stop moving against him like this, if she didn’t stop touching him everywhere he’d exposed his skin, he would soon lose his wits entirely.
Leah whimpered into his mouth and half rolled to hook her leg over his hips. “What, lovey?” Nick murmured. “Tell me.”
“Come. Here.” Leah’s hands went dodging south, to try to encircle Nick’s waist and drag him over her, but fortunately for his flagging self-restraint, she got distracted on the vast plane of his chest, delineating slabs of muscle, ribs, sternum, and… nipples.
“Easy.” Nick tried to catch one of those hands as it skimmed directly over a nipple, paused, and returned for closer investigation.
Leah left off plundering his mouth long enough to gaze up at him. “Will I hurt you? Here?” Another feathery, shivery brush of her fingers.
“Never. Not ever.” Though she would kill him dead, dead, dead with her innocent explorations. He closed his eyes and waited for her to set her hands loose on him again.
She used both hands, and Nick lifted a few inches to allow her free run of his chest. Kissing paused as the fascination of caressing and being caressed became too absorbing, then too frustrating.
“Nicholas, get in this bed, please.”
He knew a moment’s indecision—did he get under the covers with her? Try for the nightgown now? Shuck his bloody, bedamned, infernally too-tight breeches? No, not that, because the sight of his erect cock would give her the vapors, virgin or not—and do nothing to calm the riot in his body. He stood, lifted the covers, and budged in as Leah obligingly shifted to the center of the bed.
“Better,” Leah muttered, turning her face into his bicep.
“Let me hold you.” Nick smiled at her shyness, having already seen enough—felt enough—to know he could coax her past that and have a wonderful time doing it, too.
“No.” Leah kept her nose pressed to Nick’s arm. “I want you to…”
“You want me to what, lovey?” Nick heard a novel note of tenderness in his own voice, some humor, and a hint of puzzlement.
“Here.” Leah threaded an arm under his neck and pulled at his waistband until she conveyed her general intent. “Over me. Please.”
The last was whispered against Nick’s collarbone, but he heard her, oh yes, he most assuredly did. Slowly, he let her tug, pull, wiggle, and whisper him into position over her, his weight braced on his knees and forearms.
“This is where you want me?” Nick asked, crouched above her. He kissed her forehead again, needing to kiss her somewhere. Anywhere.
“For now,” Leah replied, her tongue running along his jawbone. “Don’t worry that you’ll crush me.”
“I’m tangled in your nightgown,” Nick said, his frustration real. He bunched the cotton in one hand and drew it up to Leah’s hips. “Lift up, Leah, it’s coming off.”
“But then I’ll be naked.”
“You’ll be naked under the covers,” Nick reminded her, not sure how that made things any better. “I can’t see you, and I can’t get tangled in your nightgown.”
She lifted her hips, and the nightgown went sailing to the foot of the bed. Nick’s reward for this bit of swashbuckling was to feel Leah’s naked chest pressed to his, and to feel his control go careening across his mental decks like so many loose cannon.
“Kiss me, Nick,” Leah ordered, her mouth seizing his.
Too late, Nick realized he was in bed with that most voracious and fascinating of creatures, the near-virgin. Leah had lost her reputation when she’d run off with Frommer, but she had by no means had her curiosity appeased. She was already deemed lost to propriety, and she’d been royally cheated of the pleasures such a sacrifice should have gained her. She was bent on making up for lost time, and Nick was the lucky, bedamned man in her bed when her passions slipped the leash.
“Leah.” He lifted up then rested his cheek against her temple, caging her with his body. “We are gobbling up our pleasures. Can’t I savor you for just a bit?”
“This is as much frustration as pleasure,” she said, accusation in her tone, and Nick considered she might not like that she wanted him, but she wasn’t going to lie about it or linger over it.
“You will be more comfortable soon,” he promised, wishing the same could be said for himself as he shifted carefully to his side. “Let me touch you now. Your only job is to enjoy it, or tell me to stop if you don’t like it.”
Leah nodded against the pillows, her expression guarded and impatient.
“Close your eyes.” Nick leaned over to nuzzle her neck. “And keep them closed, the better to focus on my touch.” He ran his nose the length of her collarbone, and God’s unmentionables, she smelled divine. “Your skin is the softest thing I’ve felt in ages. Every inch of you begs to be stroked, handled, nibbled, and caressed. I need more hands, the better to enjoy you.”
He went on like that, half musing to himself, touching her with languid indulgence as he spoke, his tone admiring and his touch purely reverent. She was exquisite, she was passionate, and she was his to pleasure and protect.
Truly, truly, seducing his countess this way was his very best idea ever.
***
This is how he does it, Leah thought in some detached portion of her mind. This is how Nick Haddonfield charms his way into any woman’s bed, offering her all the pretty words and pleasurable touches she’s always craved, as if he could read her most secret, unacknowledged thoughts or see into her heart.
He must have sensed the direction of her thoughts, because he chose then—right then—to drift his mouth down over her throat, pausing to push his tongue against the pulse at the side of her neck. He nuzzled the juncture of her neck and shoulder then curled lower against her, so his cheek rested on her sternum.
“Your breasts,” he whispered, “are so lovely, so beautifully, abundantly womanly. I am aroused just looking at them, Leah, and now, you are going to let me touch you, touch your breasts.”
She’d been peeking, watching him in the dim firelight, but when he announced this intention, she closed her eyes and held her breath.
“Or maybe,” Nick mused, “I’ll simply taste you and indulge one of my most fervent wishes.” He let several beats of silence go by, looking at her, no doubt, and then Leah felt a little warm flick against her nipple. The sensation returned, soft, wet, warm, and then cool.
Her hands threaded through his hair, and without her intending it, Leah’s back arched, and she offered herself to his mouth again.
“You like that,” Nick concluded, pleasure in his voice. “I like it too, lovey.” He got down to business, settling his mouth over her nipple and introducing her to the use of a skilled tongue on a very sensitive part of a lady’s body. When he finally drew on her, Leah heard a small, helpless moan escape her throat and knew the urge to clutch at him—his hair, his head, his shoulders, any part of him, just to convey her desperation.
He shifted again on the bed, crouching over her, and Leah found that helped her growing sense of restless unease. When he used his mouth on her breasts, it stirred feelings beneath the pit of her stomach.
And they weren’t comfortable feelings, either. This was arousal; she didn’t have a lot of experience with it, but recognized it, and both marveled and cringed at its intensity.
But twining through the arousal was something darker, an empty ache, a forlorn, homesick quality that was anxious, needy, and unwelcome. Having Nick once again over her, surrounding her with his weight and scent and muscle, helped with that hollow ache.
She arched up again, wanting to be closer to him. The hard length of his arousal, clearly evident through his breeches, brushed against her stomach before Nick could crouch back out of range.
“Don’t do that,” she muttered, her fingers going to his falls. “Let yourself touch me.”
“I want to lose these breeches, but you mustn’t look,” Nick admonished, humor warring with sternness in his voice. “Promise me, Leah.”
“You are worrying for nothing, Nicholas,” Leah said, her fingers stroking over his hair. “I am not a virgin, and you have assured me we will not copulate, in any case. But if it’s important to you,” Leah whispered in his ear, “then I will not press you on this, particularly when my interest in lengthy discussions is not now at its greatest.” She kissed his cheek, and Nick let out a sigh.
“You are hairy,” she went on, her lips pressed to his throat. “Like a golden lion. I like that you are different from me.”
And she wasn’t done with him. He wanted intimacy, and by heavens, she’d oblige him.
“But your chest is smooth, with only a little hair on your stomach. I wonder”—Leah’s tone became teasing—“if your body is as sensitive as mine.” She recalled her previous interest in his nipples, only this time, she angled her body so she could get her mouth over one of his.
“I am your willing servant.” No lazy seduction warmed his words. They sounded tight, bitten off.
“Take your breeches off, Nicholas. Please.” Leah planted one hand on the small of his back and eased it under his waistband, a suggestion of the pleasure he’d feel were her hands anchored on his muscular fundament.
“No peeking,” he admonished.
She peeked as he rolled to his back, unfastened about half the buttons on his falls, and jerked the last of his clothes from his body. They joined Leah’s nightclothes at the foot of the bed, and then Nick was positioned back over her, giving her no opportunity to inspect what he was so intent on keeping from her view, the dratted man.
She would not suffer him to frustrate her curiosity entirely. “Closer, Nicholas, let me feel you.”
Tentatively, he gave her contact with his chest then wrapped his arms around her and held her to him, a sort of static body caress that let his tremendous heat seep into Leah’s joints and bones.
It helped, to be this close to him, and it tormented to know he would not join with her. The greater torment was Leah’s sense that Nick hadn’t been honest with her regarding his reasons for his self-enforced limits.
“So is this what you wanted?” Leah asked when Nick eased his hold and shifted off to her side. “Is this what we’ll share besides a passing nod on the dance floor?”
“Not quite,” Nick murmured, shifting to his side. “There’s a bit more.”
Leah yawned, slid a hand down over his buttocks. She didn’t come right out and tell him to be about it, though she gently squeezed a handful of taut male muscle.
“You trust me?” Nick asked, brushing the hair back from her forehead.
To break her heart and keep her safe while he did it. She squeezed him again. “In bed, I trust you.”
“Spread your legs a little,” Nick suggested, his hand stroking the center of her chest. “You’ll be more comfortable, and please recall”—he pressed a kiss to each of her closed eyes in turn—“you are to relax and not peek and trust me.”
He covered her mouth with his, and while his tongue teased at hers and slipped over the heat of her mouth, that hand shifted to gently caress each breast. He palmed the weight of each one, glided his fingers teasingly over her nipples, and gave her just the weight of his hand resting over her. Leah arched up, trying to inspire him to greater activity, but he growled a warning and let his hand drift down over her ribs, then her stomach.
He stroked his fingers over her navel, evoking surprising sensations from a place on her body Leah had never really considered, and again he paused, while Leah experienced the warm weight of his hand on her naked belly.
“Nicholas, must you be so…?”
“Tender?” he suggested. “Careful… deliberate… enthralled… enchanted…?”
“Aggravating.” Leah landed on the word with relish, because Nick was wandering about her body as if the growing restlessness inside her were pleasurable, and to Leah, it was increasingly bothersome. Aaron had not left her feeling like this, had not taken more than a few minutes of kissing, poking, and apologizing, then grunting and making the bed creak.
“Can’t have my lady aggravated.” Nick brushed the backs of his fingers over the down on Leah’s mons, and her breath escaped on a gasp.
“Eyes closed.” Nick bent his head over her breast. “Legs spread a little.” He settled his mouth over her nipple just as his hand began to stroke her thighs, and this time when he suckled, it was Leah growling. Her eyes were closed, and behind her eyelids, colors were dancing and surging, and her body felt the same way. Full of heat and color and odd, novel sensations.
When she felt him trace up the crease of her sex with a single finger, Leah’s hands found Nick’s shoulders and gripped hard.
“Easy, lovey,” Nick murmured between kisses. “Move if you want to, against me.”
He pushed gently against her mons, and she pushed back, slowly but not so gently. The undulation of her body eased her and made things worse, too, but she was helpless to stop it as Nick’s deft fingers delved gently into her folds.
“You are growing eager,” Nick whispered as his fingers slipped higher. “Your body grows slick in anticipation of your pleasure.”
“God above, Nicholas…” She clutched at his thick wrist and stilled his hand. “What was that?”
“What was what?” Nick didn’t remove his hand.
“You touched me, and it felt like I rapped my elbow, but much, much worse.”
“You’ll grow accustomed to such sensations,” Nick said, his words laced with amusement, “and they’ll become more pleasurable if you’ll be patient with them.” He moved his hand again, with her fingers still circling his wrist, but this time he used a more definite pressure on the apex of her sex.
“Ye gracious gods…” Her grip loosened as her eyes fluttered closed, but still she didn’t let him go.
In silence, he touched her for long, fraught moments only there, letting her focus on that one source of sensation until she was breathing heavily and moving against his hand in slow, powerful surges of her hips.
“Nicholas…?” She wet her lips with her tongue, her arousal and bewilderment ringing in his name.
“Trust me,” Nick reminded her, dipping his head to brush his lips over her nipple. “Trust me and take your pleasure, Leah.”
Pleasure took her, as tight spasms seized Leah from the inside, turning her into a thrashing, keening, blind, and mindless wanton, her nails digging into Nick’s wrist, her body moving desperately to accept what he was giving her, her heart pounding with the sheer, terrifying glory of it.
“Too much…” she panted, and then Nick drew on her nipple, and the too much redoubled to be more than too much for long, shuddering moments.
When it passed, she lay on her back, body slack, mind slack, her only thought gratitude for the comfort of Nick’s hand, still pressed firmly against her sex. If he moved, if he moved even one inch, she was going to dissolve into fairy dust and drift away up the chimney.
He did move, but not that hand. Instead, Leah felt Nick’s other arm burrow under her neck and wrap her against his chest. That brought comfort, but not as much as when Leah shifted herself more closely still, hiking a leg over Nick’s hips and wrapping an arm around his waist.
She was profoundly grateful not to have to ask that he hold her. He seemed to know, and to know how to go about it, enfolding her snugly against him, but not so tightly she felt smothered.
Gradually, as the tumult in her body eased, Leah became aware of Nick’s erection. It lay along her stomach now, thick, hard, and hot, a discordant note of rigidity in a soft tangle of bodies. Tentatively, Leah reached between them and brushed her fingers across the plush head of his member.
Dear God, Aaron had not at his most passionate been possessed of such dimensions. She fitted her hand over him, testing his width and length in slow, careful movements. As intimately as they were embracing, Leah felt the stillness in Nick’s body, heard his sharp inhalation. She tucked her face against his chest and waited for him to dissuade her.
But he remained still, waiting, and so Leah followed her own urge to explore him.
She traced her fingers over his balls then teased through the hair at the base of his shaft. When she circled his shaft with her fingers then stroked the length of him, he hissed and pushed into her hand. She repeated the stroke, and he pushed more strongly.
“Show me,” she whispered. “Nicholas, I don’t know how… Show me.”
He wrapped his hand around hers and tactilely explained the rhythm, the grip, and the stroke, then left it to her as he held her tightly, tucking her leg up over his hip.
“Tighter,” he whispered, moving more quickly. “You won’t hurt me, I promise. Beelzebub’s cock stand, yes, that’s it…” A few more moments of that, and he gently disentangled her hand from him, so he was thrusting against her belly. Gripping her buttock, he held her to him, and in the seamless seal of their bodies, Leah felt a spreading warmth as Nick pulsed against her.
“Oh, lovey…” He tucked her head against his chest and kept her there, where she could feel his breath soughing in and out and hear his heartbeat as it gradually slowed beneath her ear.
“I hadn’t meant to do that,” Nick said, stroking a hand over her hair. “Are you all right?”
She nodded, his words striking hard against an ache that had been building in the pit of her stomach. He hadn’t meant to do that? Hadn’t meant to share pleasure with her, as opposed to visit it upon her unilaterally?
As arousal ebbed and fatigue reasserted itself, Leah’s previous sense of loneliness stirred back to life too. Except it wasn’t as simple as loneliness. Her throat constricted around a sharp ache, and what she felt in that moment was desolation.
Hopelessness.
It made no sense. She was wrapped in Nick’s arms, he’d just shown her more spectacular physical pleasure than she’d known existed, and he was promising her more of that as part of her due as his wife. He had even let himself find pleasure as well.
As the first tear squeezed its way past Leah’s closed eyes, she knew a despair so great that if Nick hadn’t been holding her, she might have physically flown apart. This closeness Nick was willing to settle for, it wasn’t going to be enough. For all Nick’s tenderness and consideration, it was without love, a subversion of the intended purpose of marriage, a parody of the union Leah had longed for.
He did this with many other women, and did more than this too.
Nick shifted carefully, bringing her over his body to sprawl on his chest. “Tell me again that you are all right, lamb.”
He’d felt the heat of tears, no doubt. Leah furtively wiped at her cheeks where she was curled against him.
“Here.” Nick reached out a long arm to the night table and retrieved a linen handkerchief. He dabbed gently at her cheeks, then while she shifted up, mopped at their bellies.
“We’re not quite spotless,” he said, “but the linens are safe. Now come here, let me hold you, and tell me what bothers you.”
“You mean well,” Leah allowed as she eased down against him on a tired sigh. “But you can’t repair my feelings, Nick. I do not believe I will be availing myself of this aspect of your marital offer.”
His hands, which had started stroking her back, went momentarily still, then resumed their steady, gentle caresses.
“You are not all right,” he concluded. “Talk to me, Leah.” He drew the covers up over her back and wrapped his arms more securely around her. “Please, talk to me.”
“I bore Aaron Frommer a son.”