Tempting the Bride

chapter 11



Now everything was out in the open.

Hastings felt at once exhausted and unbearably light, all his secrets unloaded. She, on the other hand, looked as if the weight of a continent had settled on her shoulders.

He closed the distance between them and touched his hand to her sleeve. “It has been a long day. Would you like to take some rest? I can have some refreshments sent up.”

She gripped his lapels and yanked him toward her with surprising strength. “How dare you leave me alone in my hour of need.”

He had rarely been more startled. “That is not what I—”

“I know.” She let go of him and smiled sadly. “And what I meant was, ‘Stay with me.’”

“Of course. Would you still like to have tea sent up? There are books you like in the sitting room. I can read to you from—”

She gripped his lapels again. “I thought you were more clever than this.”

She looped her free arm about his neck and kissed him, her tongue seeking his with a need that had him all but moaning aloud.

He forced himself to pull back. “Wait!”

“No.”

“Helena, you’ve just been told some shocking news. You are not feeling quite yourself. You should be taking a bath, or having something to eat, not leaping on a fellow you didn’t even like ten days ago.”

She set her hands to just below his ears, her fingers cool upon his skin. “I want this. And I want this to be our wedding night. Now.”

She was looking at his lips. It took a moment for him to remember what he meant to say. “Helena, you can’t disown a past you don’t even remember by taking me to bed.”

“I don’t want to disown my past,” she whispered. “I just want you. I have never wanted anything as much as I want you at this moment.”

His head spun. His ears burned. And his lungs must have collapsed in shock, for he couldn’t draw in another breath. It was not only raining in the Sahara Desert; it was pouring like the beginning of the deluge.

In the back of his mind a voice begged him to disengage. This was no time to give in to his yearning, the voice beseeched. She would hate him for it when her memory came back.

But an entire jubilant chorus shouted in objection to the timidity of the lone voice of reason. Why allow all the old memories to have supremacy? Make new ones, memories of such luster and beauty that, should the old ones come back, they would be pallid and impotent in comparison.

“David,” she murmured.

His heart thumped. She’d never before called him by his given name.

“David. David. David,” she repeated.

Their gaze locked. He tried to find some irrational desperation in her eyes, but he could see only wonder, affinity, and undisguised desire.

Suddenly he was the one yanking her to him, the one kissing her as if this were his final hour on earth, the one lifting his arms heavenward in awe and gratitude as rain came down in torrents in the heart of the Sahara.

Helena already knew that her husband was a man of many talents. Now she added supremely deft fingers to that list of gifts. She had no idea he’d opened the bodice of her dress all the way to her waist until he was pushing the sleeves down her arms.

She slapped him lightly on the hand. “This is for dallying with all the other women when you should have been chastely waiting for me.”

He kissed her again. “What penance will you order for me? Will you make me fall to my knees and worship you between your beautiful thighs?”

The place between her thighs quivered rather forcefully at his suggestion. She couldn’t say a word in return.

“Yes, I believe I shall do just that,” he murmured.

“You’d better do it very, very well.” She somehow found her voice. “Or I’d consider it not done at all.”

He spoke directly into her ear. “I love it when you order me to do precisely what I want to do.”

The brush of his breath, the nip of his teeth on her earlobe—she trembled with the unexpected rush of pleasure and shoved her fingers into his hair.

He kissed her neck. “I never knew I wanted a woman to tug at my hair—until you.”

She pulled him to her by his hair and kissed him hard. “Like this?”

“Dear God, exactly like that.”

So she did it again, her throat, on its own, issuing little noises not very different from those Millie had made when she and Fitz had been going at each other in Helena’s room.

Distantly she heard a thud and realized it was the sound of her corset hitting the floor. She pushed him back. “You will not remove another article of clothing from me until you remove a few of your own.”

He grinned as he yanked out his necktie. “You are such a pushy woman.”

“I am.” Her hand lifted to play with the curl at her ear, only to remember she had no hair to flirt with. No matter, she tossed aside her turban and batted her eyelashes at him. “But I am only ordering you to do exactly what you want. I’ll bet you’ve been waiting to show off your ‘perfectly built’ body for years.”

His jacket fell to the floor, followed by his waistcoat. He glanced at her sidelong as he extracted his cuff links. “Are you ready? You won’t swoon on me, will you?”

She gave her lower lip a long, slow lick. “Make me, darling.”

His shirt disappeared. She sucked in a breath—he had not exaggerated. Everything was shapely: his shoulders, his arms, his flat, well-muscled abdomen.

“Decent enough.” She exhaled. “Now the rest.”

Which she was suddenly most eager to see.

He tsked and came closer. She might be slim, but she was tremendously tall and not precisely fine-boned. But he lifted her out of her dress as if she weighed no more than a good pair of gentlemen’s riding boots. “I’ve wanted to see you naked for far longer. You’ll just have to wait for your turn.”

“There had better be sky-high praises waiting for me,” she warned him as he divested her of her petticoats. “I do not disrobe for anything less.”

“Young lady, you had better earn those sky-high praises.” He caught her lips for another kiss. “The youth of today are spoiled with unmerited applause, and I have no intention of giving a single compliment before it is warranted.”

He opened all the buttons on her combination and pushed it down to the floor. Then he took two steps back, squinted, and studied her. She grew nervous as the seconds passed. She didn’t have the most womanly of figures. When she’d been a child she’d been all sharp knees and sharper elbows. Her breasts were probably the smallest pair God had on hand. And He never did send hips, leaving her with a body about as curvaceous as a plank.

The man before her let out a breath. “I don’t know if this constitutes sky-high praise, but I will tell you this: I’ve spent many, many years imagining what you look like without your clothes. And I have a very fine imagination, one of the best in our generation, I daresay. And you, in person, have put that imagination to shame.”

Her heart pounded at the hunger in his eyes. He kept looking at her, his gaze hot, his breath uneven.

“Well, don’t just stand there.” Her voice, too, had become uneven. “Do something.”

Before she’d quite finished speaking he’d already closed the distance between them and placed his palm against her breast. She let out a small whimper.

“Did you know that for years you didn’t have any breasts?” he said while kissing her with only his lips. “And I loved to fantasize about your chest, flat as a board, nothing but beautiful, hard nipples.”

She swallowed and looked down at his hand. Without moving it, he caught her nipple between two of his fingers and slowly tugged. The sight of it, the sharp pleasure of it—she panted, as if she’d been climbing stairs for hours on end.

“I was almost disappointed when you did sprout those gorgeous breasts—but not anymore,” he murmured. “Not anymore.”

He rubbed the pad of his thumb on her nipple. Her breath caught. The pleasure shot hard into her abdomen.

He lowered his head and took her nipple into his mouth. She cried aloud—the pressure of his lips, the slow, moist swirl of his tongue, and occasionally, particularly, the unexpected scrape of his teeth.

He did the same to her other nipple while she filled the room with moans and sobs. She gasped when his hand closed on her bottom, his fingers digging into her flesh. He groaned and sank his teeth into her shoulder.

“Might as well put your other hand on it, too,” she managed to say, “since you like it so well.”

But he didn’t. Instead he lifted her and laid her on the bed, pulling off her shoes as he went. “These must be the most beautiful legs in the entire world,” he said, peeling away her stockings.

He climbed into bed himself and kissed his way up her legs. Instincts she didn’t even know she possessed made her clench her thighs together. Without any hesitation, he pushed them apart, exposing her to his gaze.

“The doors of the temple, darling, never close to the devout acolyte.”

And with that, he began his worship, gentle, almost sweet licks of the tongue just to the outside of her folds, before suddenly dipping his tongue inside her. She thrashed, her toes digging into the sheets, her body arching toward him, her hands gripping his hair.

His tongue flicked a most sensitive part of her, but only once, making her moan and order him to do it again. He ignored her until she was so taken with the pleasure he wrought elsewhere that she forgot her own earlier demands. Then he suddenly went back to that spot, lavishing it with attention, making her scream from pleasure and need.

When he put his teeth to use, her pleasure rose to a roaring peak. She buckled and shuddered, crying out incoherently, her thighs shaking as he, not letting her go in the least, took her to another peak, then another, then another.

David. Oh, David, David, David.”

The sound of his name on her lips was heaven’s own music. The deluge in the Sahara was flooding his humble temple, drowning him in good fortune and answered prayers.

He kissed his way up her torso. Or perhaps he was pulled up by her hands in his hair.

“Shall I do the same for you?” she asked urgently, her breath ragged.

He almost lost himself right then. “Another time, maybe,” he rasped, “when you are not a virgin anymore.”

“A what?”

“We all assumed otherwise, but you told us you were still a virgin.” He kissed her on her shoulder.

“What kind of an affair was that?” She sounded thunderstruck.

“A prudent one, obviously.”

“Well, then, quickly deflower me, so I may take you in my mouth and—”

He kissed her on her eager mouth and pushed himself into her, unable to savor the moment as slowly as he’d always anticipated. Nor could he sink hilt-deep into her as his nearly out-of-control body wanted, for despite being impossibly slick, she was also impossibly tight.

He groaned, maddened by the pleasure.

“Dear God,” she murmured.

He was immediately contrite. “I’m sorry. Does it hurt?”

Her hand lowered to grab his bottom. “Yes, it does hurt, but I want to hold all of you inside me.”

At her incendiary words, he drove deeper—far deeper—into her, unable to help himself.

“So,” she said, her fingers on his cheek, “now I’ve made you mine.”

He took her fingers in hand and kissed them one by one. “You made me yours long ago, but now you finally claimed me.”

She licked his fingers. “I don’t know why I waited so long. I love claiming you.”

He gritted his teeth. “Stop—everything. Or you will make me ejaculate prematurely.”

She sucked on his fingers, her tongue teasing. “What is that?”

He breathed hard. “Spilling my seed without properly pleasuring you first.”

Her eyes were infinitely mischievous. “But you’ve already properly pleasured me. Go ahead, spill your seed. I want you to do it.”

He almost did at the sound of those words. “Shut up, Helena. I have my pride to consider.”

“Hmm.” She kissed him on his neck—she licked his neck. Her hand slipped between their bodies to touch the base of his cock.

“Stop.” To punctuate his words, he withdrew and propelled into her again.

Her eyes widened. “Oh, my. What’s that?”

He did it yet again, deeper, harder. “This?”

She panted. “Yes, that.”

“This is what you are not getting more of if I come too early,” he growled.

“I changed my mind. I want you to keep pounding me like this.”

“God!” He swore, nearly undone by another surge of lust. “I am not going to last if you won’t be quiet.”

She was utterly merciless. “You must—you have your pride to consider. And I want to tell you how good you feel inside me, how big and hard and powerful.” She wrapped her legs about him. “I might let you have supper later, but I am not going to let you sleep. You are going to pleasure me all night.”

He kissed her to silence her, but there was no stopping her clever hands or her writhing body. Years of nighttime fantasy paled to utter insignificance before the reality of making love to her. For even in his wildest dreams she’d remained just a bit aloof. There was no aloofness here, no reluctance. She was all hot willingness and naughty touches, wanting him so much that she was already shuddering again, moaning deliriously against his lips.

He shook with his own climax, emptying into her more and for longer than he ever thought possible, each convulsion more pleasurable than the previous. She kissed his lips, his nose, the lids of his eyes. He collapsed atop her, his heart bursting with sweetness, utterly drained and utterly undone.

She tugged at his hair.

“I’m awake,” he murmured.

“You have been so silent,” she said, playing with his earlobe.

He smiled into the crook of her neck. “I was imagining Lake Sahara.”

She moved back slightly to look into his eyes. “What is that?”

He lifted one hand to touch her cheek. “I used to think being in love with you was like praying for rain in the middle of the Sahara Desert. Well, rain has come, such a rain that soon half of North Africa will be a lake. There will be new grasslands and forests, an endless supply of fish, abundant wildlife of all sorts. And when the sun rises, birds in flocks of thousands will fly over the lake, their wings white as sails in the morning light.”

She gazed at him, her eyes as green and soft as the grasslands of his imagination. “That is beautiful.”

He felt like a pilgrim standing on the shores of Lake Sahara, having walked barefoot over hundreds of miles, yet all the hardships forgotten, filled with only wonder and reverence at the marvel of it all.

She kissed him slowly, softly, and then said the loveliest words under the sky. “Let’s make it rain some more, David.”