Escape was the last thing she wanted.
The scent of woodland clung to him, and the scents of a stormy summer day, the scents of wet wool and smoke. Under these and permeating them, she knew, though she couldn’t quite catch it yet, was the scent of his skin. She inhaled deeply, the way the opium smoker draws in the drug he craves.
He started to say something, but as she inhaled, his gaze slid down, to her mouth, before lowering to her breasts, all too conspicuously displayed.
He caught the back of her head and bent his, and kissed her, hard. She kissed him back in the same way. No sweet maiden’s kiss because she wasn’t sweet, was she? She was Olympia, dammit, and she wanted more and more and more of what she’d only tasted before: sin and heat and wild feelings. The feelings she’d given up believing she’d ever experience.
She was aware, distantly, of rain drumming on the wooden roof and beating at the windows. She was aware, distantly, of the thrash and crash of the storm outside. But that was far away, as remote as a dream.
The center of the world was here, in the incorrect and unacceptable longing she was sick of fighting. This was what she’d wanted, very possibly from the moment he’d burst into the library with his friends. Whether it had started then or after or long before, he was what she wanted now.
She wanted to be crushed against his big body, his arms wrapped about her. She mightn’t have known it before but she knew now that she’d been wanting to feel his chest rising and falling against hers, and to feel unmaidenly and unvirtuous excitement. She’d been waiting without knowing what she waited for until now: to feel heat coiling around and inside her. Like molten lava, it slithered over her skin and under it and into her brain. It melted and burnt up everything in its path: sensible and practical notions first of all. The world softened and hazed over and spun about her. She was lost and glad to be.
He wasn’t the first man she would have chosen to lose her mind over. More like the last. But too bad for her. He was the one.
Just once.
Just this once.
Passion. This once, the man I want, even if it’s wrong and ruinous.
He kissed her and kissed her and kissed her. Everywhere. Along the side of her face and her ear and behind her ear and along her neck. It was only his mouth upon her skin, so small a pressure to have so much power. But the touch of his mouth was enough to make her want more. It made her forget herself and all she’d ever been taught about right and wrong. Everything inside her that had seemed so sure and solid before—the mind and will of the practical and sensible Olympia—all gave way, surrendering to him and the power of his mouth, his touch, the scent of his skin, and the warmth and strength of his powerful body.
Oh, and his hands.
They moved over her while he kissed her throat, then the top of her breast. Animal sounds, little moans, spilled out of her.
And while he kissed her, she was aware—but distantly, as though it happened in another place—of his loosening her corset with smooth efficiency. In what seemed like no time at all she felt the ties giving way and the garment sliding from her. It was instinctive to grab it as it started to slip away. But his hands got in the way, and when he pushed the corset down and untied the tapes of her chemise with the same expertise, she forgot what she’d meant to do or why she’d wanted to do it.
He pulled the chemise down and then his bare hands were on her breasts . . . cupping and squeezing them . . .
A deep, sweet ache joined with a surge of happiness so sudden and powerful she could hardly stand up. She had wanted this, though she’d had no idea what this was and never could have imagined, no matter how wildly she imagined.
Then he put his mouth where his hands had been and suckled her. Heat shot deep into the pit of her belly. Her knees disappeared, and if he hadn’t been holding her, she’d have slid to the floor.
“Oh,” she said. “Oh.” Her so-efficient brain could offer nothing more.
He had his arms fully about her now, and he lifted her off the floor and carried her a little ways. He set her down on something soft. He bent over her and gently unhooked her spectacles from behind her ears and set them . . . somewhere—she didn’t care—because he started kissing her again, starting at her forehead.
He kissed her eyebrows and her eyes and her nose and her cheeks and her chin, and on from there. These kisses were fiercer than what had gone before, and they seemed to sear her skin and under her skin. They turned everything hot and hazy and dark.
He worked his way swiftly down, and she, squirming with pleasure and other, sharper feelings, tried to put her hands on his bare skin, too. She needed to kiss him in the way he kissed her, laying claim to as much of him as she could: This is mine and this is mine and this is mine and this is mine.
They were like two armies fighting for territory. But the fight was somehow the opposite of a fight. Whatever it was, it had to be done. She needed her hands on his skin and his on hers. She needed kisses, more of them, taken and given. And while she took as much as she could, she felt a loss of things that covered her—her clothes, yes, but something more. For years and years, she’d hidden her dreams and wants, and bit by bit, other parts of herself.
But from the moment she’d started unbuttoning her dress, she—whoever she was—had come out of her hiding place. She’d emerged from the world she’d tried to make safe and painless and had only made small and boring. With him, it was impossible to live in so small a place. With him, she couldn’t play by the rules and didn’t want to.
All she wanted was more and more and more of him and what he did to her. She tugged at his shirt, pushing it up, to put her hands on his chest, so warm and hard. She laughed inside, feeling triumph when he groaned, even while she ached, so deep. She felt triumphant and right, even when she couldn’t stop crying out “Oh,” and “Oh!” while she squirmed under him, impatient for something else, something more.
He said, “Olympia,” his voice hoarse against her neck.
And she said, “Yes.” And “Yes.” And always, “Yes.”
Yes, she said.
The yes thundered in Ripley’s mind, as loud as the storm outside. Or maybe the single word was the storm.
He had, more or less, decided what he’d say to her.
But this wasn’t what he’d meant to do.
Not yet, that is.
But the way she’d looked at him when she’d undone the buttons.
The way she’d looked—all luscious curves and white underthings and naughty pink ribbons.
He was a man, and not a virtuous one.
And so, when he should have said, No, wait, and then added something sensible and correct . . . he didn’t.
Instead, he walked straight into trouble, the way he always did. He walked the few steps to Doing the Wrong Thing. Then she was in his arms, soft and willing and learning far too quickly how to make him delirious.
And now.
Yes, she said.