‘This,’ he said at last and gave in as the pounding tide in his blood battered the last of his resistance to rubble. As he seized her, the empty brandy glass fell from her hand, shattering on a mahogany side table. Then he was kissing her. She tasted sweet and heady like the liquor she’d been drinking. He wanted to drink her in and get drunk on her, as if he was not already intoxicated just by sharing a room with her.
Apparently, she felt the same for she made no effort to fight against him as he loosened the string at the neckline of her gown and let the bodice gape so he could touch her bare breasts. ‘Did your books tell you of this?’ he asked, tugging her chemise out of the way and taking a tight pink nipple into his mouth, sucking hard.
The answering groan told him what he already knew. Reality was better than any book. Her back arched and he looked up to see the delicate curve of her throat begging to be kissed. He obliged, stroking her breasts with his hands. Then he used them to push her backwards and down on to the divan behind them.
He stopped for a moment to admire the perfection of her, effortlessly wanton and waiting. Brown hair was wild about her face and her head was cradled on one arm. The muscles of it tugged at one breast so it rode higher than the other, nipple pointed toward the heavens.
If she was painted, just like this, it would result in the sort of masterwork that drove artists mad and made collectors kill to possess it. But he alone would have the flesh behind the canvas. There was no way he could live innocently as a brother to a woman like this.
Perhaps she would learn her lesson, after today. But he feared he never would. It sometimes seemed, the more unattainable a woman was, the sweeter she tasted. To test the theory he went to her, resting one knee on the cushion between her legs, and pushed her skirts to her waist.
‘What are you doing?’ She tried and failed to make the words sound like a scold, but there was too much eager curiosity in them to warn him away.
‘If you don’t know, then you’ve been reading the wrong books.’ He ran his hands up the naked thighs above her stockings, then wrapped his arms about them and lifted her to his mouth for the most intimate kiss.
Her body gave one brief jerk of shock before she relaxed and opened herself to his mouth, letting him take her, sweet and salty, musky and wonderful. He eased his fingers into her and took her in easy thrusts as his tongue pushed her to heaven and beyond. And now she was shaking in the throes of orgasm.
Was it her first? he wondered. The first given to her in this way, he was sure. In a few moments, he would be her first in the only way that really mattered. First, last and only. His erection gave an eager twitch at the thought of entering the tight channel that his fingers had found.
Her spasms of pleasure were subsiding. Her eyes were closed tight. Straight white teeth bit her full lower lip. Strands of that glossy brown hair clung to her face. Her gown pooled at her waist, where he’d pushed it, her perfect breasts still tight with desire.
He eased her legs down from where they had been resting on his shoulders, covering her mound with his palm. She opened her eyes again, watching, silent. And once again he balanced on the brink of disaster, unable to pull himself away. ‘I do not want you in my house,’ he whispered. ‘I want you in my bed. I want you in my life. I want you to fill every moment of my future.’
She sighed. The hand that had reached for him before touched his face and he felt it tremble as her knuckles grazed his cheek.
He reached to undo the flap of his trousers.
And then, without warning, the hand that had just caressed him pulled back and struck his cheek, hard, as if to knock sense back into him.
He reeled back, suddenly aware of what he’d been about to do. Then he scanned the room, staring at the windows that faced a busy London street. The curtains were partly drawn, the divan obscured by a corner of the fireplace. Thank God she had locked the door when she had entered. But what if a servant had overheard what was happening? He thought they had been quiet, but it had been minutes since he’d been able to hear anything over the pounding of his own heart and the music of her ragged breathing.
Apparently, she’d come to her senses as well for she’d pulled away from him to sit up, pushing her skirts down and her bodice up and trying to return to decency. ‘You’ve made your point,’ she said, focusing on the arrangement of her clothing, unwilling to meet his eyes. ‘I agree. It will be unwise of me to stay in your house, once you have married my sister.’
‘If I marry her,’ he corrected. Surely after what had just happened, she did not think he would carry through on the farce that they were playing.
‘Once you marry her,’ Amy said, still not looking up. ‘What just happened between us does not change a thing.’