Page 112 of Better Love Next Time
His warm mouth covered hers, parting her lips, his tongue gently searching. She rose up on her tiptoes, looping her arms about his neck. His fingers deftly plucked at the lacing running down her bodice. He pushed the wool from her shoulders, the gown tumbling to her hips. He worked the ties on her petticoat, her skirts falling at her feet, and started on her stays.
Her body tremored with longing and the pain of anticipation. She wanted him to slow down. She wanted to savor every moment. She wanted him to show her what he wanted, how to give him adult pleasure because she was awkward, a girl again. Like her first time.
She kicked off her shoes, the floor cold against her stockinged feet, and he carried her to the bed, yanking the counterpane to the foot. They fell into the sumptuous feather bed with white linens surrounding them. His hand, rough from his work, slid up her leg, lifting her shift, drawing it over her head.
His hot gaze traveled the length of her. He spanned her belly with his hand. Her fingers skidded up his chest as she stole a kiss from his lips. “Julian, please show me. Show me how I should be. I want to please you.”
“Shhh.”
“But I?—”
“You please me.” His hand sank into her hair at her temple, gazing into her eyes. “I was a fool to say those things to you. You are everything I have ever wanted.” He guided her hand downto feel him, proving his words. Trembling, her palm cupped his width. “Do what you feel, Kitty.”
He captured her lips in an open-mouthed kiss. Their tongues tasted. She responded with a shudder, at his hard form planked against her, their bodies in union, living old memories, creating new. She kissed him deeper, pushing the robe from his shoulders. He kissed her jaw, her neck, and shoulders.
He cupped her breasts. Her nipples peaked against his palms and beneath his thumbs, and when he lowered his mouth, she arched at the heat and restless fire. Kisses. More kisses down her belly. At her thighs, her knees, and ankles. And higher. Higher. Until he found the heart of her. She raked her fingers in his hair and pressed her body to his mouth.
She couldn’t stop saying his name. She raised her hips, pinned him between her thighs, savoring every uncontrollable wave, every bursting sensation. He crawled up her body as she shuddered in latent ecstasy. She remembered this. She remembered the girl who dared.
She pushed at his shoulder. He fell to his back, his eyes black with desire. She came over him, her hair loose and draping his chest. He cupped her face, his kiss urgent, his tongue with the taste of her. She took him inside her, and she remembered the completeness. The possession. The scent of his skin. The sound of his breath beating against her cheek.
He buried his mouth at her breasts as she moved over him to the pace of his hands on her hips. He groaned, a bead of sweat trickling down his hard cheek. He watched her. She met his gaze, and if it wasn’t love, it was them. She slid up and sank back. He quickened the tempo, their breath and body keeping time. She caught his mouth, the rough taste of love on her tongue, surging through her. Her eyes opened wide and fluttered shut.
Julian watched her shudder and come, her hair falling around her in wanton glory, her little cries timed with hisupward thrusts. He followed, shocked by the pleasure, the hammering of his heart, and the sense of returning to himself.
She fell over him, her forehead pressed at his shoulder and air whooshing into her lungs. His arms circled her waist as he closed his eyes in the afternoon light. Why had he lied to himself that Kitty was not what he wanted, that he wanted a woman who didn’t believe in love?
She was a drug to him. Loving or hating her, she always had been. Those years without her, when he had longed for her, he had never cried. He had been too empty to shed tears. Like an equation, he had tried to solve her. What made her special to him? He had given up and had sought those females who were decidedly not like Kitty. Shallow, voracious, marginally cruel.
He smoothed down her narrow waist and up the curve of her hip. She felt exactly as he remembered. Small, yet mighty. Soft, yet forged of steel. Formed by an upbringing without a mother, with a father who had shown minimal attention to her care and nothing for her happiness.
“Kitty,” he said. “Your father?—”
“Is dead. I know.” She rolled to her back and stared up at the canopy. There was a tremble at her chin. “I couldn’t admit that I knew when you asked. I felt nothing but relief. Do you forgive me?”
He traced her profile. “What is there to forgive?”
“I wonder, does my mother deign to know him in heaven?”
“You assume he’s in heaven. Do you wish to travel to Notfelle for Christmas?”
“I… I don’t know.”
What if it had been a mistake to purchase Notfelle? “You have many good memories there,” he said. “Your mother. Daisy. The Doomed Stairs. The Waiting Tower. And all the nights in the nursery. Think on it.”
She bit her lip. “I will.”
Julian rolled her into his embrace. She sought his mouth, kissing him softly and meeting his tongue. Her palm pressed to his chest, slipping down his abdomen and then lower, finding him ready, like a boy of nineteen. He drove into her slowly, deeply, watching her mouth part in ecstasy. He kissed her, their eyes locked, their noses grazing, surrounded by the intimate sounds of their joining. His gaze drifted over her face with the recurring feeling he had never stopped loving her.
CHAPTER THIRTY
October passed into November,bringing more men to their yard, lured by news that Mr. St. Clair had indeed returned from London and settled in a fine house with a leasehold for two years. If the evening and Sunday premiums weren’t a balm to the many who fretted on the approach of winter, his wife, Madame Féline, a particular friend of Vicar Carleton, had been asked—and accepted—the position of chairwoman for the building of a new school. And a husband surely wouldn’t desert his yard when he attended service every Sunday and when Madame’s companion, a stern, God-loving stickler, had gotten three parishes worth of children to sing in a Christmas pageant.
The arrival of two shiploads of timber from London killed the doubts of all but those with a deep-seated grudge against the Earl of Tindall’s second son. Who wouldn’t be proud to work with a man who didn’t have to dirty his hands?
“And he pays more,” Wyatt Percy reminded them as a serving wench settled their ale to the table at the Lion’s Inn.
“And there’s that Christmas reward,” said Harry Plumley.
