Page 74 of Better Love Next Time
Julian loomed tall in front of her, shades of grey and frustration. “What are you doing?” he whispered.
“Formulating my questions.”
“With a book?”
“Have you ever been to a brothel?”
He sucked in his breath. “What? No. Never.” He paced a circle, folded his arms, and glared at her. “Yes, I have.”
“Did you enjoy it? And the women, did they?”
“What sort of question?—”
“One I am asking.”
He dropped beside her, his knees high. Bent over, he raked his hair with both hands. “Yes. To both.”
“Would I enjoy it?”
“Oh Christ.” He groaned. “I don’t know.”
“Am I different then? Than the women in the brothel?”
“Maybe. No. You are not, except for your start in life.”
“Do you think it a sin?” she asked. “Are you to burn in hellfire everlasting for your lustful acts? Would I?”
“Yes.” He slewed left toward her, his arm braced against the bed. “No. But that is my opinion. And there are men far more qualified than I to guide you in the correct path to the hereafter. Heed them, not me.”
Kitty pondered his advice. Tentatively, she stretched out her hand and caressed the hard flesh of his thigh. He clamped his hand over hers to cease her exploration. But he did not remove it. His muscles spasmed beneath her palm. Tingling sensation raced from beneath his strong, callused hand. Up her arms, to her mouth, down her belly, to the secret place between her thighs she was supposed to guard for the sake of her very soul.
“What do you know of the melting flow?” she asked. “The critical ecstasy of which Fanny writes?”
“Fanny?” he whispered harshly. “Fanny Hill?” He reached for the book. She swung it away, but he caught her wrist. In silence, they wrestled. Or she did, falling to her back and pushing him off with a foot to his abdomen. He swiped her leg aside and came over her, twisting the book from her grasp with his other hand and tossing it to the floor.
Their struggle left them breathless, their bodies pressed together on the bed.
“Men give women this ecstasy,” she whispered at his mouth. “But Fanny did alone, with her own hand. I—I was too afraid to try. Will my heart seize? It sounds painful, and yet you say we enjoy it.”
His dark gaze riveted upon her in the moonlight. “You will enjoy it.”
He rolled to the edge of the bed and yanked off his boots. Next his coat, waistcoat, and breeches like a man on fire. She was not the marvel. He was. The vision of him made her body restless. If he had grown to be a man, then she had surely become a woman.
He hesitated at his smallclothes. Her heart kicked in her breast meeting his hooded, black eyes. He stood, his thumb ready to flick loose the top button.
Terror and awkward anticipation seized her. She averted her gaze and removed her dressing gown. From the corner of her eye, she saw Julian work the buttons as she slipped beneath the bedcovers. She stared at the ceiling where the rain on the windows created chaotic shadows. The wind and steady shower covered the sound of her breathing and the creak of the bed ropes as Julian slid beside her.
His leg, warm and roughened with hair, grazed her foot.
“Kitty, may I remove your nightshift?”
She flamed to the roots of her hair. “I—I will do it.”
Undressing in a novel read as much more graceful than her scooting and fumbling. She drew the nightshift from her head, and her hair twisted in the flannel. Julian untangled the unruly mass, and when she remained sitting and shivering, he eased her to her back.
Braced on his side, he traced her profile, the notch above her lips, the curved seam between them. “You are everything rightand good in my life.” He nudged the tip of her nose. “And what is wrong is my doing.”
"Ditto.” She pressed the same spot on his nose.
