Page 46 of The Smuggler & the Society Bride

One hand still holding his wrist captive, as she spoke she slid her other hand up his coat, from his chest to his cravat, then traced a single fingertip along the bare skin of his neck to his chin.

In a flush of joy and triumph, she felt the pulse leap at his throat beneath her questing finger.

He brought one hand up, as if to pull hers away, and instead clasped it over hers, holding her finger against his skin.

‘This is madness,’ he whispered hoarsely. ‘I mean to restore your reputation, not destroy it.’

‘It can’t be restored—regardless of what you discover. But having no reputation can be liberating. It means I have nothing to lose, nothing to prevent experiencing what I most desire. I think—I hope—you want it, too. Don’t you…Gabe?’ she whispered.

He swallowed hard, still resisting, though the molten blaze of his blue eyes and the frantic pulse at his throat testified how difficult he was finding it. ‘I don’t want to steal your innocence.’

She almost laughed at the irony: she had nearly been raped in a countess’s garden by a nobleman the Ton called a gentleman, while this free-trader, whose company the men in that ballroom would probably have disdained, was too honourable to accept what she offered, what he clearly wanted.

Perhaps one more little lie would be justified to free them both. Tracing his face with her fingers from his temples down to his jaw, she said, ‘I have no innocence left to lose.’

‘I thought…your brother had arrived in time.’

‘The damage was already done.’ Which was true, although not in the way she was inferring.

But she’d been right; just the suggestion that her virginity was already forfeit made desire flame hotter in his eyes. ‘You are sure?’

In answer, she leaned up and captured his lips.

Chapter Twenty-One

With every bit of nobility he could summon, Gabe tried to resist her, while her hands caressing his face steadily sucked away his will, swamping him in desire like the surf undercutting the sand beneath one’s feet on the beach.

His heart was already thundering against his ribs, his pulse roaring in his ears. His skin felt so hot, he wondered that his shirt didn’t smoulder, while need built and built, bubbling up until it threatened to overflow, like a cauldron of caulking pitch left over too hot a fire.

He felt her hands against his face, scorching as a brand, and knew he must back away before the remains of his control snapped like a bowsprit in a high wind. She was the storm, a gale blowing away all sense, all reason, sweeping him into a whirlwind of passion that would carry away every lifeline that tied him to his careful, solitary existence. Until, in the blinding force of that gale, he could see and feel and sense only her, only him, only now.

And then her lips touched his and he knew he was lost, no more able to resist her than his ship could defy the power of the sea.

She teased his mouth as he had teased hers. Brushing, nuzzling, nipping at it, until she electrified him by trailing the moist wet blade of her tongue along the outline of his lips. When he gasped at the rush of sensation, she slid her tongue past his parted lips, into the willing warmth of his mouth.

And then he was kissing her just as hungrily, revelling in the taste of her, renewed shocks of sensation jolting through him as she captured his tongue and sucked it lustily and everything within him melted and crackled and burned.

Dizziness swept through him and he took a faltering step backward, nearly falling. Laughing softly, she broke the kiss.

‘Shall we go somewhere safer?’ she asked. ‘I don’t want to fall into the surf and drown.’

Her willing slave now, he would have agreed if she’d wanted to strip him naked on the sand. Instead, she led him back to where the crags overhung the beach, the continual dampness softening the stones here with a carpeting of moss and lichen. Tossing down her cloak, she pulled him down beside her, her mouth already on his again as she urged him to sit, his back against the sloping, vegetation-covered rock.

Her touch now was deft, unhurried, and he gave himself up to it utterly, giddy senses swimming as with lips and tongue she made love to his mouth in every variation possible, nipping, licking, sucking, penetrating deeply, then withdrawing to lick teasingly with the lightest of touches around the very edges of his mouth. It didn’t seem possible he could be pushed to the very brink of climax merely by a kiss, yet he had to fight to keep from going over the edge, though she touched him only with her mouth.

His erection straining almost painfully against his breeches flap, he could have gone on letting her simply kiss him forever… But then he felt her hands at his chest, pulling loose the knot of his cravat and thrusting the cloth aside, plucking open the buttons of his waistcoat. Plunging her tongue deeply again in his mouth, she tugged the tails of his shirt out and worked her fingers under the fine linen, rubbing and stroking along his belly and ribs until her questing fingertips reached his nipples. There she raked her fingernails across the sensitive tips in rhythm to the thrusts of her tongue.

Just when he thought he could stand no more without exploding, she swept her fingers downward. Withdrawing her tongue, she gave him the lightest of tiny butterfly kisses along the outline of his lips, over his chin, his eyelids, while very, very slowly she edged her clever fingers down the taut skin of his belly, then lower still, beneath the waistband of his breeches where his erection throbbed, thick and heavy.

He was barely able to breathe now, every muscle tensed, but instead of taking him in her hand, stroking him as he quivered in expectation, her fingers sought instead the smooth curve of his hipbone, the hollow where leg met trunk, excruciatingly close, yet not touching, the plump rounds and rock-hard shaft.

Then, still giving him feather-light kisses, she removed her hand entirely. While he moaned an incoherent plea, she began plucking open the buttons of his trouser flap, until in a turgid rush, his shaft sprang free.

A shiver of sea air blew across the exquisitely sensitive tip, dewed now with the desire he was the thinnest of threads from losing all control over. And when at last, at last, she took him in both hands and stroked from the base down to rub her thumbs over the moist aching tip, he exploded in a mind-melting burst of sensation that sent ecstasy rushing to every clenched muscle in his body.

He hadn’t recovered wit enough to feel shamed that she’d brought him to the peak alone, when, dazed, dazzled, he realized she had laid her head against his sweat-soaked shirt, her cheek over the wild beating of his heart. A purity of joy he could never imagined suffusing him, he wrapped his arms around her and cradled her to his chest.

They sat together for some time, the wind whispering a blessing and the surf humming a little song of gladness, before he finally felt he could trust his brain enough to summon words. But when he opened his lips to speak, knowing he couldn’t begin to express the peace, joy, wonder of being here with her, she pressed a finger against his lips.

‘No talk now. Only loving.’ And kissing him again, she reached down to cradle his flaccid member in her hands.

Good lad that it was, it began instantly to rise back to full attention. This time, she let him use his lips to make a leisurely exploration of her cheeks and brows, nose and ears, shuddering as he licked inside the delicate shells and nibbled on her earlobes. While he ministered to her, she rapidly rekindled desire from a slow simmer to a boil, gripping him lightly with both hands and sliding them from the hilt to the tip; tracing that same journey with a barely perceptible touch of one fingertip. Caressing just the taut skin of the head.

This time, however, he didn’t intend for her to be a mere spectator. While he kissed her and she stroked him, he slipped a hand under her skirts and gradually worked up her legs, over the silky smoothness beneath the anklebone, around the lush fullness of calf to the tender skin behind her knee, then to the velvet of her inner thighs.

He delighted as her breathing went to little panting gasps that grew sharper as his fingers played across her thighs, creeping ever closer to the centre of her desires. She squirmed on the cloak, parting her legs wider for him, but he refused to be hurried, tasting the salty tang as the skin of her neck dampened and she moved urgently against his fingers.

She cried out when at last he parted her moist folds and delved within, running a finger tip over the plump ridge in a series of light strokes that pulled moans from deep in her throat.

But though he knew he’d not last much longer, before he readied her, his shaft swelling at the thought of the hot wet channel it would soon chart, he simply had to taste her. He tugged up her skirts to give him access, glorying in the sight of her pale naked limbs gleaming in the sunlight.

She played the wanton for him, letting her legs fall apart, gifting him with a full view of her soft, blonde-tufted mound and the pleasure-swollen lips beneath. Urging her sideways so as not to lose the feel of her fingers against him, he leaned down to ply her sweet depths with his tongue, echoing the pattern he’d created with his stroking fingers. She strained against him, uttering incoherent breathy sounds of pleasure.

Finally she pushed him away, urged him back to a sitting position. After bending to take him briefly in her mouth—all soft pressure and exquisite heat—she rose on her knees to straddle him.

While her mouth sought his again in greedy abandon, she lowered herself on his waiting shaft. After a brief, initial check, her hands clutching his shoulders, she moved lower, slowly, slowly taking him deeper while he vibrated with tension and delight. Finally she began to move against him, rocking him deep, setting off with each stroke little explosions of delight, each a precursor of the culmination to come. Until finally, clenching his shoulders again, she cried out and tensed around him, while he exploded in another brain-melting scorch of heat that sucked from him breath, thought, wits.

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