Bound by Your Touch (27 page)

Impatient suddenly, she unfastened the buttons on his waistcoat. The musculature of his torso, the patterns of his rib cage, entranced her fingertips. She wanted to unriddle him like a hieroglyph. Once she knew him, she would not find the looks he gave her so interesting; he would no longer keep her awake at night. This, all of it, was only for her. His body pushed against hers and she realized anew how much bigger he was. And how young. In the daylight hours, his sardonic manner disguised the smoothness of his skin, the plushness of his lips. He was not much older than she. Her fingers wound around to the small of his back, and he arched under the pressure like a cat. Muscles flexed beneath her palms as he moved, and she felt another part of him come against her.
Penis
was the name. Sophie had described this act once. There was pain for her ahead.

Doubt intruded, a cold wisp twining through the heat. She wasn't meant to do this. It would ruin her. But for what and for whom?
She
would not count herself ruined.

"You are thinking," he murmured against her lips. "Please stop."

Her laughter was soft and brief. "I always think. There's no way to stop it."

"Throwing down the gaundet? All right." He undid the buttons at her throat. Her own hand coasted down to the spot where his back yielded to the swell of his buttocks. This caused a breath to burst from him, intruding between their lips. His laughter, nearly inaudible, stirred goose bumps on her arms. "A woman of good sense," he whispered. "Reach lower, and so will I."

A woman of good sense.
The chill grew stronger, separating her from the scene. Objectively, it was odd: here in a shed with Sanburne, her sisters not three hundred feet away, the rain drumming down, a skiff to her right, draped in a white canvas sheet. That sheet was so blindingly bright that it glowed even in the darkness. Some servant, a woman no doubt, labored hard to keep it clean; in her sleep, her arm must ache from scrubbing it. No one would thank her. The perimeters of Sanburne's world, of Sophie's world, were full of such people—invisible, unmissed if they vanished. The only women less visible than spinsters were maids.

His lips pulled away. "Lydia."

"What?" The word sounded strangely defiant.

"Look at me."

She did not want to. "Just go on."

"Look at me," he repeated quietly.

The darkness cast him in grayscale, drawing gun-metal shadows beneath his angular cheekbones, glossing his lips, damp from kisses, with silver. His eyes fixed firmly on her, a resolute pewter, the shade of dim moonlight on dark water. He reminded her of a photograph, a postcard. "The handsome bachelor at play," she muttered.

Her resentment was not well hidden; she felt him stiffen. "I left my role outside," he said.

She did not know if that made it better, or worse. "Then why are you doing this?"

His hand cupped her cheek, his thumb stroking over her mouth. "Because you're with me. Because you're lovely."

"Lovely."

"That's what I said."

Her doubt infuriated her. She had wanted to abandon it tonight. "I'm not some fragile flower," she whispered. "Name another reason. One I can believe."

"True enough," he said readily. "You aren't fragile. That's another reason, a very good one. Or do you think me the sort of man who would find a woman's frailty attractive?"

No. She knew he wasn't. The conviction reverberated through her, loosening all her ingrained objections. His waistcoat was flapping open—a missed opportunity, really, begging for redress. She brushed it off his shoulders, and he straightened his arms, so it dropped to the floor. "All right," she said, "together then," and after a moment in which they stared at each other, he nodded once and she drew a deep breath and he sank to his knees, where he undid the rest of the buttons on her bodice.

His mouth brushed the top of her breast, and then he lifted it out, closing his lips over her nipple. Here was a new meaning for
delicious.
The sensation, the small noise he made, the strokes of his tongue, sent heat flushing through her. A whimsical notion strayed through her mind, that perhaps the truly fine delicacies, the chocolates and truffles, enjoyed being devoured. His hands under her skirts stroked up her calves as he sucked her, first one breast and then the other. His hair felt soft and damp beneath her fingers, and she squeezed it as his mouth grew demanding, stroked it when his lips did the same.

The sodden weight of her skirts grew lighter. Her belly contracted beneath the movements of his hand: he was untying her drawers. The rain-soaked material fell to her ankles with a thump. He scooped up her chemise, and her thighs contracted beneath his lips. Fingers brushed up the backs of her knees, tracing slow circles, spirals that climbed as his kisses did. And then—and
then
—

She looked down. The shed might have fallen but she would not have made a sound. Her astonishment was so complete that physical sensation faded; nothing registered but the sight of his head between her thighs. She articulated to herself, in a coherent grammar of nouns and verbs, what he was doing. He was licking her. He was using his tongue to open and stroke her. Still she could not comprehend it. His hand was outstretched to hold her skirts away, to pin them against the wall; his forearm corded with the effort of maintaining this awkward angle. He gave her the view deliberately. He wanted her to look.

That realization re-embodied her. Back in her flesh, her awareness ran south like a broken yolk, to where his tongue flicked and teased. A whimper came out of her. This was awful. It was ecstasy. It was making her come out of her skin. There were no words for the feelings rising within her, except a sudden, overpowering need to have him back up against her, pressed to her as he had been, but harder, more deeply—

"Please." She pushed at his shoulders, urging him down to the bare floor, and then sinking onto her knees beside him. She was going to do this. He started to speak, and she clapped her palm to his lips. He licked it, and she pushed harder. "Please," she said again, and then she realized her mistake: if this was for the both of them, she had no need to ask.

Releasing his mouth, she put trembling hands to the hem of his shirt. He lifted his arms to help her slide it off, and this triggered a queer elation. She could do as she liked, and he would submit to her. She tossed the shirt away and stared at him. She had never looked at any person so boldly before. She studied him as closely and unabashedly as if he were an artifact, and he held still for the inspection, save of course for the rapid rise and fall of his chest. His belly was flat and sectioned with muscles; they contracted beneath her touch, foreign, enticing. Not a dockworker, as she had once thought, but a boxer. He used this body to fight. And he gave it to her now for a sweeter use, if not for a more peaceful one.

She leaned forward and pressed a kiss against his bare shoulder, so so large and solid beneath her mouth. He lay back, and she followed him down, the loosened locks of her hair dropping around her, framing the expanse of his lean torso. His nipple hardened beneath the brush of her thumb. She curled her toes so her slippers fell away, and then stroked her bare foot down the wet, hard length of his clothed calf. Even there he was muscled. She straightened her legs over his, wrapping her feet behind his ankles and curling her arms around his back, wanting to sink into him, like rain into earth.

He turned beneath her, laid her against the ground, and rose over her. Her hands ran down the length of his back, and around to the fly of his trousers. This was what she wanted now. She fumbled with the fastening, and his hands guided her, until her fingers molded to his length—hard, hot, and unexpectedly smooth. The strength of her hunger shocked her. She trembled in it, suspended on a fine, agonizing edge that was not merely physical desire, but something else, something purely jubilant. It fed on the remnants of her fear; it turned the risk into an aphrodisiac.
This is the woman I will be.
There was nothing of dignity in this moment, in her wet skirts bunched at her waist, holding their bellies apart. From the small details to the largest facts, her actions now were utterly foreign to the expectations others had for her. She might have been a country maid, a scarlet woman—anyone but Lydia Boyce. Except that she
was
Lydia Boyce. And she would do this, gladly, with a willing and joyful heart.

She kissed him with new ferocity. His penis nudged against her, a blunt, unyielding pressure. The aggression of the act stole her breath; she felt herself grow more pliant as everything in her loosened to the force of him. She had wanted wings, and now she was drifting, held together only by the pulsing perimeters of her skin. Even the floor that dug into her shoulder blades seemed welcome to her, a hard, pleasurable contrast to her laxity, to the melting in her limbs; it mistranslated in her mind as yet another dimension of his touch.

Not pain so much as burning, then—slowly being opened to a sensation she could not have imagined. And then he made a sharp, forceful push, and pain did bolt through her. She whimpered and he froze. She was full in a way she had never been, abruptly conscious of spaces within her that had not been accessible to her awareness before. Some word, he whispered then—she could not make sense of it—but she nodded, and this was all he required. His hips drew away, then pressed back. He was moving inside her. Her fists knotted in his hair, on his shoulders, at the small of his back—to take him in, with her mouth, with her body; the idea made her aches dull, made hunger untwist inside of her. She lifted herself to him, and felt the beginnings of it again, everything coming unknotted, untangled. She urged him on; he remained with her, focused, his lips now on her shoulder, now on her jaw; a courtship above, a steady invasion below—she could make any noise, do anything she liked, he would never go—

He pulled back so his hand could slide between them, reaching down to touch her—only two quick, firm strokes. But it was enough. The muscles within her clenched and seized. With a groan, he slid his fingers back into her hair and thrust against her rapidly—once, twice, again—and then stilled. His head fell onto her shoulder. She lay there, hot, trembling, gasping from the weird wonder of it.

After a few moments, he rolled away, pulling her with him, so they lay side by side, with her face tucked into the crook of his shoulder. His pulse still drummed a rapid beat, and a fine tension ran through his arms, lending stiffness to the fingers that cupped her back and hip. She felt an urge to say something. But if there were words that suited such a moment, she did not know them.

As the physical sensations ebbed, the enormity of her actions seemed to grow. She remembered the couple in the library. Watching them, she had thought of Sanburne, and deplored herself for it. But now he was stroking her back, it seemed to her that his touch was not without emotion. And certainly, as she gently teased his hair, her touch was not without care.

God above, had she been arrogant to think she could do this without regret? She lay curled against him like a child, no desire to move, to so much as blink. She had not lain so closely with another person since she was nine or ten—yes, that summer when she'd been taken with a bad fever, and hallucinations, ghouls, had danced before her eyes. Crying with fear, she'd only calmed once Mama had come to her bed. How cool Mama's throat had been. Only with her face pressed against it had Lydia felt safe enough to sleep. Safe: that was how she felt now, his warmth all around her, his arms tightening at her every inadvertent twitch. But this was not safety. He offered her nothing of the sort. And she had not done this in order to
have
anything from him. Had she?

Uneasy with herself, she began to sit up. "Wait," he murmured, his hand pressing into the small of her back. "A minute longer. Whatever's going through your mind—whatever you're telling yourself—just ignore it for now."

"This was reckless."

"Extremely. The best decisions generally are."

Her eyes fastened on the window. Rain no longer tapped at the pane, and the clouds looked to be clearing. "It's very unlikely this will result in a child, though. I know biology, and my .. .courses."

"Is that what concerns you?" He paused, and his next words emerged in an awkward rhythm, as if he no longer knew properly how to speak to her. "I told you I was no libertine. I would not abandon you."

From a man so immune to natural sentiment, the reassurance seemed out of character. But she kept forgetting that there was another side to him. To balance his horrid attitude toward Moreland, there was his love for Lady Boland. The two aspects meshed poorly in her mind. She felt oddly off balance, although she had not moved an inch. How could he not understand her unflinching devotion to Papa? It was so similar to his own feelings for his sister. Why, to have that sort of devotion from one's lover . . . the idea made her breath come short again.

The next second, she was angry with herself. He said he gave his loyalty to those who earned it. Was she seriously entertaining the hope that she'd earned it by lying on her back? How incredibly lowering.

She rolled away from him. Her fingers felt stiff and bloated, clumsy on the buttons of her bodice. When he sat up and reached to help, she twisted away. "I can do it."

"Let me," he said.

"No."

He knocked her hands away, and she smacked his in return. He caught her wrists and caged them at her side, as if she were nothing, as if she were the weakling he'd claimed she wasn't. She sat back on her knees and gave a hard jerk, but his grip did not break. It aggravated her. With a grunt, she tried again—managing to pull him off the ground onto his knees, but not to yank free. She gave it another go, and then another—her irritation turning quickly to anger. But his grip did not waver as she thrashed. His fingers remained hot and firm around her bones, his eyes fixed on her face. The steady quality of his regard began to bother her. He looked so calm and composed, whereas this fury—whence its source? It made her eyes sting. It felt all out of proportion to the moment; it felt as though he had betrayed her, when of course he had not.