How to Be a Proper Lady: A Falcon Club Novel (20 page)

Then Viola began trembling again, but softly, a waiting anticipation of pure, delirious desire. Barely touching her, he drew one sleeve from her wrist, then the other. The heat of his body caressed her skin but her nipples were firm, as though she were quite cold. His attention moved to the cord at her waist. With careful movements he untied the bow and loosened the gathered fabric. He bent his head and seemed to inhale deeply, his chest rising, then slowly falling. Her eyelids fluttered. She wanted him to touch her so much. Her nipples inches from his shirtfront felt tight and tingling.

Finally, gently, he urged the shift over her hips. It crumpled on the floor. She wore nothing else; she’d been ready for bed.

She reached for his waist to tug his shirt free and he pulled it over his head. Viola got dizzy. Quite dizzy and quite weak in the knees again. She’d barely seen him the night before in the darkness. Now the golden light on his skin and glimmering across his wide shoulders washed her with need. She reached for the bulge of his arousal beneath his trousers. He grasped her hand.

“No.”

“No, again?”

“Not yet.” He spoke quietly. “Slow down.”

But she wanted to touch him. She ached for it. “What happened to ‘on my terms’?”

“That was last night. Tonight you have come to me. You have put yourself in my hands voluntarily. Tonight is on my terms.” He stroked the backs of his fingers across her cheek, then the spot beneath her mouth where she was marked. “Do you know how beautiful you are? With all your clothing on.” His voice seemed to smile. Then it dipped low again. “You needn’t remove it to entice.”

“Men look at me with lust in their eyes.” And they believed themselves in love, because they did not know any better than to confuse one with the other. She was counting on that now. She tilted her face into his touch, her eyes drifting closed. “But men are in general lustful creatures.”

“Indeed they are.” His fingers trailed along her throat, down her neck, sending shivering tangles inside her.

She whispered, “The way you look at me is different.”

“Is it?” His knuckles skimmed the curve of her breast.

“
Ye-es
.”

He bent his head and with his fingertips stroked her breast slowly from the swell and around the peak, then his palm encircled her. But still he did not touch the hungry crest. “How do I look at you?”

“I don’t know.” Her breaths stuttered. “I don’t—” She arched into his touch. “Oh, Jin, I—” He passed the pad of his thumb across the peak, only once. “
Ohh
.” Her whole body shuddered. She grabbed his arms to stay upright. “Do that again.”

“If I do,” he said, soft amusement in his voice, “do you think you can remain standing?”

“If you do,” she replied, “I will try.”

He did so again, and again, the rasp of male callus against female tenderness sublime perfection, so simple, sending pleasure through her whole body. With such a slight caress he made her into liquid longing for him.

“I don’t know that I can continue standing after all,” she said on a rush.

He lifted her like a child and took her to the bed. No teasing, no laughter, no shame that she could not manage the journey of five feet’s distance by herself. Nothing to prove. He removed his boots and as he did so his gaze traveled over her body, his breaths obviously fast. She reached for him, and he for her, and their mouths came together.

It was as before, the closeness and completeness, like their first kiss, beautifully familiar in its newness. His hands scooped around her head, holding her to him, and she gripped his shoulders and opened and allowed him entrance. He did not tease her, but gave, the pleasure of his tongue meeting hers, his teeth coaxing on her lips. His fingers curved around her jaw, touching her face, exploring as though he would feel their kiss in this manner too. The heat of his palm slipped to her throat, then her shoulder, and he followed with his mouth. She clutched his arms and with each caress she trembled and wanted more urgently for him to press her back onto the mattress and come inside her. She inched her knees apart, hoping she would not be required to tell him she could not wait, to beg. Then his tongue stole around her nipple, and quite swiftly begging seemed like a perfectly reasonable option.

She moaned, his tongue stroked, and she surrendered all hesitation, all concern for what she should or should not do. She slid her fingers into his hair and nothing mattered but this. Nothing but his perfect mouth seducing her, the hot, singing readiness of her body, and a desire beyond anything she had ever felt to make love to a man.

She slipped her fingers over the hard ridge beneath his trousers. He grabbed her hand and pulled it to his lips. His eyes were aflame.

“Don’t,” he said harshly against her palm.

“Don’t? But—”

He captured her mouth with his and she feasted on him, the taste of him and heat and his hard body beneath her hands. He grasped her shoulders and lifted her onto her knees and kissed her again, and again. His hands swept down her arms to her waist, encompassing and spreading heat. Then he touched her. He touched her and her world ended and began at once.

He had not touched her there the night before. Their coming together so swift both times, like summer storms breaking, had not truly allowed for it. Now to have him touch her so intimately, she was changed.

She had never thought much about the womanly parts of her body. They were to be used as any other parts for their proper purpose—for pleasure with a man, certainly. But she had never known what it felt like to be worshipped.

Gently at first he caressed her, and she trembled, and their mouths stilled upon each other’s. His breaths came unevenly like hers. Her face tilted upward, eyes closing, and he stroked deeper. She whimpered from the pleasure that made her need more with each stroke, from the certainty of his touch. In that touch he must know he could control her, command her in this manner, know that at this moment she would do anything he asked. She pressed into him, lost to his caress, and did not care that she had lost.

“Viola, open your eyes.” He spoke at her brow, his deep voice taut. “Look at me.”

Her eyelids fluttered, heavy like the aching pleasure mingled with desperation in her body. “Yes,” she sighed, working her hips against his hand. She whimpered, with each caress needing him inside her, seeking for him. “Why?”

He impaled her upon his fingers.

“
Oh!
God.”

He thrust again, a hard, sublime possession. “I want you to see that it is I giving you pleasure.”

She moaned and rode his fingers, pushing him deeper, wanting him deeper, everywhere inside her. She sank her hands into his hair. “Of course it is you.” She kissed him, but the need was too much, too painfully good in its intensity. She jerked her hips to him, his fingers a sweet agony in her. “Jin, take me now. Now. I cannot bear it any longer.”

“You will bear it.”

“
No
.” Would he deny her?

“You will not only bear it,” he said huskily, then finally—
dear God
,
finally
—pressed her back to the mattress. “You will ask for more.” Meeting her desperate thrusts with his hand, he parted her knees and took her with his mouth.

She did not ask for more.

She begged.

She pleaded.

Upon an astounded, needing sob she cried for more. For she had never known this. She had never known any of that which he so beautifully gave her body. Yet each time he brought her to the edge, each time she thought he would give her what she craved, he did deny her. With his tongue hot and soft and devastatingly good he made her wild, with his fingers plunging inside her he made her helpless, until the pleasure was so great and continuous that only one wish tumbled to her lips.

“
Please
.” She gripped the bedclothes. “Let me give to you too.”

That seemed to decide the matter.

She reached for him and he came to her, then inside her in one smooth thrust, surrounding her with his body and filling her with his hard heat. She choked back the joy of the pleasure, wrapping her arms about his shoulders. They were joined, finally, fully, and completely motionless save their breaths pressing her breasts against his chest.

He threaded his fingers through her hair, kissed her brow, her cheek, her throat. His hand trailed along her waist, circled a taut nipple, making her gasp and murmur his name and shift against him to feel him more, to revel in his presence in her.

Then, slowly, he moved in her, and he took what gift of pleasure she was able to give him, which as it happened was a great deal of pleasure. For, perhaps predictably (if either of them had paused to waste time predicting), their lovemaking did not remain languorous more than a moment. She drew him in, he sank into her, and they proceeded to prove quite definitively that it did not require a burning cane field, a frantic horseback ride, cannon fire, or even a staircase to inspire them to mate with the urgency of animals and the ecstasy of gods. The bed creaked furiously, she made sounds she had never before heard, he caused her previous gyrations beneath him to seem tame, and when it was over she felt fantastically sated and thoroughly battered. Additionally, four neat pink stripes were rising in welts across each of his shoulders.

“I have wounded you,” she gasped, struggling to fill her lungs.

“You have. Witch.” He seemed to be unsatisfied with the quantity of kissing that had already gone on, and now leaned down to press his mouth to hers again. But the caress of his perfect lips was nearly too much, the sweetly dissipating pleasure within her tender and unstable. Perhaps his excessive sensual teasing had overstimulated her exhausted flesh. But now with the leisure to feel his entire body against hers, again she trembled. Quite fearsomely.

“Your hand is bleeding again.” She stroked her fingers along his arm sleek with muscle. “You will wear a hook after all.”

“It will have been worth it.” He pulled off her and fell onto his back, taking her hand in his. Then for a moment he went very still. He released her hand, leaned over her, and drew a coverlet over her body. Without a word, he settled onto his back again.

She turned onto her side to face him, and curled her knees and arms tight to her. “I am not actually chilled.”

“You are shaking.”

“I’m exhausted.”

“Then sleep.” Lit only by the fading lamplight, his face and body were beautiful, his dark hair tumbled across his brow, black lashes low over ice eyes that could glisten with heat. A spot of crimson spread from the center of the single scrap of cloth on his body.

“I would like to tend to your wounds first.”

“They will keep until later.” His voice sounded quiet and deep, as though he were already descending into slumber.

“Don’t you want me to leave now?”

He did not look at her or even open his eyes. “No.”

She sat up, the covers falling to her lap. “I must dress that wound again.”

With an indolent, thoroughly uncharacteristic motion, he swept his forearm in an arc and laid his bandaged hand beside her, palm up.

“As you wish, harpy.”

Tingling warmth scurried around her belly. He seemed . . .
happy
. Simply happy.

Carnal pleasures made men happy. Viola knew this as any woman would who had lived among men her entire adult life. Men were simple creatures, most of them, and when they were satisfied carnally—be it on food or a woman’s body—they were content. Still, as little as she understood Jinan Seton, she knew he was not a simple man. Happiness did not, she thought, come easily to him.

She slid off the bed and went to his luggage, where she found what she expected, fresh bandages and salve. Although earlier when she needed an excuse to touch him she’d taunted him about tending his wound, she knew no shipmaster would actually be that negligent. Certainly not this man. She returned to the bed and unwrapped his hand.

He seemed to sleep through her ministrations, although the wound must pain him; it was deep across, though a clean slice. It would heal well. She rebound it, then laid his hand on the counterpane. Next she dipped all four fingertips into the tiny pot of salve, leaned to his shoulder, and painted a path along the tracks she’d dug with her nails. His skin was taut and damp over firm muscle, and she wanted to linger and breathe in his scent, to continue touching him. Instead she repeated the salve on his other shoulder, then drew away.

The caress of linen bandage and warm skin on her naked behind arrested her.

She swallowed through her constricted throat. “You mustn’t use that hand now.”

“Kiss me.”

“I don’t take or—”

“Kiss me, I pray you, Miss Carlyle?”

She bent and did as requested as his fingers skirted the crease between her legs, then smoothed along her thigh to trail away. When she pulled back, his eyes were still closed, his mouth ever so slightly curved upward.

“Thank you,” he murmured.

“For the nursing or the kiss?”

He smiled fully.

She pulled the coverlet over them, closed her eyes, and allowed the stars to lull her to sleep.