Sex and the Single Earl (21 page)

She threw her arms around his neck and mashed her lips to his mouth. But before he could deepen the kiss, she pulled back and gazed at him with eyes as beautiful as Russian amber.

“I love you, Simon St. James, I love you so much. And I always will.”

He laughed and drew her back into a triumphant embrace. The ground had been rough and the going heavy, but his plans were finally coming to fruition. No more obstacles stood in his way.

Sophie would be irrecoverably his, and soon.

Simon might be an idiot, but Sophie knew she was a fool. One who apparently never learned her lesson. He had deliberately used her as a pawn in his business affairs, and still she couldn’t help throwing herself into his arms. Part of her wished she had the fortitude to box his ears and walk right out of his life, but that was beyond her capabilities.

Simon cradled her in his lap, his arms locked in a possessive embrace. His tongue slipped past her lips and surged into the depths of her mouth, eagerly taking what she so cravenly offered. As she sank into the luscious delirium brought forth by his kiss, her embattled wits admitted she no longer had the strength to fight him. She wanted him too much, and when he touched her
that
way, his long fingers trailing up her stomach to her breasts, it felt as if he had set a torch to her body.

When he pulled his mouth from hers, she gasped, struggling to reclaim at least some small measure of sanity. Was this a mistake? Should she allow him to make love to her again? She feared being vulnerable once more—prey to the storm of emotions that held her in a merciless grip. But he had apologized, and most sincerely. Of that she was certain.

More importantly, he had finally admitted he cared for her more than any person in his life. She could have wished for a more passionate declaration, but Sophie understood him well enough to know how difficult it had been for him to reveal even that much.

As if he could sense her momentary withdrawal, Simon seized her attention by sucking on and then nipping her lower lip. She pulled in a breath, shivering at the curious thrill invoked by his aggression.

“Pay attention, my love,” he said as he gently removed her glasses and set them on the worktable. “You’ll wound me if I suspect you’re bored.”

Sophie couldn’t hold back a nervous giggle. “Then I suggest you try harder to keep me from getting bored.”

He swooped down and took her lips in an achingly short kiss that still left her gasping for breath.

“I’ll see what I can do to amuse you.” His voice was heavy with sensual promise.

She sighed as his hands moved to cup her breasts. He tweaked her nipples, caressing the hard tips until it seemed she would go mad with pleasure.

She moaned and arched her back, weak with the delicious sensations that racked her body. He shifted to wrap his arm securely about her, forcing her to lie still against his massive chest. His hot breath fanned her cheek as he continued to stroke her tingling breasts through the thin silk of her gown. Every time he fingered her nipples—gently tugging on them to the edge of pain—insidious warmth flowed through her veins and pooled between her legs.

Though impulse dictated she shut her eyes, concentrating only on the sensations he evoked within her, Sophie forced herself to focus on her lover. Her desire to watch him at play was wicked, but she couldn’t help it. In any event, Simon didn’t seem to find her behaviour scandalous, at least not in this particular instance.

He studied her body, his expression rapt as he untied her tapes and laces with swift, knowing fingers. In less time than it took to think about it, he had pulled her gown and chemise down, exposing her breasts to his gaze. She panted, and the soft globes quivered, the nipples flushing to a dusky rose.

A sharp hiss escaped from between Simon’s clenched teeth. The hard planes of his face and his stern jaw made him look like a conquerer of old, a warrior about to claim a long-sought prize. It was feudal, really, but the idea of her as his prize made her squirm with impatient excitement.

“Sophie.” His voice sounded strangled by a combination of laughter and desire. She couldn’t help but squeak when he moved a warm hand back to possessively claim a breast. “Let’s move into the bedroom, shall we?”

“Why?” She stretched to follow the movement of his clever fingers as they stroked and massaged her sensitized flesh. “It’s so cozy in here, by the fire.”

Besides, she didn’t want him to stop touching her, not even for a second. Nothing had ever felt as delicious as Simon’s calloused hands on the softest parts of her. It was as if she were floating on a cloud of warmth—a warmth that made her weak with desire. The idea of standing on her own two feet seemed impossible.

“You wish me to make love to you in a chair?”

“Why not?” She gave a voluptuous sigh, mesmerized by the kneading motion of his fingers. “You made love to me on a sofa.”

His laugh sounded more like a feral growl. “You’re a damned peculiar girl, Sophia Stanton, and I’m grateful for it.”

She wriggled her bottom on his aggressive erection. “Why, Lord Trask, you do know how to flatter a girl.”

“I’ll show you flattery.”

She shivered at the erotic threat in his voice.

To her surprise he stood, bringing her to her feet with him. She staggered and would have collapsed to the floor if not for his strong grip. Before she could voice her irritation, he stripped the clothes from her body, leaving her stockings, garters, and shoes intact. He pressed her back into the club chair. She jumped at the feel of the soft, cool leather making contact with her naked bottom and thighs.

“Simon! What are you doing?”

He gave a low, wicked laugh. “Flattering you.”

She gasped as he took her nerveless legs and draped them over the broad arms of the chair. Her thighs were spread wide, her most secret parts exposed before him.

“Simon!” Sophie tried to pull her legs down onto the seat, but his unyielding hands held her firmly in place.

“Stay still.” He invested the words with all the authority of a command. She gulped, stunned by the ferocity marking his features.

“Really, this is outrageous,” she protested weakly.

“You’re the one who wanted flattery. Well, I’m going to flatter you in the best way I know how.”

As he had just a short time ago, Simon dropped to his knees in front of her chair. But she hadn’t been naked then, totally exposed to his gaze, vulnerable in a way that was intimate, unnerving, and exciting.

He stroked his hard, masculine hands up the pale flesh of her thighs.

“Look at yourself, Sophie,” he whispered. “Look at how beautiful you are. So sweet, so damned innocent.”

She looked down at her smooth belly. At the nest of downy curls at the juncture of her thighs spread wide. At Simon kneeling between her legs, his brawny body—clad only in black trousers and a white linen shirt—making her seem all the more dainty and feminine in comparison. The startling contrast, the fevered images of what he would do to her, made her damp flesh turn to hot honey in anticipation.

“The only thing that’s outrageous is how much I want to taste you,” he muttered, his voice thick.

“T…taste me?” What did he mean by that?

He slipped his hands under her bottom, titled her pelvis, and bent to push his mouth through the soft curls at the entrance of her body. She jerked as if she had been struck by a bolt of lightning. His only response was to pin her to the chair and deepen his lascivious kiss.

Sophie writhed in his grip as he sucked her most tender flesh. Rapturous sensations rocketed through every limb. As he laved her cleft, performing a wicked dance with his tongue, the sensations coalesced into an aching fullness deep within her womb. It was so much stronger than the night he had first made love to her that she didn’t think she could bear it.

“Simon,” she pleaded, breathless and needy.

He ignored her, using his tongue, his lips, and even his teeth to catapult her onto a plane of delicious agony that threatened to overwhelm the few wits she had left. Just as she was about to beg him to stop—completely undone by the sight of him between her legs, the feel of his voracious mouth on her body—he eased one finger into her sheath and gently sucked her aching bud between his lips.

She cried out as her bottom lifted off the chair. He followed, his hands grasping the softness of her cheeks, his mouth still fastened on her sex. Contractions tightened and then released within her womb, and he seemed to absorb it all as she writhed against him.

Eventually, the spasms subsided into a long shudder, and then into a gentle throb. She came back to herself, to an awareness of her damp flesh on slippery leather, to the cool absence where Simon’s mouth had been. She lifted heavy eyelids to find him sitting back on his heels, hands resting on his muscular thighs. Sophie had no difficulty reading the look of rampant male satisfaction on his handsome features.

She could barely think, but she had to find a way to wipe that detestably smug and knowing expression from his face. As usual, he beat her to it.

“I told you I knew how to flatter a lady.”

Sophie made a grab for her spectacles, wincing as she peeled her damp thighs from the leather cushions of the club chair.

“Allow me.” Simon came to his feet in one fluid movement. He plucked the spectacles from the table, carefully balanced them on her nose, and adjusted the spindly metal frames around her ears.

“Is that better, Puck?”

He grinned, still smug and full of himself, but looking so big and handsome that she had to repress an addle-brained sigh of appreciation.

She forced a glower, working hard to put on a snit. “Oh, do give over, Simon. It wasn’t that good.”

His eyebrows shot up. “That sounds like a challenge to me.”

He swooped down and pulled her off the leather seat, ignoring her yelp of protest.

“That hurt,” she grumbled, rubbing her tingling bottom.

He laughed and swept her into his arms. When she shoved against his chest, he responded by clamping her against a body as unyielding as stone.

“Put me down,” she squealed, kicking a little as she put up a token struggle. Her dancing slippers fell unheeded to the floor as he strode through the open doorway of his bedroom.

“Your fault.” He carried her to a luxuriously appointed bed in the centre of the room. “I never could resist a challenge.”

He tossed her lightly onto the overstuffed mattress. She choked back a nervous giggle as she struggled into a sitting position. She had barely recovered from his first bout of outrageous lovemaking, but the gleam in his eyes suggested the episode in the chair was simply the beginning. As he yanked off his linen shirt, ripping it in his haste, she wondered if she had the fortitude for his sexual attentions—especially on a nightly basis—for the rest of her life.

That thought stole her breath. A quivering weakness crept through her limbs. Simon threw his shirt to the floor and refocused his gaze—dark as pitch and just as hot—back on her. He rested a hand on one of the bedposts and took his time giving her a leisurely but scorching inspection. She could practically feel her flesh sizzling as his eyes moved over her.

Sophie glanced down at herself and realized with an odd little jolt that she still wore her garters and stockings. Those few scraps of silk and blue knotted ribbons accentuated her shocking lack of modesty and her vulnerability under his burning gaze.

Her eyes flew to his, and she blinked. The sophisticated earl, disciplined to a fault, had disappeared, replaced by a man in the grip of a primitive lust. A battle-hardened warrior, an invader. And there was little doubt he was about to claim his prize.

Her body flamed from her scalp to her feet. She ducked her head, hiding her face behind her disheveled hair. It was one thing for Simon to make love to her, even in a chair, but that look made her decidedly nervous. She started to slither backward, intent on climbing under the brocaded satin coverlet as quickly as she could.

His laugh low and wicked, he shot out one hand to grip her ankle.

“Don’t move,” he ordered. She froze, her limbs responding instinctively to his seductive command. He moved round the bed, lighting a branch of candles set on a small side table. A soft light flared.

Her skin tingled as she realized that every part of her was ruthlessly exposed. “Simon, what are you about?”

“I want to see all of you.” He kicked off his shoes and rapidly removed the rest of his clothing, his eyes never leaving her body.

“But you already saw me in the other room.”

He came down heavily onto the bed and pulled her into his arms, wrapping his hard-muscled body around hers.

“I want to watch your face when you take me in—all of me,” he growled.

“Simon!” The room spun for a few seconds as she stared into the ravenous gaze of a stranger. She shivered, her nerves humming with a raw mixture of trepidation and excitement.

His eyes met hers. “Don’t hide from me, Sophie. Ever.”

It was all she could do to nod her head.

He rewarded her with a tender brush of his firm lips against her mouth. The last whispers of her resistance faded, replaced by a ravenous need to appease him—emotionally, sexually, in every way she could. All that mattered was pleasing him and, in doing so, pleasing herself.

“Good girl.” A ghost of a smile touched his mouth, but then he was moving over her, blanketing her body with his primal heat.

She reached to pull him down into a kiss, but he slid away. His lips trailed fire down her neck and across her shoulders. She shifted beneath him, relishing the feel of his coarse night beard rasping over her smooth flesh.

He hadn’t even reached her breasts before her nipples, already sensitized by his play in the other room, puckered into burning peaks. She moaned her eagerness, urging him to kiss the tight points. But he seemed content to slowly lick his way around them, nuzzling her ribs, tasting the insides of her elbows, nibbling at the undersides of her breasts—everywhere but where she most longed to feel his tongue. She thrust against him, pushing her pelvis into the erection that lay heavy between her thighs.

He lifted his head. “What do you want, Sophie?” His voice was hoarse.

“You know,” she whimpered.

His eyes glittered. “Yes, I think I do.”

He settled more firmly between her thighs, just touching her sex with the tip of his erection.

“Please,” she moaned, wriggling beneath him.

“As you wish, my lady.”

His mouth fastened on her nipple. The hungry sweep of his tongue, his teeth scraping across the beading tip, was sweet agony. She grasped his head, fisting her hands into his thick hair. His mouth worked one breast, then the other. Pleasure unfurled within her like a bright, spangled ribbon.

He gave one last heavy suckle and pulled away. Sophie groaned, feeling the tug deep in her womb. She widened her legs, silently urging him to take her, desperate to feel him inside.

His lips parted in a fierce smile, and he surged into her with one powerful stroke. She gasped, stunned by the depth of his penetration. Her racing pulse throbbed in her throat, her belly, even deep in her sex where she clenched around him.

“Oh, my lord,” she moaned, arching up against his chest. Her pearled nipples rubbed against hard muscle, and the erotic ache in her core spun even tighter.

“That’s right, Sophie. I am your lord—you belong to me,” he rasped in a voice as rough as distant thunder.

She shivered deliciously, but didn’t reply, too swept up in the slide of his body. He was big, and he stretched her just to the point of pain, but she didn’t care. Nothing mattered but to feel the strain of his hard muscles against her softer flesh, to know that he possessed her so thoroughly.

His predatory gaze bored into her, but his touch was achingly tender. His rhythm slowed as he explored her cheek and neck with hot, open-mouthed kisses.

She inched her fingers up his arm to his broad shoulder. Her hand looked small and slender resting on the corded muscles that ran from neck to bicep. She sighed, unable to contain the bliss that surged through her limbs with a voluptuous weight.

“Mmmm…you make me feel…” She caught her breath as he rocked into her with a slow stroke.

“Tell me how I make you feel, my sweet.”

“Safe,” she blurted out, tumbling into the mesmerizing pull of his coal-black eyes. It defied all logic, given how unsure she was of him, but
safe
was the only word that fit.

“You
are
safe,” he murmured. “No one harms what is mine.”

His voice held that note of arrogant possession that always annoyed her, but in this particular instance it reduced her to a state of exquisite surrender. Boneless, she sank into the soft mattress.

“Yes,” Simon murmured. “Give yourself to me, my angel.”

He pushed his shaft even deeper, thrusting her legs wide with urgent hands. She moaned, arching her back as the tip of his sex pressed against her womb.

He gasped, suddenly pulling out of her and coming up on his knees.

Dazed, she lifted her head, surprised by the unexpected withdrawal. Had she done something wrong?

“W-what’s the matter?”

“It’s not enough.” He moved quickly, slipping his hands under her body and flipping her onto her stomach. She squeaked, too dazed and weak to resist. Besides, all she wanted was for him to finish what he started, no matter how he did it. She would go mad if he didn’t.

Big hands pushed her knees wide.

“I want everything, Sophie,” he growled, moving between her legs. “I want it all.”

God, she was an insanely tempting little morsel—so fresh and sweet, like a delicate ice to cleanse his jaded palate. Simon clenched his teeth against the need to plunder Sophie’s body so thoroughly that she would never again forget to whom she belonged. He took a huge breath, refocusing his senses on the enticing picture she made, sprawled amongst the rumpled bed linens.

Her flushed bottom wriggled invitingly beneath him, an invitation to sin he wouldn’t refuse. He grabbed a pillow and shoved it under her belly. After a brief assessment, he lifted her and tugged another pillow beneath her hips.

“Simon,” she protested, trying to push up on her elbows.

“No, love.” He pressed his hand into the small of her back and gently held her in place. With his other hand he stroked the firm globes of her pretty ass, and then trailed his fingers down between her thighs. The sensual contrast between his strength and her delicacy made his erection throb with an almost painful ache.

Simon tilted her pelvis and spread her legs wide. Her pink, glistening cleft was fully exposed. The temptation to plunge back into its hot embrace was overwhelming.

But he held himself back, knowing that by prolonging the agony his release would be that much the sweeter. He brushed his fingers over her silky flesh, tickling soft lips already drenched by his previous attentions.

She choked back a groan and turned her face into the linens.

“Oh, Simon. This is torture.”

“For me as well, darling. The sweetest torture I’ve ever known.”

He tormented her with his fingers, relishing the sight of his cock resting between her pale thighs. Lust rode him with a hard spur, and he was dying for the moment when he would penetrate her sheath with one hard thrust. But Sophie this way—writhing with sensual abandon beneath him—was just too good to pass up.

Twice he brought her to the brink of climax with his teasing fingers. The third time he used his erection to stroke against her aroused bud, once more pulling back just before she found her release. By then she was sobbing with frustrated desire, but still he held back. He would allow no doubt to exist in Sophie’s mind that she was his, and that only he could bring her to ecstasy.

She wriggled backward in a vain attempt to impale herself on his shaft. He pulled away with a strangled laugh.

“Simon,” she wailed in frustration.

He couldn’t hold back any longer. Tilting her hips even higher off the pillows, he drove into her melting flesh, seating himself to the base of his shaft. Sophie cried out as she climaxed, gripping him with a throbbing heat. She pushed up on her elbows and thrust against him, rotating her pelvis against his groin.

Simon clenched a fist in her thick mass of hair and gently pulled her head back and up. She twisted around, seeking his kiss, sucking his tongue into her mouth.

The primal urge to mate drove their mouths apart. He fell into a pounding rhythm as Sophie writhed beneath him. The scent of her sweet musk, the feel of her skin, the sound of her husky moans, flooded his senses with a furious heat. Her swollen flesh clamped around him in another set of tight spasms, triggering his own burning climb to release. He finally exploded, crying out a hoarse shout as he poured himself into her with a wrenching completion.

An eternity later he collapsed on top of her, utterly spent, dazed by what had surely been the best orgasm of his life. She panted beneath him, all satin and sweat-drenched skin.

He tried to collect himself enough to roll off her, but he simply didn’t have the willpower to pull out from her sheath. In fact, if he had his way, he’d spend the rest of the night—hell, the rest of his life—right where he was. Buried deep inside the most alluring woman he’d ever encountered.

That thought jolted him back to a stunned awareness. Sex with Sophie was astoundingly different, and he was beginning to realize she might be the one woman he could never get enough of.

That wasn’t a good development.

“Simon, I can’t breathe.”

A sharp little elbow dug into his side. He reluctantly pulled out of her and rolled onto his back, bringing her with him. Settling her into the crook of his arm, he reached out with his other hand and pulled the coverlet over their rapidly cooling bodies. Sophie snuffled her contentment into his ribs as she snuggled against him. Her hand trailed along his thigh and brushed his groin. Unbelievably, his flaccid staff twitched with renewed interest.

Not good at all.

He craned his neck to look at the bundle of trouble that lay so peacefully in his arms. How had this happened? How the hell had she wormed her way past all his defenses, to the point where he could no longer imagine life without her? As usual, she refused to stay where he wanted her, both literally and figuratively. Given her propensity for mayhem and his newly discovered weakness for her, she would likely cause him no end of chaos and scandal.

Even more alarming was the nature of his rapidly growing obsession with her. It was all very well for Sophie to be in love with him—after all, she had been mad about him for years. Certainly he would always cherish and protect her, but she could never mean so much to him that he would lose control of her, or of himself. If Sophie ever recognized how easily she could distract him, she would run him ragged.

With the best of intentions, of course. She was no Bathsheba, nor even remotely like most other women of the ton. But if she were allowed to kick over the traces, he would spend the rest of his life pursuing her through workhouses, gin mills, and God knows where else her demented tilting at windmills would take her.

No. He was not a man to be controlled by a woman, not even Sophie. The sooner she realized that, the better.