The Secret to Seduction (22 page)

“Perhaps you should think of grooming your horse.”

He made a soft sound, a laugh. “Ah, but thinking of Gallegos won’t put me in an amorous mood.”

The matter-of-factly stated “amorous” reminded her of why he was in her room, and she lost her ability to jest. Her nerves fought their way up through the brandy. She took another sip as Rhys at last dragged the brush slowly from the top of her scalp to the ends of her hair.

And…
oh.
The stroke seemed to send tiny sparks dancing everywhere over her skin.

She’d never dreamed how delicious such an everyday thing could be when someone else did it for you. Let alone a scandalous poet and newly minted husband. Suddenly hair-brushing took on an entirely new dimension.

He paused. “Like that?”

“Yes. I believe you’ve the knack.” The words were a bit distracted.

“Very good, then.” She could hear the smile in his voice.

He set himself earnestly to the task, dragging the brush slowly from the top of her head to the ends of her hair, which fell just above her waist. Each stroke of the brush was somehow more soothing and less soothing than the next. Each one seemed to slow time, lulling her into softness, quieting her thoughts and rousing her body until she seemed aware of every inch and corner and curve of it.

“You’ve a good deal of hair, haven’t you?” Wryly, softly said.

“Mmm.”

She’d lost her ability to form complete words several strokes ago. And besides, speech would have distracted from the pleasure. Her eyes were closed. She wondered when she’d closed them. She couldn’t recall.

“Beautiful hair,” he added, his voice gone lazy and dark, as though he was lulling himself as well.

At last, she heard him, slowly, set the brush aside. Her eyes remained closed.

And then he slowly gathered the silken mass of her hair in his hand, gently, gently lifted it in his fist, let it spill from his hand over one of her shoulders. Her entire body was alert to sensation now; her own hair poured down over her like a caress.

And then lightly, lingeringly…he placed his lips against the place on her neck left bare by her hair.

The kiss spiked through her veins, hot and drugging as the brandy. She remembered this about kissing: languor and lightning in equal parts, the sense of the boundaries that defined her slowly dissolving.

Rhys brushed his lips over the nape of her neck, opening them so she could feel the heat of his breath, then the brief heat of his tongue, then his breath again. Gooseflesh washed over her arms and back, and she sighed. And then his large hands slid gently down her back and looped around her waist. Covered in his heat, it seemed she had no choice but to melt against him. She leaned into this warm wall of a man, and when she did, she felt the hard prod of his erection against her buttocks. But his breathing was still remarkably steady compared to her own, which she could hear rushing in her own ears, uneven, rising and falling like the tide of sensation in her.

When his lips traveled to a tender place where her pulse beat, she found herself arching her neck, artless as a cat, so he could reach it. And as she did, his palms slid up over her breasts.

Her breath hitched raggedly. The shock of pleasure all but made her sway.

She tipped her head back against his shoulder, her eyes closed, and his hands leisurely traced the contours of her breasts through her night rail, dragging the silky fabric over her almost painfully sensitized skin, his thumbs circling over the bead-hard peaks of her nipples. And then he slowly slipped his hands beneath the loose neckline, and they were hot on her bare skin.

“
Oh.
” She sighed the word. Pleasure was everywhere in her, skeins of hot light furling and unfurling as he stroked the silky curves of her breasts. She found herself arching under his touch, encouraging it, moving with it, and a sound very like a whimper slipped from her.

She could hear, feel, that his breathing was now as uneven as hers, rapid; surrounding her now was the musk of what she knew was his desire. She pressed her back into him, moved against his arousal instinctively, and his touch became more fierce. His tongue found the whorls of her ears, and then his voice was there.

“Sabrina,” the word was husky and strained. “My God.”

He became a man of purpose then.

Rhys withdrew his arms from her long enough to gently lower her to the fur, and before she knew it he had gently but swiftly dragged the night rail from her shoulders, slipped it over her slim hips, and stripped her of it, until it was nothing but a limp bit of fabric in his hand. He tossed it aside.

Not his first time at this sort of thing, she suspected.

She was entirely nude before him, but before she could marvel at this he was stripping out of his trousers, and she saw, curving up toward his belly, his enormous swollen shaft. But before she could take in his nudity, or form a thought, or even widen her eyes, his strong hot hands were on her, running purposely up the length of her calves, stroking the tender skin inside her thighs, places no person had ever before touched her. He was so certain of himself, of her. He coaxed her thighs wider with long, delicate, determined sweeps of his fingers, and she quivered and tensed a bit. But her tension eased away beneath his hands, because her body wanted him, and he knew it.

When her knees parted for him he knelt between them. And then she felt the head of his cock against her, and then he pushed inside her, beyond the reflexive clenched resistance of her shocked body, and filled her, slowly. She gasped, arched to accommodate him.

Her husband drew in an audible breath, closed his eyes briefly. The pleasure seemingly so intense it very nearly hurt him.

They opened again, stared down at her, eyes gone dark. A conqueror. Allowing her to become accustomed to the feel of him, watching her eyes, perhaps, for what she thought of it.

For the life of her, she didn’t yet know.

And then his fingers reached out and massaged very deliberately just where she joined with him, where she needed to be touched, and she did know: bliss ripped through her, total and breath-stealing. She moaned, and his mouth curved, satisfied. He drew back then, and thrust slowly, his fingers playing skillfully over her, then drew back again. Her own body found the rhythm, joined him in it, rising up to meet him.

“
Oh
. . .”

“Is it good, Sabrina?” A murmur.

“Rhys—,” she choked.
So good.

“Is it good?” he demanded, his voice dusky, the cadence of his hips even, relentless, each stroke banking that unidentifiable need in her until it was immense and demanding, and she began to beg him, and he obliged her, his thrusts becoming more swift and purposeful. The rush of his breath told her his own excitement was building, and then she saw his eyes begin to go opaque, his face taut. He was racing toward his own pleasure now, intent on it as well as her own.

But she needed him to ease hers.

“
Rhys
…
please
. . .” Pleasure roiled, built, gathered. The friction of him inside her, the pressure of his fingers outside, was exquisite, and then necessary—and then everything.

When release finally broke over her, it was shocking, extraordinary. She heard her own hoarse, near-silent scream as the force of her release bowed her body upward, and shook her. And still Rhys plunged into her, swiftly, his breathing a roar, sweat now shining over him.

At last he went still; the pleasure of his own release tearing a groan from him. His eyes closed; his head tilted back. And she felt it: the warmth as he came inside her.

And surely she’d left her body, because she felt lighter than air, and limp with peace.

Rhys at last withdrew from her, and stretched out alongside her on the fur. Then gently, he took her into his arms. He closed his eyes again; his chest still moved hard with his breathing.

Well. Sabrina supposed she was now officially a wife.

She tried to think about what this meant to her, about what had just taken place, but her thoughts only drifted across her mind like clouds across the sky, separate somehow from her. She couldn’t seem to grasp hold of one. She could only feel. It was strange to lie here with this man, blissfully spent, nude, slick with perspiration, his arms wrapped around her. The soft fur against her back yet another caress.

She did have one faintly pleased thought:
Mary was wrong.

Distantly she wondered if Rhys had made love just this way many times before, if he’d known precisely what to do to lull her, to seduce her, had anticipated her response.

She wondered whether she cared.

Just a kiss,
he’d said just a few days ago. Would he say to her, “It was just lovemaking, Sabrina”?

“You were very competent,” she said inadvertently, aloud.

Rhys gave a short laugh, startled. “Damned with faint praise!”

She flushed. “Oh! I’m terribly sorry. I meant to say that you seemed . . .”

“As though I knew what I was about?” His voice quivered with restrained hilarity.

She remained silent, squeezing her eyes closed. God help her, she should not have said anything.

“As though…I might have even done it…before?” he pressed, giving the words a slightly scandalized intonation.

“I just . . .”

“Sabrina?” he said solemnly.

“Yes?” She turned to him, worried.

He whispered, “I confess I’ve done it before.”

She threw an embarrassed arm over her eyes. “Forgive me. I’ve never before made conversation under these circumstances. I’m not certain of the etiquette.”

She thought he might laugh, but he said nothing. She could hear his breathing, slow and even now. The damp heat of his skin against her own warmed her.

Suddenly Sabrina had a concern. “Did I do it correctly?” she wondered.

When he said nothing, she’d begun to suspect he’d fallen asleep. She peeked out from beneath her arm to find him propped up on his elbow, gazing down at her wearing that expression she’d seen before: as though she were some new creature he’d discovered, or he were experiencing some sort of alien sensation in his body and trying to interpret it. Disconcerted. A soft expression, for all of that.

He didn’t answer her. He lowered his head and kissed her gently between the eyes.

It wasn’t an answer, but it would do for now.

He cleared his throat. “Did you enjoy it?”

The expression that accompanied his question was carefully neutral.

“I . . .” What did he expect to hear, this man who supposedly caused women to cast off their dignity, who wrote odes to sensual moments—whole odes to parts of
bodies,
for heaven’s sake? Who’d “done it before”?

This man who was her husband now.

“Mostly,” she confessed. “And then…well”—she blushed, rubbed her forehead self-consciously with her hand—“rather.”

Such an inadequate word. But all the other words she could think of at the moment made her feel both shy and wanton.

But he was smiling faintly down at her again. “?‘Rather’? As good as that, was it?”

She supposed she should be grateful she could consistently amuse her husband.

Something else occurred to her then.

“Did
you
enjoy it?” she asked worriedly. Wondering if he’d asked for her opinion because he hadn’t.

He gazed down at her. He did have beautiful eyes. Blue like the sky. She wished they were as expressive of his internal weather as the sky was of the external.

“Rather,” he finally said gently.

He reached out and plucked a strand of hair away from her face where perspiration had glued it; he smoothed it behind her ear.

She smiled up at him a little. Which oddly made his smile fade to seriousness again. And then he surprised her: he lifted one of her hands, kissed her palm, and placed it gently against his chest.

His skin was so surprisingly soft, the hair fine and crisp over his chest; beneath it ran hard muscles; steel beneath silk. Such beauty. She’d thought other men handsome before; she thought Geoffrey was handsome. She hadn’t known that male beauty could be so very thorough, so heady and strange.

Her hand began to wander as if he’d just set it free. She traced the distinct lines of it, each hewn muscle, the ridge of his collarbone, tangled her fingers through the fine hair that curled over his chest and ribs, and in the process she discovered his heartbeat. Her hand hovered there, lingered over it; the speed, the hard thump of it, surprised her.

And then she realized his breath was all but held.

She stopped, feeling suddenly shy, looked up into his face. Saw tension, his eyes darker now. He gently placed his hand over hers, stopping her exploration.

“Perhaps we should sleep.” His voice was husky.

“All right,” she faltered, after a moment.

But he gave her a faint smile, and cupped the back of her head with his hand, shifted her to rest her head against his chest, folded his arms around her. She pressed her body against his, and when she did, she could feel that he was very hard again. Ready again for her. And the tension in his body, in his face, told her that for some reason he was holding himself back from her.