Wicked (45 page)

And dizzying moments later, momentarily sated, collapsed on her back, he said between labored breaths, "Christ, you're a good fuck."

Twisting around, she bit him.

"What the hell?" Sucking in his breath in surprise, grabbing his shoulder, he rolled off her.

She was already scrambling off the bed and standing beyond his reach a second later, barricaded behind the sturdy table, she coldly said, "I'm not here for your use."

"Yes you are," he said, his voice low, seething with fury, his palm coming up bloody. "And if you bite me again," he added, licking the blood from his hand, "I'll bite you back. Now get your ass over here."

"The first time you look away, I'll run." She spoke in a quiet, poisonous tone.

"No you won't," he said with suppressed violence, rising from the bed. "You
l
ike the fucking too much."

He was still aroused as he walked toward her, his erection waist high, hard, turgid.

Backing away, she retreated until she came up against the solid barrier of the wall.

"Come here," he said, arriving at the far side of the table, his voice chill.

She didn't move.

He gazed at her briefly before beginning to clear the table. Setting the sturdy brass candelabra on the floor, he neatly stacked the dishes from her lunch and placed them on a chair, the silence so intense that the clink of pottery was jarring. Straightening the coarse linen cloth, he carefully evened the edges as if the symmetry mattered. "Put your cunt right here," he said, tapping the tabletop with his forefinger.

"I don't perform on cue like a strumpet."

"But you always perform beautifully," he silkily said. "Better than Julia Johnstone or Amy Dubochet or any of the randy society ladies. I think I'll eat you first."

Her face colored at his reference to London's fashionable courtesans and his last words, hot, intrusive, pulsed through her body. "Stay away from me," she commanded, her gaze flicking from him to the table.

He shook his head. "I don't think so." His voice had calmed to a dispassionate drawl. "I'm wondering if you still taste the same."

The throbbing inside her accelerated.

"Remember the terrace at Minorca?" His dark gaze drifted downward, coming to rest on her pale, silken
m
ons. "I don't have any marzipan here but I could improvise."

Her breath caught in her throat.

He noticed. "Do you want me to carry you?" She was holding herself rigid against the wall, but he knew it wasn't from fear. "I haven't been able to see marzipan cherries since then without thinking of you," he murmured, moving around the table, advancing on her. "You were in rare form that day."

"Give me a time limit," she quickly said as he neared. "When you'll let me go."

"Why?"

"I need that."

"And I need you." He came to a stop and drew in a small breath. "I can't give you a date."

"I cried for weeks after you left."

"I won't let you cry this time," he said, as if he could stop the world in its tracks.

"Beau, please . . . just let me go."

"I can't." He took the last two steps and she could feel the heat of his body next to hers. "I wish I could," he brusquely said and abruptly bending, he slid his hand under her knees, lifted her into his arms and moved toward the table.

"I'll stay with you today and tonight," she bargained. "Then let me go."

"Sorry."

He deposited her on the rustic table and as she opened her mouth to speak, he gently touched her lips with the pad of his finger. "This isn't negotiable. If it were I wouldn't be here. Talk to me tomorrow or two days from now. Maybe I won't care then."

"So I
d
on't have any choice at all?"

"Something like that," he murmured, running his palms up her inner thighs,
 
spreading her legs with a gentle pressure. "Tell me how much you hate this." The heels of his hands had come to rest against the cushioned base of her pelvic bone, his splayed fingers cupping the soft flesh of her
m
ons, his thumbs warm inside her. Gazing down at her, he said, "Tell me this is hell for you. How your cunt isn't throbbing around my fingers. How impossible it is for you to climax. How we don't fit together like perfection."

"And when you leave m
e
—
w
hat then?" She was helpless with wanting him . . . terrified.

"No one's leaving; I've offered you carte blanche. I'll lay London at your feet." His hands were caressing her, exerting a sensuous pressure and she felt herself opening for him, her treacherous senses concerned only with the self-indulgent moment.

Aware, attuned to female arousal, he lightly hooked a chair with his foot, pulled it close, and sitting down, lifted her legs over his shoulders. "You can have anything you want," he whispered, adjusting her hips to the proper angle, opening her delicately with his fingers. "I'll give you anything," he breathed, and leaning forward, he licked a cool path up her gleaming wet labia.

The sudden rush of pleasure spiking through her senses exploded in a rapturous cry and before she could draw another breath or further debate the shame and iniquity of her passions, his tongue plunged inside her and her perfidious whimper was audible capitulation.

He was meticulous in his attentions, taking pains to please her, his tongue caressing her clitoris and vulva slowly, gently, until she ached with desire, his fingers stroking her swollen, sensitive tissue, probing the sleek passage beyond until she was writhing beneath his hands and mouth, her fingers tangled in his hair, holding him close, her moans graphic with need. She was wet with longin
g
—
h
er pearly fluid converging into little jeweled droplets that coated her genitals and slid over his tongue and fell from time to time onto the tablecloth in a tantalizing display of sexual yearning.

"Do you think you're ready for me?" he unnecessarily said, rising from the chair, standing between her legs, her thighs lightly balanced o
n
. his forearms.

Eyes shut, she clutched at the table edge, her back arched, her pelvis provocatively raised to meet him. "Open your eyes," he quietly ordered. "So you can see me fuck you. Now," he added, his voice gruff.

Her lashes lifted in a slow, languorous movement. "I'm watching," she whispered. "Is that better?"

He smiled. "It is for me. Now open yourself."

She hesitated for the merest heartbeat and then her hands moved down and parted her pink, gleaming folds.

"Ask me," he gently said.

"Please, Lord Rochefort," she said, no hesitation now, her gaze direct. "I need you."

"Only
me." He couldn't help himself. She was too sumptuous to be allowed her freedom.

"Only you in all the world," she whispered, having reached a point of selfish and selfless realization in the burning hot core of lus
t
—
w
here barriers no longer mattered, only raw feeling.

"I'll take care of you." His eyes were strangely grave, his voice no longer confrontational. "Although I can't offer you hearts and flowers."

"I don't need that."

"Thank you," he said about something else entirely. And then he kissed he
r
—
a
fragile kiss, tender at first and then not tender at all.

She guided him into her honeyed warmth, trusting her own emotions, welcoming him with all the splendor he remembered. She had a volatile, aggressive energy that lured and baffled him, challenged him more than anyone ever had.

But in the chaos of their relationship was also a rare purity of passio
n
—
w
ild and tumultuous, prima
l
—
a
s if they were meant for each other.

Clinging to the table, she lifted to meet his plunging assault, carnal and abandoned, dipping and rising scented flesh, offering herself, surrendering. And bracing his feet on the floor, he reached above her, gripped the table for added leverage, and devoured her.

And when they climaxed in the rustic inn outside Piacenza with the scent of summer flowers in the air, they felt alive again, together, sated and conten
t
—
i
n a special place all their own.

But their deprivation had been too painful, too desperate, and they weren't content for long. They needed the touch and taste, the smell and heat and fury, the contact and nearness, the unequivocal union. And they made love that sultry afternoon in every imaginable way, crazed and ferocious, tantalizing, languorous, taking turns at initiating and acquiescing, sensation the touchston
e
—
t
he only realit
y
—
w
hen all else was discord.

She stayed a week because he wouldn't let her go. He didn't let her out of his sight for a second and after a very short time in the sweetest of paradises, she no longer wished to go.

He wooed her, gallant and solicitous, amusing and tantalizing, always pleasing her whatever his mood. And she burned for him, wanton and impatient, and hungered for him and loved him with all her heart.

And a second week passed.

She wavered at times in that nirvana of the senses, torn by doubt and self-recrimination, calling herself weak and cowardly, wondering how she could debase herself so and yield so easily to his seduction. How could she allow herself to want only his touch, his kisses, his sex?

If someone had forced her to answer in those days of heated passion, she couldn't have. She only felt and craved, eager for his joyful pleasures; she only opened her arms to him . . . and her body and heart.

She loved him as much as a woman could love a man.

He showed her new and intriguing delights in the rustic bedroom tucked under the eaves and gratified her and proved to her that some things couldn't be explained with words. Or reason. And he conscientiously fulfilled his promise to make her pregnant, depositing his seed in the fertile ripeness of her body, glutting her, deluging her, lavish in his prodigality.

He was tender with her spells of moodiness, indulgent now that she'd given herself up so completely. He composed an ode to her one day, a pretty play of words that made her smile. But most of all he catered to her lustful yearnings, pleasuring her joyfull
y
—
w
ith inspiration, artful competence, and an open heart.

He knew by the end of the first week that he'd stepped over the familiar boundaries of sensation into a new blissful elysian sphere. His feelings were perhaps inchoate but he was happier than he'd ever been in his life.

******************

Late one afternoon, when they'd returned from fishing in the small stream behind the inn, Beau decided to ride to the vineyard that produced Serena's favorite wine and see if he could arrange for a substantial supply to be sent back to England.

His reference to London and home brought all her uncertainties flooding to the fore, contemplation of the future immeasurably depressing. She couldn't accept becoming his mistress or docile wife, both roles no more than a casual accessory to his life, and he'd never brought up the subject again anyway. Exhaustion may have been impulse to his utterances that day. He'd not spoken of marriage since.

But after he left with a smile and a wave, she ran to the window like a lovesick young girl, wanting to catch a glimpse of him while he waited for his horse in the stableyard below. She was utterly besotted. How ta
l
l he was and beautiful, like a young god, she tenderly mused watching him, his strong body toned and fit, its power evident beneath his shirt and form-fitting breeches, the muscles in his shoulders rippling under the fine linen of his shirt as he idly swung his quirt. His dark hair gleamed in the sunlight, silky curls framing his face, his profile pure of line, classic in its configuration, his head bent slightly, listening to the groom.