“A bit more then, I think.” Still circling, he slipped a finger into her. This part she knew of, but she’d thought it would be quite a different part of him in her like this. This was like a tease, a promise of things to come. “You are an innocent, Amelia, but… you are older. Do you know what I’m doing?” He continued circling with his thumb and another of his fingers joined the first.
“No. Not entirely. You’re making me feel…” She panted, searching for words. “Needy.” The wood of the desk was cool against her cheek, and she did not feel shame at her ignorance.She’d spent all her life in an abandoned castle, no girls about to gossip with, no women to tell her how things were. She knew great pleasure could be had through sharing a bed with a man. His sisters-in-law and his brothers proved as much, the way they looked at each other and touched each other and desired each other’s presences.
She could have sought out books, that much she knew. A few of the governesses and companions that worked for the agency did so. What they lacked in practical experience they more than made up for in self-education. She had been, truthfully, a bit scared to seek out such books. Where did one come by them? And how did one possess one without others knowing of it? Her ignorance was her own fault. She’d not sought out friendships and materials to educate herself with.
But she did not regret it because nowhecould educate her. She could share this task of learning with the man she loved. A man whose character she knew well from years of working at his side and who had surprised her daily in the last few weeks with the depths of his emotion. A man who threw himself into crashing waves to save a woman, a man who told her she had no equal and kissed her as if she set the world spinning and he would do anything to keep it moving in whatever direction she wished.
“Tell me,” she said. “Teach me.”
His hand at her center stilled and then the other hand tangled in the hair at the nape of her neck tightened, lifted her head slightly off the desk.
“And you’ll be a good student?” he asked. “Do as I say? Everything as I say?”
“Yes.”
“Then, as I bring you pleasure, I want you to tell me… why me?”
She could not tell him that. No. No, she could not tell himthat.
“Why me?” His hand had started moving at her center again, long strokes between her legs and gentle circles with his thumb. He leaned over her and whispered into her ear, “Why me, Amelia?”
A spark of pure pleasure leapt from his hand and into her belly, and she cried out, “Because I have dreamed of you, too. Whatisthis feeling?” The question a gasp.
“It is the feeling”—he stroked his free arm down her spine and then back up again to her nape—“ofmetouchingyou. What kind of dreams, Amelia?”
“Kissing,” she said, not daring to deny him the answers he sought any longer.
“That’s all?”
“Yes. I will dream ofthistonight, though.” Of the growing need low in her belly, the hardness of his shaft pressing against her backside, the way he commanded her and protected her and demanded more of her.
“You won’t. Because you will not be sleeping tonight. Tonight, I will do this again and again, and then… I will do more.”
“Promise,” she cried as the sparks he planted within her screamed into flames. “Promise.” If she turned around, she would grab his shirt and pull him hard against her, pull his lips to hers and steal his promise with a demanding kiss. But pinned to the desk, she could do nothing but curl her hands into fists on the now-warmed wood, raking her fingernails over it. “Promise.”
And, as his hips rocked rhythmically into her, and with a groan in his throat, he promised. “That and more, Amelia. Everything.”
The promise, the rocking of his hips, the attention of his hand between her legs, everything rushed over her like the wavethat had crashed him to the ocean floor. She cried out, flattening and curling her hand, scraping her fingernails across the desk as he moved faster and faster behind her, his body rolling into hers as pleasure wound her, shook her, thrummed through her. His grip on her tightened, his fingers inside her curled, and his body shook, too, as he cried her name.A-mel-i-a, a dance on his tongue.
And then he collapsed against her, and she welcomed the weight, the feeling of being surrounded by him, consumed, because she was floating in a softer world. Her knees had stopped working after a kiss. Nothing worked in her now. She cared not a bit.
After a few heavy breaths at her ear during which she felt his heart pumping against her back, he gathered her into his arms and pulled her to standing.
“Don’t let go,” she warned in a breathy, languid sentence, “I might collapse again.” A small chuckle. “I’ve learned my lesson,” she continued. “Kissing equals weak knees and whateverthat wasequals…” She could not adequately describe it, so she wove her arms around his neck and leaned into him, letting him take the weight of her body. He hugged her to him tight, lowering his face into her neck and inhaling deeply.
Now what? She did not know, and she found herself too scared to ask, so she held on tight and let him hold her while it lasted.
Sixteen
Once more, Drew sat along the edge of the drawing room where the women had gathered for the evening. The last three days since his interlude with Amelia in her bedchamber had been… interesting. He’d not let the passion of that day consume him so fully since then. He’d let too much of himself free, admitted to truths he’d let languish in silence for years. A half hour interlude, and all that silence undone, as if he’d come up out of a cave and screamed his every desire into the air.
He’d controlled himself better since then.
Oh, he’d taken kisses in those opportune moments when Miss Angleton seemed to disappear. He’d slipped his hand beneath her skirt so often he now knew the shape of her by heart. Knew the pitch of her moan when she came around his fingers by heart.
No. Bymemory. No heart about it. All part of their business arrangement. A week or so of passion for a lifetime partnership. Irritation soared through him, and he drummed his fingers on the curved wood of the chair’s arm. And heard theclick-clackof blunt fingernails.
He looked down. Hell. Where were his gloves? He must have taken them off before the interlude with Amelia in the library that afternoon and not put them back on after. How had he forgotten? He stretched out his hand, making the bones and tendons tight beneath his skin. If hands were the measure of a man, what did his say about him? They were pale and smooth, the nails trimmed as short as possible. Proper gentleman’s hands, unlike Raph’s and Atlas’s. Theirs were marked with the evidence of labor—calluses and scars, scuffed nails, and sinewy muscle. Theo’s hands bore the marks of a boxer, a man who needed to put his fist into something hard at least once a week. Zander’s hands were less beaten and bruised, but they were strong from handling horse reins on his travels.
