He offered her no opportunity to view the inside of the coachman’s cottage but dragged her toward a small room to the side, their kiss never once faltering, skin on skin, lips on lips, fingernails dragging, and bodies hard. The moon peeked in through a small window. It had followed them, a midnight voyeur, and it showed her a narrow pallet in the corner of what appeared to be a closet or storage room.
“I told you,” he growled against her lips. “This is not good enough for you. I am not good enough for you.”
“I do not care where you lay me down, only thatyoudo.” Now that they were secreted away from all eyes but for the celestial, every inch of her burned for his touch. Her stays were too tight and her shift too clinging, her cloak entirely in the way.
He kissed her neck and backed her toward the blankets, eased them to their knees. He could not seem to decide where totouch her first—the slope of her hip, the mound of her breast, the line of her back, the round of her belly, the heated place between her legs. No matter where he touched, though, he stoked her pulsing need higher.
She could no longer remain upright, and she lay back, holding her arms up, offering an invitation she’d give no one else in this way ever again.
He came to her, eyes on fire and greedy as he bent her legs on either side of him and stroked her skirts up over her knees until they pooled across her belly and only her pantalets covered her from his sight.
Until he clawed his fingers beneath their waist and ripped them away. A lock of hair fell across his eyes, but it didn’t hide his expression—wolfish, wanting. “Such a beauty. Not a damn thing in the world more beautiful than Lucy.” He licked his lips and traced his knuckles up and down the sensitive skin on the inside of her thighs. She thought, for a moment, he planned to follow those knuckles with his lips, but he settled his body between her legs and kissed her mouth.
“Hell,” he breathed against her lips, “I’d make you a marchioness right now. I would raise you up this very instant.” He gave a bitter laugh. “You are already so high above me, I cannot touch you. So high up there. With the stars, outshining them. I do not deserve you, but I’m a selfish man, and I’ll take what you give me.” He kissed her again, then stopped just as quickly. “I shouldn’t kiss you like this. There is more I should say first. Things I have done. Jeopardizing… but I won’t let any harm come to you. Ever. I swear it.”
“No more words. God, Keats, no more words. It feels like lightning is striking in my limbs. Or is about to. A storm is gathering inside me. Please, Keats. More.”
He plunged his tongue between her lips, exploring her further, crushing her body to his and kneading the flesh of her hips with hungry, delighted hands.
Her want was a living thing inside her. In her blood and in her bones, in the electricity skating across her skin and in the rapid beating of her ecstatic heart. Ecstatic because she’d never felt like this before, never given in to pure impulse and joy before. Lucy the daughter of a disgraced viscount’s daughter must be ever careful. But Lucy the moonlit maiden could live in utter abandon for once. Just once. With this man who said the most perfect things.
“I could love you,” he breathed into the kiss. “I never once considered love, but with you, I cannot stop thinking of it, feeling it.”
On such short acquaintance? Impossible. It was lust and admiration waltzing heady between them.
But alsonotimpossible. Because she felt it, too; felt what could never be.
He ran his fingers up her spine, over the plump curve of her shoulder, and up her neck to tangle his hand in the hair at her nape, to deepen the kiss. She gave a little startled cry when his lips moved roughly over hers, but she did not fall apart. No. She kissed him harder and with greedy abandon.
He clasped her hand with his free one and moved it down his chest, past the waist of his trousers, and over the hard ridge of his shaft outlined by the loose and dirty wool. And he kept kissing her, halting only when she squeezed.
He growled. No idea what that primal sound meant. But he did not stop kissing her, and his hands sought out the edge of her bodice, pulled it down, freeing her breasts. He kissed them, too, kneading and nipping with gentle teeth. Gentle hands, too, while his hips rhythmically rocked against her.
She raked her fingernails down his back, wishing it were skin. “Now. I need you now.”
His exhale a blast of fire across the skin between her breasts then over her belly and navel, his hands bracketed her hips as he dragged his lips lower. “You are… art.” That last word a heady breath. “These dimples.” He kissed her rounded hips, dragging his tongue over the softly textured skin there. “These elegant lines.” His hot breath running the length of the marks left on her inner thighs as her body had stretched and grown during girlhood. “Strength and beauty across every blessed inch of you.”
She arched her back, his words igniting her more than his touch. Until he set his lips against the apex of her body and kissed her. Pleasure, pure and spiraling. She tangled her hands in his hair, arching harder, higher as he parted her with his tongue, tasted her, rolled her body into a ball of nerve endings, sparking and crying for more. She moaned his name and clenched her hands in his hair as the world became sensation gathering force until it crashed over her, overwhelmed her, shattered a climax through her. She floated like a feather to the rough blankets on the hard floor, realized his soft, firm lips were roaming up her belly, tasting the valley between her breasts and finding her lips once more.
A heavenly kiss, gentle. Good. Because she could barely move. Hadn’t the energy or strength. But somehow, she found it as she grasped for the buttons at his fall, because no matter how glorious that had been, she needed more. Knew there was more. Had determined to take it. He helped her unloop the buttons, and she felt his shaft, hard and hot between their bodies as her hesitant hand crept toward it, wrapped around it.
His gaze caught her, flared to life. “I’m going to marry you.” He kissed her. “I’m going to marry you and give you everything you desire. Marry me, Lucy. Will you?”
She opened her mouth to deny him. Such a foolish dream. But she could not shape the words. What if she let herself marry for love and found some other way to give herself to Hawthorne?Yes, her heart cried out. Marry a simple man with nothing to give but himself. Marry this man who makes you feel alive and loved. She smiled, and instead of setting one hard, cold syllable between them, she nodded.
Victory shot like lightning across his face, and he kissed her hard, settling himself between her legs as she clenched his shoulders. He teased her opening with the head of his shaft, dragging it up and down before thrusting into her. She greeted the thrust with a cry.
“Have I hurt you?” He tensed above her.
Tight and full. She’d never felt so full before. It felt different, new, perhaps the smallest bit uncomfortable, but heat tempered the pain, soothed it with a yearning ache both bright and beautiful. “More.”
Lowering to his elbows, he moved with a slow, determined rhythm. She wrapped her arms around his neck and met each of his thrusts with a roll of her hips, letting her body tell her what to do and when. Each of his thrusts brushed against her curls and the pulsing point hidden there, and she moaned his name when she could not quite catch the promise of falling stars. He rolled his weight to one arm and slipped the other between their bodies, finding exactly what she wanted, thrumming his thumb over it once, twice?—
She screamed, a cry of pleasure that rocked him into a quicker rhythm. Faster and faster, their bodies like their pulses—hot and impossible to calm—and then he rolled her nipple between his finger and thumb, and she shattered. His name on her lips, loud and long until he swallowed it in a hard, giving kiss. This time, her body shivered longer than before, tighter and higher.
He gave a final thrust before pulling out of her, his body taut, every muscle hard as he spent on the blankets beside them. For several heavy seconds, he panted above her, then he wrapped his hand around her nape and rolled them both to the side, gathering her up in his arms and kissing her forehead.
Perfect peace.
