“I wish it were day, so I could see you by the light of the full sun. Not a cloud in sight to trouble my vision of you. But this candle will have to do. For now.” He stood then at the end of the bed, studying her, his head slightly tilted, his long fingers flicking open the buttons of his waistcoat.
Since she’d met him, he’d been giving orders, holding what she wanted most over her head to get what he needed. “What do you want?”
“What you want.” He shrugged out of the waistcoat.
“What do you need?”
“What you need.” He set a knee on the end of the mattress and began a languid crawl toward her.
Scurrying backward, she propped herself up against the headboard. Still he came, one knee and hand after another, his gaze holding her tight, promising much. And then he was straddling her, kissing her, his hard body moving over and around her.
“Tell me what you need,” he whispered in her ear. “You like to listen, to gather information like diamonds so others may live happily. Well, I am listening now. So I may know how you will live happily. Tell me.”
The heat of each word on her neck reignited the fire from before. But hesitation cooled it quickly. Shewantedeverything from him. Sheneededto protect herself from a man who made no promises.
She cupped his face and brought his lips back to hers, kissed him soft and long before putting a bit of distance between them. “I want to watch you.” Yes, that would both satiate her desire, and his, and stay on the safe side of scandal, ruination. “You said you touched yourself. Will you show me? I want to know what it looks like. So that when I… I will have you to think of. Pleasuring yourself. While you watch me.” What a brazen thing to say, but what a truth as well. She had never cowered before him. Why start now?
His hands tightened around her waist, and then the world blurred as he flipped her, took her place against the headboard and straddled her across his lap. She gasped, clutching at his shoulders, holding tight, catching her breath. His fall was open before she’d done any of that, and his shaft rose between them, long and thick and more intimidating than she’d imagined one looking in real life.
“Can I… touch it?” she asked.
His head hit the headboard, and he slammed his eyes closed. “Yes. No. Hell. I’m trying to keep your virginity intact. If you touch me, I might not be able—” A hard swallow, a shiver rippling down his body. Through her, too.
As if she were examining art, not anatomy, she folded her hands in her lap. “What do you want me to do?”
“Nothing.” He grasped his shaft, and his muscles tightened. “Breathe,a chuisle, and I’m hard. Smile and I’m halfway there. Say my name and I’m finished.” He stroked his hand up and down, his eyes flashing open, so dark, so green, so capable of ensnaring her.
“Surely there’s something.” Breathless. She could barely speak, but her fingers—they trembled—didn’t need words. They’d found something to do. She pulled at the back of her stays, loosening them, and she untied the bow keeping her shift tight above her shoulders, and she shimmied out of both, letting them sit useless around her waist.
His hand worked faster, and why did her body ache just watching him? She bit her lip and rolled her hips against his working hand. Yes, that felt delicious. That felt right.
He cursed, he jerked, his body arching into his fist. He launched upward, crushed her to him and kissed her hard, his body pulsing with completion, hers pulsing with renewed desire. Desire he must have sensed in the arching of her belly against him, in the scratch of her nails up and down his back, bunching the linen of his shirt. Also in the way she kissed his neck, her lips little hot things, branding him. He must have sensed what she needed because his hand slipped into her once more, the other cradling her arse, squeezing it.
“So beautiful,” he murmured at her ear. “So damn beautiful.” Hekissed her and kept kissing her until she could not breathe, until she ripped away from his mouth to gulp in air, and still he continued kissing her—her jaw, her neck, her breasts, his fingers stroking in and out and circling around the bud in her curls until—
Harder, quicker than last time, she fell to pieces, gasping now for air, grasping to touch and claim every part of him she could. He held her tight, let her fall apart, his kisses skating more softly across her skin. Picking up one limp arm, he kissed the pounding pulse at her wrist.
“A chuisle.” He nuzzled her wrist, then kissed her palm, wrapped her fingers tightly around it. He collapsed against the headboard, carrying her with him.
Lying atop him, her heart pounded against his. “What does that mean? A… a chuisle?”
“Something like my pulse, my heart. My father used to say it to my mother. I never thought—”
When he did not finish that sentence after several long breaths, Isabella lifted, studied him. He would not finish that sentence, even if she asked. “Tell me about your mother and father?”
“They fit perfectly together. My father had a kind heart but a gruff everything else, and my mother’s softness hid a steel-hard strength. She used to tell me stories. She was Irish, and she believed with her whole heart that every story she told was true. Used to leave little offerings about for the fair folk, thesidhe. To keep her family safe. Not that it did much good.”
Isabella picked at the fabric of his sleeve. “Everyone does that, don’t they? Find little ways to control the world, to make it safer, more predictable. This is why…” She burrowed a bit farther into his embrace and spoke as quietly as she could without sending only mouthed words into silent air. “That is why I like to know things, why I have to find out things. Information. Gossip. You cannot prevent the things you do not know about. And often… we appear to be fools when we act on too little information.”
“You can’t know everything.”
“No. But it is better than hiding.”
His hand, stroking up and down her back, froze. “Perhaps. But aren’t you tired?”
“And aren’t you lonely?” When he didn’t answer, when his hand did not continue its journey up and down her spine, she shifted off him and slung her legs over the side of the bed. “I must leave.”
“Stay. Rest awhile. And keep me from being lonely.” His fingertips settled like butterflies on the curve of her back.
