The room had a large bed in it.
James thought that after all that had gone on between them, and after all his own thoughts and imaginings about her and her body, he would feel some tension. After all, they were alone. In a room with a bed. And yet, he felt curiously relaxed. Relieved. Because he had found her. Because she was safe, she was not crying or hurt, she had not married Ffoulkes.
Catherine stood at the end of the room, near a window. She examined him.
“You followed me.”
“Yes.”
“You’re not drunk, Lord Daventry.”
“No.”
“In fact, you’re never drunk, are you?”
He looked at her carefully. “Am I such a bad actor?”
“No,” Catherine said and smiled a very little bit. “It’s just that I am such a good one.”
He grinned. “I see. Well, I hope you’ll keep my secret.”
Catherine mimed an invisible key coming to her lips, placing it in her pout, turning it and throwing it away.
There was something about that gesture. The humor of it. The feeling that he could trust her. And her lips. Those pursing lips. He was reminded of a soft kiss in a rank alley.
She turned away, toward the window. “That innkeeper thinks he knows what’s going to happen in this room. Between us.”
The tension that James had thought was absent now flooded the room even as blood flooded into his cock.
“He does?” James thought his own voice squeaked and he sounded twenty years younger than his age.
“The question is,” she almost whispered, “is he right?”
James’ breath caught in his throat. “I think that a gentleman would say that it must be the lady’s choice.”
“Must it?” Her gaze was still directed out the window.
“When the gentleman was slapped the last time he kissed the lady.”
Catherine’s head turned and she looked at James. “I hit you not because you kissed me, but because you stopped kissing me.”
She visibly quivered. He looked at the floor and the distance between them. In three long strides, he could join her at the window and take her face in his hands and kiss her.
“If you had said that at the time,” he said, raising his eyes to her. “Things might have turned out very differently that night.” Might he cross to her now?
“I lost my temper, and I apologize, Lord Daventry. It won’t happen again.”
He tucked his thumbs into his fists that hung loosely at his sides. “Which part won’t happen again? The kissing or the losing of the temper or the blow?”
And then a small body was hurled against his.
She had charged him, not waiting for his seduction and the careful kisses he had already planned in his head. He could not contain the fierce whirlwind who clawed at his clothes, who pulled his head down and demanded his mouth.
And that anguished moan. He thought he would spend in his breeches from that moan.
She released him and backed away, toward the bed.
“If I am to be accused of being a promiscuous woman,” she panted, her voice husky, “I might as well have the pleasure of it.”
She pushed her cloak off and with one quick movement pulled her dress over her head. She kicked off her shoes and rolled down her hose. She was just in her stays over a chemise and a petticoat. And then the petticoat was on the floor and she turned her back to him.
“My lord.” It was a plea. A desperate plea. It was the sound of a condemned prisoner begging for her life.
He walked to her and put his hands on the laces of the stays.
“Shall I?” he asked, hardly believing this was happening. To him. With her.
“Yes,” she groaned.
He began to fumble with the laces, untying the knot and loosening the stays. As he did so, he followed his irresistible desire to kiss her where her neck joined to a milky-white shoulder. So soft, so warm. But she stepped away in the middle of his kiss and pulled off the loosened stays. She faced him again and pulled her chemise over her head.
He saw her round, firm thighs, edging into her generously curving hips. He saw her golden maidenhair covering her sex. Her abdomen, which bore the beautiful silvery stretch marks of her pregnancy with Arabella, and her slender waist. And her breasts, full and heavy and round, with their large pink areolas and exquisite nipples. Those breasts he felt he knew so well, so many times had he conjured them in his head in the last month.
He moved nearer to her and put his hands on her upper arms, feeling her tremble.
“Catherine,” he began.
She put her arms up around his neck and pulled his mouth down to hers.
All she knew was that she wanted him. Close. As close as possible. If she could melt into his skin, she would. As they kissed again and again and he slid his hands down her back, cupping her bottom, she found herself standing on tiptoe and lifting her left leg to wrap around his waist. She wanted her sex against his sex. She had to have it and it made no difference that he was still clothed. She had no thought except for her hunger for him.
As she lifted her leg, he slid his hand farther down to just below her buttocks and lifted her by the haunches on both sides so that he was holding her and both her legs were wrapped around his waist. They were just as they had been in the alley. But she was going to have Jamie. Now. In this room. Nothing would stop her. Nothing could.
She could feel the wetness in her crease, the throb of her pearl, as she rubbed her sex against the tip of his member that strained against the waistband of his breeches.
He broke off from kissing her for a moment and grinned devilishly and shifted all her weight to just one of his arms. He bent his head and used his free hand to bring one of her breasts and its nipple to his mouth. As he sucked, the most delicious piercing sensation connected Catherine’s breast and groin and she cried out, “Jamie!”
She could not help herself. She began to rub herself on his still-clothed member more quickly. The rough friction was almost too much for her and she thought she might climax at any moment even as her sex was hungry to be filled.
“Put me on the bed, Jamie,” she moaned. “Take your clothes off. I need you. Please.”
He released her breast from his mouth and with his free arm, he flipped the counterpane open, slid the bedwarmer out, and put Catherine on the bed. He took the bedwarmer to the fire and put it on the hearth. He began to untie his cravat.
Catherine watched him undress through a haze of her lust. Coat and waistcoat. Shirt. She saw that beautiful torso. Golden skin to match his golden-brown head of hair. His chest, the muscle there that she had felt through his shirt when she had clung to him. And his long, lean flanks that flexed as he leaned over to take off his boots and hose. He straightened up, and as he put his hands to the buttons of the fall of his buff breeches, she stayed him with a gesture.
“Come here,” she said as softly as she could, knowing that her voice was graveled with desire, curling her hand in a beckoning gesture. She sat up and put her legs over the edge of the bed as he came toward her. On his perfectly flat abdomen, there was a trail of almost invisible golden-brown hair that started at his navel and descended down into his breeches. She touched that hair with one fingertip and followed the trail down to the waistband and over the rigid bulge under his front fall. He gasped and rested one of his hands on her back. She undid the buttons and freed his member. As it sprang out, erect, Catherine was unsurprised to find his cock quite long but was astonished by the sizable girth. It was no match for her tall, slender Jamie. This was the phallus of some rough primitive warrior, a Visigoth, a Viking.
James shuddered as she curled her hand around his cock. She noted that her thumb could not meet her middle finger. The end of his member was already wet. She put the tip in her mouth and lightly licked the end, looking up at him. He was looking down at her and she could not read his face. It didn’t matter. She had his member in her hand, and she knew he wanted her. And then she took him into her mouth.
James looked down and was overwhelmed by his view of his shaft in Catherine’s small, rosy mouth, her large breasts visible in the middle ground and in the background, her lap where her body forked into legs and her labia were shielded by a fine golden fuzz. He felt that at any minute, from the image alone, never mind the warmth and wetness and licking he felt on his cock, he would climax like an overexcited boy. This was not how he wanted to bed Catherine. He had to take control of the situation.
“Lie back, Catherine,” he said firmly.
Very quickly, she did so while he stepped out of his unbuttoned breeches. He swung her legs onto the bed and got in beside her, wedging his body against hers and sliding her to the center of the bed.
She was on her side, her body vibrating, her breathing both deep and rapid. As she put her hands on his chest and started kissing his skin, licking his nipples, he could feel her tremble. And she was making sounds he had never heard before from any woman, sounds of agitated arousal, almost small screams. He put one hand between her legs and felt her wetness and as he did so, her hands and mouth on his chest became more frenzied, as if she were trying to devour him. One of her hands dragged down his body and grasped his cock. He slid his fingers in her smooth folds up to find her hardened pearl and brushed it. She did scream then, muffling it into his chest. He kept his thumb lightly on her pearl and slid his other fingers down and found her opening. He put a finger inside and started rubbing the roof of the opening, just behind her pearl. As he moved his finger in and out of her, softly brushing her pearl with his thumb, her head went back, arching her whole body up off the mattress.
“Jamie,” she panted, her voice half harsh whisper, half groan, her hand running up and down his shaft. “Jamie, I need you inside me.”
His arousal had only increased with her frenzy in the bed. He had never felt so hard. He wanted to be inside her, but his excitement was so heightened, he thought he might spend very quickly once he was.
But she had told him what she wanted, and it was what he wanted, too. He could not remember wanting anything, any woman, any sensation more. He took his finger out of her opening and rolled to kneel between her legs. He held himself up with his arms, fearful of his weight on her. Still her hand was on his cock, stroking him, not letting him go.
“Catherine,” he said and she allowed him to replace her hand with his own. He put his sex against hers, his hardness against her dripping softness. She put her legs up and out, kicking the counterpane off, pointing her toes to the ceiling. Her small hands were on his hip bones, pulling his pelvis toward hers, urging him, wanting him.
The silk of her folds and then the inner warmth and wetness and tightness.
And so much of her frenzy was suddenly contained, even as she contained him.
“Jamie,” she cooed. She was still. Her blue eyes looked up at him. She licked her lips. A drop of sweat ran down her neck and between her breasts.
He was lost in a welter of feeling. On one hand, he wanted to hold still, to savor this moment, the incredible sweetness of being inside her while he looked at her face and her breasts. On the other hand, he wanted to thrust and move and buck.
She made it easy for him. She pushed her rounded hips up off the bed to hold all of him, and she began to rock.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I . . . just . . . can’t . . . wait.”
He joined her then, pulling back when she pulled back, thrusting in when she raised her pelvis to his. He leaned over to brush his lips against hers when he thrust. Her wildness returned as she grabbed at his hair, his back, his shoulder blades, and back to his hair. He supported himself with one hand and twisted his other wrist so as to touch her pearl as he thrust.
“Shall I touch you here?” he asked.
“No, no, no, oh Jamie, yes, yes!” she cried out, looking into his eyes. And then she sneezed. She shuddered and stopped thrusting up toward him. He could feel her sex close even more tightly around his, her upper body convulsing in perfect synchrony with the lower body spasms that gripped his member. He stilled his hand and waited.
She stared at him with a glazed look in her eye. Her breath was ragged and then became deeper, slower, more even. She whispered something that might have been “My mastiff,” but that made no sense to him.
He bent his head to hers and kissed each one of her blonde eyebrows. Those marvelously expressive brows. She grabbed his head with both her hands and kissed him deeply, forcing her tongue into his mouth as she started pushing up against him.
He began to thrust again. He was so aroused by her arousal, her climax, that he could not stop himself. Within a minute, he was consumed by pleasure and spilling himself into her, clenching on top of her, looking down into her eyes, as she held his flanks. He collapsed on top of her, forgetting himself for a moment, and then tried to raise himself off of her in a panic. But she held him tight.
“I won’t break, I’m not made of porcelain,” she breathed in his ear.
He rolled over, taking her with him, so that he was under her and she was perched on his chest and abdomen.
“It’s crushing you, not breaking you that I’m worried about,” he said and lifted his head up to put his mouth on her perfect white shoulder. “And you look like you’re made of porcelain.”
She purred contentedly, lying on top of him, her cheek to his chest. He stroked her back, long soft strokes, from her shoulders all the way down to her buttocks until he noticed she had some gooseflesh. Holding her to him with one arm, he reached for the counterpane and drew it over them. As he did so, he felt the stickiness at his groin for the first time. Some of it was her, undoubtedly; she had been very ready for him. But most of it was him, his seed.
He had not used a French Letter. He who had always been the most scrupulous of all the rakes.
“Catherine,” he began.
She raised her head from his chest and looked at him. “Kate.”
“Kate—”
“Jamie,” she hummed and kissed him on the sternum.
“Kate, I did not use . . . I had no French Letter . . .”
She began to shake. He realized she was laughing. She moved herself up his body so her face was above his, her beautiful breasts resting on his collarbone. He was very interested in what she might say when she was done laughing but he couldn’t help taking his hands off her back to raise them to the sides of her breasts so that he might hold them. They curved perfectly into his hands, full and soft. These breasts of his warrior goddess. His unbound Viola. He began to rub his thumbs over her nipples and was gratified to feel the tips grow erect under his touch.
“Jamie.” She kissed the side of his mouth. “The advantage,” she kissed his chin, “of bedding,” she kissed the angle of his jaw, “an old woman,” she nibbled on his earlobe and spoke softly in his ear, “is that there are no babies to worry about.”
He turned his head to hers so that they were eye to eye, nose to nose, mouth to mouth. He covered her mouth with his and kissed her deeply, slowly, luxuriating in the taste of her mouth, the feel of her tongue, the warm scent of her lips, all the while rubbing her nipples.
When she broke finally from the kiss to breathe, he whispered, “I don’t see an old woman. I see a goddess.”
“Jamie,” she said, her voice strained. She began to move atop him.
Her transient peace was gone, shattered. He was holding her breasts and rubbing her peaks with his thumbs, alternating between quick, soft brushes and rougher, slower strokes. Her groin throbbed in time to the movements of his thumbs, and she began to feel her sex dampen and widen. He moved lower down the bed, still beneath her, and moved his thumb off one nipple. She felt a pang of loss, which quickly turned into a flash of the most delirious pleasure as he took her breast in his mouth and began to suck. Heavenly sharp raptures shook her. He lightly bit the nipple and then transferred his lips to the other breast. He kissed, he licked. He suckled. And when he nibbled on the second breast, she raised her head up, neck straining, and she sneezed just before her entire body was rocked by a climax that started at the tips of her breasts and spread, in concentric circles across her entire body, like the ripples from a stone cast into a still pond.
She collapsed off to the side.
“My breasts,” she panted, “are very susceptible.”
He took her hand and pressed her palm flat to his mouth and kissed it. And as he did so, he looked at her with those crystalline gray eyes whose corners crinkled up and she knew he was smiling under her hand. She moved her hand to his cheek and the smile was there indeed.
“Kate,” he said through his grin. “I would say they are exquisitely susceptible.”
As she slid her hand off his cheek to fill her fingers with his hair again, she could feel weariness invade her body. When one has fought against something for months as she had, even a temporary surrender was exhausting.
She thought then of sending him away to find a room and a bed of his own. To draw the lines. It was this one time and this one time only. They were not lovers. They would never be lovers. That was an impossibility. But she did not think he would understand. Understand that what he aroused in her could never be allowed to rule her life again.
But what harm could there be in letting him stay close this one time?
Every harm. Every danger. But for the moment, she could not bring herself to care about the peril of letting him stay in her bed.
She turned and pushed back into him, even as he gathered her in, his chest against her back, his arm pillowing her head, his other arm around her body, his hand between her breasts, his knees behind her knees. Once they were positioned thus, he was so still. Catherine felt his stillness infect her, and the muscles in her neck relaxed. And she slept.
She awoke some hours later, having felt something change behind her, although he had not shifted his position.
“My lord?” she whispered.
“Yes?” he said, seemingly fully awake. He did not move.
She nudged back against him, pressing into his tumescence.
His mouth was just behind her ear. “I apologize for waking you, Mrs. Lovelock.”
“Mrs. Lovelock?” She laughed. “I think I’m a little naked for that mode of address.”
“You called me ‘my lord.’”
Very slowly, she turned to him, reluctant to break the warm touch of his body to hers. But in turning, there was a thrilling friction over her breasts as he kept his arm in place, his forearm abrading her nipples until she was facing him and his arm was curled around her back, her breasts brushing against his chest. She wanted to see his eyes. There they were, gray, soft, maybe a little drowsy.
“What should I call you, my lord?” she asked. She put her hand to his hair, that hair.
His hand caressed her spine. He bit his lower lip as if in thought. “Well, the last time you spoke to me, Kate, a few hours ago, you called me Jamie.”
“Jamie,” she said and kissed him.
He had awoken perhaps fifteen minutes before she had. He had slept heavily, surprisingly heavily considering their circumstances. He would have thought that he would have been vigilant and alert, but his sleep was dreamless and deep.
As he came to himself, feeling her pressed to him in such a way so that she was against every part of the front of his body, he thought that this, this position, this flesh-to-flesh contact with this woman, this was something worth dying for. Or living for. He opened his eyes and all he could see was her head of golden curls. But he felt her chest rising and falling with each breath. He imagined that his hand between her breasts could feel the thump of her heart. Her round bottom, that delicious bottom, pushed into his groin. And now, undeniably, his member began to harden. He held still, holding her, keeping his breath even and quiet.
And she woke and spoke to him and turned to him and said, “Jamie” and kissed him. And when she said, “Jamie,” it pierced him with such sweetness that he kissed her back almost as he might kiss one of his sisters. But Catherine—Kate—was having none of that. She put her arms around his neck and filled her hands with his hair, drawing his head toward her, kissing him as she first had in the alley. Soft, so soft, so light. Then, forceful, avid. She pressed the front of her body against his, her breasts against his chest, her thighs against his cock.
She moved her lips from his mouth but it was only to kiss his jaw, his neck, the base of his throat. She moved to his collarbone. Quite without meaning to, James had gone from lying on his side to lying flat, as if she had tipped him over. She, who was shorter by more than a foot and weighed six or seven stone less than he did, had melted him onto his back, and she was on top of him and moving her kisses down from his collarbone to his chest. She held her pelvis high off of him and with her mouth on his lower chest, her own sex was just above his. Her cleft touched his cock, first just the lightest of touches and then a pressing, a prodding, a rubbing.
He throbbed to feel how wet she was.
She looked up at him. “I must have you,” she whispered. He felt he could do nothing but nod.
She used her hand to hold his shaft and lowered herself down onto him.
Ahhh.
Entrance into her was, if possible, even more arousing than it had been a few hours earlier. He was fully erect but only partially inside her. He immediately wanted to grab her hips and pull her down so that he would be deep inside her. But he resisted. Instead, he rested his hands on the sides of her thighs as she mastered the depth and speed of their coupling with her movements. He was rewarded with the sight of her throat as her head was thrown back, golden hair falling in a ripple. And her irresistible breasts moving up and down. She arched her back and he could no longer see her throat, only her breasts and abdomen. He placed his hands on her waist and supported her as she moved up and down on his shaft in a quick, jerking rhythm. Her walls clenched his cock. Her halting breaths sped up and she let out a moan. A moan that was interrupted by a sneeze.
And then she came out of her backward lean, straightened up, gave him a dazed smile that hardened his member even more, and fell forward onto his chest with a little whimper. And even as she seemed to have gone from all straining hunger to all soft satisfaction, her hips kept moving rhythmically and she took him deeper and deeper into herself.
“Mmmmmmm,” she said, humming against his chest. “Mmmmmmm.”
“Kate,” he whispered.
She gripped his upper arms and sneezed as her body shook again. He thought she might rest then, laying on his chest, but she continued the sinuous rocking of her pelvis against his. He was in the sweetest of agonies. He could not bear it. He had to control the rhythm of the rubbing of her sex on his sex and he could not do that underneath her.
He held her to his chest and quickly rolled over. He was on his elbows and forearms and knees, and she was lying on the mattress, her upper half completely caged by his body, her legs wrapped around his waist. He hovered over her and she looked up at him, her mouth open, her skin flushed. Her arms were up over her head, her fingers buried in his hair.
“Kate,” he grunted.
“Jamie,” she gasped.
He quickened his thrusting. He wanted his whole body on her but he held back, still worried about hurting her.
She read his mind. “You won’t hurt me.”
He put his whole body against her then, gave her all his weight, pressing her into the mattress, as he released in his own spasm of bliss, and finally was still.
After a short time, she sighed and he suddenly feared that he had hurt her and he closed his arms around her back and rolled on his side so his weight was off her but they were still pressed tightly together and he was still inside her, just barely.
She moved a little, but he tightened his grip, and she exhaled and stayed still.
“Just a minute more,” he said. “Please.”
“Of course,” she murmured.
He was washed by a flood of emotion. Although they were naked and had just climaxed and he was still inside her, he did not believe this feeling had to do with copulation.
“That’s been a minute, surely,” she said and he relaxed his arms and she rolled away.
“Yes,” he said and got up on his elbow and touched her face. “Thank you, Kate.”
Later, she curled herself into the side of his body and put her head on the hollow between his chest and his shoulder and he put that same arm around her body so that his hand stretched down below her bottom where he stroked the backs of her thighs with featherlight touches. Until his hand stilled.
She’s mine, he thought as he drifted off.
He woke to cold sunshine streaming in and an empty room. Her little trunk was gone.
There was a sealed note left for him with the innkeeper.
“J,” the note ran. “The mail coach is leaving shortly and I am taking it and will go to see my youngest daughter. I must remind myself that I am, after all, a mother. Thank you for another rescue, even though I assure you that I was not in need of it. Again. There was so much loveliness in all that passed between us last night, and I thank you for indulging me. Good luck to you and goodbye.” She signed it, “Mrs. Edward Lovelock.”
