Needing more, he smoothed his palms down her corseted sides to the softness of hips and thighs and the firm, mind-consuming curve of her bottom. Lifting her, he molded his hands to the shape of those high, rounded buttocks and wondered how anything could be so perfect, so delightful.
The release of a few pins brought down her hair, a silky cloud of spun gold. He buried his nose in it, dragging her long legs across his own until she sat perched in his lap, her arms tight around his neck, all of her his for the taking.
Dare he?
He slipped his hand beneath her skirts, gliding along the silky skin to her knee and allowing his fingertips the pleasure of tracing its shapely bend. Insatiable, he dragged his lips across her face, her throat, down the fragrant curve of her bosom. His free hand followed, fingers sliding into the sweep of her neckline.
“Laurel, I want you. You know I do, but I want more than kisses and a few stolen caresses. My only question is what, and how much, do
you
want?”
Her bosom trembled against his lips. “I want your hands on me. Everywhere.”
“Are you quite certain?”
“Oh, yes.”
He brought her hands to his lips and kissed them, turned them over, and suckled her palms. “And will you put your hands on me, in return, or are you afraid?”
A mingling of uncertainty and joy brightened her eyes and daubed her cheeks with fevered patches of color. Her bottom lip slipping between her teeth, she slowly set about unbuttoning his waistcoat, working the knot free from his cravat, opening his shirt.
With each light touch his lust for her mounted, yet he sat motionless against the cushions, tensed but passive, giving himself up to her ministrations and the dark, enveloping bliss of erotic pleasure. When at last she peeled the layers away and leaned to press her mouth to his bare skin, his chest muscles quivered; his blood raced.
Tenting his trousers, his sex throbbed visibly. Laurel saw it, and the candid wonder in her eyes nudged a part of his conscience that was fast turning numb. How innocent she seemed. Indeed, he had even compared her to Virgo, the virgin. Yet at the shy touch of her fingers closing around him through his trousers, his breath hitched and he dismissed all lingering notions of guilt.
He grabbed her in his arms again, swiftly, roughly, making her yelp and grin and arch her neck in an open invitation for him to set his mouth against it. He suckled her skin and slid his tongue along the underside of her jaw, making her squirm and laugh and press herself more tightly to him. God, she was beautiful. Innocent, yes, and at the same time wickedly loose, a fallen angel that had landed smack in his lap.
What on earth was he to do with her?
He hesitated for the duration of two ticks of the mantel clock before reaching a decision that felt as inevitable as breathing. Scooping her up in his arms, he gritted his teeth against the pain in his side and carried her into the next room.
His bedchamber.
Chapter 19
L
aurel knew where Aidan was bringing her, and knew she should demur, should put an end to this madness before it spun wildly out of her control.
Too late. Thought and desire meshed into a sensual conviction that silenced Victoria’s warnings and any admonishments society might have made, leaving only her body’s desperate plea to feel him, know him, join with him in that most intimate of acts.
The fireplace opened onto this room, too, and rich, tawny light bathed the walls, draperies, and hulking four-poster. Aidan stopped beside the bed and lowered her feet to the floor. He held her, kissed her, slid both hands to her bottom, and pressed her to his arousal.
His hands moved higher to undo the buttons down her back. Layer by layer he stripped her clothes away. She felt the fire’s kiss on her arms and shoulders . . . her ankles and thighs . . . on her naked belly and finally her breasts. All the while he held her close, keeping her within the circle of his arms so that though she stood naked before him, she felt covered and protected and unafraid.
His lips played tenderly against her own, hot, feathery kisses that lit a blaze at her core. He raised her chin, kissing his way along her neck and lower. She shivered as his tongue traveled between her breasts, as he held each mound in his palms and kissed, sucked, leaving them heavy and tight with longing.
His mouth closed around a nipple, and suddenly her entire world felt delineated by the texture of his tongue and lips. At the light scrape of his teeth, her womb contracted. Her knees threatening to buckle, she let out a soft cry.
Straightening, Aidan stepped back. The flickering firelight caressed his features, smoothing the planes and deepening the hollows. Gilded and shadowed, he was beautiful, breathtaking. Though her limbs trembled with the desire to propel herself into his arms, she waited, spellbound, as he removed his boots and set them aside. Then his hands went to his trousers, his eyes piercing her through the shadows as he undid each button.
He kicked away the last of his clothing. The room around her spun in her vision while he became the center of her focus, her existence. Solid and firm, he was the only fixed image in an otherwise whirling universe. Her gaze dipped to his hardened length standing proudly and imposingly away from the rest of him. Such power, such strength. Her body ached to have him inside her.
A feral glint lit his eyes as he came forward, and her body pulsed with the anticipation of his touch. His chest muscles twitching, his features rigid with pent-up emotion, he framed her face and kissed her. No other parts of their bodies touched but their lips and the faintest brush of his chest hairs across her nipples.
Taken unawares by a surge of passion, Laurel cried out again. All at once Aidan swept her into his arms and dropped her, without ceremony, onto the downy center of the bed.
In a fluid motion he levered himself on top of her. The heavenly weight of his body pressed her deeper into the mattress, compressing the feathers into a snug nest around them.
“Frightened?”
“Not anymore,” she said, and meant it. Tonight she had experienced the most frightening moments of her life, but Aidan had saved her, as he had saved her before. Grabbing the chain that still hung around her neck, she yanked it free and tossed it to the bedside table. The treasure she had coveted all her life now seemed defiled, seemed a lie, and she wanted no further part of it.
She wanted only this, only Aidan. “How could I ever be anything but safe in your arms?”
“Oh, but I assure you, madam, there will be no safety for you here tonight.” His wicked grin sprinkled gooseflesh up and down her body. “Prepare to be ravished . . . very,
very
slowly.”
He began at the tips of her fingers, suckling each into his mouth with tantalizing swirls of his tongue. He nuzzled a moist path along her arm to her shoulder, her nape, then turned her to tend to each beaded ridge of her spine, lower and lower, all the way down to the cleft of her bottom. He touched her in places that tingled and tickled and shocked, that reduced her to shivering delight and made her beg him to stop and then plead for more.
Smoothing her hair away, he eased his body over hers. His mouth worked shimmering magic at her nape while his shaft nudged between her legs and teased her entrance from behind until she throbbed painfully and whimpered her longing into the pillows. Ah, but he didn’t torment her for long. Rolling her onto her back, he reached a hand between them, seeking and finding the sensitized flesh between her legs. A finger slipped inside her.
Her cries this time came longer, louder, as bursts of ecstasy hurtled through her body. Bucking against his palm, she clenched and unclenched her fists while her surroundings dissolved into rippling pleasure.
“Laurel, look at me.”
She opened her eyes. Her senses felt heightened. Even the fire’s glow seemed overly bright, its crackle sharp in her ears.
The beauty of Aidan’s smile brought tears to her eyes. “Laurel, darling, this is your first time.”
A tear spilled over. Her throat closing around the truth, she could only nod.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Yes, why hadn’t she?
Because she had been deceiving him all along, weaving falsehood into falsehood until even she could barely discern between truth and lies. And because she feared how he would react when he learned the depth of her deception, how he might push her away and turn his back on her . . . forever.
“I am sorry, I—”
He held his fingers to her lips. “You’ve nothing to be sorry for. Just tell me what I should do, either stop or go on, because, so help me, at this moment I don’t know what is right.”
No more than she did. She knew only what she wanted. “Please, don’t stop.”
He hesitated as if still uncertain, still debating. Then with a gentle thrust, he entered her. There was the glide of his length, then a raw, stabbing pain. He retreated, then eased himself deeper inside her, stretching her inch by inch, each time waiting for the discomfort to subside before advancing again.
“So tight,” he murmured. “So luscious . . .”
She felt his restraint, the postponement of his release, however excruciating, until he had satisfied her. Retreating and surging, he filled her, became part of her, her body, her being. Pain faded, leaving only his thrusts to carry her headlong into a breakneck passion as exhilarating as it was frightening.
An overwhelming energy built and burst and rippled inside her. He swallowed her cries and lunged, seeking fulfillment by sheathing himself fully and sealing their bodies. The heat of his seed as it pumped into her sent her soaring again, and she shouted against his shoulder, unaware that there should be any reason to hide her rapture, her delight.
Her love of him.
When at last the rapture receded, he draped himself over her. His lips moved across her eyelids, her cheeks, her lips. His body covered hers for a long moment. Then she felt him begin to ease away.
Her hands closed over his shoulders. “No. Stay.”
“I’m not going far. I’m heavy, Laurel. I don’t wish to hurt you.”
“Stay. You feel, oh, heavenly.”
He relaxed against her, his muscular weight filling the contours of her body. “As long as you wish,” he whispered.
Forever.
She didn’t say it out loud. But it was a hope that filled her heart, her soul.
With her cheek pillowed on his chest, Laurel dozed while Aidan held her. His thoughts raced as he stared into the fire beyond the foot of the bed.
He had once claimed to her that even a rogue followed his own rules. Well, he had just broken the most cardinal of those rules, for if this had been a first for Laurel, it had been equally momentous for him.
Married women of less-than-spotless virtue, widows who had sworn off marriage, high-class courtesans, and honest, workaday whores—these had been the focus of his sexual exploits since he’d joined the Home Office. All had been women who asked no questions and demanded no commitments.
Would Laurel? He would bet his life she wouldn’t. If he had learned anything about this woman, it was that her actions were dictated by pride and a strict code of integrity.
The latter notion brought him up short. Why would he assign such an attribute to a woman who had lied to him at every turn?
But hadn’t he done the same? Should he assume that she had done so for reasons any less noble than his?
No, and that made his actions tonight all the more irresponsible, not to mention reprehensible. His work for the Home Office precluded his allowing a respectable woman into his life. Men like him didn’t have wives and families. Attachments were a liability and made a man of his occupation vulnerable. Despite appearances, he existed on the fringes of society, observing and analyzing but never truly belonging. People only supposed they knew him, and that made his job both easier and safer, for him and for them.
Was it time to quit?
That such a thought would even cross his mind shocked him . . . and demonstrated the extent to which this particular woman affected him. The prospect wrapped its allure around him as he pictured the two of them retiring to one of his country estates, occasionally visiting Town with their several children in tow. . . .
The idyllic images were shattered by the remembered crack of a pistol and the ghastly sight of his father slumped across his desk six years ago.
With a silent groan, Aidan threw an arm across his eyes and attempted to blot out the blood and gore and the hopelessness of his younger self squeezing his hands around his father’s shattered skull, desperately trying to undo the horrific act.
He’d been too late then, just as he had been too late in detecting the financial scam that had driven a broken Charles Phillips to load his gun that day. He could never bring back his father, but now that he understood his talents for rooting out financial fraud, he
could
save countless others from a similar fate.
Would he abandon them in pursuit of his own happiness?
Laurel stirred, her soft exhalation across his chest a stark reminder that the question was not an easy one to answer. What of
her
happiness,
her
needs?
If he had only adhered to his damned code of ethics . . .
Little would be different now if he had. He had to admit that. It wasn’t simply making love to her that had thrown his future into a shambles. It was having met her, touched her, held her . . . loved her.
God help him.
Laurel shifted again, the movement ending with a twitch of her shoulders. Her breath caught, rasped. She began to mumble.
“No . . . no. Holly. Danger . . . run. No . . . not safe. Don’t speak. . . . Not safe. Ivy . . . go, go through the garden, through the garden. . . .”
Aidan held her tighter, remembering someone once telling him that it was best not to wake a person in the middle of a nightmare. Such dreams usually passed quickly and were instantly forgotten, unless the dreamer awoke suddenly. He kissed her hair and lightly stroked her back in an attempt to soothe the dream away. She startled him by crying out and lurching upright.