The tip of a finger circled the clenching opening, then pushed a scant bit inside. Her body sucked hungrily at it, luring it deeply into the spot where she throbbed for him.
“Dear God,” he groaned. “You are so tight and greedy.”
“Take me,” she begged, tortured by the feelings of emptiness and desperation. She lifted her hand and pushed it into the thick silk of his hair, tugging him toward her.
“Not yet.” The lilt of Ireland in his voice was more pronounced now.
She adored it, as she was beginning to adore all of him. Except for those two words.
“I cannot take anymore.” She was shaking violently, a creature of desire and longing.
“You will take all of me, a thiasce.” A wicked smile preceded the return of his lips to her breast.
“A thiasce.” Her eyes stung from the reverence with which he said the words. “What does that mean?”
“My treasure.” His mouth surrounded her aching nipple with drenching heat and she writhed, broken by his endearment and the whiplash of pleasure created by his suckling.
This was what she had needed, what she had refused to forfeit for her family and the future she was destined to have. In all of her life, only Simon had inspired these feelings of complete trust and mindless need. If this was all she could have of him, she would accept it without fear of reprisal and treasure the memory as he claimed to treasure her.
His tongue curled around the tight, hard peak and pressed it against the roof of his mouth, his cheeks hollowing with every drawing pull. An invisible thread led straight to her womb and tugged in timed rhythm to his ministrations. The teasing finger between her legs slipped inside her to the first knuckle, causing a burning stretching that scorched her skin and made her perspire.
“Simon!”
He moved, fitting his mouth over hers, his thumb rubbing into the sensitive knot of nerves just above where he entered her. Pleasure swept through her body in a rush, bowing her spine and freeing a relieved moan that poured into his mouth. Her sex clenched like a fist, then rippled in release, moisture flooding her body and easing the sudden thrust of his hand.
The rending of her maidenhead was scarcely more than a pinch of discomfort amid the violence of her first cli**x. It seemed to affect him more than her, his groan louder than her cry, his powerful frame shuddering brutally. His kisses grew shorter, more fervent. His finger thrust gently, soothingly through the tender tissues of her ravished sex.
“Lynette,” he murmured in a broken voice. “Forgive me.”
Her arms wrapped around him and pulled him tighter to her, her tearstained cheek pressed tightly to his. “I wanted this, mon amour. I wanted all that I can have of you, however much or little that may be. However short or long the duration.”
He leaned heavily against her for the space of several heartbeats, his hands leaving her body. Then his voice came rough and needy, “I must move you higher.”
She tried to help by holding tight to him, fighting through a penetrating languidness that slackened her muscles. He lifted her, his knee pushing into the mattress, then the other, moving them both in a half-crawl across the bed.
He set her down amid a profusion of pillows of various sizes, textures, and colors. Resting back on his haunches, his hands on his thighs, he watched her. Lynette held her arms out to him, giving him the invitation he seemed to be looking for.
Simon rose to his knees and reached for his waistband, drawing her gaze to that tantalizing triangle of skin.
Her mouth dried.
The thick crown and top few inches of his erection were visible there, peeking out defiantly in a straight line toward his navel.
For the rest of her life she knew she would remember this image of him vividly—his knees spread wide, his dark hair loose about tawny shoulders, his abdomen ridged with muscle and glistening with sweat, his c*ck hard and thick and thrusting hungrily upward. She moistened dry lips and a dangerous growl rumbled up from his chest.
A moment later, his breeches were around his knees. Simon rolled to his back and kicked them the rest of the way off. Gloriously nak*d and impressively aroused, he climbed over her in a dazzling display of rippling strength and golden skin.
There was nothing languid about her any longer. She was as hot for him now as she had been in the gallery earlier. And as always, he knew it. A slight smile softened the harshness of his taut jaw. It shattered her, that gentle curving of his voluptuary’s mouth and the adjacent tenderness in his eyes.
His thighs pressed her legs open wider. One arm rested in the mattress by her shoulder, the biceps bulging with the strength required to support his torso above her. The other reached between them, taking his weighty c*ck in hand and tucking the thick crest into the slick entrance of her body.
The heat of him made her whimper and writhe. He set his other hand into the mattress. The only parts of his body touching hers were his outer thighs and the broad head of his cock. Silky smooth and burning hot.
Lynette’s fingernails dug into his forearms as he rolled his h*ps and pushed into her. Her head fell back, her eyes closing. Panting, she clawed at him, certain she would lose her sanity in the maelstrom of sensations flooding her senses.
The scent of his skin was stronger now, surrounding her, filling her mind with every breath. The feel of the coarse hair on his chest and legs was unbearably arousing, emphasizing the differences between them—his hardness to her softness, his strength to her litheness, his size to hers.
“Sweet.” He groaned. “Dear God, you are so sweet and tight.”
“Please . . . Simon . . .” She struggled to arch her h*ps and take him deeper, faster. His weight held her down, forcing her to accept his pace and the short, fierce digs of his c*ck inside her. Advancing and retreating in tiny increments, allowing her body time to adjust to its first claiming by a man. But she did not have time to spare. At any moment she would go mad, she was sure of it.
“Beautiful,” he praised hoarsely as she tightened around him. His h*ps circled expertly, pushing the length and width of him ever deeper into the heart of her. Simon cupped her face in his large hands. “Look at me.”
Lynette forced her heavy lids to lift. He was devastating to gaze upon, his eyes brilliantly blue and glittering, his cheekbones flushed, his hair swaying with his movements.
She whimpered and clung to him. “Deeper.”
“Soon,” he rasped.
“Simon . . . I beg you . . .”
But he refused to be goaded, maintaining his slow relentless drive until finally he was seated to the hilt, impossibly thick and throbbing. She felt every beat of his heart, every rope-like vein, every straining inch. It was the basest, most primitive of dominations. She was crammed full of him, stretched too tight to move.
“I am finally where I have longed to be since the moment I first saw you.” His hands left her face and captured hers, his fingers linking with hers and pinning her down. He moved then, withdrawing until the veriest tip of him remained, then gliding deep and slow.
The friction curled her toes, the wide flared head of his massive c*ck stroking across nerve endings she had never known she possessed. She could not believe she fit him, or that he fit her, but they were tailor-made for each other, despite the snugness of her untried flesh.
His h*ps rose and fell again, still leisurely and sure, his expertise evident in his ability to make every plunge an exercise in unalloyed bliss. He watched her like a hawk, noting every gasp and sob of delight so that he could continue to rub those tender spots. Lost in the rapture he imparted so skillfully, she still noted his intense perusal. It was why she had wanted him, why she had come to him at such great cost. She had wanted to be pleasured like this, to be the sole focus of an expert lover’s attentions, to be cherished by a man whom she adored.
Simon was deliberately and methodically imprinting himself deep into her, making absolutely certain she would remember his touch, his scent, the minutiae of how he felt inside her. Forever. The sense of the end approaching, of the fleetingness of this night, incited a potent desperation. Sweat soaked her skin, causing her hair to cling to her forehead and cheeks in damp tendrils. She twisted and slid beneath him, her head thrashing as he rode her with studious leisure. In and out. Driving deep. Retreating to the tip. Building her arousal moment by moment, making the climb to cli**x a lengthy, unhurried, unforgettable affair.
Her legs wrapped around his pumping hips, pulling him into her, trying to increase his pace to the pounding tempo his guests had used, but unable to match his strength. Nothing could sway or move him. He simply laughed softly and teased her aching n**ples with the hot lash of his tongue.
When the orgasm finally hit, it was devastating, the slow stoking of her arousal releasing in a violent jolt through her body, her sex sucking hard on the swelling c*ck inside her, her womb spasming in grateful relief. She cried out, over and over, shivering violently and sobbing his name.
“Yes,” Simon purred, his mouth to her ear. “Melt for me, a thiasce. Mold to me.”
And she was, she could feel her body softening to hold him more perfectly. He extended her pleasure until she thought she might die of it, the drugging thrusts of his c*ck prolonging her tremors until she could hardly breathe for the joy of it.
Only when her legs fell wide in exhaustion did he take his own pleasure, shafting her quivering sex in fierce strokes that were nearly too much after the ravaging intensity of her cli**x. He gasped lewd praise in her ear, remarking on the feel of her, the scent of her, the totality of her submission.
“For you,” she whispered, her fingers tightening on his. “Only for you.”
He wrenched out of her with an agonized groan, kneeling above her and fisting his cock, spurting his seed across her stomach in long, silky skeins. Guttural cries tore from his throat as he came with such force, it awed her to see it.
She had done this to him, led him to this end. But even in the extremity of his orgasm, he thought of her and protected her.
When he had finished, his head hung low, his face shielded by his hair, his chest heaving with the need for air. A stallion winded from a long, hard ride.
Lynette would have spoken, if her mouth were not so dry and her body so weary. When he left the bed, she held her hand out to him and he kissed her fingertips, his eyes dark with emotion.
He moved behind the screen in the corner. She heard water poured and a cloth wrung out. When he reappeared, his face and locks were damp, his chest glistening, his stride sultry and relaxed. Unabashedly nak*d and half-erect. He sat on the edge of the bed and smiled, setting a chilly wet towel on her stomach.
“Oh!” she gasped, jerking in surprise. “Wicked man.”
The sensation of cold on her fevered skin revived her slightly, although she felt even better after drinking the glass of water he poured for her.
“Thank you,” she murmured, handing it back.
Simon retrieved the cloth and stroked it over her sticky skin, cleaning off his sem*n and soothing the flesh between her thighs. His touch was reverent, his gaze warm with something akin to gratitude.
“You are very quiet,” she said when he had set the towel aside. “Have you nothing to say?”
He paused, breathing deeply. His throat worked on a swallow and tension weighted his shoulders. The more time that passed, the more she adored him. There were no practiced platitudes, no teasing gambits, nothing to take the moment from the extraordinary to the mundane.
“Could it be,” she wondered, tapping her chin with her fingertip, “that Simon Quinn, lauded lover, has been rendered speechless by a virgin?”
Rich, masculine laughter filled the air and stilled the beating of her heart. He leaned over and kissed the end of her nose. “Witch.”
She smiled, and lured him back to bed.
Chapter 12
Marguerite paced the length of Solange’s upstairs parlor and wrung her hands. She was nervous as she had never been, her palms damp and pulse erratic.
She had returned from Quinn’s and fought with herself for hours, wanting to apologize and right things with her daughter, but knowing it was her responsibility as a mother to take extreme steps when necessary. She hated these machinations, hated threatening Lynette with marriage when she knew well how it felt since her own mother had done the same to her. They were too alike, she and Lynette, and now their lives were even more paralleled than ever before. Considering the end she had come to, Marguerite did not consider that to be an acceptable state of affairs.
Solange was out at the theater with a paramour. Lynette was sleeping, as were most of the servants. The house was quiet, the night still. The serenity of her surroundings only emphasized her roiling disquiet.
How did one face her missing heart, knowing she would have to lose it again?
But as time passed, she feared he might not come at all. Did he believe she had betrayed him? Did he not understand that she had left him to protect him?
A soft scratching came to the door, the sound so obtrusive in the silence that it felt as if they had scratched directly across her high-strung nerves. She jumped, tried to call out, and found her throat too dry. She caught up the glass of sherry on the table, drank it down, then tried again.
“Come in.”
Her voice was low and throaty from the alcohol, but she was heard and the portal opened. The maid dipped a quick curtsy and stepped out of the way. A moment later, Philippe filled the doorway.
Marguerite’s hand rose to cover her heart, her senses wracked by the barrage of emotions that assailed her at once.
Mon Dieu, he was still impossibly perfect, his body still lean, his countenance made more distinguished by the lines of time. Even the silver hair at his temples blended beautifully with the gold—an enhancement, not a detriment.
He glanced at the maid and sent her away with a flick of his wrist. She withdrew, closing the door behind her.
He stood unmoving for several moments, studying Marguerite with the same ravenous hunger, the same need to catalog every outward change. His enduring love struck her like a blow to the chest, stealing her breath and making her heart throb in her chest.