The Fall into Ruin, page 18
Her honesty did him in. It wasn’t his place in the bigger scheme of things but he wanted to show her pleasure in a world where she’d so far only known rejection.
Anthony did finally let her go then. He picked up the blanket and spread it before the flames in the hearth. “Lie down,” he said, unable to utter more than two words at a time when she had him on fire. She did as he said, the movement of her breasts hypnotic to him. He removed his jacket and then loosened his shirt cuffs.
“What are you doing?” Her voice was so small. Was she finally thinking about what she asked for?
He lowered himself down on his arms, nudged her legs apart and settled over her. He didn’t say anything at first, only undulated his pelvis over hers, ground his hardness into her softness until she gasped and writhed.
“Do you want to know pleasure, Rose?”
She nodded, her head thrashing, her curls everywhere, fanned out on either side of her head as she bit her bottom lip. Her eyes closed then and her hands fisted in the blanket beneath her.
“You have to make a promise to me first.”
“I won’t tell anyone, I swear it.”
He chuckled and leaned down to glide his tongue over her neck, stopping only to nibble on her sweet, soft earlobe. “That’s not what I meant.”
“What then?”
He met her gaze, the firelight reflected there, her skin flushed and her lips wet. “Promise me you won’t see Smith again. Ever.”
He knew his condition would end her willingness. He spoke hastily before she cooled altogether. They’d come this far and he didn’t want to turn back. He wanted to touch her, to make her wild, to give her release. “I’ll go to her, get Michael back for you. But you need to promise me you won’t ever see her again.”
“I cannot do that and you know it.”
He didn’t think so. He placed his lips against hers and kissed her until she was arching her hips against his, desperation making her reckless. This was a lesson he’d never be able to teach her. Patience. But he knew he could distract her until she agreed to just about anything. On a groan, he said, “Promise me then that you will not see her again without me there. You have to tell me what moves you are making so I can protect you properly.”
Breathlessly she responded, “You don’t own me. Not yet, Anthony Germaine.”
To own Rose Clairmont would be paramount to taming her and they both knew that would never happen. She would never belong to anyone. “This part of you that feels as though it will explode when you’re in my arms?” He pressed into her again, kissed her senseless again. “I have a feeling also. I have this need to protect you. To keep you safe. It’s just as frustrating as yours because you are still working against me, Rose. Say you’ll work with me and I’ll show you sweet release.” Another drugging kiss. Another gentle roll of torture as he drifted a hand down to squeeze the curve of her backside, his fingertips so close to her wetness. “Together we’ll bring Michael home and take Smith down, but only together, or not at all.”
*
What was she supposed to say to that? To him? She couldn’t make promises knowing she would wind up breaking every single one before the end of the next week. He had to stop making her feel so alive and frantic and anxious so she could think. She had to be the most selfish creature on the planet because she wanted it all. Freedom. Pleasure. Him. He’d evoked in her this strangeness that was all bliss mixed with just a little bit of pain. Rose hovered on the edge of something amazing, and the excruciating knowledge that she needed the very thing only he could give her taunted all of her senses at once. She wanted it all. She needed it all.
“I promise not to go to Smith again without you.”
He pushed himself up to watch her. Did he try to catch a glimpse of her soul through her eyes? Did he suspect anything? She wasn’t lying so there was nothing to hide there. Her words were completely honest. She needed him to go with her to Smith. She wanted to tell him her plan but she knew he wouldn’t trust her or Smith and he would do anything he could to ruin her groundwork. It didn’t matter that he wasn’t to be harmed; he wouldn’t like it one little bit. She didn’t like it much either but her options were limited. She could control the situation. She was sure of it. Smith would not dupe her twice.
She couldn’t, however, control this one. Each swipe of his tongue over her skin or sweep of his hands over her body drove her crazy. She should have felt fear or shame or embarrassment but there was only that intensity again, the feeling as though her very insides would come tearing out through her skin. Rose raked her nails down Anthony’s back and kept going until she got to his bottom. She squeezed just as he had done to her. His groan and the answering pressure when he rolled his hardness against her again had her moaning in reply. When her legs opened fully to wrap around his waist causing the delicious friction to hit another spot entirely, she cried out. He captured the sound with his mouth but still he didn’t stop. On and on and on he kissed her, rubbed against her, left her reeling until she didn’t know which way was up.
She took his full weight as he ran both hands down the side of her body, lifting his chest just so and then torturing her nipples with the pads of his thumbs only to replace them with his warm, wet mouth sucking on first one nipple, and then the other. When he reached her hips he kept exploring with hands and mouth, shifting his body down hers until finally he left her completely, unlocking her legs from his waist so he sat between her knees.
Rose heard a whimper and realised too late it came from her. Did that tiny sound amount to begging? If it didn’t then she was prepared to say the words to him. Don’t stop. Keep going. Give me all that you can.
She watched with fascination as he reached for her with his finger, sliding it between her curls.
“I won’t take your innocence, Rose.”
She made a strangled sound as the edge of pleasure became a never-ending curse and said, “Take it, I don’t want it. It’s yours.”
Another slide, almost dipping his nail into the place she’d only ever touched herself. The flock of birds returned to her stomach and rose and fell with each barely there touch.
“You say that now but later, when you’ve thought on it, you will hate me.”
“I hate you now. You’re killing me.”
He smiled and withdrew his hand. “Do you want me to stop?”
She reached around on the floor until she found the hilt of one of her dropped daggers. “I might have to stab you if you do.”
“Threatening a man to make love to you, Rose?” In one deft movement, he reached for her again and slid that knowing finger right into her, up to the knuckle, hard and fast and rough. “Or is it a fuck you’re after?”
She gasped both from the intrusion and from the vulgarity. She cursed often and the words were never pretty but from him, like this, she’d never expected it. His eyes had become black pools reflecting only the flames from the hearth and the knowledge that if he wanted to break her, he probably could. Was this the pirate she had been looking for? The flutter of thousands of tiny wings moved lower inside of her abdomen and the dagger fell from her fingers to clatter at her side.
“Whatever it takes to make you give me what I need,” she ground out.
“Are you afraid of nothing?” he asked but his attention had drifted from her face to what he did with his finger and thumb.
“I’m afraid if you don’t do something, I’ll combust. I need…I need more.”
His gaze was still on that place between her legs. Had she known this was the kind of explosive feeling she could experience, she might have explored her own body more in those long lonely nights at Hell’s Gate. When he added a second finger, they both groaned. Rose’s eyes shut and she had to fight the impulse to squeeze her legs together to make it all go away. Was there an ending to this or had he awakened in her a storm that would never pass?
*
He had died and gone to heaven. Though the wind howled and thunder boomed all around them, Anthony no longer saw it as the Lord’s displeasure—he could only think of her pleasure. Of her undoing. God, how he wanted to witness her orgasm, feel it around his shaft as her insides clenched. He wanted to be the one who brought her to it and then to hold her as she came back down to earth. He wanted to taste her and fuck her and love her all at the same time.
He’d never in his life been so hard. He’d never in his life used the word fuck in the presence of a lady and now he’d said it at least twice in one night. His erection pressed so hard against his trousers, he wondered if the fabric would hold. As he readjusted himself, she lifted her head and stared at him there. His cock jumped as though she touched it. When she licked her lips all sorts of carnal thought took over.
“Can I see it?” she asked.
He nearly died. “No you can’t see it.”
“You’re looking at me,” she pointed out with impatience mingled with desire.
“I cannot completely ruin you, Rose.”
“Is it because you don’t want to? Because you don’t want me?” The fire in her eyes cooled a degree and he wanted to tell her to shut up so he could think for a moment. He was supposed to be distracting her but the moisture on his fingers and the smell of her sex in the air turned him from a want-to-be gentleman into a sex-starved cad.
His fingers tangled in her curls again and he fought and fought. Truly he did. Here she was, begging, ready, willing, and he was going to add to the rejection that had become her life. The gentlemanly way to proceed would be to give her what she wanted, he reasoned. Clearly his rationale had taken a hit if that was all he could come up with.
“Anthony, please.”
Two of his fingers slid into her heat again and when her hips bucked this time, she cursed and groaned and thrashed her head. Fuck it, his mind roared. Fuck her, his body insisted. He kissed and licked her stomach, gently rounded, soft, perfect, dipping his tongue into her belly button.
“Are you sure?” he asked against her skin, his own voice strangled, his own need rising to dangerous levels. It had been more than a year since he’d touched the heart of a woman. He was trying to be respectful, respectable, a gentleman. Where had it gotten him so far? Nowhere. He should remove his fingers from her and run into the night but he didn’t. He continued to feel her, to dip into her heat and find her places of pleasure.
She nodded, no fear, no second guesses, just desire and need.
“In for a penny, might as well be in for a pound.” He hadn’t intended it as a pun but as the words left his lips, the weight lifted from his shoulders and he was light as a breeze and free as a bird. A smile curved his lips and he met her gaze as he continued to move his fingers in and out of her. “But first, a taste.”
Chapter Seventeen
Rose could absolutely not take any more. Her body tried again and again to find what it was she needed to be satisfied, to be normal again, but it was out of her reach. Anthony had even kissed her, down there, his tongue mimicking the way his fingers had slid over her earlier. He didn’t stop and she begged him for more, for everything, her pleas falling on deaf ears as he continued to torture her slowly while he drank of her body. She reached for his head and pulled his hair while she thrashed and moaned. Higher and higher she flew until she could no longer feel the hard timbers at her back, only the teeth that grazed and the hands that wound her up and up.
All at once, her vision fractured and her body clenched like it would not explode but rather collapse back in on itself. Over the edge she fell, finally, fully, all of her being splintering beneath his ministrations. She thought she might have screamed but didn’t much care, such was the oblivion in which she found herself and her insides pulsed and her skin turned molten.
At the edge of it all, was Anthony. He moved up her body, licking, laving, sucking and nipping, his fingers still at play within her. “Do you still want more, Rose?”
She met his gaze over the rise and fall of her bared breasts but then her eyes dropped to the fall on his trousers, his other hand running over the hardness there as though just another taunt in a long line of promises. When her brows rose, he did it again. Touched himself. When she licked her suddenly dry lips and nodded, he straightened, looped the buttons through the holes and freed his member.
“Oh my,” she breathed. She’d never before seen one. Her men had bared their chests at laborious work but never had she witnessed this. “Can I touch it?”
He choked, coughed, shut his eyes on a nod.
Coming to a sitting position, she was tentative at first, only daring to poke it, but then it sprang back and her instinct was to take a hold. When she did, it jumped in her hand. She marvelled at the softness of his skin but the hardness beneath. “What word should I use?” she asked. She knew a few but was not ready to test them all.
“It depends on the context,” he ground through clenched teeth, stripping his shirt from his arms in manic, sharp movements, although she hadn’t seen him undo the buttons.
“Is it very strong?” she asked, ignoring the ridges of his stomach and the hair dusting his narrow chest, instead running her hand up and down the length of him. “It feels as though it would be very strong.”
She let out a little shriek when he grabbed her shoulders and pushed her onto her back, her body once again trapped by his. “That’s enough,” he growled. “One last chance, Rose. If you’re going to say no, now’s the time to do it.”
His hardness pressed into her folds and the heat of him almost burned. “I won’t say no. I want this. I need you.”
I need you.
He stilled.
No one had ever said those words to him before. They fired along his veins and a crack appeared in the wall he’d built around his mischievous nature and the part of him that was probably, most definitely, the son of a pirate. He’d conjured a box for the side of him that got him into trouble and shot his credibility as a genuinely good man. Had he known Rose was the key to unlocking it all, he would never have come anywhere near her.
Stars appeared before his eyes as he nudged at her entrance, making sure she was ready, that she could take his width and length without harming her or causing her pain. “This might hurt a little, but I’ll try to be gentle.”
He’d never lain with a virgin before, even in his days of debauchery. When he’d become so sick of trying to change society’s opinions of him and acted the way they’d always assumed he would, he’d never taken an innocent into his bed, or anywhere else. He started slowly, inch by precious inch, sinking into her, waiting for an obstruction, a tearing, something to slow him and remind him she was new to this.
It never came. Once he was fully seated to the hilt, their eyes clashed. Hers filled with first discomfort and then with wonder. His, he had a feeling, filled with the devil’s need to let it all go and just take her, just be himself here with her.
Her inner muscles clenched and it was all the invitation he needed, sliding nearly all the way out and then back in until they were pelvis to pelvis once more. She was so gloriously tight, like a glove that was a size too small. With each stroke and glide, she adjusted, her breath coming in moans and pants, her nails surely breaking the skin of his biceps and back as she seemed to try to find purchase, a handhold that would see her secure in the hurricane between them.
His movements quickened and she met each one with a lifting or a tilting of her hips, her moans turning to begs and pleas to keep going, harder, harder, don’t stop now. He captured her encouragement with his mouth and kissed her like he was starved of her oxygen, all the while slamming into her welcoming body over and over and over. Until finally, he just let it all go and the ground beneath him shifted.
Thrust.
Fuck being a gentleman.
Thrust.
Fuck being a Runner.
Thrust.
Fuck being Anthony Germaine, son of a pirate first and the daughter of a baron second.
All he wanted in those helpless moments of release was to be one with her, with Rose. He wanted only to be her all, to give her the world, the moon, the stars. When she screamed his name and her body clenched around him, he tossed away the notions of who he’d wanted to be and gave over completely to what she needed of him. His body clenched and his climax washed over him in waves until he was spent.
He smiled and collapsed atop her quivering body.
Perhaps this was where he was meant to be all along.
Chapter Eighteen
It was a funny thing, Rose thought, lying next to Anthony, his body a shield against the cold at her front while the fire warmed her back. She’d never known. She had read books and eavesdropped on cheek-burning conversations amongst the servants but never could anything have prepared her for what they’d just done.
He stirred, kissed her head and wrapped her tighter to his side. “When we are married, I should like to do that every day. Perhaps twice.”
Confusion chased away the lingering bliss and she lifted her head to meet his glazed eyes. “We aren’t getting married.”
Instead of the stubborn tightening of his lips she’d expected, he simply smiled and shifted his focus to the darkened ceiling above. “We’re definitely getting married.”
“I am practically a spinster and a hoyden to boot. Just because we…we…did…that, doesn’t mean you owe me anything. Your honour is getting in the way of common sense.”
“How so?” he asked, his voice rumbling from his chest where she rested her hand.
“No one ever has to know. I won’t tell anyone.”
His chest swelled and he laughed. “I should like to shout it from the treetops right now.”
“Oh.” A dawning realisation made her chuckle along. “You’re teasing me. Very funny.”
He rolled his body until she was pinned once again to the floor, his expression serious, his touch gentle where he held her wrist down to the blanket. “We are getting married. As soon as possible. Tomorrow if I can make it happen. Of course, I’ll have to ride back to London for a special licence so perhaps the day after.”
