After the Scandal (39 page)

But she did not faint. She gasped in a useful lungful of sweet air, and let the pleasure cascade all the way through her, from the very edge of her skin all the way down to the empty center of her belly. She let the pleasure fill her up, like a cup filling to its brim and then over the brim, soaking her in the wonder that was his intimate kiss.

His voice came to her from far away. “May I?”

Whatever it was he asked, she was glad of it. “Yes,” she said, though her voice was nothing but pieces of air. “Yes, please. Please.”

His hands went to the laces of her gown, quick and nimble, loosening the ties and pulling the seams apart. The bodice sagged loose, and she was pulling it away, pulling her arms free of the tiny cap sleeves, so she could wrap her arms around his neck and hold her breasts tight against him, because when she moved, even just the tiniest amount, the glorious, ravenous pleasure surged anew.

But his hands were at her shoulders, urging her away from him so he could push down the straps of her stays, and brush down the short sleeves of her chemise. His lips were whispering over the upper curves of her breasts. But it wasn’t enough. So when his fingers plucked at the laces of her stays she did not object. She encouraged.

“Yes, please. There. Get them off. Get them off so I can—”

And then the laces were loose, and she could push them away and free herself. His hands, his warm, callused, clever hands, and fingers were already there, cupping her breasts. Taking her tightly puckered nipples between his forefingers and thumbs, and rolling them gently against the cotton fabric. And then his mouth was on her, sucking at her nipples through the thin lawn of her chemise, wetting the fabric until it cooled and drew her sensitized nipples into ever tighter, more sensitive peaks.

Everything was pleasure. Everything was brilliant, brilliant delight. And bliss. And need.

And then his clever, clever fingers were pushing the chemise down to her waist and she was bared to him, arching back over the strength of his arm. Offering herself to him. The only gift she had to give was herself.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Claire gasped—a small but thoroughly satisfying sound of encouragement and benediction. He could hear her agitated breathing meld with his own, and all but feel the pleasure and excitement coursing through her veins. He could feel the delicate, rising heat of her body as she instinctively pressed closer to him.

Tanner’s world narrowed to her and her alone. Her breasts were beautiful and white, her skin gleaming pale and silvered in the moonlight shivering through the windows, washing across the bed for a long second—long enough for the image to etch itself indelibly into his brain. Her nipples were the same warm, delicious pink as her lips, and her skin held the heady fragrance of white gardenia and deep green summer.

He would give her what she wanted—what she didn’t even know she was asking him for, with her breathy sighs and plush, inquisitive mouth. With her soft insistence.

“Tanner?” Her voice held just the right amount of question to make him want to answer her with his mouth on hers. With his hands saying,
Yes, yes, whatever you want,
and his fingers whispering enticing secrets against her skin.

Because they had secrets, his clever fingers. They worked at the behest of his brilliant analytical mind, and he knew how to watch and what to think and when to act. If he knew nothing else, he knew each and every signpost along the road to her complete arousal.

He laid his hand gently along the side of her neck, testing the race of her pulse, gauging the level of her excitement. Was it enough? Was it enough to overcome both her scruples and any lingering fear?

He leaned away from her, just a fraction, just enough so his body couldn’t press upon her or hem her in. Enough so if she wanted the sweet frisson of the contact of her body against his, she would have to move closer. Or not.

It was her choice—her need to be in control, even if she did not yet know it.

He knew it. He understood her. And he would act accordingly. For both of their benefit.

Because the truth was that however attentive he was trying to be in watching and gauging her reactions, he could not really think—he was suffering from the same unaccustomed heating of his skin as she. The same unruly rush of his pulse. The same mad thumping of his heart.

All she had to do was sigh or smile or lean the weight of her head into his hand, and he was smitten, over and over again—a wave rebounding upon his shore, more strongly each time.

The result was total unpredictability—he was becoming dangerously out of control. And the total ungovernableness of his physical attraction to her frightened him in a way that knives and guns and threats of hanging never had. Never could.

But she didn’t seem frightened. She seemed curious and warm and interested in his mouth in a way that was inexplicable, except that he was just as inexplicably interested in hers. In the way her lips seemed to fit rather exactly against his. In the way everything she did was exactly designed to set his physical body on fire and muddle his brain.

He felt buffle-headed. And extraordinarily alive.

And determined to get it right. For her.

For both of them.

He knew well enough how to send a girl over the edge. The straightforward steps that would send a female careering breathily toward her crisis, tumbling gladly toward her oblivion, so he might find his own. So he might lose himself for those few fleeting, heady moments when his body triumphed over his brain.

He wanted that oblivion; he wanted to work toward it immediately. But she was taking her time, meandering from his lips to his earlobes and back, and he was having trouble concentrating on what he knew he ought to be doing.

He ought to be finding her secret places, the hidden swaths of sensitive skin. He ought to be touching her there, at the very edges of her nipples, making her skin heat and her knees knock and her heart beat too fast beneath her lily-white breasts.

But it was
his
skin that felt new. His knees knocking together beneath him. His heart that beat a wild tattoo within his chest. Because she was mastering the space between them. Pressing closer when he leaned back. Taking hold of him when he would not lay his hands upon her.

Ah, but he wanted to. He wanted to hold her, to wrap his arms around her, and hold her tight against his naked skin. He wanted it with a hunger that felt as if it might eat him alive if he did not give in and grip the delicate rounds of her shoulders, and take her nipples with his mouth.

Lightly. Lightly. Just enough to show he that he wanted this slow death by delight, this slow teasing march toward cataclysmic physical climax, as much as she. That he wanted this excoriating brush of her peaked nipples against the bare skin of his chest. That he wanted her with every breath of his body and every fragmented thought left in his mind.

She wanted, too. “Tanner. Tanner, please. Again.” Her voice slid away into irregular breathing. “Tell me.”

Ah. Words. He would give her those, too.

He told her, “Yes. You want what I want, too. I can tell. You want to feel the pleasure.” His words were terse, blunt even, he was having as much trouble breathing as she.

“Yes.” She gasped her urgent agreement into his ear. “I want to feel—I want to feel it all.”

He would give her it all. Every bit of it. Every last piece of pulsating bliss he could wring for them. “Are you a virgin?”

He thought he knew for a fact that she was—the signs were there for him to read. Had been there for him to read.But life was messy and stranger than fiction, and the analytic part of his mind needed confirmation of all the facts, so that he could proceed correctly.

“Yes.” Her voice was hesitant, as if she were unsure of why he asked.

“It matters.”

“Oh.” That was disappointment in her voice now. And she pushed away, separating them, moving just out of his reach.

“No. Not to me.” He tried to make her understand. “It matters to you. It matters as to how we proceed.” His words sounded stupid and stilted to his own ears. He had to do better. “In how I touch you. In how I ask you to touch me.”

“You don’t need to ask me to touch you.” There was dawning hope in her voice—the return of physical excitement, building in her breathlessness, and she proved her point by kneading the taut muscles at his shoulders.

He felt himself stretch and move wantonly unto the sweet pressure of her hands. “Yes. Like that. And like this.” He led her by the wrists, so her palms brushed across his chest, teasing his flat nipples into their own tightly furled peaks.

She needed no more encouragement, and immediately raked the backs of her fingertips across the sensitized tips, and he thought he would come out of his skin.

“Yes. Just like that.” He reciprocated by thumbing her glorious pink nipples into tight, needy peaks.

She drew her breath in through her teeth, a long suggestive sound of urgency and provocation. “Yes. Show me.”

“I should like nothing more. I shall show you,” he promised her on a whisper that had gone dark and hungry, “all the ways to give pleasure. I will show you the places on your body that are made for the giving and taking of pleasure. I will show you the places on my body, for they are different from yours.”

“Yes.” It was her turn for quick agreement now. “Please. Please.” She could not abandon her exquisite manners even now, when she was in the throes of needy, unthinking bliss. And he liked her for it.

“Do you want me to touch your sex?”

Her eyes widened at the bluntness of his question, but he wanted—he needed—to be sure. He wasn’t one for couching his words or obscuring his actions in confusing or misleading euphemisms. They were not yet married. They were in the throes of sexual excitement. He would be inside her
sex
. They would be engaging in messy, wet, exhilarating, pleasurable, physically draining, blissful sex.

With the woman he loved.

But he was not blind or stupid enough to think that she really loved him, despite the way she sighed her encouragement into his ear. Despite the way she looked at him now—half hope, half fear, and all physical excitement.

“Do you?” she asked.

He felt his mouth curve into a hard smile. “Oh, yes. Very much. But I want to make sure you want it, too. I want to make sure that you don’t feel forced or pressured or coerced in any way. It’s important for you to choose.”

Her expression softened, and her head tipped to the side, as if she thought him even more buffle-headed than he felt. But he had to make sure she understood. “And whatever you choose—yes or no—I will abide by your wishes. I won’t force you. Or try to coerce you. No matter how much I want to be inside you, or how disappointed I might be.”

She set her delicate fingers against the pulse in the hollow of his neck. “How disappointed might you be?”

“Enormously.” His straining cock was proof enough of that. “Make no mistake. I want you, Claire. But I also want you to want me.”

She smiled. That warm, open guileless smile that slayed him, and shot him clean through with heat and need and torturous bliss. “I do want you.”

His heart slammed against the cage of his ribs, straining to be let loose. “What do you want most?”

Her answer was as quick as it was satisfying. “I want to kiss you again.”

He closed the distance between them directly, but not at such speed as to overwhelm her, and set his mouth to hers. It leapt between them, the attraction, like an arc of electricity jumping between poles, the moment his lips touched hers. He was jackknifed back into arousal by nothing but the plush push of her lips against his, and the soft breath of her satisfied sigh whispering against his cheek.

And her hands were everywhere upon him, already circling around his neck so she might pull him close. He allowed himself the satisfaction of letting his hands grip her by the waist, but he resisted the urge to pull her against him. He forced himself to wait for her to lay her body flush against him, to press her breasts into his chest.

Only then did he allow himself the pleasure of opening his mouth to her kiss, to tasting her heady sweetness, and exploring the plush tartness of her tongue and mouth.

“Yes,” she whispered, and he took that encouragement for the permission it was, to draw up her skirts as they kissed, teasing her with his tongue and his teeth, nipping and sucking and tantalizing her with new sensations. With more delight, if only she chose to come and follow his lead.

She did. She pushed forward as he leaned into the cushions at his back, never breaking their contact. Never letting her lips part from his for more than the time it took to change his angle of approach, or take her lower lip delicately between his teeth, and sweetly bite down with just enough force to send a jolt of unholy arousal careening through his gut. “Claire.”

Her name was both a groan of entreaty and a plea. A plea for more of the wickedly divine caresses that spanned the divide between pleasure and pain so neatly, he was nearly poleaxed by the force of his response. By the force of his need.

His need for more of her.

He widened his knees and pulled her closer, so that the delicate heat of her body would press directly against his arousal.

But she was moving faster than he. She spread her knees wider on either side of his legs and moved against him while her hands speared through his hair, fisting and tugging the disordered strands. He leaded his head into her palms, and let her roll his head in her hands, trying desperately to exhaust the itchy need for skin to be against skin.

She kissed him again, filling him full of urgent, insistent need. “Tanner. Tanner, please.”

His name was like a spur to his own hunger, urging him on. Her clothing was a bunched impediment between them, but he could not bear to set her away from him, even to bare her white, white skin to his touch and to his greedy gaze.

He crumpled up her gown and drew it up, up the length of her body, taking his time, dragging the soft muslin slowly across her skin in a precursor to his touch.