Never Lie to a Lady (21 page)

“Zee, come upstairs.” He whispered the words against her lips. “I should be patient, love, but it is beyond me.”

Xanthia’s dark lashes lowered, feathering across her ivory cheeks. “I wish you to make love to me, Nash,” she rasped. “Slowly—as if we had all the time in the world. Not just a few stolen moments. Not just this one night.”

This one night
. Was that all she meant it to be?

It would be wise of her, but Nash could not bear to think of it. And although it was a romantic, almost silly gesture, he swept her off her feet and into his arms. She pressed her cheek against the softness of his coat, and, suddenly, it did not feel silly at all. She said nothing as he carried her up the two flights of steps to his suite.

“I have a surprise for you,” he murmured.

He laid her down in the middle of his bed and set his knee to the mattress. Half of her long, heavy hair had already slipped from its loose arrangement, and was cascading across the brocade of his coverlet like a waterfall of dark silk. Her hands lay to either side of her head, her fingers gently curled to her palms, in an almost submissive gesture, and Nash was struck with the almost primitive urge to take her—to take her fiercely, to bind her to him then and there, without another word.

But it was then that she noticed the flowers. She sat up a little and looked about in obvious amazement. “Good heavens!” she murmured. “Hibiscus blossoms? Nash, what on earth?”

He braced one hand on the headboard, leaned over her. “I thought they might remind you of home.”

Vases of tropical hibiscus blossoms were everywhere— pink, peach, and even crimson—and the bed on which she lay had been scattered with petals. Nash plucked a pink one from a vase by the bed—a huge, double-blossomed beauty, and passed it to her.

Xanthia held it to her nose to inhale the familiar scent. “Oh, they
do
, remind me of home,” she murmured. “Do you know, we had an entire hedge of these round our house. Goodness, Nash, where did you find so many?”

“I robbed every hothouse in the south of England,” he confessed.

Her eyes widened farther still, and she laughed. “You didn’t?”

“Well, my messengers probably harangued them until they likely wished I had.” He took her empty hand in his. “But you struck me as the sort of woman who ought to be made love to on a bed of flower petals—and what better than these?”

She drew the blossom down the turn of his jaw. “Ah, it seems I have you in my power,” she said. “You must want desperately to please me.”

Nash gave a sharp laugh. “My dear, I think I should hate you to know just how desperate.”

Xanthia stroked the flower beneath his chin. “Then undress for me,” she whispered. “I wish to see something beautiful.”

“That’s what the hibiscus blossoms were for,” he teased. “Have my poor florists suffered for naught?”

“Oh, Nash, you wretch!” She choked out the word on a sound which was half a laugh, but perhaps half a sob, too. “Damn you for being such a—a
romantic
! They
are
beautiful—too beautiful. What kind of libertine are you, sprinkling hibiscus petals over your bed?”

He carried her knuckles to his lips. “I am wooing you, you practical-minded shrew,” he said, kissing the back of her hand. “Be still, and let me properly seduce you.”

“
Properly seduce
was not the phrase I had in mind,” she assured him, sitting up amidst the flower petals, and kicking off her slippers. “Undress for me, Nash. Please. I want to feast my eyes on something that is both beautiful and wicked.”

Nash felt suddenly taken aback. Oh, he had undressed for women a thousand times—but what she asked for—it was somehow more than he had given before. But her hands were already at his cravat, and in seconds, she was unfurling it from his neck like an expert.

He looked down at her, and lifted one eyebrow.

“Two brothers,” she answered dryly. “Brothers who often came home cup-shot, only to promptly pass out. Valets were in short supply—but I am, if I do say so myself, not a bad one.”

Her clever fingers were already slipping free the buttons of his waistcoat. She pushed it from his shoulders, taking his braces with it. Nash drew his shirt hems from his trousers and dragged it off over his head. He was gratified by a sharp inhalation of breath—the unmistakable sound of feminine appreciation.

Xanthia leaned into him, lifting her mouth to his. As their already-swollen lips met, she began to deftly unfasten his trousers. But Nash kissed her lingeringly, refusing to be hurried despite the increasingly urgent sound of her breathing.

By God, the woman was not going to rush him into scratching an itch that could not wait. It very well
would
wait—and by the time he had done with her, Nash vowed, she’d be on her knees and shedding the tears of a grateful woman. He pushed her back down into the softness of the bed, braced his hands beside her shoulders, and told her so, in no uncertain words.

Xanthia’s eyes widened, and her chest rose with a deep, anticipatory breath. Nash got up, ruthlessly toed off his slippers, then shucked off trousers, stockings, and drawers in one practiced move.

On the bed, Xanthia swallowed. Hard. “Oh, my!” she whispered, her eyes trailing lower. And lower. “You really are…quite magnificent.”

Nash was no longer sure that was so—he had long ago ceased to be a beautiful boy, but was instead a man—in his prime, yes, but with all the attendant battle scars. He accepted her compliment, however, and drew her up from the bed.

“Now, wench, it is your turn,” he answered. Quickly, he unbuttoned her gown down the back. It sagged open to reveal an elegant chemise of fine white silk and a pair of slender shoulder blades that made his mouth go strangely dry.

They were just shoulder blades
.
Good God
. He drew the pins from her hair, then sat down and pulled her a little roughly between his thighs. Xanthia watched almost passively as he divested her of most of her garments, until at last he was rolling her stockings down her legs. But when she was then left in nothing but her drawers, she crossed her arms a little shyly over her bare breasts, and looked away.

“Oh, no,” he murmured, slithering them down her hips.

Dear God
, he thought.
Her thighs really did go on forever
. Her hips curved gently, her belly was a soft, beautiful swell, and her navel turned inward in a way which made a man want rather desperately to tease it with his tongue. But the thatch of dark hair at the joining of her thighs—oh, it was almost enough to drive a man mad. He inhaled her scent, then, on a wild, irrepressible impulse, slid his hands around to cradle her derrière. She gasped faintly. But he drew her body to his mouth without preamble, thrusting his tongue deep.

Xanthia cried out, a faint, quavering sound. A jolt of pleasure. Her hands settled lightly on his shoulders, as if for balance. Nash drove his tongue in again, stroking it as deep as the position permitted. The scent of her was maddening. Over and over he flicked his tongue through the warmth, feeling her buttocks tremble in his hand and her fingernails dig into his shoulders.

It was not enough. He set his lips to her belly, and closed his eyes. Dear God, when
would
he have enough? He could make love to her like this all night, he feared—and never ease this aching hunger.

“Lie down,” he said, a little roughly.

Xanthia did as she was told. He dragged his body over her nakedness and pushed her legs wide with one knee. For long moments he kissed her, his fingers buried in her hair, his cock throbbing hot and urgent against the warm velvet of her thigh. Kissing her so deeply, so intimately, Nash began to lose touch with the present, began to lose himself in the raw need as he slid, hopelessly and inexorably, into that blinding sensual abyss he knew so well.

Xanthia’s breathing was ragged when his lips left hers. He sat back and let his eyes sweep over her—
feast
on her, just as she had said. Her breasts rose rapidly, their large areolas dark pink against the ivory of her skin, skin so pale he could trace the blue veins just beneath the creamy surface. Her nipples were hard nubs now, and her skin prickled with sensual awareness.

Nash set his mouth to her breast and drew her nipple between his teeth, biting just enough to make her gasp. Her hips bucked beneath him instinctively, a clear signal of what her body wanted. For long minutes, Nash suckled her, tasting and nipping, until her trembling and her breathing had risen to a fevered pitch.

When he sat up, her mouth was slightly parted, her face turned half-away. Her breasts were still rising and falling as she gasped. He gently turned her face back to his, and held her wide-eyed gaze.

“Do I frighten you?” His voice was abrupt and husky.

“Yes,” came her whispered response. “We both frighten me.”

And she frightened him just a little
. Though he would never have admitted it, Nash was on unsteady ground, and he knew it. But best not to think of that too deeply. Instead, he pushed her thighs wider with the flats of his hands, then trailed one thumb through her glistening wetness. She gasped twice, like a woman on the verge of release—and yes, just a little afraid of herself.

On impulse, Nash picked up the pink hibiscus blossom and stroked it down her breastbone. The stiff green leaves were almost black against her fairness, and he found the contrast deeply erotic. Slowly, he brushed the flower over her left nipple, hardening it even further, as if such a thing were possible. Over and over, he stroked her with the heavy pink flower, fixated on the way her flesh shivered as the rough leaves lightly prickled at her skin. Then the wide, milk-soft petals would follow, almost soothing it. He stroked her throat, her breasts, the crooks of her arms, slowly working his way toward the sweet swell of her belly.

He toyed with that perfect little navel. With the slight curve of her pelvic bones. Then down the quivering flesh that guarded her womb. Her breath was rough now, almost as if she were crying. She was looking not at him, and not at the flower, but at his hand. With the opposite fingers, he gently parted her, then drew the blossom through her slick, creamy flesh. She cried out, a tremulous, uncertain sound.

Again, he stroked. And again, until she was shivering. Until the shivering became something more. “Come for me, Xanthia,” he crooned after a time. “Let yourself go.”

“I—I—can’t,” she gasped. “I want—I want—you inside.”

He wasn’t sure why he urged her on. “Just feel it, Zee,” he whispered. “Feel the soft touch of the flower on your sweet, hard—there, do you feel it?”

“Yes—” she gasped. “Oh! But I want…oh, Nash!”

“You want
this
, Zee,” he whispered, lightly tormenting her with the hibiscus. “Come for me, my tropical flower. Let it go. Tremble, and let me watch. Here—take your own hand and—”

She jerked her hand away. “I need…more,” she said. “I want
you
.”

“This
is
me,” he rasped. “And you don’t need more, Zee. You are such a wild, sensual creature at heart. Think of the silk drawers you wear—so slick, so erotic. You wear them, Zee, because you like that silky softness against your skin.”

“Yes,” she gasped. “I…like it.”

He drew the hibiscus just a fraction deeper. “The next time you draw them over your thighs, Zee,” he whispered, “I want you to think of this flower. To think of
me
—making love to you with this flower. Making you cry out like the beautiful, sensual woman you—”

And then she was crying—and trembling to her very core, her hands curling deep into the loose petals and the softness of the coverlet. When her cries subsided, he dropped the hibiscus and crawled up the length of the bed to cover her shuddering body with his own. He felt…
deeply
gratified. Amazed. Inspired. Xanthia was beautiful—beautiful in her passion—both in bed and out. He held her close, planting light, reassuring kisses down the swanlike length of her neck.

When Xanthia came back to the present, she found herself inextricably entwined with Nash—literally and figuratively, she feared. Her arms were around his waist, and one of his rock-hard thighs was between her legs. But her heart—oh, that he held in the palm of his hand. In that perfect moment, however, time held suspended, and her life beyond this—this room, this night, this
man
—seemed fleetingly to hold no meaning.

Making love with Nash, she feared, would ever be like that. It would shut out the world, leaving only the two of them.

She felt Nash’s weight shift smoothly upward, the rough, dark hair of his chest prickling at her breasts as he moved. Xanthia, still trembling, reached instinctively down to grasp his swollen manhood. Nash made a sound, an almost raw, urgent groan, then he mounted her. In the candlelight, his hard thighs bulged, and his shoulders seemed impossibly wide. Still fascinated, she slipping one palm down to cradle his heavy sac, then slowly she guided the firm, hot length of him between her legs.

“Now, Nash,” she whispered. “Make me…make me yours again.”

He entered her almost reverently, inching slowly deeper as the sound of his breath roughened. At the last, Xanthia lifted her hips to take him. Nash slid inside on a triumphant grunt. He set his hands to either side of her head, closed his eyes, drew out, and thrust again. “Good God, Zee,” he rasped. “You…you madden me.
Bewitch
me.”

She lifted her hips again, and slid her hands down the hard muscles which layered his ribs, then his thighs. “Make love to me, Nash,” she pleaded.

Apparently, he did not need a second invitation. Soon his thrusts were deep and strong. His powerful hands were everywhere—on her shoulders, clutching her hips, stilling her buttocks as he thrust in a wild, carnal rhythm. His hands caught hers, pushing her arms high above her head. Xanthia rose to meet him, curling one leg about his waist. His too-long hair had long since fallen forward to shadow his face, and the glistening sheen of exertion lit his skin. Their bodies slid over one another, his dark, glittering gaze like that of something wild and untamable.