Scandal of the Year (24 page)

“The reason, of course,” she went on, a lightness coming into her voice that he knew was forced, “is that I have far more important things to do right now.” With that, she picked up her glass, drained it of the last swallow of its contents, and tossed it onto the grass as she stood up. “Like dip my feet in the water, for example. It’s deuced hot today.”

It wasn’t—not like last August. But he was relieved by her pretext to change the subject. And though it might be selfish of him to so easily postpone hearing what her husband had done to her, wrong to want her to seduce him again when the first time had been an act of desperation, he couldn’t help it. He watched her pull the combs from her hair and toss them into the picnic hamper, and he loved the way her loosened black curls swirled across her face in the ocean breeze. He loved the easy grace with which she moved as she turned away and walked toward the shore. He loved the way she didn’t just dip her feet in, but gathered up the folds of her skirt around her knees and waded into the water. And he loved those long, gorgeous legs of hers.

Unlike last time, he wasn’t shocked by her brazen display. Instead, he grinned with pure, unadulterated pleasure. He wasn’t shocked when she dove underwater and came up facing him in folds of clinging, transparent muslin. No, he thought as she came out of the water and back across the sand toward him, he wasn’t shocked at all. But just as before, by the time she sank to her knees in front of him, he was fully, flagrantly aroused. He could see her breasts, small, perfect breasts, her nipples jutting against the wet fabric like hard pebbles, and just as before, he felt his wits slipping, along with his moral code.

“Go on,” she breathed, tilting her head back and leaning toward him just as she had done before, her fingertips trailing along her throat between the unbuttoned edges of her dress. “Take it. You know you want to.”

He stared, riveted, his throat dry, as her fingertip grazed the hardened nipple of her breast. One second, and then two, and he was grabbing her by the arms, just as before, and falling back onto the blanket, pulling her with him.

She sank onto him, her hair falling in wet spirals around his face. She kissed him, her mouth open and lush, tasting of sweet blackberries and salty sea. Her hips moved against his in a slow, lascivious slide, and he tore his mouth from hers with a groan.

God, had it felt this good last time? he wondered, lost in an erotic, sensuous haze.

She lifted up, resting her weight on her arms as she looked at him, her breath coming in soft huffs between her parted pink lips. “I think it’s time to move this picnic indoors. Don’t you?”

Just as before, he didn’t even hesitate before he answered. “Yes,” he breathed, and stood up, pulling her with him. “God, yes.”

It was déjà vu all over again.

Chapter Twenty

W
hen Julia took him by the hand and led him back up the path, Aidan had no intention of arguing with her. “Your wish is my command,” he told her, and followed her into the house. He closed the kitchen door behind them, and when he turned around, she was in his arms. Her mouth opened over his, warm and lush and willing. Her arms slid up around his neck.

He tilted his head, his hands came up to cradle her cheeks, then tangled in her wet hair. But when she entwined her arms around his neck and pressed her body closer, tasting him with her tongue, the desire he’d been holding back all afternoon threatened to flame out of control, and he fought to contain it. Pulling back, he gentled the kiss, suckling her lower lip between both of his, tasting her as if she were a piece of candy.

Slowly, he eased back, thinking how he was going to take his time with this, but she seemed to have different ideas on the matter. She grasped his hands and lifted them, bringing them to her breasts. “This is what you did last time.”

“I did?” He opened his palms, embracing the small, perfect shape of her breasts through the thin layer of her dress. Arousal was once again banked to an aching heat inside him, but he knew that it could flare up again quick as lighting a match, and he wasn’t going to let that happen. Not yet.

He jerked his hands back, ignoring her protest. “I don’t care if I did that last time. This time, I’m sober, and I want to do it differently. We are composing a different scene.”

“Different ending,” she corrected.

He shrugged, refusing to quibble about it. Instead, he lifted his hands to her bodice and began undressing her, slipping the pearl buttons free one by one from her collarbone to her waist. Then he pulled her dress apart, off her shoulders and down her arms. It caught at the sash tied around her waist, and for now he left it there to trace his fingers in light caresses across her bare shoulders. He didn’t dare look any lower, for he wanted to keep lust under tight rein as long as possible, and a view of her bare breasts was not going to help him do that right now. He kept all his attention on her pretty white shoulders, watching his fingertips trace light caresses over her skin from her neck to her arms, then back across her collarbone, then over her shoulders and down her spine to her waist. He worked to untie the sash of her dress, easing the knot loose as he pressed kisses to her throat.

“I should have done a bow,” she said, laughing, a bit nervously, he judged. Somehow, that made him feel better; he was nervous, too. Not only because last time he’d consumed a great deal more champagne, but also because back then he hadn’t known anything about her past, her husband, or the lack of tenderness in her life. Now he did, and he was nervous as hell.

The knot came loose, the sash came off, and the sodden dress fell to the floor around her ankles. He looked away, waiting until she’d stepped out of it and shoved it out from under her feet. Then he allowed his gaze to travel slowly upward from her pretty feet over what seemed miles of gorgeous legs, catching his breath as he passed a soft triangle of black curls.

“My God,” he breathed, as his gaze moved up, up over slim hips and a tiny waist. “Did I have this splendid view last time?”

“Yes.”

He paused at her breasts for just a second.
Not yet
, he reminded himself, and lifted his gaze higher, to her long, slender neck. He tilted his head, pressing a kiss to the pulse at the base of her throat.

“Did I do that before?” he murmured against her silken skin.

“Yes.”

“What about this?” He trailed more kisses along the side of her throat and across her shoulder, using his tongue and making her shiver.

“Yes.”

“What about this?” He drew her close, slid one arm around her waist, and kissed her again, full and open on the mouth as his free hand finally embraced her breast. He pulled back, lowered his hand to his side, and looked into her eyes. “Did I do that?”

“Yes. And then you pushed me away.”

“I—” He paused and looked down, his throat going dry at the sight of her erect, rosy pink nipples. “I was an idiot.”

Her throaty chuckle lifted his gaze to her face. “Yes,” she agreed, that unmistakable glimmer of mischief in her eyes. “That’s just what I thought.”

He laughed with her, but then her laughter stopped and she frowned. “Wait,” she said, and pulled his hands down. “This isn’t quite right.”

He glanced down. “It looks quite all right to me.”

“That isn’t what I mean.” She reached up to finger his unfastened collar. “At this point last time, you were half undressed.”

“Ah.” Enlightened, he spread his arms. “Well, then you’d best get busy, hmm?”

“I should say so.” She unbuttoned his waistcoat and slid the vest of yellow silk back from his shoulders, and it fell behind him to the floor. Then she undid the last button of his shirt, and unbuttoned his cuffs. “You had cuff links last time.”

“I did? You probably thought I was overdressed for the occasion.”

She smiled. “I thought you were adorable.”

“I’m not sure that’s a compliment to a man,” he complained as she pulled his braces down and tugged his shirt out of his waistband.

She stepped back a little as he pulled his shirt over his head and tossed it aside. “You want a compliment?” she asked, glancing down, and even though she already knew what his bare chest looked like, her breath still caught at the perfection of it.

“You have the most ripping chest.” She fanned her hands over his pectoral muscles, down his flat, hard abdomen, up along his strong, sinewy arms and across his powerful shoulders, ending where she began, her palms over the flat, brown disks of his nipples. “Damn,” she added, laughing, “when I pick a lover, I do it right.”

She leaned in, pressing a kiss to his chest right over his heart, and something hot and tight twisted there, something that had nothing to do with the lust in his body. Something in her hushed voice when she whispered, “I want this to be right, Aidan,” that awed him and scared him and made him randy as a dog.

“Anything you do will be right, Julia. Do what you want.” He cupped her cheeks, nibbled gently at her lips. “Do what you feel.”

She rose on her toes to kiss him deeply again, but this time there was a tender sweetness in it, a vulnerability, that hadn’t been there before. The touch of her tongue wasn’t driving or desperate. It was tentative, exploring slowly, almost as a child might stick her toes experimentally into the cool water of the sea before plunging in. But the contact, soft and tentative as it was, sent shudders of pleasure through his body nonetheless.

When she unbuttoned his trousers for more explorations, he gritted his teeth and bore the agonizing suspense, but when she slid her hand into the opening of his linen to touch his penis, he groaned, unable to take any more. “I can’t,” he muttered.

She froze, her hand around him. “Please tell me you’re not stopping.”

“No, no. That’s not what I meant.” Gently, he extricated her hand. “I can’t hold back if you go that fast.”

“But why should you hold back?”

“Because I want you not to.” He didn’t explain. Instead, he pushed the hair back from her shoulders, cupped her cheeks, and kissed her—long, slow kisses that went to his head in a more powerful rush than any champagne. He slid his hands down to cup her breasts, and broke the kiss to ask her, “How does this feel? Do you like it when I caress you like this?”

“Aidan!” It was a shocked laugh with a hint of embarrassment. “Now who’s being seductive?”

“I’m a quick study.” Resting her breast against his palm, he toyed with her nipple, rolling it slowly in his fingers. “So you do like this?”

She nodded, tilting her head back, closing her eyes. As he watched, her skin took on a rosy hue in the late afternoon sunlight.

He bent his head. “What about this?” he asked, and took her nipple into his mouth, suckling softly at first, then harder until she was shivering, until she gasped a little affirmative answer against his hair.

Suckling one breast, he caressed the other as his free hand slipped around behind her to cup one of her buttocks. He pulled back long enough to ask, “This?” before returning his attention to playing with her breasts. He caressed them, shaped them. He toyed with her pretty nipples, brushing his thumbs back and forth across them and rolling them between his fingers. As he played with her, she began to moan, soft and low, and he could feel the quivers running through her body, the tension in her taut like harp strings. Gently, ever so gently, he scored her nipple with his teeth. She cried out with pleasure, and her knees gave way. He wrapped an arm around her to hold her upright, his tongue still licking her nipple. “Like that, do you?”

She made a smothered sound, and he laughed, nipping playfully at her breast. “Was that a yes I heard?”

She nodded, making a strangled sound that was definitely positive. Her hands slid into his hair, cradling his head, and he could feel her arousal growing hotter. Her body began to move against his in little jerks, but the sounds she made were hushed, as if she was still holding a part of herself back. That, Aidan decided, wasn’t enough. Perhaps he was selfish, but he wanted it all, with no holding back.

He sank to his knees, gliding his palms along the sides of her waist to her hips, and then behind to cup her buttocks. He pulled her closer, pressing a hot kiss to her navel that made her stomach muscles quiver in response. “Do you like that?” he asked, breathing the question against her skin.

“Yes.” A sigh. “Oh, yes.”

“How about this?” Pressing slow, hot kisses to her stomach, he moved lower and lower, until his lips touched the midnight-black curls at the apex of her thighs.

She sucked in a deep gasp of shock at the contact, and pressed her thighs tight together. “Aidan, what are you doing?”

“Do you like it?” he asked, the brush of his lips as he spoke making her body jerk in response.

“I don’t know!” She sounded a bit frantic.

Good
, he thought, and kissed her again. “You haven’t ever had a man do this? Kiss you here?”

“God, no! I told you, I’ve only had—oh God,” she moaned as he tasted her. Her legs parted a little, and he nuzzled her warmth. “Aidan,” she wailed. “Don’t. It’s . . . it’s indecent!”

He chuckled, blowing warm air against dark curls.

“What are you laughing at?” she demanded, sounding aroused and embarrassed, excited and angry all at once.

“You,” he answered, “turning missish on me all of a sudden.”

“I am not missish!” she shot back, then immediately gasped as his tongue dipped for a second taste. “Oh, you mustn’t do that!”

“But do you like it, Julia?” He stroked her with his tongue. “How does it feel?”

She cried out, a sharper cry this time. “I can’t explain how it feels! I can’t.”

“Is it good?”

“Good? It’s wicked, that’s what it is. Oh God!” she moaned as he licked her again, and her knees sagged beneath her.

Wicked? He laughed as he cupped her bum and rose, lifting her onto the kitchen table that was against the wall behind her. Sliding his hands out from beneath her buttocks, he knelt to taste her, savoring how her body quivered with each stroke. She was soft, and slick, and lusciously warm. And he wanted to keep kissing her like this forever. Though she wouldn’t say it in words, he knew these carnal kisses pleased her. As his tongue slid along her silken folds, her body began to move in little jerks, and her breath began to come faster, until each breath was a gasp. When he touched her clitoris with his tongue, she cried out, but then immediately smothered the sound with her hand.

“Don’t, Julia, don’t.” Reaching up, he pulled her hand away from her mouth, took both her hands in both of his. “Don’t hold back how you feel, not with me. Show me what you want and how you feel, or I won’t know how to please you.” He moved up a bit, licking her stomach. “Did you like what I just did?”

“Yes.” She ground out the word.

“Was it good? Do you want more?”

“Yes!”

“Then just say so. Tell me you want me to kiss you there.”

“I—” She tilted her head back, laughing in chagrin as she stared at the ceiling. This was the hardest thing she’d ever done. “Kiss me,” she mumbled.

He did, on her stomach. “There?”

Julia shook her head, frantic, scared, so aroused she couldn’t think. “Lower.” She forced the word out through clenched teeth. “Lower.”

He did as she bid, his tongue lashing her with the softest, most incredible caresses she’d ever experienced. From a distance, she heard his voice, tender yet insistent, demanding an answer.

“How does it feel, Julia?”

Impossible
, she thought. He wanted her to describe it?

She felt him release her hands, and she didn’t bother to cover her mouth again, but she bit her lip instead, trying hard not to give way, fighting with him, and not even knowing why. She wasn’t afraid; she was long past fear. There was no pain, only tenderness, and lush, hot, blissful kisses. There was no shame, not even naked in her sunlit kitchen with her legs spread apart and Aidan doing this naughty, naughty thing to her. Aidan? Never could she have imagined it. Aidan licking her . . . her quim? Good God. Where had he learned to do this?