Seduced At Sunset (8 page)

“No, I don’t need anything,” she replied with breathless
desire and a heart pounding with excitement.

He removed his waistcoat, tossed that to the floor as
well, and proceeded to pull his shirt off over his head. “Would you like to
talk first? Some women want to talk.”

Curious as to how many women he had pleasured this way,
Charlotte shook her head and sucked in a breath at the awesome sight of his
upper body, stripped bare. He was a fighter, a sportsman, and she was utterly
spellbound by the splendor of his masculine form.

“Before we begin, is there anything at all that you
require?” he asked, climbing onto the bed on all fours, like a black panther in
the dark.

“I have everything I could possibly desire,” she replied.

Reaching out, she cupped his face in her hands, and he
came down for another hot, wet, soul-reaching kiss. Charlotte spread her legs
wide and wrapped them around his slender hips. She kissed him deeply, thrusting
her body freely, without inhibition, for this was a fantasy she intended to
live out to the fullest. He was so deliciously enticing and so very male in
every way, she thought, as he ran his hands up and down and over her body.

He fisted a hand in the fabric of her skirts and tugged
them upwards. In very short order, he found the entrance to her
womanhood—that private, sizzling place between her thighs that was at the
very heart of her arousal. She writhed with yearning. The wickedness of this
encounter intensified the pleasure when his finger slipped into the slick
opening of her womanhood.

He stroked her, in and out, while keeping his eyes fixed
on hers the entire time. The pleasure of his touch was so intense, all the
muscles in her body melted into hot pools of liquid fire. She let out a small
moan and then a gasp, while his big hand fondled her.

“You can tell, can’t you...?” she asked.

“Tell what?”

“That I am not a virgin.” She wanted to admit it. She
wanted him to know he need not be overly gentle.

“Yes.”

Her eyes fluttered closed at the flood of erotic
sensation. “It’s been a long time,” she explained, “since I’ve been with a
man.” Then his finger slid into her again—slow, deep, and long. “But
that’s enough talk.”

“Not yet,” he whispered in her ear. “Tell me what you want
first.”

That titillating, husky voice swept over her like velvet.
“I just want
you
.”

It was far too romantic a response, when clearly this was
intended to be a casual sexual encounter.

He drew back slightly and looked down at her in the
candlelight.

“Was that not specific enough?” she asked, and was
strangely relieved when the corner of his mouth curled up in a small grin.
“Have I amused you?”

“A little.” He removed his hand from her womanhood and
swiveled his hips in small circles to rub up against her pelvic bone.

“Perhaps I should have been more specific when posing the
question,” he said.

She ran her fingertips up and down the smooth corded
muscles of his back, then over his firm buttocks. “Ask another, then.”

“All right.” Still braced above her, he said, “Fast or slow?”

“Both.”

“Foreplay? Or straight to the main course?”

“Foreplay, please.”

He grinned again. “Naked or partially clothed?”

“Naked.”

He paused for a long moment, then swiveled his hips again.
“How long can you stay?”

“’Til dawn,” she replied. “Not a moment longer.”

“Then we have all night.” She felt his erection push
against her, and every ounce of her being ached to feel his whole body, his
bare flesh, hot and damp upon her skin.

“Take this off,” he said, running a hand over her bodice,
then sitting back on his heels to watch her unfasten the buttons at the front.

She sat up and shrugged out of it, then unhooked the front
fastenings on her whalebone corset.

With careful forethought at home, Charlotte had
intentionally selected articles of clothing that would not require a
maid’s—or a gentleman’s—assistance. Nothing she wore laced or
buttoned at the back.

Tossing the corset carelessly to the floor, she pulled her
light cotton chemise over her head, and with breasts bared, leaned back on her
elbows to stare up at him.

His gaze roamed from one breast to the other, and she felt
her nipples tingle and tighten, as if he had licked them with his tongue.

“Now the skirts,” he said. “Take everything off.”

Charlotte’s body shivered with yearning, for the note of
command in his voice was a powerful aphrodisiac all on its own.

Lying back on the pillow, she slowly unfastened the
buttons at the side, then untied the ribbon of her petticoat.

“Will you pull it off for me?” she asked, lifting her hips
off the bed.

Those big hands slid up her legs and gripped the
waistband. Soon her skirts were sliding over her knees and joining the other
garments on the floor. The stockings and shoes came off next, and Charlotte
marveled at the fact that she felt no modesty, but delighted in the sensation
of her nudity beneath the heat of his gaze in the warm glow of the candlelight.

“Now it’s your turn,” she said, eyeing, with hungry
fascination, the large bulge beneath his dark trousers.

He worked the fastenings of his trousers and smoothly slipped
out of them as he moved to lie beside her.

Fully naked now, they rolled to face each other. Charlotte
reached out to briefly touch her fingertip to his lips. Then he gathered her
into his arms, pulled her close, and kissed her passionately for what seemed a
perfect, blissful eternity.

Eventually, he rolled on top of her, but never broke the
kiss. She spread her legs wide and wrapped them around his hips, while their
tongues tangled and danced.

Charlotte sighed breathlessly when he began to move down
the length of her body, dropping languorous open-mouthed kisses on her breasts,
suckling them for yet another blissful eternity, until she was so overcome with
feverish need, her body bucked beneath him.

“Are you growing impatient?” he asked with a sinfully sexy
smile that promised something very wicked at the end.

“Intolerably so,” she replied, “though it is a frustration
I would not choose to forgo.”

“You did ask for foreplay,” he reminded her.

And he was torturing her with it in the most exquisite
way.

“Yes, therefore you should not stop.” She smiled and ran
her fingers through his thick wavy hair.

With a devilish glint in his eyes, he lowered his head and
returned to his task of pleasuring her senseless. He kissed all across and down
her flat, quivering belly, past her navel until at last, he arrived at the
juncture between her thighs. The kissing—so hot and deliciously
erotic—continued down her inner thighs, causing her to tremble and quake.
How in the world would she ever survive this?

Then his head moved between her legs and he flicked his
tongue over the sensitive bud of her desires, first with quick strokes, then
slow, deep velvety ones that made her shudder with an arousal that came from
deep inside her womanly core.

She began to breathe faster, moaning with delirious need,
but just as the promise of a climax mounted within, he drew back and said, “Not
yet.”

Wiping his wrist across his mouth, he moved upward, looked
down and took hold of his swollen, rigid erection, and placed the thick silky
tip at the entrance to her womanhood.

“Are you ready for me?” he asked, and she nodded
profusely, feasting her mouth on his, and her hands on the rippled muscles of
his shoulders and upper back.

He pushed her legs further apart and slowly slid into her
with smooth, relentless mastery, for he stroked all the right places with just
the right degree of pressure, as he penetrated her to the hilt.

He withdrew with equal thoroughness, while his hot tongue
swirled around hers.

Intensely aroused—barely able to comprehend that she
was not floating in the haze of an erotic fantasy—Charlotte cried out
with each deep, glorious invasion.

Soon, his slow stokes began to grind harder and faster,
and all her muscles turned to jelly. He was hot and heavy above her; his skin
was slick with sweat. He grunted like a savage and crushed her mouth with a
plunging kiss that stirred her senses into a firestorm of sexual response.

Her climax came quickly, with a sudden intensity she
hadn’t experienced before. Perhaps it was the sheer thrill of this wicked
encounter, or perhaps it was the way he moved. Each stroke of friction was
electric, sizzling through her senses and awakening the sexual being which had
been lying dormant within her for so many years.

Oh, how she had needed this—this human, physical
connection. She had been living such a solitary existence, surrounded only by
her books and her family, when what she really needed was a man—a rugged,
virile, experienced lover who truly knew how to make love to a woman.

Her body shuddered and convulsed, and when she arched her
back, he rose up on one elbow to watch her.

Everything she thought she knew about sexual intercourse
was shattered in the explosion of her desires; it was far more visceral,
exquisitely more carnal, than any experience from her youthful past.

When the ecstasy reached its peak, then began to recede,
and the throbbing of her flesh relaxed, she opened her eyes and looked up at
him. Mr. Torrington.
Her lover
.

He was staring down at her with hooded eyes that were full
of desire and raging need, while he continued to thrust and pump his hips. Then
he shut his eyes, touched his forehead to hers, and grunted as if in
excruciating agony as he withdrew from her depths and used his hand to spill
his seed onto her stomach to prevent the conception of a child.

She was wildly aroused by the sight of his release. It
thrilled her to the very depths of her soul.

He rolled to the side and collapsed beside her like a
giant naked sex god.

Had all this truly happened? Part of her wondered if she had
been dreaming, for it was everything she had fantasized about in the secret
hours of so many lonely nights. No. It was more.

After a moment or two, he turned his head on the pillow to
look at her, and while she was struck by how attractive he was—not classically
handsome, but extremely charismatic—she had no idea what to say or do
next, for this was all so very unfamiliar.

Chapter Seven

Drake turned his head on the pillow to look at the woman
he had just made love to, and in that moment he wanted to know everything there
was to know about her, for she had done something to him just now.

He had come here tonight, fully expecting to have sex with
an eager bed partner, and to enjoy it to the fullest—which he had. It was
certainly not the first time he had been invited for a night of sexual play
with a beautiful woman. Invitations came often from ladies in all levels of
Society. Sometimes they wanted it rough. Other times they wanted to be
anonymous. But always, they wanted the sort of sexual experience they
fantasized about and hadn’t achieved with their husbands, for one reason or
another.

He didn’t know what category Lady Charlotte fell into. She
was not a virgin and from what he understood, she was not married. Was she a
widow, then? Or simply a modern woman who had chosen to enjoy her freedom?

“Why are you looking at me like that?” she asked with a
shy smile that charmed him.

He leaned up on an elbow and studied her face in the
candlelight. Her golden hair, splayed out on the pillow all around her, gleamed
like spun silk, and her full lips were moist and swollen from kissing him.
There had been a lot of kissing.

“I can’t help it,” he said. “You fascinate me.” Not just
because she was beautiful. He’d made love to beautiful women before, but Lady
Charlotte was different.

“Why?”

He shook his head, for he was bewildered by it himself. “I
am curious about you.”

The flame on the candle flickered in a draft, and she
shivered. Drake reached for the covers and drew them up over her lush, naked
form, and covered himself as well.

“That’s better,” she said, snuggling closer. “Now tell me
what you’re curious about, sir. I assure you I have no secrets. Not since I
told you about my alter ego... as a man.”

He chuckled and cradled her close in his arms, while
stroking her hair away from her forehead. “Why are you not married, Charlotte?”

She was a lovely, charming, intelligent woman and the
daughter of a duke. She could have almost any man she wanted. What was wrong
with the men of England? Were they dense?

“I was engaged once,” she said, “many years ago, but he
died.”

Ah...
“I am sorry to hear that.”

“So was I. He was the great love of my young life, and I
was devastated by the loss of him. It took me a long time to recover from it,
and in some ways, I suppose I still haven’t. I never
decided
that I wouldn’t marry. At the time, I thought I would eventually find someone,
but it never happened. I am not bitter, though. It happened this way because I
haven’t invited anything different. I am fulfilled by my writing, which keeps
my imagination occupied, and I am blessed to be a Sinclair. My family is
tightly knit. I have children in my life—nieces and nephews who keep me
entertained. So I am never lonely or bored. There is no shortage of activity,
or love in my life.”

“But the love of a family is not the same as this kind of
love.” He thrust his pelvis against the curve of her hip and felt a burst of
arousal when she wiggled to meet his stroke.

“You’re quite right about that,” she said with a smile.
“Which brings me to ask the same question of you, sir. Why are you not married?
You are a desirable man and quite gifted...
with your hands
.”