Simply Shameless (4 page)

With one swift thrust, he filled her and she obliged him, climaxing with a force that blinded her to everything but his body and her response to it. He arched his back and bit down hard on his lip as she convulsed around him, his shaft a thick unyielding presence deep inside her.

"I'm still not sure I have this right."

Helene closed her eyes as his fingers played with her nipples, drawing them into tight sensitive buds. She swallowed hard.

"Trust me, you do. If I experience any more pleasure, I think I'll die."

"Isn't that what the French call it anyway?
Le petit mortV

He kissed her gently and began to move his hips, shallow upward strokes that made her gasp. She gripped his muscled forearms and dug her nails deep as another wave of satisfaction crashed over her.

He pulled out, and his cum flooded her belly and pooled on the chair beneath her. He kissed her throat and sat back on his heels, breathing hard.

"Next time, I want to stay in you longer." He stroked his now-flaccid cock. "Damnation, I wish there was a way to gain satisfaction without having to withdraw." His gaze was direct. "I want my seed in you."

"You do not." Uneasily, Helene counted the days since her last monthly course. "I have something in my baggage that might help—if it ever gets here."

He drew away from her, his expression careful. "You have sheepskin condoms?"

"Don't men use those to protect themselves against disease? I have something to protect
myself."

Despite the sudden nervousness in her stomach, she met his gaze full on. Had he realized she was not what she seemed? She hated the thought that he might turn away from her in disgust. There had to be something she could say.

"My husband's children from his first marriage did not want to dilute their inheritance.

My widow's portion depended on my making sure it didn't happen."

Mon Dieu,
another lie, but what else could she say? Her sense of happiness and well-being dissipated.

Philip got to his feet and stretched before looking down at her. "I'm sorry."

"For what?" Helene wrapped her arms around her knees and retreated farther back in the chair, anxious to avoid his piercing stare.

"For making assumptions about your character when I hardly know you. For bringing the outside world into our refuge." He shoved his hand into his hair. "This is our time away from reality. The only time we can really be ourselves, and I had to ruin it."

She met his impassioned stare, amazed that he felt the same as she did and that he had the ability to put her yearning into such eloquent words.

"We are never truly free."

His shoulders drooped. "I know, but I wanted it to be different for us tonight."

Helene stood up and walked to him. His seed clung to her

|thighs, and his scent covered her own. She already owed him so much. She stroked his back and encircled his waist with her arms.

"If this is a dream outside of time, then we make the rules, oui?"

"I suppose so."

She rubbed her cheek against his warm skin. "Then perhaps 'We should simply enjoy each other?"

He sighed. "I would like that."

She went up on tiptoe to kiss his luscious mouth. "I would too."

He slid his hand into her hair and deepened the kiss until his cock nudged her belly again.

Helene felt an answering quiver in her sex. To have such a young vigorous lover was a revelation. His fingers tightened in her hair.

"Let's go to bed."

Chapter Three

Philip thanked the maid, shut the door, and returned to the bed, balancing the supper tray in his hands. The steaming bowls of beef stew, fresh crusty bread, ale, and apple pie gladdened his heart. Food on the ship had been plain at best, inedible or infested at worst.

And although he'd loved the spices of India, it was a pleasure to come home to the more simple things in life.

He halted by the side of the bed and stared at Helene, who dozed beneath the well-rumpled covers. Her blond hair was tangled, her skin a delicate shell pink from the roughness of his unshaven chin. Despite her disarray, she reminded him of the porcelain figurines on his mother's mantelpiece.

They'd coupled all night in every conceivable position and found a closeness that had so far eluded him in his life. Her body craved his with an intensity that humbled him. Even as he studied her, his cock rose in anticipation.

With a groan, he set the tray down on a small table and climbed between the sheets. He tickled Helene behind the ear.

"Are you hungry?"

"For you? Always."

He chuckled. "Not this time. I meant for food."

Her nose twitched as she caught the scent of the feast in store for them. She yawned.

Philip leaned across to plump up the pillows and pull her into a sitting position. Her breasts came into view over the top of the covers, and he stared at their rosy tips. His cock grew even more.

Helene brushed the hair out of her eyes and accepted the mug of ale he handed her. She shuddered as she drank and then put her cup down.

"English ale is so weak. How can you prefer it to wine?"

Philip toasted her with his mug. "Because I'm English?"

Her smile made his heart clench, made him want to cover her with his body and protect her from every ill. There was Something fragile beneath her astonishing beauty that called to him at a primitive level.

"Whereabouts in London are you staying, Helene?"

The question escaped him before he considered the implications. He cursed himself for a fool as her face became guarded. Why couldn't he just accept the here and now? Why did he have to spoil it? He finished his ale, poured himself another cup, and then balanced the tray of food on his knees.

"Eat, you must be hungry."

To his surprise, she took him at his word, eating with a serious thoroughness that made him question whether food had always been freely available to her. The thought of her wanting for anything made him curiously angry. He focused his gaze on her hands, not wanting her to see his unguarded expression.

With a soft curse, he encircled her left wrist with his finger and thumb, making her drop her bread. He turned her arm over to display the rough marks on her inner wrist.

"Who hurt you?"

"Why do you ask?"

She went quiet, her breathing so shallow he wondered if she might faint. He squeezed her flesh, felt small bones flex and yield beneath porcelain skin.

"I've seen the scars manacles make on skin before."

She sighed. "My family was caught up in the revolution. I was imprisoned for a while."

Philip simply stared at her as he grappled with the appalling images her simple statement brought to life. Despite his exile in India, he knew all too well the horrors that had accompanied the French Revolution. Helene wrenched out of his grasp and clasped both hands to her breast. She retreated to some private place he sensed he would never be allowed or able to enter.

She took a ragged breath. "I do not wish to talk about it. I survived and I wish to move on with my life."

Philip nodded. She was only eighteen. He might complain, but what had her short life been like, compared to his indulged and cosseted existence? He felt far too inadequate to ask about the suffering mirrored in her fine eyes.

He picked up his ale. "Then here's to life."

She glanced at him, her expression still distant and wary. He reached across, handed her back her mug of ale, and raised his eyebrows. To his intense relief, she managed a tremulous smile. His heart softened, melted, and came to rest at her feet.

"Life," she said, raising her mug.

Philip smiled back and returned his attention to his plate, reasoning that if he could fill his mouth with food, he was less likely to say anything stupid. And as soon as Helene finished eating, he'd show her exactly how far he was willing to go to remove the hurt from her gaze.

Much later, when the room was a series of shadows and distorted gloomy shapes, Helene stirred in her sleep. The old feather bed sagged in the middle and made them a perfect nest. Behind her, Philip lay on his side, one hand buried between her legs, the other cupping her breast. His half-erect cock nestled between her buttocks. She felt more comfortable with him than with any Other man. His deep appreciation of her was evident in everything he did. He worshipped her body, he freely
shared
himself with her, and she gloried in every new sensation.

If she'd met him in her former life at a ball or some other so-cial occasion, would she have felt like this? This instant connection and strong sexual attraction? She'd changed so much that she no longer trusted herself. Bitter experience had replaced her former romantic dreams. Nothing was ever as good as it seemed, and yet here she was, wrapped in a man's arms and at peace for the first time in years.

She smiled into the darkness. His scent bathed her now, the exotic smell of spices and his seed as familiar as her own cream. Had she ever allowed herself to lie entwined with a man without wanting to rid herself of the physical reminders of yet another unwanted sexual encounter?

"You're awake."

She slowly opened her eyes as Philip nuzzled her neck.

"I suppose I am."

He chuckled, the sound muffled against the nape of her neck. "I keep imagining I'm back on the ship again. I woke up because everything wasn't moving."

"The voyage from India is very long,
n'est-cepas}"

"Aye, five to six months on average." He squeezed her breast. "And no women passengers to flirt with. Can you imagine that?"

"I cannot imagine how you survived without sex for that long."

He laughed again, the sound sleepy and intimate. "There were some avenues I explored—unconventional ones, I might add."

She placed her hand over his as he slowly fingered her nipple. "Such as?"

"You are a curious minx, madame. I hesitate to shock you."

She almost laughed. "I don't think that is possible."

He sighed and settled himself against her, his breath warm on her cheek. "From my first day aboard the ship, one of the men who served in the passenger cabins made it clear to me that if I was interested in a sexual tryst, he would be happy to oblige."

Philip kissed her shoulder. "I, of course, politely declined his offer, telling him I had no interest in men. But as the voyage progressed and my hand became the only means of satisfying myself, I began to see his proposal in a different light."

Helene arched her back against the growing swell of Philip's cock, felt the first wetness of his precum soak into her skin.

"I found myself lingering in my cabin to watch him perform the simplest tasks. I loved the way he laid out my linen, the tight stretch of his breeches over his arse as he made my bed. He was a handsome man, too, with long black hair and a gold earring in each ear.

"One morning, about three months into our voyage, I met him in one of the narrow corridors between the state rooms and the kitchen. A roll of the ship threw me against him, and he caught hold of my arms. I didn't step back. I let my body press his into the wall, felt his erect cock grind against mine."

Helene shivered as the tip of Philip's thumb worked its way inside her back passage.

"When he licked my lips, I almost came in my breeches. ..."

"And how did that make you feel?"

He groaned and rocked against her, his precum making his cock slide easily between her buttocks. "Hard, horny, and desperate, if you really want to know. Two days after that, I deliberately met him again outside the tiny storeroom. He shoved me inside the room and went down on his knees. Before I could even speak, he had my cock in his mouth and soon my seed was pumping down his throat."

Helene slid her leg up over Philip's thigh and anchored her foot on his hip, leaving her sex open to his questing fingers, her arse ready for the first penetration of his cock. He pressed against her, withdrew, and then returned, his cock now slathered in oil and precum.

"God, I let him do that to me every night in my cabin, my hands in his hair, holding him against me, making sure he took every drop of my cum." He moaned and undulated his hips against her. "And then he offered me his arse and showed me how to grease my cock to get inside him. And God forgive me, I took him on his hands and knees, over my table, in my bed ..."

Helene closed her eyes as he worked his way inside her. She climaxed almost immediately, erotic images of Philip fucking the unknown man with all the concentration and finesse he had given her floated through her mind.

"I would've liked to see you together."

He bit her shoulder. "I would've liked that, too, as long as you were naked and so aroused you made yourself come with us."

"And did you give him the same liberties?"

Deep inside her, Philip's cock twitched and swelled as he gave another long, slow thrust.

"I took him in my mouth ... I enjoyed that."

He gripped her hips as he pumped hard against her buttocks, his breath hot and harried on her neck, his fingers digging into her flesh as he came. His final words were whispered so quietly she almost missed them.

"I was ready to let him fuck me, but the voyage was ending, and he was called away to other duties."

"You were surprised by your lust for this man."

He shifted behind her. "At first I was horrified, but then I felt no shame, only a deep need to be fucked, to be taken, even if it was by another man."

Dreamily, Helene considered his words. Here was a man who might understand that love came in different disguises. A man who might love her despite her past. She eased away from him to the edge of the bed. What on earth was she thinking? She had a new life to plan, a new future. The last thing she needed was to throw herself into Philip Ross's arms and beg him to keep her there forever. Had she learned nothing?

"Helene? Have I disgusted you with my story?"

She opened her eyes and focused on the soft candlelight as it flickered beside the bed.

She hated the dark and always insisted on a light. It meant the faces of those who had fucked her were all too memorable. But at least it kept out the decaying ghosts of those who were no longer able to fuck anything at all.