Sweet Deception (20 page)

“Oh God, Emma,” he groaned, unable to hold back the answering thrust. Sparks such as he’d never felt in his life burst through him, raining down tingles upon every inch of his skin. What was this madness? He trembled like a green boy—even his legs threatened to give out on him.

Good God. He had to find something stable before he collapsed in a heap on the floor, taking Emma with him.

He wasn’t given much time to consider, however. A brilliant smile wreathed Emma’s face before she renewed their kiss with an untutored fierceness that stole his breath. Her next undulation was anything but tentative and wrung a moan from them both.

From the corner of his eye, Emma’s desk caught his attention. He shuffled toward it, still clasping her tightly
to him. He had just enough restraint not to sweep the surface clean. He doubted Emma would appreciate her meticulously shaded maps being flung to the floor. With one forearm, he nudged aside some papers and settled himself on the corner of the desk with Emma draped in his lap, her legs still straddling his hips.

He pulled back and stared at the woman in his arms. Damnation. Had he ever seen such an arresting sight?

And what a sight she was, her skirts pooled high around her thighs, her chest heaving as she struggled for breath, her lips swollen with his kisses. A fierce possessiveness flared.

“Derick?” Emma’s shy inquiry should have brought him to his senses, but then she reached for his hand, taking it in hers and pressing it against her breast. “I ache,” she said simply.

“I know,” he murmured, reveling in her gasp as he squeezed her firmly. And in this moment, that was all he did know—her need, and how to fill it. His mind emptied of any other thought than how to bring the most pleasure to them both. His other hand followed suit on her neglected breast until he was caressing them both in rhythmic rotating tugs that culminated with the simultaneous rolling of her clothed nipples between his thumbs and forefingers.

“Oh. Oh!” She squirmed in his lap, instinctively grinding against him in a movement that hurled him even further into the madness.

Derick released her breasts just long enough to tug the lace fichu from her bodice. Better, but not enough, not nearly enough. He yanked the muslin down and her breasts popped free of her dress. He cupped her once again, pressing them together as she was bared to his eyes, his hands. His mouth.

He lowered his head, rasping his tongue against her pebbled nipple. Emma nearly shot from his lap. He had to exert pressure on her thighs with his forearms to keep
her in place. “You liked that, didn’t you?” he murmured against her breast, his voice gone rough with his own building need. “Let us see what you think of this.”

He drew her into his mouth, suckling hard, then laving soft licks to soothe her before drawing upon her again.

Her fingers tunneled into his hair, squeezing, tugging spasmodically as she held him tightly against her chest. “Please,” she panted. “Please. More.”

“More what?” he asked as his mouth skimmed to her other breast.

“More anything,” she groaned, ending on a jagged inhalation as he sucked her in again.

More anything.
He wanted to give her more
everything
. To take everything from her. His hand delved beneath her skirts, finding the soft skin of her thigh. It felt as supple beneath his fingers as her breasts did beneath his tongue. He wondered briefly if she would taste as sweet between her thighs as she did between the valley of her breasts. He burned with the need to know.

Later. Now, it was his questing fingers that found her silken folds. Hot. Wet. Swollen. She moaned against the top of his head as he fondled her gently, circling the nub of her pleasure with the pads of his fingers in a way that had her clenching her thighs tightly around his hips.

How he burned to release himself, to thrust into her beckoning heat. And he would, as soon as he was certain she was ready for him.

He lifted his head, straightening as his other hand found its way through her cascading chestnut curls, winding around her hair and pulling her head back so that he could take her lips in a voracious kiss. His tongue swept into her mouth at the same moment he pressed a hard finger into her dew-slickened body.

She stiffened with a moan. Damnation, she was tight.

Exquisitely, deliciously…
tight
. A frigid chill burst through Derick’s belly as cold reality returned him to his senses. Of course she was tight. She was a
virgin
.

And not just a virgin. She was Emma. Pygmy.

His hand stilled as his eyes raked her. Her hair fell in wild disarray around them, her chest heaved, passion-splotched breasts spilling free over her neckline, glistening with moisture from his own mouth. Her legs were splayed, her skirts tossed above her waist, his bronzed hand stark against her pink skin where he touched her intimately.

Self-disgust ravaged him. Look what he’d led her to. Look how close he’d come to ruining her. What a bloody ass.

He knew she wanted him, knew how vulnerable she was to him. And he’d nearly taken her atop her own desk, in her brother’s house, for Christ’s sake.

Derick trembled all over, no longer with passion but with the effort of holding still with a writhing woman in his lap.

She must have felt the change in him because she grabbed his forearm with both of her hands, just above where his hand still rested between her thighs. “Derick?”

She was so beautiful with her eyes clouded, her muscles tight and twitching with her need. “Please,” she said, her voice shaking. He knew she didn’t even know what she was asking for. She only knew she needed it. Badly.

Tension coiled in him, pushing away every conflicted thought save one.
This was his fault, not hers.
Still, there was no way he could consummate what they’d begun. But neither could he leave her like this.

“Shhh…” he crooned, gentling her. He opened his hand over her mons again, his fingers returning to their swirling movement on her clitoris. His other hand left her hair, skimming down her spine in a soothing motion. “I know what you need, Emma. Trust me to give it to you.”

He had tupped scores of women in the name of duty, never once losing his head like this. Now he called on
this other self. The one who wrung pleasure for a purpose. Only this time, his purpose was simply to give Emma the release he owed her.

He brought her down gently, then helped her start a slower climb, bringing to bear every bit of experience he’d gleaned in all of those years of seducing women for their secrets. He knew precisely how to shift his touch when her pearl quivered beneath his fingers, how to gently suck her tongue into his mouth to give her a point to focus on when the sensations wracking her body became unbearable. He knew when to spear his fingers into her body, when to plump her breasts and when to pinch her nipples to push her just to the very edge.

But what he didn’t know was how to stop his own body from climbing with her. Derick gasped for breath, when by all accounts his only exertion at the moment was with his hands and mouth. Alarming bursts of pleasure sporadically rocketed through his body. Damnation. He’d never had this problem with any other woman. He’d always been able to wring from them whatever he needed, without becoming any more engaged than necessary to be able to complete the deed. But with every gasping moan from Emma’s lips, Derick was strung tighter and tighter. He hoped to hell she came soon, as her every cry of pleasure twisted him.

“Derick!” she cried out as she crested.

Thank God.

She clenched his hand tight between her thighs, clasping his head to her chest with a strength that screamed the power of her climax. She jerked in his arms, moaning in hiccuping little waves.

Derick’s breath strangled in his chest as a fierce burning started in his spine. What the hell?

Emma shuddered again, her bottom notching against his still-clothed arousal.

Pleasure exploded through him, shocking him, spasming
through his cock in hot violent spurts. “Ah—ah—ah—ahhhhh!” Derick shook, mindless, grinding Emma’s hips against him until every last bit of him was spent.

As their cries died out, only their harsh panting echoed in the room. Derick buried his face against the humid skin of Emma’s throat, and he couldn’t help himself from licking her, tasting her salty sweetness.

She slumped, boneless, in his arms. Derick let his hands skim over her back, her hair, in long, soothing strokes. But the more she relaxed, the more tense he grew. By all rights, he should be as languidly sated as she. Instead, tension grew to alarm.

He’d just been undone, popping in his trousers like a lad during his first slap and tickle. He, whose longevity and sexual prowess had been whispered about throughout countless ballrooms on the Continent. And even though Emma had never actually touched him, it had been the most wrenching, wringing, intense climax of his life.

It was unthinkable, what he’d done. He’d lost control.

An even more disturbing realization struck him.

He’d
liked
losing control.

He was in serious trouble.

Emma struggled to catch her breath. Not just her breath, but her thoughts. Words danced into her mind, jumbling together in combinations that made no sense. Much like others saw her equations, she imagined. She let them go, too tired, too…blissful to try to hang on and make sense of them.

Unfamiliar physical sensations flitted in next. An odd moisture between her thighs. A humming, tinglingly raw pulsing there as well. A twinging in her breasts. A full-body ache, as if she’d climbed one of the great hills White Peak was named for the day before and had the sore muscles to prove it. And yet, it was all overlaid with a golden honeyed glow. What had Derick done to her?

Her eyes popped open. Derick. He was…beneath her, would be the best way to describe it. And yet between her, and around her, too…and fully clothed, while she—
dear God
—was half naked.

She stared down her body as if it were someone else wantonly splayed in a man’s lap in the middle of the morning, on top of a desk, no less. Her breasts spilled out over her dress, nipples darkened and throbbing, a dark head nestled between them. And—and her thighs were bare. Heat flooded her once again, this time from embarrassment. Thank God Derick’s body blocked the rest of what she knew she’d see—her most private of places, bared and pressed tightly against him, pinkish white skin against the dark brown material of his pantaloons.

She tensed, the urge to reach down and yank her bodice up and her skirts down overwhelming. And yet…This was Derick. The one man she’d always wanted. She relaxed a little, comforted, and breathed him in again. Were she ever to do…well, whatever they’d just done, he was the man she would have chosen. And that had to make it all right, didn’t it?

Because he’d chosen her, too.

She stroked his silky black hair as a contented smile lifted her lips.

Derick flinched beneath her. The harsh jerk reverberated through Emma, sending her heart into her throat. Her smile dipped. Why would he flinch at her touch?

He pulled back from her. The sudden loss of his heat against her bare chest sent a chill through her and left her feeling cold. And strangely alone, which was ridiculous, as she’d never been
less
alone in her life, still seated as she was, so intimately on his lap.

As he straightened, his hands moved to tug her dress up over her chest. Emma shivered as his hot palms delved beneath the lace of her neckline, efficiently shifting
her breasts back into place. Efficiently…and almost impersonally—nothing like how he’d touched her before. Why?

When she was decently covered, Derick’s hands moved to grip her upper arms. “Can you stand?”

“Of course,” she said automatically, but could she? She didn’t know. She didn’t want to. Emma searched Derick’s face. His expression had gone blank—firm and emotionless. Confusion twisted in her belly. “If you wish it…”

“I do,” he said in a clipped tone, and Emma’s throat constricted painfully.

She hadn’t pleased him.

Shame flooded her. She turned her face away, unable to look at him as she braced her hands upon his shoulders so that she could gingerly slide her legs from atop his. Derick gripped her waist, standing to assist her glide to the floor. Her legs trembled and ached as she gained her feet, but she ignored it. She stepped back, pushing his hands away when he tried to help her smooth her skirts down. She focused her gaze on the patterned rug as she finished the task herself.

Derick’s booted feet disappeared from her view, leaving only her discarded fichu crumpled on the floor.

Emma rubbed her forehead with the fingers of her left hand. She had no experience in these things, but she’d thought for certain he’d found the same unnameable bliss as she, given his throaty cries there at the end. Hadn’t he shaken with the same pleasure she had?

“What did I do wrong?” The question flew from her lips, and at once she wished she could call it back. And yet she couldn’t stop the torrent. “Was I too wanton? Too eager?” She braved a look at him. “Or am I the opposite? Too…boring? Not worldly enough?”

Derick stood only feet from her in profile, his darkly clothed form in stark relief against the light color of the
door. His chest lifted and fell with a heavy breath. Emma drank in his sleek angles, the perfectly formed lines that defined his face, the precise balance of sinew and bone from head to toe.

And then she knew. Derick was beautiful—perfectly proportioned, physically magnificent. One of those beings graced by the Divine, without flaw. Whereas she…Emma winced, hugging her arms around herself. She was not. Her breasts, she knew, were disproportionate to her small frame, her hips a degree too wide while her waist dipped too narrowly. He would have seen all of that, felt it. He must think her severely lacking when compared to what he could have, what he deserved.

“Do you find my form distasteful?” she whispered, ashamed. But she had to know.

A choke emerged from his throat as his face whipped around. He pinned her with his glittering gaze. After several long seconds, the strained lines around his eyes softened. “You don’t actually believe that, Emma,” he murmured. He squinted at her a moment longer. “Do you?”