The Delicate Matter of Lady Blayne (25 page)

He rocked his hips against hers, gently. Barely.

Sweetness poured through her. She gasped in surprise.

“Doing all right?” he asked, his voice somewhat hoarser.

She nodded.

He moved within her, a strong, steady stroke. Her flesh clenched around him. Oh God, she was so filled by him. His flesh throbbed. Pressure, so much pressure. It sent waves of sensation down to the soles of her feet. She bit her lip at the intensity. The strangeness. Was it always like this?

“I think…I think.” A feeling of foolishness stilled her tongue.

“What, love?” he said, his voice terse and hoarse all at once.

“I think you’re too big.”

He seemed to freeze, then he uttered a strange barking sound. A cross between a groan and a chuckle. “No, love. You’re just not used to it.”

“I am sure you’re too big.”

“I’ve had no complaints, until now.”

“I just…” Her voice trailed off. Oh, didn’t she sound ridiculous? She took a deep breath and tried to reframe her thoughts. “It’s different than I expected.”

“Shh, love, this is new to you. Just relax and let it happen. You’ll become accustomed to it.” His voice shook.

His whole body had begun to shake.

She could sense the coiled energy within him. She realized he was holding back on her account. That it might be causing him distress. She made an effort to lie back. To relax and accept him inside her.

“Didn’t any of your wicked little romances describe how a man takes a woman?”

“They made it sound all airy and floaty. Two people merging and flying together and visiting the stars.”

“And the reality is something a bit less celestial, eh?”

“It is just that it is all well and good for you to say that you’re not too big, but I think you may be too big for
me.”

“You’re resisting me.”

“No, I am not.”

“Yes, you are.” He rocked his hips, evoking that sweet pleasure deep within her.

She gave a soft cry.

“Did it hurt?”

“No,” she said.

“Then we fit together, do we not?”

“I suppose.”

“Admit what’s happening.”

She didn’t want to admit it. She shook her head.

“Admit it.”

“I feel him.”

“Yes, and what about him?”

“He doesn’t approve.”

“It’s no longer his place to approve or disapprove.” He pulled his hips back then thrust forward.

Pleasure consumed her, and she moaned.

“You’re mine now.” The words vibrated as though they had come roaring up from his depths. He tightened his hold on her hips. “Mine.”

Chapter Seventeen

You’re mine now.

The words echoed in her mind. She could still feel them vibrating through his body, carrying all the energy of his emotion. His eyes shone like dark sapphires, the intensity of his passion commanding her to focus only on him. She couldn’t have torn her gaze from him even if she’d wanted to.

She could still feel Freddy’s presence. But now it was as though he were watching from a distance. And she could still sense his disapproval, his displeasure.

Freddy did haunt her. Really haunted her at her most intimate moments. She knew this was an irrational belief, yet she couldn’t let it go. And she had never admitted this belief to anyone, not even Meeker.

James said it wasn’t really Freddy at all but her own resistance. Had she really been resisting James?

Dr. Meeker had said resistance to male sexual authority was at the root of all her problems. Yet, she hadn’t thought of herself resisting James. To her perception, she had been the one trying to seduce and he had been the one resisting.

James’ hips jerked against hers, jolting her out of thoughts. It was a quick movement that seemed involuntary, as though his body compelled him to thrust. She gasped, her pelvis arching up just as involuntarily. He groaned then went rigid. She could feel the tension thrumming in his muscles, could feel the energy he restrained.

He cupped her face. “You’re mine, the way you should have been from the first.”

His voice resounded with such emotion! Had she ever imagined that he would speak to her like that? Not James Blayne, not the Rock of Gibraltar. Part of her soared to hear this passion from him. But another part of her wanted to urge him to speak quietly, or perhaps not at all.

She couldn’t quite believe James’ insistence that it was
she
who had resisted him.

Freddy was here, really here in spirit. She could imagine him standing at a distance, but he might as well have been in bed with them, for he could hear their every whispered word.

He would hear all those secrets she had kept from him.

He would know that as an innocent girl, she had wanted James and allowed him stolen moments in the garden.

That would hurt Freddy worse than anything else she had ever done.

Would Freddy then realize that her encounters with James had been the beginning of her undoing? Would he guess that James had awoken the sensualist in her, the lioness who hungered to reach for life’s pleasures with both hands and take all she could? That had been the start of all the changes in her that had dismayed and disgusted Freddy. He had turned from her…

“Don’t resist me.” James’ voice was gentleness underlain with steel.

A command.

Her blood turned to warm honey and she melted beneath him. Deliciousness that made her cling to his broad shoulders. Steel in his voice, steel in the solid muscle beneath her hands. How his strength had always drawn her. Tempted her. Yet now it was hers to touch. All she had to do was let his strength envelop her and give in to his protection.

Freddy’s image grew fuzzy.

James lowered his head. His lips pressed hers, soft-firm and oh, so luscious.

His weight bore down on her, his long, tall body hard, warm. Solid. Real.

His tongue thrust against hers, hot and wet. Heavens! His mouth tasted of something she couldn’t quite name but reminded her of sweet peach brandy with a bite of ginger.

Eager for more, she met each caress of his tongue with strokes of her own. He responded by giving her ever more lush, fiery thrusts. His heart pounded against hers. Yet she discerned the slight trembling of his body, which told her how he still was holding back.

His erection throbbed within her. At the reminder of how they were joined, how he filled her to the point of stretching, she started. This time, the sensation held a pleasurable edge. Exquisitely so. Her flesh clenched around him. Oh, and wasn’t that even more pleasurable? A thrill of anticipation raced through her.

He groaned and his shaft throbbed again.

His invasion of her flesh no longer felt so strange. He was quite welcome. Her hips arched up, of their own volition. Her flesh clenched him harder, a convulsive little wave of spasms.

He groaned and rocked his hips.

Such a slight movement but fire raced through her cunny and lit her whole being. She gasped in surprise. In wonder.

He rocked against her again and she arched to meet his thrusts.

Oh, oh, the weight of his body on hers, the taste of his mouth, the stretching of her inner walls, the impatient pressure of his crown against the mouth of her womb, all of it his taking of her—all of it felt good, so good.

He tore his mouth from hers.

She cried out softly with a sudden sense of loss.

He shifted his body. He pulled back then thrust, more firmly than before. The slick friction of his cock within her channel was so delicious that she cried out again. His pelvis brushed her mons, brushed her straining, erect nub.

Sunny cried out more sharply and clutched his shoulders. She arched her hips, greedily seeking more contact between her nub and his lower abdomen.

He put a hand under her chin, holding it steadily. “Open your eyes.”

She complied.

A thick lock of inky black hair fell over his broad forehead. His gaze seared into her like a pair of blue flames.

Real. He was real.

There was no room for anything or anyone else. For the first time in three years, Freddy left her.

James withdrew then thrust harder this time, his girth stretching her, making her aware of her lingering soreness. She didn’t care. It was so glorious. She cried out, clutching his shoulders and jerking her hips up to meet his.

He groaned, more deeply, harshly. He withdrew and thrust and withdrew and thrust, faster, faster, harder, harder until he collapsed on her, his breaths blowing harshly against her neck. “You’re so hot, so wet.” He paused then made a sound like a raspy hiss. “So tight.”

His rod throbbed within her.

She clenched him, learning with each thrust, each passing moment, how to accentuate the natural reaction of her flesh, how to enjoy his body more.

He drew his breath in between his clenched teeth.

She hugged his flesh again with her sex.

“God,” he said, his tone gritty and harsh. Then he exhaled, loudly. “Fuck.”

Pure joy filled her and she laughed and grasped his shoulders.

More! She wrapped her legs about his waist.

He inhaled. The sharp sound cut the air.

Oh God, she wanted
more
of him. She wanted to be as close to him as she could get. She tightened her legs about him. The steel of his buttocks tensed between her thighs. She squeezed his cock more fervently than ever.

He uttered a harsh groan.

She arched her hips, grinding herself. “Please, please!”

He gave her a series of rapid, wrenching thrusts. Their force rocked her. Her soreness increased to rawness. A sweet pain. Sweetness flooded her whole being, a sort of melting. Melting into him. It was grand. The grandest thing she’d ever known.

He pulled back.

She tensed with the expectation of the next hard thrust. He kept pulling back, all the way back, until his flesh left hers, leaving a hollow, aching emptiness.

“James,” she said, between frantic pants for breath. He placed his erection against her belly and pumped. Hot wetness jetted onto her flesh.

“Catriona!” he softly growled her name.

At the sound of her name, spoken with such passion, happiness welled within her.

She still did not feel Freddy’s presence.

James collapsed against her and then breathed raggedly against her ear. He dragged several strands of hair off her face, and in doing so, brushed her cheek with his fingertips. “Oh, Christ, Catriona.”

* * * *

Having washed and dressed, James lounged on the bed with his hands braced behind his head. His muscles felt like ballast, as though he were slowly sinking into the featherbed. Languor. Not unpleasant, just something he wasn’t accustomed to. It was his way to be up with the dawn and to be about his business shortly thereafter.

Sunny had needed to sleep, so he had let her, but now she was behind the screen, sloshing about as she washed herself.

He remembered the warmth of her form in his arms as he’d held her in bed. He’d held her all morning. It had proved too seductive, the softness of her ample buttocks against his loins had kept his cock half-erect. He had closed his eyes against the ever-brightening light of morning and allowed himself to drift into a half-dreaming state, a pleasurable, sensual place he’d never quite been before. He would either fuck a woman or get up from the bed and put his feelings aside.

Never had he purposely wallowed in the sweet longing.

Yet it was almost ten now.

They were waiting for the baggage cart to catch up with them from yesterday, to bring them both fresh clothes, as well as shoes and stockings for her.

The sense of repletion that had been with him since waking further relaxed him. He couldn’t recall having had such a powerful sexual release since he’d been in his early twenties. Now that he had come fully awake, he also couldn’t remember ever feeling so—he frowned, searching for the right word—emotionally dissatisfied after a carnal encounter. He hadn’t been able to bring her to completion. The magnitude of his own climax, the intensity of his physical enjoyment, only increased his sense of dissatisfaction with the situation. It was more than a normal sense of dissatisfaction from wondering if perhaps he had not applied the correct techniques to arouse her properly. No, it was a type of empathy he was feeling. For the first time in his life, he felt a woman’s disappointment as keenly as if it had been his own.

This whole time, he’d been watching her.

She stood before the washstand, drawing a silver-backed brush through her hair, making vigorous strokes and shaking her head whilst tilting it back. The morning sunlight streamed through a slight part in the curtains and made the medium-brown tresses glisten like gold. He ought to have left her alone, given her privacy for her toilet. The truth was, he was enjoying the sight of her. With the light shining through the thin chemise, every gorgeous curve of her body was illuminated.

He couldn’t call her Sunny, not now. Sunny was the girl who had presumably grown up into the perfect lady. A lady beyond reproach. It hurt too much now to even think of her as Sunny. It confused his heart.

The girl he had loved was gone. Forever.

From this moment forth, she would be Catriona.

Catriona with the lush, sensual body; Catriona, a vision straight from a man’s most erotic dreams.

She was not beyond reproach.

She had made mistakes in life and been all too human. Not simply human. Woman. More woman than lady.

A woman with wants, needs. Hunger.

Aside from stunning lust, he wasn’t completely sure what he felt for Catriona, except that last night he’d experienced a consuming sympathy for her distress over her past mistakes, and this had elicited a tenderness that he’d never known with any other bedmate. It had added a confusing piquancy to their joining, as had her virginity.

He had never taken any woman’s maidenhead. Seducing virgins and ruining them, ah, but that had been Freddy’s forte, hadn’t it?

James had always believed that if he took any woman’s innocence, she would be the woman he would marry. Yes, he had plotted to seduce Sunny into giving him herself that night years ago in the Blayne garden. To coerce her into giving him her hand in marriage.

That had been wrong, very wrong.

That had ended in disaster.

He had lost her to Freddy.

Catriona stood in the window, seemingly unaware of how completely the rays of sun illuminated her form. How utterly seductive any man would find her pose.

His erection throbbed against the confines of his trousers. Despite his release the previous night, the pleasure of admiring her charms displayed so enticingly had gone from enjoyable to painful.

He resisted the urge to grasp his cock and give it a squeeze, even though the pressure was fast becoming unbearable.

He couldn’t take her again, not today. He must give her newly breached body a chance to recover. He plucked the top sheet from the bed. “Catriona.”

She turned, her leaf-green eyes distant, her gold-brown hair a cloud about her shoulders. He reached out a hand to her. “Come here.”

He motioned to beside him on the bed. She approached slowly, giving him a stunning view of her pink nipples that strained against the thin cloth, and of the dark shadowing at the apex of her legs. He picked up both corners of the sheet, intending to wrap it about her shoulders once she sat.

She knelt before him and cast her eyes down.

He caught his breath.

She crawled on her knees between his spread legs then pressed her cheek against his thigh.