The Pleasure of Your Kiss (28 page)

Clarinda twined her lithe arms around his neck, her beguiling kisses skating dangerously near the corner of his mouth. If he allowed her seeking lips to find his, there would be no saving either of them.

Using every ounce of the meager self-control God had given him, Ash reached behind him to unhook Clarinda’s clinging arms from his neck. Striving to keep his motions brisk and efficient—no easy feat when he was already as hard as a rock—he pushed her down on the pillows, pinning her wrists on either side of her head in the improbable hope of keeping her hands off him long enough to allow the blood to start flowing to his brain again.

Visibly delighted to find herself on her back with him looming over her, she wiggled her hips and bit her bottom lip in brazen invitation, her eyes sparkling with mischief.

It was no struggle for Ash to keep his expression stern. “You might not remember any of this in the morning, but I would. Once you regained your senses, you would hate me. And I would hate myself even more.”

“Don’t be ridiculous! I could never hate you!”

“What you’re feeling right now has absolutely nothing to do with me. Trust me. When it comes to assuaging the hungers you’re suffering right now, any man would do.”

Her smile faded. Her lower lip began to tremble ever so slightly, making him feel like the meanest ogre in the world. “Is that what you believe? That any man would do? That’s simply not true. It’s always been you, Ash. Only you.”

Ash had already committed himself to enduring whatever physical torture she might dole out, but he had no defenses against the unabashed adoration in her big green eyes. He ought to be impressed that she could still lie so convincingly while under the influence of opium and God knew what else.

“What about Max?” he asked grimly.

She gazed up at him blankly.

“You do remember Max, don’t you?
My
brother?
Your
fiancé?”

“Oh, Maximillian!” A fond smile lit up her face. “Your brother is such a dear. Have I ever told you what a dear he was?”

“No,” Ash growled. “And I’d rather you didn’t.”

Knowing it wasn’t going to be possible for him to maintain his stern demeanor for long with her flat on her back beneath him, he tugged her to a sitting position. “What I want you to remember in the morning are all of the things I
didn’t
do to you so that you can tell my brother about every one of them in great detail.”

“Then what will we do tonight to pass the time?” She sat up on her knees to face him in the moonlight, all eagerness and big, dewy eyes.

“Wait for the effects of whatever they gave you to wear off.”

“How long will that take?”

“An eternity,” he muttered, propping his back against a plush purple bolster. He’d had enough experience with the more potent aphrodisiacs himself to know things were likely to get much worse before they got better.

For the both of them.

Despite his concerted effort to keep Clarinda at arm’s length, she couldn’t seem to keep her hands off him. When he folded his arms over his chest and tried to hold her at bay with a forbidding glower, she began to pet the front of his shirt as if he were some sort of faithful hound. Even that innocent touch was enough to send shock waves of heat shooting straight to his groin.

She leaned forward, swaying slightly on her knees, and whispered loudly in his ear, “Did you know it was possible for a woman to pleasure herself?”

The corner of his mouth curved in a reluctant smile. “I’ve heard rumors to that effect.”

Clarinda sank back on her heels and stole a look over her shoulder, as if to make sure no one was eavesdropping on their conversation. “They taught me how to do it. Would you care to see?”

“God, yes,” he breathed. She reached for herself, but he grabbed her wrist before her hand could arrive at its destination. “I mean, hell no!”

If she touched herself in front of him, he was going to explode right then and there.

His refusal earned him a brief pout, but Clarinda’s disappointment was short-lived. “When the women of the harem were teaching me all of the ways a woman can pleasure a man,” she said softly, inclining her head so that the fall of her hair veiled the flushed curve of her cheek, “I tried to think of Max, honestly I did. But it was always you I saw in my mind. Doing all of the things we never had a chance to try before. Me touching you. Kissing you.” She lifted her wistful gaze to his face, her wayward hand drifting over his folded arms and down to the tightly clenched muscles of his abdomen. “Putting my mouth on you.”

Ash stopped breathing altogether, mesmerized by her confession. He made a valiant effort but could not stop his gaze from dropping to the parted pink petals of her lips, from imagining what they would look like—and feel like—wrapped around him.

“If it would make things more … bearable for you, I could show you what they taught us,” she offered earnestly. “Would you believe they used a cucumber?” Another one of those adorably sly glances over her shoulder. “I pretended to be disinterested but I smuggled one out when no one was looking and took it to my alcove so I could practice. I might not be as adept at it as Yasmin, but I’m sure you could talk me through it. After all, don’t they always say practice makes perfect?” A husky little giggle escaped her. “I used to spend all of those hours practicing my scales on the pianoforte just to please Papa. There’s no reason I can’t practice to please you, is there?”

“Yes. No. Yes,” he blurted out, tearing his gaze away from her mouth. Her oh-so-soft, oh-so-luscious, oh-so-tempting mouth. “There are any number of reasons why you can’t
practice
on me.” Oddly enough, even as he said the words, he couldn’t think of a single one. He couldn’t think at all.

As if sensing his mounting distress, she reached up to caress his face, her expression tender and her eyes darkened with sympathy. “This is all so unfair. I can only imagine how difficult this must be for you.” He didn’t even realize her other hand had escaped his grip until she brushed her fingertips over the part of him already straining to escape the front placket of his trousers.

Ash had somehow managed to stop her from touching herself, but no force in heaven or on earth could have given him the strength to stop her from touching him. He couldn’t have moved in that moment if a stone block had been about to tumble from the sky and crush him to death. Not that there was any need for a stone block. As Clarinda curled her fingers around him, stroking his rigid length through the snug fabric of his trousers with bewitching boldness, he thought he was going to die right then and there.

“Please, Ash,” she whispered, the wild look in her eye warning him the effects of the aphrodisiac were just beginning to make themselves fully known. “I can’t wait anymore. It’s been so long … too long. I want you … I need you …”

How many nights had he lain awake and dreamed of her whispering those very words? It was so hard to deny her anything when she was looking at him like that. He had only done it once, and he had spent every moment since then keenly regretting it.

He sat as still as a marble statue as she slid into his lap, neatly straddling him. Now it wasn’t her hand pressed against him but the damp heat between her thighs. She wasn’t wearing any undergarments beneath the shift, and he could smell her desire. It was more powerful and beguiling than any exotic perfume or oil—Musk of Clarinda, its sole intent to drive a man wild with lust. To turn him into a ravening beast with only one thing on his mind. If Ash could have found a way to bottle it, he could have made a fortune.

Tugging up the hem of his shirt with her other hand, she writhed against him, making helpless little sounds deep in her throat. “It’s so very hot in here. Aren’t you hot?”

As she rubbed the fulsome weight of her breasts against his chest, Ash had never been so hot, not even when the tropical fever had raged through his body, robbing him of both his senses and his name.

“I know you don’t care for me anymore, but there’s no need for you to be so cruel. Oh, please, Ash … won’t you help me? I’m on fire down there … burning … burning … ” Clarinda was shivering and crying now, nearly incoherent with need. “I want … I need … ” A ragged moan tore from her throat, the piteous sound arrowing straight through his heart.

Her shaking hands reached between them, fumbling clumsily with the fastenings of his trousers. All he had to do was lean back on his elbows and let her have her way.

In this state there would be nothing she wouldn’t let him do to her, nothing she wouldn’t do to him. He would be able to use her nubile body to fulfill his darkest and most erotic fantasies, including the ones she had already fulfilled in his dreams a hundred times before.

It was no longer possible for him to pretend she wouldn’t know what he had done to her. If he unleashed himself on her now, there wouldn’t be a muscle anywhere in her body that wouldn’t know she had been loved … and loved in every way that a man could love a woman. If she tried to swear she didn’t remember a moment of it, they would both know she was lying.

Ash could still remember chasing her through the meadow on a beautiful spring day while she teasingly made him beg for the simple favor of a kiss. It was his turn now. He could tease her, make her beg, shatter her pride. He could bring the high-and-mighty Miss Clarinda Cardew to her knees and punish her with pleasure for every transgression she had ever committed against him.

As the irresistible temptation of Clarinda’s mouth descended on his, turning his face away from her kiss was one of the most difficult things Ash had ever made himself do.

“Shhh,” he murmured, wrapping his arms tightly around her and rocking her like a baby. “It’s all right, angel. Everything will be all right.”

He knew what he had to do. Knew there was only one way to take the edge off of her need. Even if doing so might kill him.

Perhaps if he thought of it as some sort of scientific experiment, something to be dissected with clinical precision in a paper delivered before the Geographical Society of London, he might survive. Perhaps then he could remove his own emotions, his own desires, his own savage need to possess her—to bury himself in the softness she was still grinding against him—from the equation.

Ignoring her whimpered protest, he urged her around in his lap until she was sitting between his splayed legs with her back pressed to his chest. He slid one arm around her waist, gently but firmly imprisoning her in place.

She dug her fingernails into his muscled forearm. Her breath hitched in a shuddering sob. “W-w-what are you doing?”

As one of her helpless tears splashed on his arm, he knew beyond the shadow of any doubt that he was making the right decision. For her. For himself. Perhaps even for Max. “Taking care of you,” he whispered, sweeping aside the moonlit fall of her hair and pressing his mouth to the graceful column of her throat. He might deny himself a taste of her lips, but he could not resist sampling her sweet-smelling skin.

She settled back against him, her unspoken trust in him more touching than anything that had come before.

Forcing himself to ignore the enticing weight of her breasts resting against his forearm, he slipped a hand between her legs. He didn’t have to coax her into spreading her thighs for him. They fell apart of their own volition as she let out a sharp cry and arched off the couch, pressing herself into the cup of his hand. He gently squeezed, molding the sheer silk of the shift to that enticing mound and acclimating her to the shock of his touch.

Her flesh felt feverish beneath his hand, hot enough to scorch. He didn’t dare let his hand slip beneath the shift. He was too desperate to get any part of himself inside her again, even if it was only his finger. Or fingers. She was already so wet for him that the silk was clinging to her like a second skin.

Even the most callow of lads could easily have located the hooded little bud tucked between the delicate petals of her womanhood. And Ash was no callow lad.

He brushed the pad of his longest finger over that bud only to find it as hard and swollen as a ripe cherry just begging to be plucked by a man’s finger … or his tongue. He had hoped to bring the fires that were burning her alive under control, but the stroke of his fingertip against that exquisitely sensitive bundle of nerve endings was more like striking steel to tinder, igniting a conflagration of lust that threatened to burn them both to ash.

Clarinda bucked against him like a wild thing, gasping for breath. He cinched his arm tighter around her waist to hold her fast, gritting his teeth against a groan and fighting to steady his own breathing. He could feel the taut rope of his control already beginning to fray.

“Just relax, sweetheart,” he bit off through his clenched teeth, wishing he could do the same. “Give yourself over to the pleasure.”

Determined to do everything he could to make that possible for her, he began to rub the very tip of his middle finger over her in taut little circles. Her hips arched off the couch, rotating in a sinuous counterrhythm as her body instinctively responded to the silent but glorious music of that ancient dance.

Ash took that as his cue to expand his attentions, petting her, stroking her, deftly fingering her through the silk until it was all but dripping with the proof of her desire for him. His entire being was focused on one thing and one thing only—lifting her to the peak of pleasure so he could send her soaring. He might not be able to accompany her, but he would be waiting with open arms to catch her when she came crashing back down to earth.

“Oh, Ash … ” she moaned, her head lolling back against his shoulder, then twisting around to give him a fierce look through eyes glazed with passion. “Promise me …”

“Yes?” In that moment he would have promised her anything.

“Promise me … ” Her moan deepened to a groan as the callused pad of his thumb flicked back and forth over that engorged bud, mimicking the precise motion of what he was longing to do to her with his tongue. “Promise me … you won’t stop.”

She had always been able to make him laugh, even in the most unlikely circumstances. Ash buried his lips and his chuckle in her tousled hair. “I promise you I won’t stop. I’ll never stop.”