Page 42 of Who’s That Earl

She must have stiffened or pulled away or made some sound. Thomas stopped kissing her and looked down. One brow arched. “Jane?”

If she hesitated, she was lost. She tightened her fingers in the curls at his nape. “I need you, Thomas,” she said, her voice remarkably cool and Mrs. Higginbotham-ish, betraying—she hoped—no trace of her desperation. “Take me to bed.”

At those words, the old grin slid into place, and the dimple appeared on his cheek. She could almost forget what she’d glimpsed in his eyes. “I’ve never been one for following orders,” he said. “But for you, I’ll make an exception.”

He released her long enough for her to clamber onto the high bed and settle between the luxurious linens, while he tugged off his boots and then went to work on the fall of his breeches.

His back was to her when he finally shed them entirely, and she was treated to a view of the paler globes of his bottom and the taut muscles of his thighs, dusted with dark hair. So the sun hadn’t touched him everywhere?

Then he turned, and she saw all of him. As he walked toward her, his manhood bobbed, rigid and dark with need. The sight of it was both exciting and a little alarming. She was tempted to avert her gaze, but she couldn’t bear the thought of wasting even a moment of this experience on shyness. He paused a few feet away to slick a hand over his length, somehow teasing her with it and offering it to her all at once. “Is there room in there for me, lass?”

She swallowed hard and nodded. Her head was full once more of decadent fantasies and illicit etchings, poses she’d doubted were humanly possible. One night to discover whether she’d been wrong.

But again what she wanted most was so utterly conventional, no doubt dull to a man who’d led a life like Thomas’s. To lie on her back with her legs spread, to take him deep within her body, to bear his weight…

She shivered a little as he flipped back the covers and his knee pressed into the mattress as he prepared to climb into bed. When he was lying on his side beside her, and she could feel his heat from her shoulders to her knees, she began to shake in earnest.

“Cold?”

He reached for the blanket, but she shook her head. “I—I suppose I’m just a little nervous. I thought you would”—one hand flailed in a vague half circle—“you know, come on top and, um…”

He chuckled a little and shook his head. “It will be my very great pleasure, when the time comes. But ladies first.”

With deft fingers, he undid the ribbon that finished her braid, then slipped each section free until her hair was loose and lay against her bare skin in cool, sensual waves. His fingertips stroked along her scalp, massaging away what felt like years’ worth of tension. “Better? Now roll this way, just a bit.”

She let him arrange her so that they were nestled together, her back leaning against his front. The position was reminiscent of the way he’d held her before, one arm cradling her head, the other encircling her waist. But this time his hands played over her skin, his touch at first light, then more determined. In her ear, his whispered voice poured a steady stream of praise as he dismantled every doubt she could have about her appeal.

“Like a work of art,” he murmured, tracing a line from just above her knee, over the swell of her hip, to her round belly. “So soft. And when a man’s hard, it’s softness he craves, ye ken.” His shaft, nestled in the cove beneath her bottom, nodded its agreement.

Then his questing hand rose to cup each breast in turn, and his groan of pleasure vibrated through her. “Ah, lass, shall I confess how I’ve dreamed of these, wondered over the shape and color of your nipples? But my imagination didna do you justice.”

Until that moment, she’d been generally displeased by the rosy brown color of her areola, which were too large to easily be hidden by the shallow bodices currently in fashion. But as his thumb slipped back and forth over that petal-soft skin, until the edges crinkled and her nipples grew to stout peaks, she began to see the advantages of their size and shape. When he gently pinched her nipples between his second and third finger, she could not help but moan. When he pinched them harder, she found herself lifting her chest to his hand, seeking that glorious pleasure-pain. When he promised to suck them until she screamed, her whole body stiffened and shuddered.

“Perhaps not quite so self-sufficient after all, eh?” he teased.

Shock flared in her chest. Had he really thought that earlier she’d been referring to...self-pleasuring? Ordinarily she would have tried to claim she didn’t know what he meant. Why, she would never!

Well, only rarely...

His hand slid down her body to toy with her nether curls. “If you’re ready to come, then, open for me,” he urged, and whatever denial she’d been poised to make evaporated in her throat. He eased her thighs apart, draping one of her legs over his so she lay spread to his touch. “Ah, that’s it, lass. So wet. So eager.”

As his fingers slicked through her folds, she squirmed against him, for at first he determinedly skirted her nub, then circled it with tormenting gentleness. “Please.” She could manage no more than a hoarse whisper.

His lazy smile curved against her shoulder. “Since you ask so sweetly.” Focusing his touch on the center of her pleasure, he quickly brought her to shattering release, still murmuring words of praise in her ear.

Boneless, she could do no more than make a soft mewl of protest as he extracted his arm and eased her back on the bed. Too soon for him to go, too soon to be left bereft of his touch, his heat. But to her relief, he levered himself over her, parting her thighs with his. His kiss was rougher, hungrier, and before she had stirred herself to respond to it, his lips and tongue were making their way down her throat to her breasts, sucking until she felt her need rising again.

Following a last lash of his tongue, he sat upright and watched himself run his work-roughened palms up the insides of her thighs where they lay open against his, his phallus rising between them. His thumbs skated back and forth along either side of her mound, where the skin was thin and delicate. She had never dreamed of anyone looking at her there, to say nothing of looking at her with such unvarnished lust in his face. Even she could not deny that he liked what he saw.

“If we had more time, I’d kiss you here. And here. ’Til you came for me again.” The pad of his thumb slid once more over her nub, making her jerk. She couldn’t pretend to be shocked at the notion, couldn’t pretend she wasn’t curious about the magic his mouth would perform.

Distraction, if she’d wanted such a thing, came in the form of one long finger slipping inside her, soon joined by a second. “But since it’s just to be one night…” Her eyelids dropped almost closed when he took himself in hand and slicked his—cock, that shocking book had called it, though the word made her blush, then and now—through her wetness.

She’d expected some discomfort when he entered her, and it was a bit of a stretch at first. But she was still pliant and soft from her release, and her body welcomed his hardness, just as he’d said it would. Once they were joined, he came over her as she’d asked, caging her head and shoulders in his arms, tangling their fingers together, kissing her mouth, her jaw, her forehead. When he thrust, the hair on his chest teased her nipples and made them tingle again, and sooner than she would have thought possible, she was straining for another peak, lifting her hips to meet him, relishing his strength as he drove her down into the bed again.

Too soon, his rhythm grew ragged, and the breath began to saw from his lungs in uneven gasps. With a strangled cry, he jerked from her just as she began to clench around him. His seed spurted onto her belly, and he collapsed half on top of her. She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to imprint every last detail of the experience on her memory, the scent of sweat on his skin, the weight of his body pressing her into the mattress, the wet heat and pleasant ache that were the remnants of their passion.

Later she would tuck her newfound knowledge away in the dark drawer where such memories belonged. But for now she listened to the longcase clock in the study chime two and wondered whether it would be so very wrong to rouse him and do it again.