Deborah Simmons - Regency - Courtship And Candlelight

‘Edmund,’ she murmured his name reproachfully, protesting any distance between them and wantonly hoping he could be persuaded to do it again.

‘Katherine?’ he replied, lingering on the syllables of her name as if it was a sensuous luxury in his mouth.

‘Kiss me again?’ she begged shamelessly.

So he did and this time there was nothing reverent and respectful about his wickedly knowing mouth as it opened hungrily on hers and, as soon as she echoed him in instinctive response, he plundered it ruthlessly. For the first time Kate felt the true allure of being seduced as well as seducing, with a man’s firm mouth and hot demands suddenly a wonderful promise, rather than a threat of terrible vulnerability or base subjection. She shivered in anticipation of something even more mighty, a force that could take her under and drown her in passion and sweetness, so she did her best to make sure she attained it by sneaking her hands up and about Edmund’s strong neck, then shocking them both by moaning against his lips when his tongue invaded her mouth and her knees turned to water.

It was heat and light and sustenance and she couldn’t currently imagine ever needing any other. He ran lingering, approving hands down the supple line of her slender back and she all but purred with satisfaction when he reached the firm swell of her buttocks and settled there for a hot, breathless moment before he swept that incendiary touch back up to mould her even closer into his kiss. Gasping with delight as his wicked tongue darted in and out of her wanton mouth in a rhythm even she recognised as primal, for all her ridiculous innocence, she clung as if he was her rock in a very stormy sea indeed.

Then he allowed them the sumptuous treat of lowering his hand to cup her breast and Kate wondered how she managed to stay standing for the rush of heat and temptation that rocked through her like a force of nature. She heard his breath catch at the willingness of her tightened nipples, obvious under the richness of silk and his exploring fingers and she stuttered out a sigh of delight when he explored one of them further until she moaned once again. All thought of where they were and what risks they were taking of being discovered fled as even the distant sound of music faded from her consciousness and all that mattered to her was him. Edmund, her almost-promised lover, hers. At last there were no questions in her head except for how soon the searing ache at the heart of her could be appeased with something he and no other could grant her. Caught up in her first taste of headlong, driven passion, she keened softly at the bolt of demand for more that ran through her like hot fire.

Head reeling from her innocently erotic responses to his runaway loss of control, as soon as he felt her mouth respond to his with untutored enthusiasm, Edmund tried hard to draw back, to let his longing hands fall from her magnificent body and put distance between them that his own harder, even more eager body certainly didn’t want.

‘No, stay,’ she urged, her voice husky and shaky and utterly in tune with every one of his feral instincts to possess her and carry her off to his lair and keep her there for ever. ‘Kiss me again,’ she demanded, so lost in what they’d set alight between them that he doubted she remembered her own name, let alone his.

‘If I do there will be no going back for either of us,’ he managed to grate out between lips stiff with wanting and needing to do exactly what she demanded.

‘Edmund,’ she whispered and it was an agreement, not a denial.

Triumph roared through him as his body tightened even more painfully. He struggled to leash his own out-of-control instincts and the need he’d kept under such a mighty curb ever since he’d met her in the face of her suddenly so wild, so natural, so truly Kate-like urgency. The lure of lowering her on their host’s fine carpet and thrusting into the warmth and welcome she was innocently laying out for him tempted him until it felt like too much of an effort, too much of a betrayal not to give in and take her to their mutual ecstasy.

He tensed to do as they both wanted and seize her by that ridiculously slender waist of hers and soothe and stoke her passion until neither of them had any choice but to let themselves sink onto the floor of this room in a stranger’s house and rut like a pair of spring-tortured animals. He’d always known she would be matchless and sweet and impulsive and unashamed in her wants and needs, if she ever let herself be the passionate and extraordinary woman she had it in her to become. Now that Kate was free from the restraints the miseries of the past had forced her to curb her true, passionate self with, she was utterly breathtaking as she took fire in his arms and demanded an intense seduction neither of them would ever want to forget.

And here they were, exactly where they should not be, with risk and scandal dogging every step along the way, and all it would take to set it off was someone else feeling the urge to wander as she had wandered and find them out. They were trespassing in the shadows of their host’s private rooms, with an open door at their back and hundreds of curious guests far too eager for any slight scandal that presented itself to their eager ears and eyes a matter of mere yards away. Reluctantly he restrained the ravenous wolf within him bond by painful bond, until he could gasp in a huge breath of cooling air and set his forehead to hers, drawing on an unexpected stock of true tenderness that surely only she could unleash in him at such a time.

‘Not here, lover,’ he murmured, ‘and certainly not now.’

‘Where then, and when?’ she demanded, the tremble in her low-voiced demand threatening to undo all the good he’d managed to do them.

‘In our marriage bed, after all is made right between us in our own eyes.’

‘It was right,’ she protested bitterly, drawing away from him as if his touch repelled her now and he cursed her contrary, headstrong nature, even as he knew very well it was one of the things that made him want her so unbearably that he’d take her on virtually any terms.

He wondered if he’d made a mistake after all by not seducing her as if she meant no more than a quick and lusty roll in the hay to him. Yet every instinct that wasn’t primitively crying out for her and a release from this nigh-overwhelming frustration shouted just as loudly that he’d have lost a crucial part of her if he’d sunk into her and brought them both to a quick and savage climax on the floor in a virtual stranger’s house with so much risk all around them.

‘Not until you know exactly what you want from me and why,’ he told her implacably.

‘I want you , and I want you now ,’ she challenged him furiously.

‘But why , Katherine, why do you suddenly want me so much?’

‘Because …’ She almost let something betraying slip out, but stopped herself just in time, as she always had when it came to her feelings for him, whatever they might be, and now he doubted she knew any better than he did.

‘Because I’m irresistible, because I make your world shift and then brighten whenever I come into the room? Or is it just because I’m the first man to get past your ice-queen defences and make you feel the possibilities of being a real woman?’ he made himself ask in a voice husky with wanting to do just as she urged, to forget anything else and let the devil take care of afterwards.

Luckily she was far too innocent, far too confused to read his true state from that gruff enquiry, for if she truly ignored the scruples that had backed them away from the precipice and rubbed her roused body against his, butted her mouth against his and demanded more, he knew he’d be beyond controlling his response to her, beyond fighting this reckless need that tore at his self-control and snapped at the fetters he was trying to put on both their demons.