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‘It is possible to make love without that risk, is it not?’
‘Ah.’ Theo came fully into the room, leaning against the bedpost, a faint smile lifting the corner of his mouth. ‘My very well-read and very innocent Elinor, you are quite correct. But there is one proviso—you have to trust the man who is making love to you not to get carried away in the heat of the moment.’
‘And you do not trust yourself?’ she queried, sceptical. ‘What exactly were your intentions those times you kissed me, might I ask? Were they completely dishonourable? Were you confident things would go no further than a kiss? Or were you going to risk the consequences and rely on disappearing back into your wandering life afterwards?’
‘I intended to give you pleasure,’ Theo said slowly, his eyes locked with hers, ‘and I intended to take pleasure myself from doing that. You would still have been a virgin at the end of it. And the intensity of it made me realise that I should not involve myself with virgins and I resolved, somehow, to keep my hands off you in future. Don’t blush like that, Nell, you cannot initiate this sort of conversation and expect it to continue in euphemisms.’
‘I see. I beg your pardon for having implied any lack of honour on your part.’ The apology came from stiff lips, but something warmed the cold green eyes and she sensed him relax a little. The wise thing would be to say goodnight, to stop this now while she was still safe from the emotional consequences of what she wanted so much. But she no longer wished to be wise. Or safe.
‘Could we not pretend we are still in that study?’ she asked. ‘Could we not finish what began there?’ His lids lowered, hooding his eyes, hiding his thoughts from her. She wanted to shake him, make him realise how much she was suffering from the need he had ignited in her.
‘Theo, I know men have ways of dealing with frustration.’ His expression of mingled shock and amusement had her smiling back for the first time since this fraught encounter had begun. ‘Well, I do read, as you say, and all kinds of journals, including medical ones, find their way into the study at home, and I am bright enough to read between the lines. But you have made me want something I do not understand. And I want to understand it and I don’t want to ache like this any more.’
He was going to refuse her, she was certain. Theo walked to her side, his face serious. ‘Nell.’ His big hand curved under her chin and tipped her face up. ‘I am not sure about revisiting the study. That floor was dreadfully hard and this one looks just as bad. Would you settle for the bed?’
Chapter Nineteen
‘Yes, I will settle for the bed.’ It was difficult to keep her tone light to match his. The bed suddenly seemed very large, Theo seemed very close and it did not seem as though she was wearing very much at all, not with the way he was looking at her now.
‘Just tell me if you want to stop, Nell. This is all about you, about your pleasure.’ He had shed his coat and was loosening his neckcloth while she stood there like Pandora, wondering what on earth she had just let out of the box.
‘That is rather selfish,’ she demurred, reaching up to take the ends of the long muslin strip from his hands.
‘I didn’t say I wouldn’t enjoy it, too.’ Theo bent his head to help her pull off the neckcloth, then added encouragingly as she hesitated, ‘I would like it if you took off my shirt as well.’
It was all rather leisurely, in contrast to that explosion of passion in the study. Elinor began to unbutton his shirt, her fingers fumbling a little. But the tension this slowness engendered was very real, knotting in her stomach, aching down the inside of her thighs. Between her legs a pulse began to throb with intimate urgency. Then her fingertips brushed skin and Theo caught his breath and she forgot to analyse how she was feeling.
As she pushed the linen off his shoulders, he pulled at the shirt so it came out of his breeches and fell to the floor and then she was standing, her palms flat on the naked chest of a man. It felt…wonderful. He looked wonderful. She had thought she had known what to expect, but it was not the tactile smoothness of tanned skin over hard, defined, muscle or the strangely arousing tickle of crisp hair or the intriguing way his nipples hardened when she accidentally brushed against one.
Theo moved his hands to push her robe open and the muscles of his chest shifted, rippling under her hands and she smiled, caressing down to explore as the fine lawn fell to catch at her elbows.
‘Are you sure you haven’t done this before?’ Theo asked as her fingertips slipped into the tight waistband of his breeches. ‘You seem to know all the right places.’
‘Quite sure!’ Worried she would do something wrong if she went any further, Elinor snatched back her hands and the robe fell to the floor at her feet. Theo made a complicated noise, somewhere between a growl and a sigh and pulled her against him, his hands sliding down her back from her shoulders to cup her buttocks, lifting her against the wonderful evidence that she was doing something very right indeed.
Then he shifted his grip again and the next thing she knew her nightgown had gone and she was quite naked against him, feeling his heart hammering as his hands skimmed over her back and her buttocks, caressing with a gentleness she did not realise a man could possess. How she got on to the bed she could not say, but Theo was removing his breeches, drawers and stockings in one movement that a part of her brain which was still functioning recognised as honed by long practice.
He was even more beautiful naked than clothed, she realised, staring at him with unabashed interest, not even the startling jut of his erection deterring her. Then she saw his eyes and realising he was looking at her in just the same way. I ought to be shy, I ought to be hiding under this sheet, she thought, wondering at herself, but all she could do was bask in the warmth of his gaze.
‘I knew I was right about what was under those dreadful gowns,’ he murmured, lying down beside her and gathering her in close for a kiss. That felt safer—wonderful and exciting and inflammatory, but at least familiar, as his mouth worked over hers. But then he moved, slid down against her, and that wickedly knowing mouth was doing things to her breast and to her nipples and she arched up off the bed with a gasp as he nipped the tense buds between his teeth.
‘Theo! Theo?’ She caught at his head, her fingers threading into the glorious red mane, but he kept moving, his mouth hot and wet now on her belly. Under his tongue the flesh was sensitive, responsive and she tried to move, only his hands cupped her hips, steadying her. ‘Where? Theo!’ He was nuzzling into the dense red curls at the apex of her thighs and she knew she was wet and hot and aching and it was the most shocking thing she could imagine. And then it became even more shocking as his tongue tip found something, found her, and teased and stroked while his hands pushed her unresisting legs apart and his fingers searched and probed and slid inside just as the complex knot of sensation deep in her belly unravelled itself into something that sent her spiralling into an explosion of feeling that was anguish and was delight and was everything.
‘Theo.’ That must be her voice, murmuring. Somehow she was in his arms again and the thud against her cheek was his heart.
‘Nell?’ He was stroking her, gentling his hands down over her hot skin, stilling her quivering. Now, at last, she realised that making love meant just that. He might not love her, but he had pleasured her with loving care, was holding her with tenderness.
‘That was…beautiful.’
‘Good,’ he murmured into her hair. ‘Are you tired?’
‘I’m not sure,’ Elinor answered honestly. ‘Why?’ In answer, his hands began to move with more firmness and he turned her in his arms until he could kiss her, while those clever, wicked fingers searched out that hidden part of her and began to touch and tease while she gasped against his mouth and realised that, no, she was not in the slightest bit tired.
But what about him? What about his pleasure? Experimentally Elinor slid one hand down bet
ween their bodies to where his heat was most intense and curled her fingers around him. It stopped his mouth on hers and his moving fingers stilled. ‘Yes,’ he said, his voice husky. ‘Like that. Move like that—ah, Nell!’
She was clumsy, unskilled, she knew, but he didn’t seem to mind and to feel the powerful urgency of his body responding to her while he drove her to the brink, brought her back, over and over, was utterly delicious madness. Then that tightening knot broke, shattered again, just as he surged in her grasp, his groan mingling with her gasps and she collapsed, limp, into his arms as he fell back shuddering with the force of his release.
