Indeed, it was a miracle no one had discovered them already, but Charlotte didn’t allow herself to worry too much about that. “You have a large house,” she said, hardly recognizing the husky tone to the voice. “I am certain there are other rooms in which we will not be disturbed.”
“My bedchamber will be safe, but—” He leaned back and looked at her seriously. “Are you certain this is what you want?”
“I have never wanted anything more,” she said, and somehow she meant it even though what was certain to follow—the joining of their bodies and an end to her innocence—seemed almost wrong. Young ladies of quality did not wish for such things.
Yet with Aaron, when he looked at her with such unbridled lust in his eyes, when her body flooded with heat and heavywant, she could not resist. Society could have its rules—she would have Aaron.
Besides, they would shortly be married, and it would all be as if it had happened in its proper place.
ChapterTwenty
Aaron took the same hand he had taken when he had asked her to marry him. “If you are certain, allow me to educate you in the art of pleasure.”
“I’m certain there’s much to learn,” she said. A smile, long and slow, spread across his face as he led her up the stairs and onto the first floor, along the long gallery, and into his bedchamber.
She had never been in a man’s bedchamber before, and she was unsurprised to find it had a very heavy, masculine touch to it with the same old-fashioned style of furnishing she had found in the old wing of his country estate.
“When we are married,” he said, pushing her against the wall and cupping her face in his hands, “you shall sleep here with me.” This time their kiss had the same impetuous energy as a breaking wave, and Charlotte was powerless to stop it. His mouth was greedy, pulling her along a path she half recognized.
She was just as wanton, just as greedy. Rather than holding him at bay, she pulled him closer, arched her back into him, and encouraged those wandering hands to stray across the places she wanted him—places that felt as though they were glowing like embers for his touch.
Of everyone, he was the only man whose very hands could set her alight. She sent her hands to work as well, tracing the familiar lines of his face before moving down to tug at his cravat with impatient fingers so that his neck was exposed.
“Charlotte,” he murmured against her lips. She had never known her name could sound quite so wonderful, but then, no one had ever said it like that before. “Charlotte, you are driving me half out of my mind.”
She explored further down, across the sharp collarbones, the hair poking up beneath. No one had told her that men had so much hair across their bodies, and she let her fingertips run across as much of it as his shirt and waistcoat allowed.
In return, he skimmed fingers across her stomach, along her sides, down her arms, his hands hot against every inch of exposed skin, until he finally obeyed the silent plea of her body and ran a finger across her breast and around her peaked nipple. She gasped at the sensation and hung her head back against the wall. In the heat of the moment, she didn’t care that someone might be searching for her in the ballroom. Here, with Aaron, was the only world that existed.
“I think,” he said, his voice grating, “we are in entirely the wrong place.” Charlotte opened her mouth to point out that in her opinion a bedchamber was the optimal place for such things to take place when Aaron picked her up and carried her across to the bed, laying her down on the sheets.
“This is much better,” he said. Charlotte had to agree. From here, she had the delicious weight of him pressing against her, and the pressure of that rod was even more pronounced.
“Show me what lies underneath,” she said, tugging at his waistcoat.
“Why, do you wish to enjoy me?” His voice was amused, but there was a spark of something else there, too. Not uncertainty—he wasn’t uncertain, but he was hesitant. As though this was something he hadn’t expected.
“I want to see everything,” she said, sitting up. He followed the movement, and they sat on the bed facing one another. Nerves curled in her stomach, but she refused to give way to them. “I want to know everything.”
He leaned forward and ran his fingers along her jaw. “Then let me show you,” he said, kissing her once again. It was a continuation of the kiss they’d shared against the wall, but instead of his hands crossing her body like he was learning her, he unbuttoned his waistcoat and shrugged it off. Underneath was his shirt, which he also removed to reveal his chest. His bare chest and the muscles that shifted under her fingers as she explored down to his navel and the sharp V that pointed down into his breeches. He was warm to the touch and so very responsive—he shuddered as she explored across his sides, and when she turned her attention to that V and where it might lead, he moaned against her lips.
“You are wicked,” he murmured.
Filled with daring prompted by the heat that ran through her at his every movement, she fumbled with the buttons on his breeches, this time able to remove them and reveal him. Standing tall and proud and thicker than she remembered. Last time, she had been so overcome in the moment—with his fingers coaxing such a response from her—that she hadn’t had time to appreciate him. Now, though, she had ample time, and she turned her attention to its wide head and the thick, veiny shaft.
“May I touch it?” she asked.
“May you?” His nose nudged that sensible spot behind her ear again. “Lottie, my sweet love, I have wanted nothing more than for you to touch it since before we began.”
Last time, in the garden, she had wrapped her hands around it without considering what she did. Now, she stroked her fingers along its softness—it was so unexpectedly soft—and smiled at the way it twitched in response.
“What are we to do?” she asked. “Withit, I mean.”
“Leave that to me.”
Her mother had not yet broached the topic of intimacy, and Charlotte knew little of what occurred between a married man and woman. More of what she had already experienced, she hoped, but that did not solve the logistical issue ofwherehis—thing—would go.
“Last time, we—”
