Page 56 of The Secret Love of a Gentleman
His hands fisted in the fabric of her nightdress and lifted it off over her head.
‘Lie down,’ he urged, as she had urged him earlier.
They guided each other’s movements in the dark.
Her skin and hair were scented with the lavender from the soap she must have used in her bath.
He touched her leg to get his bearings and found the soft skin of her inner thigh.
She opened her legs, making space for him to kneel between her thighs, the soft mattress rocking.
He imagined the sway of her breasts.
Memories from their moments on the cramped bed in the shabby hut flooded him in waves.
His erection brushed somewhere on her skin, as he leaned to kiss her. He found her lips with his, and her breast with his hand. Learning her body in the dark was very different, and there were no clothes to hinder him. He moved from between her legs and lay down beside her. His hand traced every curve of her body, committing every detail of the shape of her to his memory.
In the early summer, he thought he saw something in Caro no one else had spotted, now he knew everything no one else saw.
He felt so hungry, it was as though his stomach became a vacuum that wished to devour her. ‘I love you,’ he said over her mouth before pressing a kiss against her jaw. He said the words with uncertainty, yet they were the words on his tongue.
‘And I love you.’ Her echo of them came with a depth of emotion that implied utter truth.
His kisses followed the path of his hands, across her chest to her breast and downwards; learning her body with his lips and his tongue as he had been learning with his hands.
He lifted his head. ‘I will not apologise, not now nor after. This is what we both want.’
‘It is,’ she agreed.
The next kiss he pressed on her stomach, and he swept his tongue into her navel. When he kissed below it, she sighed. Hetrailed his tongue over the line of her hip bone, where it pushed against her skin on the right.
His fingertips brushed across the skin of her left inner thigh as his kisses descended, exploring. His tongue parted the velvety skin and licked the satin of her inner plains.
Her fingers clasped in his hair and her body arched towards him, encouraging him. Her legs lifted and rested on his shoulders. ‘Rob.’ She rocked up against his tongue. He used his fingers as he had done at the hut, and when he withdrew them, he licked them and licked her.
‘Rob.’
The tip of his tongue teased the little bead at the head of her flesh.
A choked sound escaped her mouth, then a little groan as he did it again. His lips closed about it, and he sucked her there, as his forefinger stroked inside her. Her breath shallowed, quickened, in the rhythm he heard before they succumbed to the bliss of this in the hut. She was close to what his brother called ‘the little death’.
‘Ah!’
Her cry was harsh and long. A warm fluid ran about his finger, as her muscles throbbed beneath the tip of his tongue.
When he rose up, he felt like a hero. Harry had told him it was not easy to bring a woman to this moment. His hands pressed into the mattress beside her shoulders as he moved over her. Then he was baptised again when he thrust into her.
Caro made short sounds as he moved; those sounds and her fractured breathing filled the room.
He moved swiftly and then slowly, pushing hard to a deep depth and then pressing in in shallow pulses. Learning what everything felt like and how she responded. All the time her hands ran over him and whimpers of pleasure left her lips.
Perhaps when she came to town in the autumn, he might consider engagement until he could afford to marry.
Her thighs pressed at his hips and her bare feet brushed the back of his legs as her body arched into another spasm of release.
He pressed a kiss on her cheek. She turned her mouth to his. ‘I love you so much.’
The words resonated through his soul.
