Page 78 of The Heir
“Cover me,” she said, and he reached for the sheets.
“No.” She tugged at his scalp. “You, cover me. Please.”
It was an odd request, but he rose up on all fours, crouched over her, and lowered his chest to hers.
“All of you,” she said, eyes closed, hands drifting over his shoulders and back.
So he settled between her legs, giving her his weight, his erection resting snugly on her belly. When she sighed in contentment, he tucked her crown under his chin and matched his breathing to hers.
“Thank you,” she whispered. “For all of it, but this, too. Thank you.”
Twelve
“I can hear you thinking,” Westhaven rumbled above her moments later.
“What you did,” Anna said, too closely wrapped for him to see her face. “Is that…?”
“Is it what?” he smiled, in charity with all of creation. “Legal? Yes, unlike some other intimate pleasures. Is it biblical, absolutely not. Is it what?”
“Is it something you did with your mistress?”
“Ye gods, Anna.” He levered up on his arms and frowned down at her. “What is this fascination you have with a woman you’ve never met?”
“Not with her.” Anna met his gaze, her face crimson. “With you. Is that something men like to do—or you like to do?” A slightly different and more acceptable question, he decided, snuggling back down.
“As a young man,” he said, brushing her hair off her forehead, “it’s something you want to experience, as it’s wicked and forbidden and said to delight those women willing to allow it. But no, I’ve not offered this to another. There is a whole invisible community of women whose job it is to educate university boys and I put them through their paces and they put me through mine, but not in this regard.”
“So you enjoyed it?”
“What I enjoyed,” he said, smiling at her, “was bringing you pleasure and learning your responses and feeling close to you when you let yourself go. Some women, Anna, go their whole lives without experiencing passion the way you do. You are lovely, and so, yes, I most assuredly enjoyed doing that with you.”
She was blessedly silent while Westhaven anticipated her next outrageous, blushing question.
“I enjoy it, too,” she said, “having you find your pleasure in my mouth. It is… intimate.”
“There is trust involved,” he replied, thinking about it for the first time in years. “On both sides.” She nodded under him and closed her eyes.
You do trust me, he wanted to point out. Maybe not completely, but you do. He wanted her to admit it, to him, if not to herself, but wasn’t willing to breach that intimacy she’d alluded to. Rather than start a lecture, Westhaven began kissing her, his mood still slow and relaxed.
“Would you like me to…?” she began. He stopped the question by covering her mouth with his then drew back.
“I’ll do the work, such as it is,” he said. “You relax. We don’t want to make you sore.”
He rocked against her, their bodies snugged tightly together. She was learning the way his body moved when it sought pleasure and subtly undulated with him. When she tilted her hips just a little, sealing them even more closely together, he buried his face against her neck.
In a very few moments, he felt his pleasure welling up, a thick, hot current radiating up his spine and out through his extremities. He didn’t fight it, didn’t hold back, but pulsed against her hard for a half-dozen thrusts, and then went still on a long, fraught sigh against her neck.
“God, Anna.” He lifted himself off of her. “You utterly undo me.” He walked naked across the room to his jacket, extracted a handkerchief, and used the water in the pitcher on the nightstand to wet it. He swabbed at himself thoroughly, rinsed the handkerchief in the basin, and wrung it out. He then sat at her hip, washed his seed off her body, and raised his gaze to hers.
“I am fond of you,” he said, “and maybe more than that. If you are in trouble, Anna, I wish you’d let me help you.”
“You can’t help,” she said, her expression unreadable.
He said nothing but climbed into bed beside her and lay back, his hands laced under his head. He should not have made that admission—fond of her, for God’s sake—what woman wants to hear that? He was fond of Elise, fond of Rose’s pony, George. It was as good as saying he did not love her, which he feared might not be true.
That is to say… He shied off that fence and turned his mind to Anna’s virtual admission she was in trouble. That was progress, he decided. From bearing confidences, to being in trouble. Dev had been right, and it meant Westhaven had to take a little more seriously Anna’s threats to leave him. What kind of trouble would a young, pretty, gently reared housekeeper have?
She had a brother, he recalled. It was a brother’s job to protect a sister, so where was that worthy soul now that Anna needed him? But even a brother had no rights where a husband was concerned.
