Page 61 of A Secret Consequence for the Viscount
His mouth came across her own, sealing intimacy, the heat of his flesh and the push of his tongue. He was greedy in what he took, shaking away her small offering and coming in further. His good hand cradled her head so that the kiss could deepen and he could know every part of her, her whole body bound up in his own. Wanting.
And then the dam broke, the gentleness replaced by only need and the hot savage touch of his lips against hers. She pushed against the tautness in her own desperation.
Do not make this gentle, Nicholas. Do not kiss me as if I might break. Please.
As though he understood he suddenly brought his mouth in from a different angle and took her without restraint, a demanding kiss that promised everything. Sensation scorched through her body, in her stomach and between her legs and in the tight pull of her nipples against the lawn of her petticoat.
This is what she had dreamed of for all those years. Exactly this. And her release came with barely a warning, the edges of lust opening and beaching across the shattered pieces of her soul.
Only him. Only her.
She clung to him as if he was the last salvation between her and eternity.
* * *
He could feel her release, strong and then stronger, the clutching waves of passion making her throw back her head and groan. No longer a duke’s sister. No longer the careful Eleanor Huntingdon who seldom showed her colours either. Here with him she was somebody else. Dangerous. Vulnerable. Recklessly unsafe. The sting of her fingernails carved small troughs down the side of his neck.
He knew now that he could take her, that he could simply lift her up and carry her to his bed. The old Nicholas would have done exactly that and without compunction, but something inside him had changed and instead he drew her close to his body and held her, the hard ache at his groin pressed into her cloak.
Not like this, he thought. Not again.
But his heart thumped with the shock of her and the want, for all the shadows of who he had been were pushed into a corner by her light.
With Eleanor he could live again. With her he could be healed of bitterness and of loss. The smell of violets made him smile into her hair, soft curls of brown and gold tumbling under his chin.
She was so fragile in her honesty that it frightened him.
Take it slow, he thought. Let her get used to you and know you. Let her understand that this was a mutual want and that they had all the time in the world to understand it.
‘I am sorry.’ Her words, hot against the skin at his throat.
‘For allowing me to kiss you?’
Her head shook. ‘For being so...wanton.’
He laughed at that and his grip strengthened. ‘You think I might want a milk-sop girl who hardly moves or breathes, but simply stands there as I kiss her?’
‘I do not know.’
And she didn’t. She had made love to him for one night all that time ago and then been thrown into the lonely winter of widowhood for six long years until tonight. Until now.
‘You are perfect, Eleanor. In every way possible.’
She stilled and pulled back, looking up at him as if he was giving her an untruth.
‘Tonight I will show you exactly how I mean it.’
‘The dinner?’
‘And more if you will allow me. Much more if you stay with me.’
The beat of his heart was heavy as he offered her himself.
He would remember this moment, this second scrawled into faulty memory. In the reds of the fire and the warmth of her skin. In the grey of the morning and the silence in the room, save for breath between them, ragged in need.
He’d been trapped in time for so long and to suddenly be released to feel again, to walk and love and laugh, was overwhelming. The joy of her filled him, overflowing, her fierceness and her beauty, the grace of rediscovery, the benediction of touch. He let her go when she pulled away because he wanted to do nothing to frighten her.
‘I will see you tonight, Nicholas.’
