Page 102 of Ordered Home for the Holidays
“No one can see us. The walls of the pews are too high.” He kissed down her neck, and she let her head fall to the side. A moan escaped her as he pressed her over his arm, his lips on her throat while one hot hand palmed her breast through the delicate cotton of her bodice. Her breath came in pants.
“Someone might come into the galleries.” She moaned as he licked the small hollow between her collarbones. Pleasure made her shiver like a tree in the wind.
“They are all busy in the vestibule, and no one will hear us over the noise. Mad. You smell delicious, and you taste like berries and cream.”
Without her knowing quite how, he scooped her breast from its stays and tugged back the lace of her bodice. His hot breath kissed her skin and her nipple puckered to a thick point. With a low chuckle that made her ache deep inside, he dipped his head and pulled the begging little peak into his mouth.
Madelina couldn’t order him to stop because she could no longer speak. She had forgotten how to form words. She lay in the pewin the churchand stared at the ceiling of St. George in a holy daze because Garrick was kissing her,kissing her breasts, and she couldn’t bear the delicious sensations funneling to every point in her body. They arrowed everywhere, but they all seemed to circle back to place between her legs that was growing hot as an open fire.
He slid his hand beneath her skirt, his palm heavy and rough on her calf. “My God,” he muttered. “You’re like silk.”
“God is watching,” she said shakily. She could not bring herself to let this end yet. Garrick was kissing her. Touching her—her. At long last.
“He approves.” He moved to her other breast and the stab and swirl of his tongue made her float up into his arms, pressing against his body, leaving the pew and the whole earth behind. His hand inched higher, and she could do nothing but whimper because he was moving toward that place,there,and she was certain his hand would stop the ache. He knew how he made her burn, and he knew how to bring relief.
“You’re so beautiful. My Mad.” He wrapped a hand around her breast and squeezed her into his mouth, pulling,sucking. She writhed and bit back a begging cry. His hand moved upward, fingers sliding along the groove at the top of her thigh, then the groove between her legs, and then his whole palm was pressed against her, hot and hard against the place where she ached for him, and Madelina’s entire body jolted with shock.
“We must stop,” she said weakly. Her voice was thin, hardly her own.
“Let me pleasure you, darling,” he murmured against her lips. His breath came as ragged as hers. He pressed his hand against her. “It will be good. I promise.”
It was too much, and she was too exposed. “Stop.Stop.”
“Mad.” He reared back, his face surprised. “You don’t want—? Ah.” His eyes flared. “You never have. You don’t know.”
She struggled to stuff her breasts back in her stays, to bring her rioting body under control. To put some measure of distance between them. “This is indecent.”
“It’s beautiful,” he said roughly. “It will be beautiful, with you. Let me share this with you, Mad.”
“What you’ve shared with so many others? So many, many others.” She tugged down her skirt and met his eyes with a defiant stare.
“Oh, I see.” His face turned to that careful blank. He wouldn’t even share his emotions with her, much less anything else. “If it’s a fumbling green boy you want, I’m afraid I can’t give you that.”
The heat scalding her now was of shame. She didn’t want a green boy. She wanted him, always and ever, him. And the unfairness of it made her unable to breathe. He would be her everything, and she would be one in a very long list of conquests.
“You told everyone here you meant to marry me,” she accused him.
He nodded. “I intend to.”
“I didn’t agree.”
He lifted his hand and traced a finger along the lines of her face as if testing the solidity of her features. As if mapping territory he’d never seen. He hadn’t yet donned his gloves, and his skin burned against hers.
“Don’t you believe I can make you happy?”
No. She nearly moaned it aloud. He would break her heart, again and again, and she would be left holding the pieces, loving him and watching him leave for the rest of her life. At eighteen, she’d been foolish enough to think she could bear that just for the joy of being near him sometimes. She knew herself better now.
He read her answer in her face, and his brows drew into that heavy scowl. He went from sultry to dangerous in a heartbeat.
“I can make you want me,” he growled.
“You cannot make someone love you,” she said, because she’d been learning that lesson since she was six years old.
“I can.” Oh, the arrogance of him, the absolute brazen confidence. He bent and breathed on the tops of her breasts. Her nipples puckered immediately, visible through the cotton bodice, and his low, satisfied chuckle was an animal growl. “I will make you fall in love with me by Twelfth Night.”
Lust wasn’t love, but nevertheless, she rose to his bait like a trout. “And my forfeit if you win?”
He smiled, a feral smile, all his teeth showing, like the wolf from the fairy tale ready to devour the girl in the red cape. “Why, you marry me. And you are mine, body and soul, buxom at bed and board.” He dragged his tongue over her décolletage. “Especially bed.”
