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A heavy weight pinned Victoria’s legs to the mattress. She opened her eyes. The gray light of dawn cast shadow and light on the chiseled planes of Simon’s peaceful face beside her on the pillow. Thankfully, he’d set her wrist free. She touched his forehead. Cool. She sighed with relief.
“No,” he cried out.
Startled, she drew back from him. His eyes remained closed.
His head dark against the linen shifted restlessly. “Miranda.” The whimper of a thwarted child escaped his lips. He was dreaming of Ogden’s sister? His father’s wife? No wonder he suffered the torment of the damned.
She tried to slide from beneath his leg.
He groaned. “I didn’t mean it. I couldn’t have... I would never... Forgive me.” His voice broke and Victoria’s stomach clenched at the heartbreak in his tone. To hear him beg instead of demand revealed a depth of vulnerability that made her heart hurt.
She rolled to face him. Tears were running down his hollowed cheeks. Unable to bear his agony a moment longer, she touched his chest.
“Simon.”
He stilled.
“Simon. You’re dreaming. Wake up.”
Simon felt the mists of sleep slowly seep away. God, how he hated awaking, knowing what he’d done. Self-disgust soured his gut.
He opened his eyes and gazed into a pair of wide violet eyes. Victoria? In his bed. He must be dreaming still. If so, he wanted it never to stop.
Warm, vibrant, her hair floating around her shoulders in a glorious, tangled mess, her luscious lips a hairsbreadth from his, she was gazing at him with a frown. She was in his bed?
If this was death, then somehow he’d made it past St. Peter into Heaven. The drowning ghastly bitterness fled. “Hello, angel.”
She drew back as if startled by the sound of his voice.
He slipped his hand around her neck and pulled her lips to his.
Yes. Oh yes. Better even than he had remembered. Soft, warm and full of promise.
He felt her yield to his kiss. Not a lot, not all, but a definite softening.
Bliss rushed through his veins. A vibrant joy. She wanted him. He always knew when a woman slipped over the edge into need, but had never dared hope for it with Victoria. He really had reached Heaven.
He deepened his kiss, flicked her lips with his tongue and nibbled. So sweet. Like sugar on a cake, like a taste of lollipop on a baby’s lips, like...
She pulled away and he didn’t have the strength to hold her.
“Simon, wake up.”
He chuckled at her indignant expression. It certainly didn’t fit with the misty haze of desire in her violet eyes. “I assure you, I am wide awake.”
Now he was. Dear God, what the hell had he done? How was it that she was in his bed when he’d sworn never to touch her, never to taint her with his past. She deserved so much better than a cur like him.
It seemed he had no willpower where she was concerned. He bit back a curse.
She tossed aside the cover. She wasn’t exactly in the bed with him, he realized. Not quite. Relief made him feel slightly dizzy. “What is going on here?”
“You were shivering. I lay beside you to give you warmth.”
Really? And her reaction to his kiss? The flush of desire, the tremors, the softening, yielding body. The sense she had wanted him as much as he wanted her.
A picture came into his mind. Her staring at him at some point during the night. Staring at him naked. The desire on her face had been unmistakable. So she was not quite the little innocent she made out, after all. While vaguely disappointed, why would he be surprised, after Ogden’s declaration? He and her brother had been as thick as thieves and Ogden was certainly not one to let an opportunity pass him by.
The thought of Victoria bedding the cur made Simon feel ill. Not because she had, but because Ogden’s predilections were well-known to him and Victoria was likely too innocent to understand. No wonder she didn’t want to marry.
Didn’t it behoove Simon to show her there was far more to bedsport than a man of Ogden’s ilk could provide?
For her sake. Damn, he wanted to.
“I’m cold now,” he said, with a sly smile of invitation.
“I’ll cover you with the quilt. You’ll soon warm up.”
She wasn’t playing. Not yet. “Not good enough.”
“Simon, please don’t tease.”
The pleading tone in her voice served as a dash of cold water. It seemed she had no trouble resisting her baser urges where he was concerned. He released her hand and eased himself into a sitting position wincing at the slight twinge from his shoulder. Of course. The bullet wound courtesy of Ogden’s man Quigley.
“Are you feeling better?” she asked. “You were terribly feverish in the night.”
So that was why all the ghastly dreams. “Much better, thank you.” Might as well be polite, even if the one pain she had it in her power to alleviate would go unattended.
Her expression held puzzlement. “Are you sure?”
He tried a careless laugh. Anything to ease the tension heating his blood and pulsing in his loins. “The merest scratch.”
He shifted. The pressure on his throbbing shaft cock from the heavy quilt only made things worse.
Unable to resist, he eyed her beautiful bosom. The shift hid nothing of her breasts’ up-thrusting perfection beneath the filmy fabric, astonishingly alluring in the faint dawn light. He wanted those soft pink tips budding in his mouth. Even as his glance grazed across them, they tightened, hardened to points.
Pure torment. How like a woman. “Get out, if you are going,” he grated. He would not let her see how much he wanted her.
“Simon.” Her breathy whisper made his stomach clench. “You were having a nightmare. It wasn’t me you kissed when you awoke, was it?”
He frowned at the hurt in her voice. “Who else would it be?”
She shrugged as if she did not care, but clearly she did. “You called out the name Miranda and then kissed me.”
Miranda always got in the way of anything good in his life. Now even his nightmares about her were ruining things.
He forced himself to breathe evenly, calling on every ounce of control in his command. He reached up and dragged his fingertip down the line of her jaw, across her lips, down the slender column of her neck until it came to rest in the hollow of her throat.
“Victoria, I knew exactly who I kissed. I haven’t been able to think of kissing another woman since the day I saw you run past me in Hyde Park.”
She glowered. “What about Miss Eckford?”
She couldn’t be jealous, could she? A spark of hope flickered into life. His reckless heart hummed with cautious joy. He kept his tone carefully neutral. “I didn’t think I had a hope in hell with you so...” He shrugged and held his breath. He never knew where he was with her. She was unlike any female he had ever met. She had a mind of her own.
“Oh.”
What the bloody hell did she mean? Oh. Oh, good? Oh, bad? Trying not to look at her glorious breasts inches from his chest, he let his finger slide lower, waiting for her to push him away, hoping she would not. Her face, her beautiful, exquisite face, hovered above his. But whatever happened next had to be her choice and if she chose to get out of this bed, he would never touch her again. Never. He swore it— and he would keep his promise this time.
She lowered her face closer. He was dreaming. No, it was a nightmare, because when he woke up, he’d know it hadn’t happened. He closed his eyes, not wanting to see her disappear.
Her lips brushed his in a whisper of a kiss. Just the kind of kiss he liked, sweet and temptingly innocent. Her tongue touched his bottom lip.
His balls tightened. White-hot flame licked his groin rock hard. His control abandoned him to his fate.
A moan of desire escaped him. She pressed her mouth harder against his, touching his tongue with hers.
He needed her close, her softness pressed against him. He wrapped his arms around her.
Burning pain. A groan ripped from his lips. He slumped back onto the pillows fighting a wave of dizziness.
“I’m sorry. Forgive me. I’ll get some laudanum,” she babbled, touching his face, his arm, hovering over him with an anxious expression.
“I’m fine,” he said, hauling air into his lungs, trying not to gasp. “Don’t move. Give me a moment.” Nothing would get in the way of this. He would simply take more care. He forced the pain into the recesses of his mind.
“Now, where were we,” he murmured and pushed her riotous curls back from her worried face.
The sweetness of Simon’s expression and his blue eyes, softened by the haze of desire, took Victoria’s breath away.
His hand slipped down her back, caressing her hip. She ought to stop him now, while he wasn’t strong enough to hold her. She should just get up and explain she did not want this. Him.
She did, her body shouted, relishing the heat surging through her veins and the sweet longing trembling in her core. She wanted him with a desperation she did not understand.
Despite knowing he only felt lust, she was unable to resist his blatant sensuality. If desire was all he had to give her, it would be enough given that they would only have these few days together. After all, it wasn’t as if she would ever marry.
“Kiss me, please, sweetheart.” His glorious, sensuous smile made her heart skip.
If only she knew more of kissing. She’d only ever kissed one man. Him, and then only twice. If he scorned her lack of skill, she would die of embarrassment. She touched her lips to his and they parted on a gentle breath. Emboldened, she edged her tongue into his mouth. A throat-deep growl of pleasure pierced her core with the sweetest ache she’d ever known.
She moved her mouth on his, imitating him. She flicked her tongue across his lips then plunged it deep into his mouth. He sucked on it gently. Pleasure shot between her legs.
She gasped and drew back, panting.
He was breathing equally raggedly.
“Mercy,” he said, his voice thick. “Don’t stop now. You’re killing me.”
So, she did have some power over him. She smiled and leaned closer.
His hand cradled her head. He gently eased her against his mouth. He moved his lips against hers and she parted them. He caressed her tongue with his. Her eyelids drifted closed. Then there was no reality except his mouth and the sensations storming her defenses.
A good person would fight him off in outraged virtue, but that gate stood open and the horse had gone. Now she was in his arms, she accepted that she had been waiting for this moment for days and days. She pressed closer. She felt his thigh hard against the top of her legs. She rocked her hips and moaned at the heightening pleasure of the hard feel of him between her thighs.
Her body burned, nerves stretched taut to breaking point. His hand slid down then drifted up again. She felt his palm’s rough skin on her thighs, her buttocks. He lifted her shift with steady caresses moving up her body.
He broke the kiss. “Help me take it off,” he whispered.
It? Off?
She glanced down the length of her body. Her chemise rode high above her waist. She glanced back at his face; his eyes gleamed wickedness, daring her.
His hand roamed higher, hot and heavy against her ribs, brushing the underside of her naked breasts. His thumb teased her nipple and the tension in her core tightened.
Trembling, wanting to please him, she sat up and swept the shift over her head.
His smoky gaze, caressed her body. His expression darkened. “Victoria,” he murmured. “You are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen in my life.”
Fire lit her racing blood, yet her wantonness shocked her. She buried her face in his shoulder, ashamed yet strangely thrilled at his lovely words. His musky, male scent filled her nostrils as heat warmed her cheeks.
Placing his hand under her chin, he gently lifted. “Look at me.” Sincerity burned in his eyes. “Believe me. You are glorious. Pure poetry. A goddess.” He pressed his lips to hers.
She surrendered to the delight of his wooing mouth. His tongue flickered on her lips and she opened to him. He explored her mouth and she tasted his in turn. She lost herself in the bliss of his mind-numbing kisses.
His lips moved from her mouth to her chin, to her throat, to the rise of her breasts. A tension built inside her. Too much tension. A flame of desire flared in the pit of her belly and sent her mind reaching heavenwards.
His mouth found her nipple and she gasped, clutching at his hair. Before she could pull him away, his tongue circled and she shivered in torment and delight. He moved to her other nipple and it puckered and hardened under his slick, hot tongue. Her breath came in small gasps. She was going to die of pleasure.
No turning back now. Nor did she want to. He was hers to enjoy to the full.
Careful to avoid his bandage, she ran her hands over his back and shoulders, up through his hair and felt her limbs go languid with longing.
He drew her nipple into his mouth and she spiraled out of control. She could think of nothing but his mouth and the pulsing need between her legs. She arched her hips toward him.
“Will you let me love you, Victoria?”
“Yes,” she gasped, filled with strange physical longings. But there was also the need to be held and to hold that satisfied something far deeper within her.
“Slip between the sheets, so I can touch you more.”
More? There was more? She felt his hand tugging the sheet beneath her and saw his grimace of pain as he tried to pull it out from under her. She scrambled to thrust it down with her feet and saw the way his gaze focused on the triangle of dark hair at the apex to her thighs.
He groaned.
“Does it hurt?” she asked, conscious stricken, backing away. They should not be doing this. His wound would open.
He grasped her hand and pressed it to his mouth. “God, yes, it hurts. Let me show you.”
Gently, slowly, he guided her hand down, across his chest, over his stomach. She looked down and saw his male flesh, rigid, roped by dark veins, thrusting towards her. He brushed the back of her hand against the engorged, purple tip, silky-soft and hot. She snatched her hand away.
“It hurts?”
“Pleasure pain. You feel it, too. I can see you do,” he said. He brought his mouth to her lips.
Pleasure, laced with the pain of needing more, did indeed have her in thrall. She yielded to the temptation of his kisses. Nothing between them, his chest pressed, hard and hot, against her breasts, the rough hair of his leg brushing rhythmically against her hip and his hard maleness pressed against her thigh. His palm caressed her breasts. He brought her to a state of endless, mindless longing.
His kiss demanded, deepened, and enslaved her.
Gliding over her ribs, down her stomach, so lightly her skin flickered at their passing, his fingers explored the curls of her womanhood. She ought to be afraid. But she wasn’t. Not a bit. She wanted him and she wanted this with him.
The sweetest agony Simon had ever endured forced him to lean on his good shoulder to hold her close. He had to move slowly and carefully or he’d be incapacitated by pain.
He’d learned to isolate pain, to ignore it, to cut himself off from all feeling, physical or mental. Blackhurst had taught its lessons well. Years of petty misery interspersed with physical cruelty had honed his skill of stony endurance until nothing could touch him. Nothing until now, when his heart soared with the joy of her yielding and left him defenseless against his body’s hurt. He didn’t care how much pain he was in. Nothing would stop him now. Nothing. She was his and he would claim her.
He ran his fingers through the crisp curls protecting her slick, swollen, female flesh. Wet for him.
The heat of her core pulsed against his hand as he delved his tongue into her mouth. Traces of her jasmine perfume lingered in her hair and mingled with the essence of her woman’s desire.
Her trembles ran the length of her deliciously slender form. She hovered on the brink of ecstasy. His gift to her.
He slipped one finger between the delicate folds of flesh into hot wetness. Her back arched and she gasped into his mouth, a hot rush of moist air he swallowed greedily. Catching her tongue gently between his teeth, he sucked it into his mouth.
His woman. He pressed his thumb against her pleasure nub and eased his fingers deep inside her, seeking the place that would drive her wild.
She writhed beneath his hands and mouth, her hips grinding into his cock. She cried out. Yes, there. Another finger joined the first. Heated, wet flesh stretched to accommodate him. He released her mouth, allowing her to catch her breath. Her gasps and moans drove his own surging want higher and harder than he ever remembered. Control began to slip away.
Shocked, he tried to set himself apart, to watch himself bring her pleasure and take his own, the way he always did, without involvement.
Her puzzled frown revealed she sensed his detachment. It ruined the moment. He wanted to be a part of her, have her blend with him until they became one. He gave himself up to her. He had never felt this close to anyone before and he didn’t want to think what that might mean.
“Open for me,” he urged, nudging her thighs with his knee.
Languidly she parted her thighs, her gaze fixed on his face, her eyes sultry, her expression so sensual he could hardly bear to see it. He came over her, the bed ropes creaking as he adjusted his weight onto his good arm, his hand beside her shoulder. Carefully, he eased the head of his cock up against her entrance, the path to heaven on earth, to death in life.
He was big and she was small and tight. He ran his other hand over her flat stomach, dipped into her navel, teased her breasts, plucking at her taut nipples, dark with desire, then moved his hand lower, circling the small nub that would bring her close to what she wanted. She cried out for him and he thrust forward. Into blissful heat.
A cry of shock. Her body quivered, her eyes squeezed tight shut.
He froze. Dear Lord. A virgin. She’d told the truth about Ogden, after all. Even as he regretted the pain he had caused her, his heart swelled with a strange kind of pride and tenderness.
“Victoria.”
Her eyes remained shut.
“Look at me, sweet.”
Victoria forced herself to open her eyes. She glared into Simon’s strain-filled face. How could anything with such a wonderful beginning end in such pain?
His weight pinned her to the mattress, while he was suspended, motionless, above her, only the slight trembling of the arm holding his bandaged chest inches from her body indicating he felt any kind of stress. His male flesh stretched her, filled her.
“I’m sorry,” he said, bending to kiss her mouth.
More lying kisses from his sensual lips. He didn’t look in the slightest bit sorry. He looked pleased. She turned her face away.
“Relax, love,” he pleaded. “It will be all right in a moment. I promise.”
Trust him, her heart whispered. She let go her breath. Once more his mouth descended to hers, his hand caressed her breasts, moving from one to the other, his thumb flicking at the nipple as his tongue licked at her lips. A master of the sweet torture of her senses, he turned her blood to fire and made her body melt. Desire surged.
She ran her hands over his back, tried to hold him fast as he began to withdraw. She made a sound of protest. A small smile curved his lips and he eased drove into her, slowly. The delicious friction drove her to increasing heights of need. She cried out, but not with pain. Her body vibrated with passion. She lifted her hips, wanting more.
“Yes,” he said, pushing deep. “Lift your legs around my waist.”
She did and he surged deeper.
“Simon,” she cried.
“Hold on, my darling,” he whispered. “Hold on.”
He began to thrust with steady, ever-increasing urgency.
There was nothing else, just the sensation from their joining. The tightening need within in her seemed to drive her upwards, filling her mind with a darkness and something just out of reach. She clenched her inner muscles around him, barely able to endure the tension.
“Oh, Victoria,” he whispered and reached between them, stroking, pressing the sensitive flesh there, driving her higher. “Now, darling. Come to me now.”
She felt him shudder, saw pain on his face, his jaw clenched in the grip of sweet agony.
A dam broke. She rushed headlong and breathless into a maelstrom of sensation centered at her core. Heat spread through her limbs in bone-melting bliss.
He groaned and pulled out of her body, fixing his mouth to hers as he heaved and shuddered above her. She felt wet heat on her belly where the hard length of his manhood pressed between them.
He drew his mouth away and grabbed for the towel on the bedside table. He wiped her stomach, then lay down beside her, pulling her close. She glanced at him with a question on her lips.
Simon smiled at the misty wonder in her face. “No babies, Victoria. No children, fatherless, lost and alone.” He knew what it was to be alone. How the emptiness of it ate away at the soul until nothing remained. Children didn’t deserve that sort of cruelty. Nor, in truth, did he deserve this with her, but in the end, he hadn’t the power to resist.
His lips touched her temple and her cheek, he nuzzled her ear, stroked her arm. He petted her hair where it lay on her breast. He adored the silky feel of her hair. “So beautiful,” he murmured. “You were wonderful. Kiss me, sweetheart.”
She turned her face to him and Simon gazed at her full lips, bruised and swollen from his kisses, her skin red from his rough, unshaven cheeks. Christ, but he’d been a brute, when she had been the sweetest and most delectable lover he had ever had. Would ever have. He kissed her tenderly and pulled the quilt over her delicious nakedness, knowing she would be sore and not ready for another encounter anytime soon, no matter how much he wished it. After all, she had been a virgin. And she had honored him with a precious gift.
He would do all in his power to ensure she did not suffer any consequences. Deep in his heart he wished he could keep her forever. It wasn’t possible. In the end she would be tainted by him and that he would not allow. He would have to make amends. Let her go.
Her eyes slid closed. She slept peaceful in his arms, her warm breath brushing across his skin, her heart a gentle flutter against his chest.
He didn’t deserve her, never would, but he would keep her safe. Somehow.
He drifted on a gentle sea of satiation that, for once, contained no bitter regrets about the past. Yet the knowledge that she would hate him when she realized this was all he had to give loomed like a dark cloud.