“There can’t be much passion there.”
Charlotte choked on her swallow of tea and stared at Colin. He had leaned back in his seat and was staring at her again. She shivered. This time there was no denying that he was appraising her. But not like she saw him look at every woman. This look was different. Sexual, yes, but also something else. Something…deeper.
She was utterly confused.
“What are you talking about?” she managed to say after she regained her breath.
“In a marriage between you and that old man,” Colin explained. His eyebrow arched. “I can’t imagine it will be a great passion.”
Charlotte shoved to her feet, tea sloshing from her cup to sting her hand. With a frown, she set her drink aside and paced away from Colin.
“This is an entirely inappropriate conversation, Colin.”
He chuckled. “Is it? In the proper parlors of London with ladies watching, yes. But we are here in your family home, the door closed, and we are, as you put it earlier, old friends. How can it be inappropriate for me to inquire after your welfare?”
She spun around to face him and found he had gotten to his feet and moved toward her. Instinctively, Charlotte backed up.
“Because you aren’t inquiring after my welfare,” she said as he came closer and closer. “You are asking after my…my…”
“Sex life.” He smiled as he came to a stop about a pace’s length away from her. “Or lack thereof.”
Heat flooded Charlotte’s cheeks. As devilish as Colin’s reputation was, he had never been so forward with her. Now he reached out and caught a loose tendril of her hair. She watched, eyes wide as he wound it around his finger, tighter and tighter, until she felt the gentle tug against her scalp. That little touch forced her to move forward and suddenly they were chest to chest. She craned her neck to look up at him and hated herself for the way her body reacted. Her nipples grew hard and sensitive beneath her silky gown. Her thighs clenched around empty heat and wetness.
“Colin,” she whispered, the sound a plea, though she wasn’t certain for what.
“It seems a waste for you to marry a man who would be nothing but kind to you, Charlotte.” He let her lock of hair spiral away from his finger and slipped the digit beneath her chin, stroking just his fingertip in a silky line there.
“You would prefer me to marry someone cruel, then?” she asked, trying to keep her tone light when she was dizzy and hot beneath his unexpected touch.
He shook his head. “Of course not. But a woman such as you should be worshiped and devoured and seduced. She should be made to beg for more, offered a chance to take more. She should be pleasured and teased. But none of it should be done kindly. It should be done passionately. Slowly. Reverently, even.”
His mouth came down with every word and Charlotte found her eyes fluttering shut even though she knew she should run away from him, from his words, from his kiss that would mean nothing the moment it was finished.
“Don’t you want passion, Charlotte? At least one last time?” he asked softly before his lips claimed hers.
And it was a claiming. Despite the fact that it was their first kiss, there was nothing gentle or questing or questioning about it. If she had been a virgin, it would have been the kind of kiss that made her swoon.
But she wasn’t. So instead she clung to his shoulders and surrendered herself as his mouth opened over hers. His tongue invaded and claimed. His arms came around her, lifting her up, molding her close. To her utter horror, she arched her hips, rubbing against his very obvious erection as she let out one deep, soulful moan of pleasure.
She shook her head, trying to clear her mind, as she staggered back from him and his confusing touch. He released her immediately, watching her through a hooded gaze as she moved farther and farther from him.
“What are you doing?” she asked, covering her burning lips. “Why are you doing this?”
“You were once married to a man of a certain reputation,” Colin said softly, his dark eyes never leaving her face. “Undoubtedly you know exactly what I’m doing. I am trying to seduce you.”
Charlotte turned away from him as even more blood heated her already flushed skin. Damn him. Damn him for bringing up her marriage that he knew nothing about. For reminding her of exactly why she couldn’t involve herself in an affair with a man like him. Even though he was so tempting.
“You don’t want me,” she murmured, proud she could keep her voice from cracking.
“You are wrong.”
She shook her head. “You want a woman, perhaps. But any woman will do. It has nothing to do with me.”
He laughed and she looked over her shoulder. He didn’t actually look amused, despite his smile. “Darling, if I wanted any woman, there is a chamber maid who passed me in your hall not twenty minutes ago who would have sufficed.”
Charlotte’s eyes went wide, and she turned her face away with a huffing sound that gave away far too many emotions. He chuckled again, but this time he was right behind her again. Before she could move to face him, his arms came around her, drawing her back against his broad chest even as he moved her forward toward the door, inch by inch.
“When you came to me all those years ago, when you offered yourself to me I turned you down for—” He stopped and Charlotte felt the catch of his breath against her bare neck. She shivered before he continued. “Well, there were many reasons. But I spent the next seven years wondering what would have happened if I had said yes. Haven’t you ever wondered?”
Charlotte trembled. Of course she had wondered.
“No,” she lied.
“Very well, then, indulge me despite your supposed lack of interest in what might have been. You and I are trapped here, perhaps for many days, all alone. We can play whist and pretend we don’t feel the desire that courses through us when we are near each other. Or we can have a very passionate affair and purge that desire from our systems.”
Slowly, he turned her, pressing her back to the parlor door as he reached around her to lock it. She could hardly breathe now, her dress felt too tight, her skin felt too tight as he leaned against her, his body making very clear what he wanted. And what he would give her in return.
“But—”
“You think too much, sweet,” he whispered, brushing the tip of his nose against hers. “There don’t have to be consequences or regrets; just all that passion that you are so willing to give up by considering Darnell’s proposal of marriage.”
Charlotte closed her eyes as Colin pressed his lips to her throat. With his mouth on her skin, it was so hard to think. But she had to. For Colin there would be no consequences to an affair. He felt nothing for any of the numerous women he had bedded.
For her, it would be different. She had loved this man for most of her life. Truth be told, that love had never fully died, she had just found a way to ignore it, bury it, forget it. But if she let him make love to her, it would be so easy to feel the emotion again. And the pain when he was finished with her.
His lips slipped lower, as did his hands. He pressed his palms to her breasts, gently lifting them so that the swells were more pronounced over the scooped neck of her silky gown. He pressed his mouth to the valley there, gently licking, languidly lighting her on fire.
She pressed her head to the wooden surface behind her and let out a strangled moan of pleasure and frustration. It was a huge risk to take the sudden offer Colin was making to her. And yet, perhaps without even knowing it, he had given her a good reason to surrender.
Perhaps, if she did give in, gave herself to him, she could purge those feelings she had for him. And at the very worst, she would have memories, not just fantasies to take into her life after the storm. Whatever she decided about Lawrence’s proposal, there was something to be said about living, not just wishing to live.
“Say something, Charlotte,” Colin whispered, even as his hot hands glided ever lower, bunching her gown up into his fist as he cupped her hip and then skimmed her thigh. “Say yes.”
“Yes,” she whispered as her hips arched against his hands. “Yes.”
He didn’t ask again. Immediately, he dropped to his knees before her, shoving her skirt up as he let his mouth move to where his hands had been. Charlotte yelped out surprise as his warm breath breached her stockings, steaming against the skin of her inner thigh.
Her husband had done this a few times in the years they had been married. She had enjoyed it, but the teasing pleasures of this act had ended years before his untimely death. Still, though she had experienced a man’s mouth against her before, Charlotte wasn’t fully ready when it was Colin’s mouth that settled against the juncture of her thighs. When it was his tongue that burrowed up to tease the wet lips of her slit. When it was his fingers that parted her wet folds, revealing her most private areas to his burning gaze, hot fingers, and questing tongue.
“Oh yes,” he murmured against her flesh. “I have always loved sweet things.”
Charlotte moaned, her head thrashing against the door behind her as he began to lick her in earnest. And he savored every lick, just like she was a sweet treat he wanted to relish. His fingers stroked in time with his hot, wicked tongue. First he teased her swollen folds, then he wetted his thick thumb with her flowing juices and stroked her flesh aside until he found the hidden pearl of her clit.
Her legs began to shake as he drove his tongue inside of her with relentless, focused thrusts and swirled his wet thumb around and around the tender bundle of nerves hidden within her folds.
Charlotte’s back stiffened against the door. She lifted her hand to cover her mouth as intense, powerful pleasure rushed through her. Every part of her became completely focused on the places where he touched her. She felt every breath between her legs, every strum of her own heartbeat. Her entire life centered in that one pleasure point, and she couldn’t help but moan and cry out as he dragged her through one burst of pleasure to the next. Even when her knees buckled, even when her cries turned to pleading words of surrender, he still relentlessly licked and stroked on until her body was on fire and she feared being consumed.
Then and only then did he step between her shaking legs, straightening up to support her trembling backside as he unfastened his trousers and freed his cock. Charlotte did not protest as he fitted the hard, hot head of his erection to her trembling entrance. She simply held her breath and waited for the tremors of pleasure to move to their next level.
He didn’t disappoint. As he leaned his hips in and slipped inch by inch into her body, Charlotte sighed with pleasure. Oh yes. This was what she had dreamed about. He was bigger than her husband had been, and when he fitted himself to the hilt and ground his hips in a slow circle against hers, Charlotte realized Colin was also far more talented. Immediately another orgasm overtook her.
She clung to his shoulders, which were still cloaked in his heavy coat. She slammed her hips to his, no longer caring that her fine gown was caught between them and likely to stain. She even stopped trying to muffle her cries of release as he took her in one hard, long thrust after another. Until finally, as she climaxed a final time, he withdrew from her body and cursed loudly as he spilled his seed against his palm.
Charlotte slowly lowered her legs, letting her feet touch the ground as her heart rate began to slowly ease its way back to normal. She waited for doubts to enter her mind, for her thoughts to race with all the reasons why she shouldn’t have allowed the animal coupling that had just transpired.
As if reading her mind, Colin met her gaze as he fastened his trousers. “Do you regret what just happened?”
She stared at him a long moment. It was impossible to lie to him. It always had been. So she slowly shook her head.
“No. I regret nothing.”
He smiled, an expression of relief as much as pleasure. Then he leaned forward and kissed her so gently it brought tears to her eyes that she blinked away.
“Then I would like to go up to your bedroom and do that again,” he whispered as their lips parted. “Only this time I would like to savor every moment.”
Charlotte’s breath caught. This was her last chance to withdraw from the agreement she had made for an affair that lasted the duration of the storm. She could refuse him.
But she didn’t. She simply smoothed her skirts, unlocked the door behind her and took his hand.