“Not this way. Not this time.” She hooked a leg over his waist and rolled them both, flipping Piers onto his back. “It’s my turn.”
As she leaned forward to kiss his unshaven neck, he muttered a curse. She trailed her tongue along his collarbone and down the center of his chest. She gave his small, flat nipples playful bites.
Then she sat up, straddling his thighs. She lifted her breasts with her hands, shaping and plumping them for his view. She circled her nipples with her fingertips, teasing them to tight, rosy peaks.
He made a strangled sound in his throat. “You’ll kill me.”
She only smiled.
She laid a single fingertip to his lips, then drew it down his chin, then his neck, then his chest. Down, and down . . . Until she found the bulge tenting his breeches and cupped it in her hand.
She reached for the buttons of his falls. Her fingers didn’t falter this time.
He sucked in his breath as she reached into his breeches, freeing his swollen staff from the buckskin. She stroked his hardness up and down, then reached lower to cradle and caress the soft, vulnerable sac beneath.
Gripping his length in one hand, she bent her head and drew her tongue across the tip of his cock.
His hips jerked, and he muttered something in a language she didn’t recognize.
When she lifted her head, he was staring down at her. Holding eye contact, she lowered her head and licked him again, this time swirling her tongue around the head.
“Christ.”
His blasphemy didn’t deter her in the slightest. To the contrary, she felt a surge of power that bordered on divine.
She sat tall. He reached for her, but she caught his hands, lacing her fingers with his. Then she pushed his arms back against the bed, pinning them to the mattress. As she leaned forward to brace him there with her weight, her hair came loose from its plait and tumbled about them both.
She moved a few inches, feeling his hardness slide deliciously against her most sensitive places. Then she sank down on him, one inch at a time, until she’d taken him all the way to the root.
Setting a slow, smooth rhythm, she rolled her hips, taking his fullness inside her again and again. She kept his arms pinned to the bed and stared into his eyes.
“You feel so good inside me,” she whispered. “So hard and so deep.”
She loved it when he said carnal things to her. Perhaps hearing them from her lips would excite him, too.
It would seem she’d supposed correctly. He began to arch his back, pushing up to meet her with each stroke. Urging her faster. As they moved together, her unbound hair brushed her nipples and his cheeks.
“Can’t hold back much longer.” He gritted his teeth. “Come.”
She smiled down at him. “You first.”
She released his pinned arms, leaning her weight on her elbows and tangling her fingers in his hair. His hands went to her hips, seizing her flesh in desperate handfuls. He guided her up and down, pushing her to ride him faster, harder. His brow furrowed with effort, and he bared his teeth.
Through it all, their gazes locked and held. His blue eyes penetrated her even more deeply than his cock. Searching, pleading.
“I love you,” she gasped, feeling him swell even larger within her. “Love you, love you, lov—”
He kissed her. He might have stolen her words, but not the emotion. No force on earth could hold back the tide welling in her heart, or the bliss gathering at her center.
At last, he let go. With a harsh, guttural cry, he thrust deep, holding her hips in place. She felt a series of frantic spasms as he found his release.
His crisis unleashed her own.
She closed her eyes. She couldn’t help it. The joy, the desire, the relief, the love . . . They all swirled and collided within her. White light sparked behind her eyelids.
She saw stars.
When her breathing calmed, she looked down at him again—and was heartened to find him gazing up at her. She smoothed the damp hair back from his brow.
“That”—she pressed a kiss to his lips—“was making love.”
He closed his eyes. “Charlotte . . .”
She shushed him. “It’s all right. I know this is new to you, and probably a bit overwhelming. It’s rather new and overwhelming to me, too. But I love you, and it’s important that you know that. Because no matter how you control your emotions, you can’t control mine. I know what’s inside you, behind all those walls. I’ll keep chipping away until I get at it. Even if it takes years. Decades. I know you’ll be worth the effort.” She rested against his chest, burying her face into the crook of his neck. “I’m never giving up on you.”
His arms went around her, clutching her so close and tight she barely had room to breathe. Nevertheless, she felt safe in his embrace. His heartbeat pounded in her ear, steady and strong, lulling her into a trance.
Someday, Charlotte told herself, she must learn how to make love without falling asleep moments afterward.
That day wouldn’t be today.
“Charlotte, wake.”
Her eyes snapped open. She sat bolt upright in bed. The past two times he’d tried to wake her had been disastrous. She wasn’t going to give him cause to worry again.
“There’s smoke,” he said. “We must hurry.”
No sooner had he pulled her from the bed than footsteps pounded down the corridor. Someone was running through the house, pausing only long enough to thump on each door.
“Fire! Fire!”
While Piers checked the corridor to make certain it was safe, she located her dressing gown and tied it about her waist.
They emerged from the room to find the house in an uproar. People in nightshirts hurried past them in both directions. She couldn’t see any flames. However, a cloud of acrid smoke obscured the corridor to the right, blocking the way to the main stairs.
“This way,” he said, taking her by the wrist and heading left. “The servant stairs. You go ahead, and be quick about it. I’ll follow with your mother.”
Oh, no. Mama.
She looked toward the streaming black smoke. Her mother’s bedchamber was down the corridor that way. Just across from Charlotte’s own.
Between Mama’s age, her diminished eyesight, and her nervous condition, she would never make it out unassisted.
She pulled her arm from his grip and started toward the right.
Piers held her back. “No. You go downstairs.”