Her gaze lingered and he saw the longing in her eyes. "Let me give you what you want," he said, his voice hushed and low.
His erection swelled at such lascivious words, and a corresponding heat spiraled downward within her, melted between her legs, the damning wetness answer to his query. She inhaled deeply, and on the merest wisp of breath because she couldn't stop the words no matter what conscience or propriety demanded, she said, "Just this once before I go." She looked away, clearly discomposed. But when her gaze returned to his and she spoke again, her voice was stronger. "I feel as though I'll die if I don't touch you, if you don't touch me."
"I'd be pleased to touch you anywhere you wish," he murmured, an inherent politeness in his offer of sexual satisfaction.
"You can't
come
in me." An exacting fiat no matter her breathlessness.
He raised his eyebrows, contemplating her. "Orders?"
Flushed, acutely agitated by his raw sensuality, she maintained enough control over her emotions to reply, "Yes, orders."
His sudden grin was boyish and unabashedly impudent. "Sounds fine to me." He quickly surveyed the room. "Would you prefer a bed?"
Clearly tense, she shook her head.
"Then let me suggest the window seat. The stars are out."
"How romantic." But a fine edge colored her trembling voice.
"It is actually. You'll be surprised." Aware of her discomfort, he gently noted, "I'm not in a hurry. Take your time."
A sudden flicker of awareness showed in her eyes. "This may be a mistake." Hastily pushing back from the table, she jumped up and stepped away.
He didn't move to check her withdrawal. She was skittish, high-strung, unable to completely acknowledge the extent of her sexual longing. He was patently aroused by such virtue.
"I don't make a practice of doing this," she said, standing stiffly upright a safe distance away.
"I know."
"I'm not a harlot."
"I know. You're Beatrix Grosvenor from Kent."
"I'm not sure what's come over me. After—everything that happened tonight," she fastidiously said.
Less squeamish about the loss of Langelier's kind, Pasha pointedly asked, "How long has it been since you've slept with a man?"
"Too long, obviously." Sarcasm touched her voice.
"That's what I was thinking. How long has it been?"
"Two years."
A libidinous jolt brought him upright in his chair. "That's a long time," he breathed, unable to fathom two years of unsated desire.
"
It
suddenly seems like a long time."
"We'll have to remedy that."
"So I shouldn't be overly disturbed by—"
"
Anything
," he said with discreet emphasis. "Particularly sweet lust."
"And if I am?"
"Don't be. It's pleasure, pure and simple."
"How easy you make it sound."
"It is, darling. Forget about propriety. Indulge yourself."
"I should simply assuage my carnal desires?" Disconcerted she could even contemplate such licentiousness with this stranger, she fully expected to be struck dead by a bolt of lightning.
"Why not? I offer that assuagement worry-free," he gently said. "Guaranteed." Never a man of mystical propensities, he knew better than to contemplate retribution from other than worldly sources. And even those were generally within his power to curtail.
"How can you offer guarantees?"
Did she realize she'd capitulated in asking that question? he wondered. But he knew better than to force the pace. "Considering your son you mean."
"Yes."
"This is only one night." His brows rose in query. "Or was the other one—"
"No, no, of course not."
"In any case I'm very dependable."
A small silence fell, the sound of the wind outside suddenly audible.
"I'm sorry," she said at last, never having found herself in so compromising a position before where no impulse beyond desire impelled her. No excuse or rationale, no extenuating circumstances offered solace. "You must find this annoying."
"Not in the least." Pasha recognized that she needed a modicum of persuasion to appease the moral strictures assailing her conscience. "Let me show you the stars at least," he suggested, uncoiling from his chair. "That should be safe enough." He plucked a bottle of champagne from the ice bucket before moving away from the table.
"This is all very confusing."
"That's fine. It doesn't matter," he soothed, his voice comforting, cordial. "Come," he went on, holding his hand out to her. "Sit with me and we'll see if Orion is visible tonight."
She should refuse, she knew; decorum and convention demanded it. Despite her son, she was a woman of conscience. But Pasha was so very close and tempting, and the strange, powerful pulsing within her seemed not to respond to any normal restraints. For a woman who'd known only two men in her life—the first a monster, the second, a friend—she questioned her sanity when she was so flooded with ravenous need, overpowered by the sheer physical presence of the man holding his hand out to her and offering her the stars.
Her hand seemed to come up of its own accord. Their fingers brushed, met, and his hand closed gently around hers, warming her, the delicious sensation shimmering through her body like liquid light.
"How small your hand is." He pulled her to her feet, raising her hand to his mouth, bending his head to brush her knuckles lightly with his lips.
"
You're
very large," she whispered, a frisson of ambiguity in her words, her violet eyes flickering downward, plainspoken in their need.
"I won't hurt you," he softly said. "I'll be very careful."
Her knees went suddenly weak. She felt light-headed at such a dizzying prospect.
Catching her in midfall, Pasha righted her, the champagne bottle cool on her back.
"This is impossible." She was shocked by her giddy, delirious response. But he was holding her tightly against his powerful body, his erection flagrant between them, and intemperate longing put the lie to her words.
"Kiss me," he whispered.
"No." A last breathless act of untainted innocence.
But she lifted her face to his.
And her eyes mirrored a passion he'd seen a thousand times before.
His mouth closed over hers, drawing in her breathless sigh. Impatient, Pasha began counting down from one hundred by threes because a lady of such uncertainties would require wooing. And that called for unprecedented restraint in his current rapacious mood. But he'd reached only eighty-eight when Trixi began kissing him back; and drawing her to the window seat, he eased them both down, she atop him.
"The stars
are
out for you tonight." He glanced up, setting the bottle on the windowsill. "And Orion is on guard," he added, his breath warm on her mouth.
"Will he guard me from my salacious urges?"
"If you want," Pasha kindly replied, his hands warm at the base of her spine.
She raised her head and gazed out the windows at the brilliant starlit sky. When she looked at him again, she was smiling. "You must think me an adolescent with all my uncertainties."
"Virtuous perhaps," he gently remarked. "Never adolescent." Her plump breasts and curved hips were too voluptuous for youth, her heated responses those of an alluring woman.
"I don't know how to do very much," she apologized. "If you're expecting an accomplished lover."
"I have no expectations save those of pleasure."
"Tell me if you want something," she hesitantly murmured, her arms propped on his chest, her expression tentative.
He chuckled. "You don't have to perform for me."
"Good," she replied, grinning, "considering my inexperience."
That inexperience intrigued him. A widow with a love child wouldn't ordinarily be considered inexperienced. And for a man who prided himself on the sophistication of his amorous partners, he found himself curiously excited by the prospect of her innocence. He slid a finger over the appliquéd lace on her gown. "Let's take this dress off first. I've been thinking about it for a very long time."
"While I've found you irresistible for a very long time," she breathed. "How do you do it?"
"Do what?" His smile was angelic, the hush of his voice perfumed lust.
"Make me feel this way," she whispered, touching his fingers as he gently unbuttoned her bodice.
"The stars are out tonight," he teased. "I take no responsibility."
"It's the stars then making me feverish. And not this?" Pushing herself upright, she sat across his legs, ran her fingers over the bulge in his trousers, his erection hot under her hand—the tantalizing lure and focus of her intoxication.
He started counting again, not sure who was more inexperienced tonight. He'd never felt this way, almost out of control, adolescent again, breath held as she touched him, like the first time when he was fourteen and his mama's maid lured him into her bed. "Maybe the stars are making both of us feverish. I wouldn't do that if I were you," he said on a caught breath as she molded her hand over the wool-covered length of his penis.
"Do this?" Her fingers closed hard over him.
Jerking her hand away, he inhaled harshly. "Don't." Sex wasn't going to be a game exclusive of emotion tonight.
Hitching up her skirt, crushing the silk above her thighs, she whispered, "Please…" when she'd never in her life begged for sex. "Please…"
He was already unbuttoning his trousers, discarding any further notion of wooing. This lush, pleading woman was so hot, she was about to come with or without him.
That realization made him consider the question of her innocence with a certain degree of cynicism.
He'd know soon enough, he decided, sliding the last button free. Drawing his erection out, he said, "Here you go," in a newly cynical tone. Suddenly testy at having been taken in by a very adept actress, he forced his arousal upright and brusquely murmured, "It's all yours."
Even in the dim light, he could see the heated blush rise to her cheeks. Her lashes dropped, shielding her gaze; and biting her lower lip, she shivered, tears slipping from her downcast eyes.
Instantly contrite even as a perverse gratification inundated his senses, he whispered, "Lord, don't cry," and reached up to brush away her tears with his shirt cuffs.
"I'm sorry," she breathed, humiliated by her gaucherie and worse, her ravenous need. "I don't know what to do."
"Look at me." He touched her chin and when her liquid gaze met his, he said very low, "
I'm
the one who should be sorry. And you don't have to
do
anything.
Here… come here," he whispered, patting his shoulder. "Lie with me."
"I don't know if I can."
"If you can wait, you mean?"
She nodded, her golden hair loosened, pale tendrils falling on her shoulders, her bodice partially undone, her full breasts visible above the skewed neckline of her chemise, her bare thighs hot on his.
"Do you want your gown off first?"
A flame-hot rush of pleasure streaked through her body, anticipation so tautly felt it seemed as though she'd explode if she moved.
"Let's just slide this skirt away instead." Her skin was like silk under his fingers as he adjusted the skirt, his palms heated on her flesh. She was visibly trembling beneath his hands.
He lightly stroked the crisp blond hair at the apex of her spread thighs, slid his fingers down her drenched cleft in the gentlest of motions, slipped a finger inside her hot passage the merest fraction, an incipient, casual prelude, and she instantly climaxed, whimpering, sobbing, tears spilling down her cheeks.
Drawing her down, he held her close until her sobs quieted, until the feverish tempest within her had stilled, until her breathing calmed, and then he murmured with the kindness that distinguished him from the other men she'd known, "Two years is a very long time."
His simple words eased her shame, lightened the confusion in her mind. All the ambiguity of modesty and morality became less intimidating when one considered the merely physical.
Looking up at him, she touched his cheek. "How gracious you are."
"Pleasure is pleasure," he genially noted. "It's not a liability."
Mortified at her precipitous orgasm, she whispered, "What must you think of me. I hardly know you."
"Then again, I'm looking forward to getting to know you."
The throbbing between her legs resumed as if her body automatically responded to the insinuation in his voice. "I don't know what's come over me. It's as though I've jettisoned all scruple."
"You worry too much," he serenely said, idly stroking her back.
"I should just enjoy this." Lying in the crook of his arm, she touched his erection, poised and ready.
"Hold that thought," he teasingly murmured.
"Who will ever know?"
"Who indeed? And the next time you come I guarantee it'll be much better."
"You can guarantee that?"
"Oh, yes."
"Because you're stud to half of Paris?"
"Only half?" he laughingly replied.
"I should take advantage then of your talents."
"Why not? You'll like it."
"So sure." A playful gleam shone in her eyes.
He grinned, then slid a finger down her wet cleft. "I don't think it'll be much of a problem bringing you to orgasm a dozen more times tonight."
She sat upright, naïveté in her astonished gaze. "A dozen?" she said, her voice shaking.
"Should we get started?" He smiled in the moonlight, a teasing, playful smile. "Or should we do something else instead while you're in Paris?"
She didn't answer, couldn't answer so bold a question.
"Should I tell you?"
He lay sprawled before her, temptation in a white silk shirt and undone trousers, his arms thrown over his head, his powerful body hers for the asking. And more than anything she desired him. "I want your clothes off," she impetuously said, allowing her fevered longings expression, understanding she couldn't rationalize her feelings away no matter how much she talked. "I find myself very susceptible to your sexual allure."
Her words made him smile although he carefully masked his response; how polite she was, as though she were expressing her admiration for a bonnet or teapot. "Then you know how I feel," he graciously replied. "Let me help with that." He eased her fingers away from the neckcloth she was muddling into a tighter knot. "Watch now… for next time."