The Burning (34 page)

Wait—slightly built . . .

“There may be a bit of discomfort the first time.” He cleared his throat. “I’m a rather . . . large man and you are a virgin after all.”

“You won’t fit?”

He smiled. She was so anxious. “No, I’ll fit.”

“Then I’d like to try.” She was breathless. Was she already suffering?

He jerked his hands away from her shoulders “Did you get too much sensation?”

“No, no. It isn’t that.” She pressed her lips together over another secret smile. “It’s just that no one has held me like that since . . . since I was very young. I . . . liked it.”

Then, that was it. He was going to do this. Carefully. With total control. Regardless of his own torment. It wouldn’t be like it was with the Daughters. He sent his senses out into the rest of the house. Mrs. Simpson was crying in the kitchen. Mrs. Creevy was in the library, drinking brandy. “Where is your cousin?”

“Erich is afraid of you. He left the house early this afternoon when the workmen came. He said he was going to find a safe place to stay for the night.”

That meant Van Helsing thought Kilkenny would come tonight. Stephan pushed that thought away. He must focus if he was to give Miss Van Helsing the experience she deserved.

She was looking at him with those clear silver-gray eyes of hers, expectant. “Since I have already been so presumptuous, would it be too much to ask if I might use your given name?”

“Only if you will let me call you Ann.” He smiled.

She nodded, shy again. “Stephan. How . . . how does one proceed?”

“Let me show you,” he whispered, leaning in. He brushed his lips across hers.

Seventeen

Ann felt the brush of his lips like the shock of rubbing your shoes against the carpet on a windy day and then touching metal. It seemed to send a spark down to the spot between her legs. She leaned into him for more and he opened her mouth gently with his tongue. So surprising! So moist and . . . intimate. Was this what kissing felt like? It was different from the memories she had from Stephan, as different as seeing a painting of a flower and the real thing. A flash of fear shot through her. Would everything be so much more intense than she had remembered through Stephan? Maybe one really
could
go mad.

And then he gathered her into his chest. She smelled the warm scent of him, cinnamon, and under that the sweet exotic aroma of ambergris. His heart thumped against her breasts, so intimate, so vulnerable. She had never felt so close to another human being. The fact that he wasn’t human was beside the point. He bent and kissed her neck, his lips brushing her throat and making her shiver in delight. Would he take blood from her? He sometimes did in the course of
lovemaking. The Daughters had taken his blood regularly.

After his experience with them, would he be repelled by the act of sexual intercourse? That was what had caused his hesitation. She felt his uncertainty about his ability to have normal physical intimacy. He was as frightened as she was, maybe more. She resolved to make sex all it had not been with them, tender, giving. She knew what he liked. She could do those things. In fact, the very thought of doing them was making her wet and throbbing. It was only right to repay his generosity. If only he was not overcome by memories of his years with the Daughters, they could prevail.

It would be difficult to think if he was going to kiss her ears like that. It was difficult even to breathe. And then he was kissing her mouth. She gathered her courage and touched his tongue with her own. That must have encouraged him, for he probed deeper with his own, and she pressed her breasts against his chest.

“God, Ann,” he said thickly, breaking away. “God, but I have wanted this.”

“No more than I,” she said as she bared her throat to him and he kissed it. “I have done a lot less of it than you. None in fact.” He cupped her breast with his right hand and felt for her nipple through the cloth of her plain green gown. It was not hard to find. Her breasts had never been so tight and full. The stroke of his thumb across her nipple drew a little moan from her.

He broke away from her and cast about for a moment, before he said, “Would you prefer us to remain clothed? Perhaps you would find a man’s body distasteful.”

He preferred to be naked, and liked his women so as well. She knew that. She swallowed. She was a little frightened but her way was clear. “How could I find you distasteful?”

He took the lead in order to make her more comfortable about disrobing, she was sure. His eyes burned with intensity. The lips which had so recently been pressed to hers
were sensuous and promising. He stood, ripped his neckcloth off and tossed it away, then shrugged out of his tightly fitting black coat of superfine. She saw clearly that he was aroused, and that he was indeed a large man. His trousers bulged where they pressed his member against his thigh. She searched her memory, which meant she searched his, but he was strangely unconscious of his own body, so she was not certain what to expect. He pulled off his boots and stockings and stood before her, almost within touching range, but not. She wanted to touch him constantly now. She missed already the warmth of his embrace.

He ripped several buttons off removing his waistcoat of figured gray brocade. Then looked at her steadily and pulled his shirt over his head. She managed not to gasp. She had seen men’s upper bodies; laborers working without their shirts, the blacksmith wielding his hammer over a hot forge. But those men were not Stephan. He was big all over, with muscled shoulders and thick biceps, just like in her dream. But the reality of him was more particular. Dark hair dusted his chest and pointed in a vee over his abdomen to parts below. Dusky nipples peeked out at his well-developed pectorals. The muscles were named in her anatomy book. But muscles in the flesh were far more exciting. Biceps, abdominals, and those delightful ones that went over the hip and girdled a man’s most private parts—what were they called? Her head swam.

He looked apologetic as he unbuttoned his breeches. “Are you certain?” he asked, without a direct referent.

She nodded, smiling. If he knew that even now her thighs were sticky, he wouldn’t have to ask. He pushed his breeches over his hips and stepped out of them. Freed, his erection was . . . impressive. It was fully erect, the tip reddened, the shaft swollen and veined.
That
she had never seen before. She knew all that was to go inside her, but that knowledge seemed very theoretical at this point. She felt a blush rising and
lowered her head. Her fingers fumbled at the buttons down the front of her dress.

He knelt before her on one knee where she sat on her bed. “May I be of assistance?”

She nodded, and his hands came to her breast to slip each covered button out from its loop. His fingers were swift and certain. Her breasts pressed against his hands as she breathed. When he had unbuttoned it to beneath her waist, he took her slippers from her feet, handling them gently, and removed her stockings. Then he took her hand and stood up with her. He was so much bigger than she was. Her head came only to his chest. She had an urge to lean into him, to inhale the musky cinnamon scent of him. Instead, he slipped her dress over her shoulders. It pooled at her feet. He pulled at the ties of the short corset she wore in order to be able to undress herself. And then she was standing only in her shift. The thin linen was the only thing between them. He moved closer. His most male part touched her belly through the cloth.

Ann found that she was breathing hard. How long had she longed for this, feared it? She might end like her mother. But one night of pressing flesh to flesh seemed worth insanity. She reached up and took the pins out of her hair and tossed them to the carpet. Her hair fell heavily down her back. He bent and took the hem of her shift up over her head. She was naked. He put his hands on her shoulders. The only sensation she had was of her insides turning liquid.

“You are beautiful,” he said. “Like a small and perfect jewel.”

She looked up, startled. After all the women he had had, he thought
her
beautiful? He leaned down and swept her up in one movement. He placed her on her narrow bed and lay down beside her. He was touching her all along her length. There was just room enough for two. His erection pressed against her thigh. He brushed his lips along her forehead, down her nose. He kissed her mouth thoroughly, and she
kissed back, moist and intimate. She found herself arching her breast into his chest. He dipped his head and took her breast into his mouth, tonguing her nipple and sucking gently. Ann thought she might faint, it felt so delicious. Was this what made one go mad? He turned his attention to her other breast. She moaned.

Somehow, when she was distracted, his hand had strayed to her thigh and now he cupped her mound of flesh with his palm. She knew she was wet, and that he could see her desire for him displayed plainly over her thighs. One finger strayed inside her, shocking her with new intimacy. “Shusssssssh,” he murmured. “Relax and trust me. You will like this.”

He slid his finger along her moistness while his mouth returned to hers. Her nipples still brushed his chest, and the sensation between her legs, on her mouth, and her nipples was driving her to distraction. But then he found a particular point of feeling between her legs she had never known was there, and the feeling ramped up into a whole new realm. She could have no thought but the feeling that grew and pulsed. It made her twist and moan aloud. He would touch her and then rest, and then rub her lightly again, until she was pulling him down to kiss him fiercely and bucking against his hand to find his fingers and the pleasure they gave again.

It seemed like forever that she was poised on some kind of precipice. No one could experience any more sensation than this.

And then she did. Her whole body contracted into some overheated well of pleasure and then shot her soul out of the bed, out of the room and into the night. Somewhere she realized someone was yipping in little moans, and a soft voice in her ear breathed soothing noises. Was this madness?

With a wrench her body jerked away, exhausted. Without her permission, tears welled up and she sobbed against Stephan’s chest while he held her. This was so much more
than the sterile contraction she had experienced at her own hand while she dreamed. When she could think again, she gasped, “What was that?”

“That was an orgasm, my love, and a good one, I should guess.” He ran his lips over her hair, whispering to her.

“I thought it must be something entirely new. Well, that is as close to madness as I should like to get,” she said, a little shaky.

“I would like to get you there often,” he murmured.

“And how about your pleasure?” she asked.

“I shall hold mine in reserve.”

She thought about that. He didn’t want to ejaculate inside her. What had happened with Stancie made him afraid. And he was afraid that his experience with the Daughters would break through in the heat of his passion and horrify her. “Then I think I’m still a virgin, technically. That isn’t fair, somehow.”

“You should save that for your husband,” he said. His voice was throaty.

“And what if this is only possible with you?” she asked pointedly. “Must I be denied?”

“You know . . . you know there is danger.”

“I trust you.” She said it simply.

He enfolded her in a crushing embrace. He started to say something, then couldn’t.

God, she
did
trust him! He didn’t deserve it. But he couldn’t let her down. She had been so trusting that she had experienced one hell of an orgasm. It took not only trust but sensitivity to come like that. She was incredibly sensuous. And why not? Was not touching the sense that drove her life in many ways?

What surprised him was that the desire that even now made him rock-hard against her was not torture. The lava
inside him simmered, but the sensation seemed a promise, not a threat. She wanted the whole experience. He could give her another orgasm tonight before he left for the lodge, perhaps more than one, without ever coming himself. Lord, only a few weeks ago he had serviced three insatiable daughters of Rubius almost round the clock without ejaculating. Surely he could manage to give Ann the tender experience she deserved as initiation to the world of sexual intimacy. That made him smile. He wanted to do that for her, to show her that ecstasy was only a distant cousin to madness. Of course, he didn’t have the power of the Daughters to control him. But if he found himself close he could withdraw.