Not Just a Governess (10 page)

Elena sat unmoving as she watched Adam between thick dark lashes, her heart beating a wild tattoo in her chest as she looked at the gold smoothness of his skin revealed at this throat, the fine dusting of hair on his chest also just visible. She was barely breathing as she waited to see if he would remove the shirt completely.

She had taken off her gloves so that she could unfasten the buttons at the back of her gown, the release having somewhat lessened the pressure against the fullness of her breasts, but that very freedom of movement
serving to heighten the full and tingling sensation at their tips.

Quite what happened next, Elena had no idea, but she was happy—indeed, she quivered with eagerness!—at the thought of putting herself into Adam’s gentle and more experienced hands. And lips. And tongue. And teeth…

Adam did not remove his shirt, but sat down beside her on the
chaise
, the warmth of his thigh resting against the length of hers. He reached out and slowly slid the loosened material of her gown from her shoulders and down the length of her bare arms before slipping the bodice down completely, her breasts only covered by the thin material of her chemise now. ‘You have beautiful hands…’ he murmured even as he raised one of those hands to his lips to kiss each individual finger before once again looking up into her eyes. ‘I should very much like to feel them against the bareness of my chest, so if you will help me to remove my shirt…?’

Elena was moved beyond words by Adam’s continued tenderness, knew that most men—how that past memory was still burned within!—would have simply made an eager grab at her breasts rather than take the time
to kiss her fingers, totally uncaring as to whether or not she enjoyed the experience. Which, with Neville, she most certainly had not.

‘Do not think of the past, love.’ Adam reached out to gently touch Elena’s cheek as he saw the shadows that had once more entered her eyes. ‘This is you and me. Adam and Elena. And there is no room for anyone else here, not between the two of us.’

Tears glittered in those blue-green depths. ‘Why are you being so kind to me?’

How could he not be kind to her? How could any man not wish to show kindness to this beautiful and entrancing woman? ‘Help me off with my shirt, love?’

Instead of continuing to sit beside him as she reached up to help him, as Adam had expected she would, Elena now stood up, causing her unfastened gown to fall to the carpet at her slippered feet, and leaving her clothed only in that revealing white chemise over her drawers, and delicate white stockings held in place at her thighs by white garters adorned with rosebuds.

Drawing Adam’s gaze unerringly to those other rosebuds now visible through the thin material of her chemise, full and delicious red
berries that were clearly and temptingly outlined against that gauzy material.

Adam continued to gaze hungrily at those pouting red berries as Elena slowly raised his shirt up his chest and then over his head before discarding it completely, only looking up into her face as he heard her gasp softly. ‘What is it, love?’

‘You will think me silly.’ Her cheeks had flushed a fiery red, her eyes overbright.

‘I am currently sitting half-naked in the salon where I usually receive guests, and I will think
you
are the silly one?’ he teased huskily.

‘I am standing here half-naked in that very same salon,’ she came back ruefully. ‘And the reason for my shock was that you are very beautiful, Adam,’ she said shyly.

His own breath caught in his throat at her unaffected candidness, then he ceased to breathe altogether as those long and slender hands moved tentatively to the nakedness of his chest, fingers tracing a delicate and seductive path across the muscled width of his shoulders before moving down to touch the silky dark hair covering his chest. Adam let out a hoarse exclamation of pleasure as her fingernails rasped lightly across the flat
nubbins hidden there. His arousal surged and leapt inside his breeches to the same rhythm as those caressing fingers, causing him to shift uncomfortably.

Elena flattened her fingers against those hardened nubbins. ‘Am I hurting you?’

‘Only with pleasure,’ Adam acknowledged throatily.

Her eyes widened. ‘You enjoy being touched?’

‘By you, yes, very much so.’ Adam reached up to slide the thin shoulder straps of her chemise down to her elbows, finally baring those breasts to the avidness of his heated gaze.

Surprisingly full breasts, considering the slenderness of her body. They were round and pert, and tipped with delectable rosy-red nipples that seemed to swell and deepen in colour the longer he continued to look at them hungrily.

‘May I?’ Adam moistened his lips in anticipation of the taste of those ripe berries as he slipped the straps down completely, allowing her chemise to fall down to her waist.

‘Please…!’ Elena stepped forwards to stand between his parted thighs, her bared breasts swinging temptingly close to his mouth.

Adam placed his hands on her hips to
steady her as he leant forwards and gently kissed each rosy-red nipple, one after the other, before lingering to lave one engorged berry with his tongue, around and around, urged on by her softly keening cries. She reached out to cling to the bareness of his shoulders as he slowly, skilfully drew that sensitive nubbin fully into the heat of his mouth.

Elena’s knees threatened to fold completely and she knew she would have fallen, if Adam had not tightened his grip on her hips to hold her in place. Her throat arched, head thrown back. She became totally consumed with the pleasure he gave with his lips and tongue—ah, yes, his teeth!—as he laved and suckled and nibbled upon that engorged berry.

This was nothing like that terrible memory of her cousin’s touch, Adam’s causing her drawers to become wet with moisture, her folds there swollen and aching, and a throbbing between her thighs that she could not explain.

She whimpered as Adam ceased his ministrations to her breasts and turned his attention to its twin, no longer gentle as he drew deeply on that nubbin, his breathing laboured as he suckled hard and long until it grew bigger
still, elongating as he rasped his tongue across the tip over and over again until Elena thought she might go mad with the pleasure. The ache inside her was now so great that it caused her to thrust her thighs forwards, her movements restless as she burned, ached, begged for a release from the torment, at the same time as she never wanted this pleasure to stop.

Her back arched as she leant into him, pleading, asking, needing—for what she did not know. She groaned in protest as Adam released her nipple with a loud popping sound, that berry red and moist as Elena looked down at him with dark and sultry blue-green eyes.

‘Part your legs, love,’ Adam encouraged throatily as he pushed her chemise up her thighs to her waist. ‘I want to touch you here, too,’ he breathed, looking at her long and deeply before once again slowly, deliberately, latching on to the engorged pout of her nipple. Her legs slowly parted, allowing his hand to seek out the slit in her drawers.

Elena felt his fingers part her silky curls to seek out her swollen folds, dipping those fingers into the moisture there before parting those folds and moving higher, circling, caressing, moistening her there but not quite
touching the part of her that throbbed, ached for his touch. ‘Please, Adam…!’ She moved her thighs restlessly against those caressing fingers, seeking, wanting—‘Yesss!’ Elena cried out at the first touch of those fingers against that ache, fingers that now alternately stroked and circled that swollen and moistened nubbin to the same rhythm that he suckled deeply on her nipple. His free hand moved from her hip to cup her other breast, finger and thumb tweaking, pulling on that second nipple.

The triple assault upon her senses was too much. Too many different sensations at once. Too much pleasure. Too much, too much, too much—

That pleasure released, climaxed so suddenly, that it took Elena’s breath away as it rippled and surged, then exploded in a cascade of overwhelming sensations, the moisture rushing freely between her thighs, wetting Adam as he thrust one finger deep inside her even as he continued to stroke her into ecstasy.

On and on it went, as the tears coursed hotly, unknowingly, down Elena’s cheeks.

‘W
e are not finished yet,’ Adam said as Elena, flushed and obviously self-conscious after her loss of control, turned her face away and would have moved out of his reach. Instead he continued to hold her lightly with one arm about her waist as he reached up to release the pins from her hair, so that he might admire those long silky dark curls as they cascaded down the length of her spine and fell softly about her flushed face. ‘You are a very beautiful woman, Elena…’

She moistened full and swollen lips, those blue-green eyes slightly unfocused from her recent climax. ‘I—thank you.’

Adam chuckled softly at the obvious absence of her usual calm and composure—he
was feeling less than calm or composed himself! Nor had he had his fill of her beautiful body. ‘Come, lie here beside me, love,’ he encouraged as he turned with her in his arms to place her down gently upon the
chaise
.

His gaze darkened appreciatively at the totally wanton picture she presented as he sat back to look at her, those dark curls falling wildly about her shoulders and breasts, breasts swollen from his ministrations, the nipples tight red buds, becoming even more so as Adam’s gaze lingered there before moving down to the slenderness of her waist where her chemise was gathered.

‘These need to come off.’ He suited his actions to his words as he rolled both her chemise and her drawers down over her thighs and legs before discarding them completely, Elena now wearing only those white stockings held up by rosebud-adorned garters. ‘Please do not.’ Adam reached out to clasp Elena’s hand in his as she would have self-consciously covered the curls between her legs, dark and silky curls that He could see were slightly damp from her recent release. ‘Will you allow me to kiss you here?’ He allowed his fingers to tangle lightly with those
silky dark curls as he raised his soft grey gaze to hers.

Elena’s eyes widened. Adam wished to—he wanted to place his mouth against her
there?

She had not known what to expect from Adam’s lovemaking, her past experience with Neville—both painful and terrifying, and one she had tried in vain to erase from her memory—having in no way prepared her for the pleasure she had just known. He had been so gentle with her, so careful not to hurt her, as he showed her that lovemaking could be a pleasurable and caring experience. With him, at least.

Even so, could she—dare she—allow him to kiss her
there
, to feel those sensual lips against her most intimate place?

‘Your husband did not deserve you, love!’ Adam rasped as he obviously saw, and understood, the uncertainty in her expression, though he did not know the correct person to blame for it. ‘Lovemaking is for the enjoyment of both parties, Elena,’ he continued gently. ‘And it would give me as much pleasure to kiss you here as I believe it would for you to be kissed. But I appreciate that some
ladies do not even like the thought of such intimacy. Do you trust me, Elena?’

She looked up at him. ‘I trust you, Adam.’

His eyes darkened. ‘Thank you.’

She nodded. ‘You have been very kind and gentle and I have enjoyed our time together up to this point.’

‘I promise I will stop if you decide you do not like what I do to you now.’ His caressing fingers gently parted her legs so that he might separate the dark curls and stroke against that already swelling nubbin between her thighs as he draped the leg nearest to him across the muscled hardness of his own thighs before his head began its slow descent. ‘I so badly wish to taste you!’

Elena swallowed the saliva that had gathered in her mouth, that swallow turning to a breathless sigh, her lids closing, at the first touch of Adam’s lips against her swollen folds, pleasure coursing through her anew as she felt the rasp of his tongue against her most sensitive place.

‘You taste divine, Elena.’ The warmth of his breath moved lightly, arousingly, against her moist heat. ‘So sweet and creamy,’ he murmured.

Elena’s hands seemed to move of their own
volition as her fingers became entangled in the darkness of Adam’s hair. Her back arched as her hips began to undulate in the same rhythm as the almost unbearable rasp of his tongue, his fingers moving to stroke the little nubbin, causing Elena to shift restlessly.

He raised his head only slightly. ‘Do you wish me to stop?’

‘Heavens, no!’ Elena’s husky laugh caught on a sob—she wished him to do the opposite!—as she glanced down into those dark-grey eyes rimmed by black, allowing her to see lips damp from her. ‘Unless…Do you wish to stop?’

His gaze continued to hold hers as he once again lowered his head and resumed that skilful flicking of his tongue, at the same time as both his hands moved up to cup her breasts, capturing the nipples between thumb and index finger and pinching gently. This combined assault upon her senses was altogether too much for Elena as she felt the burn of that pleasure coursing through her once again, hotly, frantically, until she exploded a second time, even more fiercely than the first, her back arched up as wave after wave of pleasure consumed her.

‘Does that answer your question, love?’
Adam asked as he lay his head against her bare thighs. ‘I would kiss and caress you here all night long if you allowed it,’ he assured her. ‘You are as beautiful here as you are everywhere else.’ His gaze lowered as the gentleness of his fingers stroked against her sensitive flesh. ‘So, so beautiful, Elena.’

She chewed lightly on her bottom lips before answering him shyly, ‘And you…you really enjoy performing such…such intimacies?’

‘Any man would, love.’ A smile curved those sensual lips as he looked up at her. ‘To give you pleasure is to give myself pleasure also.’

‘Would you not enjoy it more if I—if I were to touch you now?’ She looked at him anxiously, unsure if she had gone too far as she saw his eyes widen. Except…she ached to touch Adam, to explore the hardness of his arms and chest, the flatness of his abdomen, and perhaps lower still?

‘You do not have to do so,’ Adam said gruffly, that reassurance belied by the heated glitter that had entered his eyes and the deepening flush in his cheeks, the bulge in his breeches seeming to grow larger still.

Elena had only seen a man’s rampant rod
once before in her life, seconds before it was pushed painfully inside her, ripping through her innocence and causing her immeasurable pain. What had followed had been even more excruciating and unpleasant.

But this, here and now with Adam, was so unlike that last time, both the man and the experience. Adam was intent only on giving her pleasure, to a degree that he had asked nothing of her in return. She
wanted
to give something back to him, to perhaps be able to give him the same release he had given her—twice.

Well, perhaps she should not expect it to happen twice for Adam, for Elena had overheard two of the maids gossiping once at Sheffield Park, in regard to one of the footmen, a gentleman with whom it seemed that both young ladies occasionally engaged in love-play, and there had been much giggling between them over that gentleman’s need to rest for several hours before he could ‘perform’ a second time.

She looked up at Adam shyly once again. ‘And if I should wish to?’

His throat moved as he swallowed before answering. ‘Then I would like that very much indeed. You are sure, love?’

She nodded as she tucked her legs beneath her before moving up on her knees and placing her hands upon his bare shoulders as she knelt in front of him. ‘If you will help to instruct me as to what I may do, how to touch you, so as best to please you?’

Adam’s breath caught in his throat as he gazed at her unashamed nudity: those firm, uptilting breasts, reddened now from his ministrations as they peeped through the ebony waves of the long hair cascading over her shoulders and down her spine, the curve of her waist, her legs slender and shapely, slightly parted so as to reveal the dampness of the curls between her thighs.

‘You would perhaps find such intimacies…unpleasant.’

She gave him a calm, trusting look. ‘I do not believe that I should. Not with you.’

Something welled up in Adam’s chest. Something too fleeting to be recognised. Something he had no time or inclination to analyse, as Elena reached down and began to unfasten the buttons at the sides of his breeches.

His shaft, already a painful throb, surged to even greater heights as those slender fingers brushed lightly against his heat, a small
amount of liquid moistening his smalls as it eagerly escaped.

‘I believe you will have to be the one who now lies down.’

Adam dragged his gaze away from Elena’s flushed face to glance down and see that she had his breeches completely unbuttoned and pulled down to his thighs, along with his smalls, his manhood bobbing free and far longer and thicker than Adam could ever remember seeing it before. ‘I believe he is pleased to see you,’ he murmured ruefully as he lay down on the
chaise
in order to completely divest himself of his clothing.

‘“He”?’ She gave an uncharacteristic giggle as she moved to kneel between his parted thighs.

‘All men call that part of their anatomy “he”, love,’ he teased.

‘As if “he” is an entity apart from yourself?’

‘Sometimes I believe he is,’ Adam drawled ruefully. ‘Certainly, men have allowed themselves to be led about by it. Myself included—’ He broke off as once again Elena smoothed the frown from between his brows caused by memories of the past.

‘We will not talk of anything but the here
and now,’ she spoke firmly, as if she too had memories she would rather not dwell on. As no doubt she had. ‘My instinct is to curl my fingers about him, is that correct?’

‘Your instinct is perfectly correct.’ Adam nodded, watching between narrowed lids as Elena moved her hand to allow her fingers to curl about his girth. Well, almost to curl about his girth, for it was now so thick and throbbing that her fingers were too tiny to span him completely. ‘Perhaps you should use both hands?’ he teased, only to catch his breath in a gasp as she did exactly that, those fingers tightening and relaxing at the same time as she began to pump lightly and rhythmically.

Elena was obviously completely enthralled by what she was doing and Adam was more aroused by her wonder in his response than he had ever been aroused by anything, or anyone, in his life before. It was almost as if she were seeing a man’s responses to her for the first time—and perhaps she was? Her surprise earlier, when she had reached her first climax, would seem to imply that whatever manner of man her husband had been, he had not seen to Elena’s physical needs before his own. That he had not seen to her needs at all, or shown her how to please him!

Not so unusual, in any marriage. Indeed, the marriages of the
ton
especially tended to be arranged or loveless affairs, forged only to produce an heir and a spare, before the gentlemen returned to their mistresses and the woman very often took a lover of her own. Why should he have assumed it would be any different between men and women of the lower classes? Elena’s lack of experience in what pleased her or the man in her bed made a complete nonsense of any such assumption. He—

‘Dear God…!’ Adam groaned low in his throat as he felt Elena’s tongue against him, trailing up the velvety side, seconds before she parted her lips wide and took the sensitive tip fully inside the hot cavern of her mouth. ‘Elena!’ His fingers became entangled in her hair as she took him deeper still, at the same time as her fingers tightened about him and her other hand moved to cup him beneath.

At which time Adam knew he was never going to hold!

Elena had never seen or felt anything as beautiful as the shapely length of Adam’s rod: long and thick and hard, the skin surprisingly soft to the touch. It was no longer enough for
her to merely hold him; she needed to taste him fully, in the same way he had tasted her.

Instinct had told her to part her lips and take him into her mouth. The same instinct that told her to pump her fingers lightly along the shaft as Adam began to thrust his rod into her mouth, slowly at first, and then faster, his breathing laboured.

‘It is all over for me, Elena,’ he cried out in a strangulated voice. ‘I cannot hold any longer. I am going to—oh, dear God…!’ The last was a low and husky cry as hot and creamy spurts of Adam’s release poured out of him like molten lava.

‘We should both dress and go upstairs to bed.’

‘Yes.’

‘The candles have both burnt out.’

‘Yes.’

‘The fire will soon have burnt down, too.’

‘Yes.’

‘Elena…?’

‘Yes?’

He chuckled softly and glanced down at her as she lay in his arms upon the
chaise
, the darkness of her hair a silky curtain across his bare chest. ‘I believe you would make that
same reply to anything I were to say to you at this moment!’

‘Possibly.’

‘Ah, a different reply, after all.’

‘I would not wish to become boring.’ There was a smile in her voice.

‘I doubt you could ever be that, Elena,’ Adam murmured, and, to his surprise, meant it.

Women had become a necessary inconvenience to him before and since Fanny had died, something Adam had need of every now and then in order to assuage his physical needs, but none of those women had been for conversation, certainly not for lying in each other’s arms once he had found his release, or sharing a conversation which did not appear to be conversation at all but what he believed to be lovers’ nonsense.

Was that what Elena was to him now? His lover? Had he taken her as his mistress, after all, without so much as even asking her?

Without any of the finer details of that relationship having been discussed and agreed upon?

That very much appeared as if it might be the case.

An occurrence he should have thought of sooner.

Adam scowled the following morning as he walked through the capacious entrance hall and through to the breakfast room. He paused only long enough to bestow a kiss upon his grandmother’s powdered cheek, as she sat at the table drinking the herbal tea she favoured in the mornings, before turning his attention to where the array of breakfast foods were laid out in covered silver dishes and plates for his selection. Jeffries had already disappeared to the kitchen to collect the pot of strong tea he knew Adam preferred with his breakfast. His stomach gave a sickening lurch as his nostrils were assailed with the smell of the breakfast foods.