The Pursuit of Pleasure (32 page)

He ached to plunder the tart sweetness of her pliant mouth. To see the soft white skin of her face and body washed pale by the moonlight. To feel the tight pulse of her quim as he opened her flesh and to experience the moist heat of her slick passage when he finally, finally slid his aching cock home inside her.

He couldn’t stifle the groan of longing that crawled out of this chest as he buried his face in the soft hair at the nape of her neck. The scent of citrus, of light and heat, filled his head. “God, Lizzie, I’ve missed you. How I’ve wanted you. Needed you. You smell like sunshine.”

“You smell like fish.”

He leveraged away for the barest moment and stripped off his woolen sweater and cotton shirt in one smooth motion, throwing it on the damp slate floor. Then he took her by thewrist and placed her cool palm flat against the skin of his chest, just to catch the icy electrical heat of her touch.

“I’ve been fishing, haven’t I?” He dropped his voice to a rough whisper. “That’s why I smell of the ocean and sand and fish. But now, whenever you smell that, you’ll remember this moment and how much I wanted you. You’ll remember the way I kissed you. You’ll remember the way I touched you. You’ll remember how I lifted your skirts,” he fitted his actions to his words, fisting up the material, “until I could see your soft, beautiful pussy and how I put my hands between your legs. And how I told you to open your legs, Lizzie, so I could touch you. You’ll remember how much I wanted you. How much I needed you.”

She was trying to back away from him, looking sideways for the door, but he wouldn’t let her leave his arms. He couldn’t. And her breath was growing shallow, with fear perhaps—he was rapidly losing all restraint—but also with excitement. He hadn’t forgotten how much his words could arouse her. So all the while he stalked her, crowding her back against the wall.

“There’s nowhere to run, Lizzie.” He kept her tethered by the fabric of her skirts, his words a harsh murmur next to her ear. “I’ve missed you. God, how I’ve needed you.”

“No. You haven’t missed me. You left me.” Her words were a breathless rush as she burrowed and twisted her arms between them to push against his chest, to push him away. But it only brought her soft belly squirming against the growing length of his arousal. And gave him a better view of her ripe little breasts.

His mind’s eye instantly conjured the way she had looked that summer day so long ago, the dappled sun on her bare skin, her nipples like wild strawberries, tight and pink. He’d always wondered what she would have tasted like.

But she had been worth the wait, hadn’t she? He held her still against the unyielding brick and set his lips to the hollow of her throat. He could feel the hectic beat of the blood in her veins and smell the intoxicating lemony tang of her warm skin. He plied his teeth along that lovely, sensitive tendon on the side of her neck, nipping his way up to her ear.

“No,” she panted. “I won’t let you. I won’t let you try to seduce me out of—”

She broke off with a gasp as he bit down just a little, just enough to raise a mark. Marking her as his. Only his.

“Then what will you let me try, Lizzie?” He dragged his lips off her skin to look directly into the depths of her green eyes. “If you don’t care for seduction, how about a subtle application of… restraint? Just enough so you can let go? I haven’t forgotten how much you liked it when I sailed you across your desire like a nimble sloop, all battened down tight and close-hauled. It’s been a long time, Lizzie, but I haven’t forgotten. And I’ve wanted you. I want you. I want my wife.”

“I’m not your wife. I’m no man’s wife. You’re dead. I’m a widow.” She repeated the words, more for her own benefit than his.

“Am I?” He purred low into her ear. “If I’m dead, then tell me, would you, what this is?” He put his palms flat against the wall to either side of her head, leaned his considerable weight and height into her and carefully, and oh, so slowly, rubbed the length of his ruthlessly erect cock against her mound. “I have ached for you, Lizzie. And God help me, you feel so good.”

Her breathing fractured, and her eyes slid shut. Her breasts rose and fell against his chest in shallow gasps, the blistery friction of each breath shooting a prick of want deep into his bones. He let his hand follow his eyes, running a firm palm along the rounded underside of her breast and up across the needy, beading peak. Her answering gasp of pleasure decided his course.

“Ah. Restraint it is then.” And God knew he needed all the restraint he could muster. His hands were nearly shaking with the effort to go slow, to hold his clawing need at bay.

It gave Marlowe a deep-seated shot of pleasure to watch her silent complicity as he slowly gathered her porcelain wrists in his hands. With exquisite care, he slowly, inexorably pulled her arms behind her back until he could band their fragile strength in one hand. He tugged down slightly, to pull back her shoulders so he could bend his head to her breasts, wetting her and sucking her through the fabric of her dress, giving her pleasure, until she began to arch away from the wall and small, needy sounds began to wing out of her throat. He let his mouth slide up the sweet gloss of her neck to skim the edge of her jaw as his fingers loosened the neckline of the gown.

“Open your mouth, Lizzie. I want to taste you.” He didn’t bother to hide the anguished need in his voice.

She closed her eyes even as her lips parted on a shallow breath. He covered her open mouth with a deep kiss, stroking her with his tongue and stoking the carnal heat in his belly.

“Show me your breasts, Lizzie,” he pleaded, though it was he who loosened and pulled the neckline of both her gown and shift down over her arms, leaving the material to trap her arms tight to her sides. “Let me …”

Let me give you what you need. Let me touch you, let me need you, let me lose myself inside you.

He covered her breasts with his hands, drawing lightly over the sensitive peaks, and then not so lightly, letting the rough calluses on his fingers drag over and rasp against her nipples. As she arched helplessly into his palms, he wedged his knee between her thighs and raised her up until she was lifted off her feet, and he could feel the enticing heat of her cunny through the coarse wool of his trousers. He continued to stroke and tongue her perfect breasts, hungry for the taste, the smell, the feel of her, as she rode his leg, her thighs clamped tight around him in search of her own pleasure, until her breath was coming in great panting gulps, and he couldn’t wait another moment to be inside her.

He dropped his leg and she made a sound of desperate protest. He answered her plea with a rough, possessive kiss, as he bore his weight into her and rucked up her skirts with more speed than finesse.

And then his hand found the folds of her quim, slick with moisture, hot and waiting for him. He slipped a finger into her opulent silkiness, opening her to his touch, readying her for his possession. He swallowed the groan tunneling out of his chest and closed his eyes to shut out everything but the blinding pleasure of touching her.

She ground down into his hand, wanting the pressure, needing more.

Marlowe let go of her to rip open the buttons of his close. “You like it when I take you like this, don’t you, Lizzie? When you can’t make a choice, when all you can do is feel.” He freed his cock and guided the broad head to the very edge of her opening. “Feel the way your cunny responds to my touch, and comes to do my bidding. How do you feel now, knowing you’re wet from my touch and ready to be fucked?”

Her response was a keening gasp. He felt a fierce moment of possessive, predatory triumph. She was his. His to take. His to love.

“Open your legs for me. Lizzie. Wider. Take me inside you.”

All she could do was tilt her hips forward, but it was more than enough. Marlowe pushed into her and slid home with one swift thrust.

“Yes,” she gasped into his ear. “Yes, Jamie.”

Yes. Finally.

And then there was nothing else but her. Everything else: the brick of the walls, the glass of the ceiling, the earth, the stars, and the moon fell away and there was only her. Only her heat and her passion. Her body pressing into him, taking him inside her warmth and her light. He was lost inside her silkiness: her hair, her skin, and her gloriously tight cunny, pulsing and whirling around him. He was drunk on her essence. He could never get enough.

He held her tight against his chest, and when her open mouth slid over the muscles of his shoulder and she bit him, he careened headlong over the edge.

His orgasm, as he pumped his seed into her clinging cunny, ripped through him with enough force that his knees buckled into the wall. If he hadn’t been holding tight to her neck, his face pressed into the glorious riot of her hair, he would have fallen.

He pushed himself, and his bruised knees, off her and leaned his forehead against the wall, waiting for his breathing to return to some semblance of normal.

Marlowe reached out to cup her cheek and brush the tumbled hair off her forehead. He liked her like this. Soft and exhausted, her claws sheathed. Beautifully, thoroughly fucked. God, how he had missed her.

She sighed, a weary exhalation from deep in her bones, as she tentatively moved cramped arms and shoulders. He reached down to help her collect her clothes about her.

“No.” She surprised him by shaking her head. “You can go now.” Her voice was low and clear. “And please don’t come back.”

She shrugged her bodice back up onto her shoulders and moved away. She wouldn’t look at him, just collected her gun and made for the door.

She was dismissing him. From her arms. From her life.

He couldn’t lose her again. He couldn’t possibly endure it.

Lizzie damned herself as two kinds of fool. She headed out of the garden and across the lawn towards the relative sanctuary of the house, keeping her mind a careful, incurious blank. She wouldn’t think about what had just passed between them. How she had been unable to resist the lure of his body. How she had responded exactly as he had known she would. How she was right back where she started, stupidly enthralled. Damn his fine eyes.

She couldn’t think about it, or even acknowledge it. Not just now. If she did, she’d fall apart.

Better to ride the numbing, but temporary tide of physical satiation for as long as it lasted. There would be time enough for contemplation, and recrimination, later.

“Where the hell do you think you’re going?” Jamie came out of nowhere to grab her elbow and haul her to a stop on the damp, dew-slick lawn.

She only just managed to keep her footing. How dare he?
He
had no right be furious.

“I’m going to bed. You can go to hell.”

“No.” He took a steaming breath of night air. “You’re not going anywhere. We’ve still got unfinished business between us, you and I. You can’t pretend to me you didn’t feel anything, Lizzie. You can’t. And you can’t walk away without any explanation. You owe me that much.” The words sounded as if he’d gnashed them between his teeth.

“I owe you nothing.” She was weary to her soul from the ache of loving him.

“You do, damn your eyes.” He was grimly adamant. “You promised. You promised to honor and obey, Lizzie. Upon your
honor.
And you never go back on your word.”

Oh, he was a clever bastard. The urge to hit him, to make him feel even a fraction of the pain he inflicted, was monstrous. “My word, is it? What about yours? The only person I have ever promised to obey is dead to me. I owe you nothing. You’re not my husband, because a husband wouldn’t lie to his wife. A husband wouldn’t desert his wife. A husband wouldn’t leave his wife rotting in gaol! The minute you start acting like a husband, I’ll start acting like a wife.”

“Fine. We can begin right now.”

“Bugger off.”

The flinty spark in his eye told her she had finally pushed him too far. He growled into her ear, his voice a velvet threat. “Such filthy, unmannerly language, Lizzie. So that’s how you want it to be, is it? My God, why can’t you ever learn?”

“Really? And here I thought I’d learnt to be well-fucked, or wasn’t that what you had in mind?”

His head snapped back in recoil at her purposefully vulgar language. Good. Turnabout was fair play: she was glad
she’d
finally shocked
him.

His immediate response was to tighten his grip on her arm. “My God.” He was stunned into momentary silence. When he spoke, he chose his words carefully, as if he were picking out weapons. “Well, it seems another kind of more advanced lesson in fucking is in order. But you were always a fast learner, Lizzie, an eager student. I’m sure you’ll like it. Because, if it’s the last thing I do on this earth, I will show you that you need me just as much as I need you.”

His intent gaze slammed into her like a slap, his words just as blunt and forceful.

“No. I don’t need anybody. I—” But she had no air in her lungs.

He turned her around and lowered her belly-first into the grass, with his big hand hard against the small of her back, just above the rising curve of her buttocks. He came down atop her, his long, lean body fully covering hers, giving her no time to think, or even breathe.

“I’ve regretted many things, Lizzie. I’ve regretted not telling you the truth. I’ve regretted every single hour of every day it cost you in that God-forsaken gaol, but I will never, ever regret loving you. And I won’t allow you to regret it either.” His voice in her ear was low and gritty, an agony of tortured need. He could light a bonfire with the inferno he contained. She could feel his passion smolder off him in waves.

She twisted around to catch a glimpse of his face: he looked lethal. And very, very intent. And so powerful. His body was carved by moonlight and shadow—his muscles stark with straining to control the force of his hunger.

“You need me, Lizzie. You need my body. And you want me.”

Lizzie was stunned to feel the first unwelcome stirring of her newly familiar desires. No matter her wishes or her feelings, her body awakened to his dark words and barely leashed passions. Heat began to collect and unfurl from between her legs, deep inside her belly, as she looked at him, half-naked, holding himself above her. He looked relentless, dangerous, and exciting.