for it to—” He jerked his hand. “Do not let it fly from your grip. You have six shots.”
Lucilla wasn’t sure what to say. At last, she settled for “Thank you.”
“Let’s hope it will be of no consequence,” Fournier said. He turned to face the wall and tugged the bedding over his shoulder. Lucilla loosed her hair, switched off the electric light and climbed into bed beside him. She could not lie flat without touching him. She did not mind the brush of his warmth against her hip and shoulder, for she lay awake, nerves thrumming, staring up at the ceiling in the faint light from the window. Gradually, the street noise quieted, and she could hear Fournier’s steady breathing and the ticking of his wristwatch. She closed her eyes, but her heart raced and her leg muscles twitched as if they wanted to run. Where they touched, the heat spread and sank through her skin. She shifted restlessly.
At least an hour had passed when Fournier said in a low rumble, “You aren’t sleeping.”
“Nor are you,” Lucilla replied as softly as she could manage.
Fournier turned over. He threw his uninjured arm over her ribs and pulled her to him. “Closer,” he said. “If you please.”
His arm was like a hot brand. Lucilla could no longer deny that she wanted to touch him. She eased against his body. She would definitely never sleep now. Cautiously, she rested her hands on his arm, which now wrapped snugly around her, beneath her breasts.
“Better,” he pronounced. He nestled his face into her hair, which was still damp from the bath. She could feel his breath fluttering on her scalp, and it flushed her entire body. He murmured, “This is better still.”
She’d thought at first he’d meant to be seductive, but clearly she’d been wrong, for he made no further move. He was only comforting the dried-up spinster. It was crazed to feel disappointed that she was not being ravished. Still, the embrace was nice. More than nice. She pressed her back into his chest, heat soaking into her through two layers of thin cotton, sensation rushing out from even the slightest friction as they shifted against each other. She remembered the heat of a man’s body, sweat springing into being and melting skin to skin; she remembered from her few nights with the man who would later betray her. She had never been held so closely since, and until now the memory of how it had felt, the safety of it, had been tainted for her.
Patience, Lucilla, she told herself. You might taint this moment yet.
She closed her eyes and inhaled scent and warmth, hers and his mingled. A decorous woman would protest even this, given their dishabille. She had passed decorous simply by being in this hotel, in this room, in this bed. She closed her eyes and felt their hearts beating, concentrating on the sense of wellbeing that cocooned her, trying to sear it into her memory against future need. She didn’t dare move, for fear it would end.
Fournier’s voice caressed the inner tunnel of her ear. “This is permissible?”
“Yes,” she said. Her throat tightened. Foolish to want more. Foolish. She did not even know this man. This young man. Far too young for her.
“Is it polite among the English to ask if you have experience?”
Lucilla’s breath stopped as the world flipped. She should not have been surprised. The world had flipped more than once today already. She drew a deep breath. “I don’t think so,” she said. “That seems silly just now, doesn’t it?”
“Well?”
He sounded as impatient as if he had demanded coffee from a recalcitrant waiter. Lucilla laughed a little. He was clumsier than she in these matters. “I was engaged to be married, once. It ended badly, very badly. Yes, I am experienced.” She paused as a thought occurred to her. “And you?”
Fournier snorted, a ticklish sensation against her neck. “Somewhat.”
A delicious sense of freedom flooded her to her bones. Lucilla rubbed her hand along his arm where it lay against her. She liked its heat and the contrast of soft skin over firm muscle, and the friction of hair beneath her palm. He must have liked it, too, for he shifted a little closer to her. She wondered how his skin tasted. “Have you asked me this for a reason?”
“You are toying with me.”
“Teasing,” she corrected giddily. She lifted his arm to her mouth and kissed the back of his hand. It didn’t taste of anything in particular. She would need to taste some other spot, such as—her breath caught at the thought—the crease where his leg met his thigh. “I’ve never done this with a stranger. Or anyone, except the one.”
“I do not make a habit of seducing women,” Fournier said. “If that is what you wished to know. I have always wondered why numbers are considered to be a factor in these matters, if once is enough to be damning.” He paused, rubbing his nose against the back of her neck. Lucilla shivered at the odd but pleasurable sensation. “It was not my plan to seduce you when I brought you here.”
“Oh, surely not,” she said. “You were so gallant. Why, when you offered to share your towel, I declare, my heart was all aflutter.”
She couldn’t help herself; she began to laugh at the absurdity of it all, at the circumstances that had led her, a spinster chemist, to find herself nearly naked in a bed in Germany with a French scientist. She didn’t even know his field of specialization.
That thought sent her off again, and she laughed until her gut hurt. At some point, she gasped out a few words of explanation and Fournier laughed with her. Seemingly without transition, she was on her back and his face loomed above her. She lifted her hand and traced his mustache with her finger, then he was kissing her, first gentle brushing and nibbling, then deep kisses full of bristles and heat and wet swirling sensation, whirlpools sucking her down.
Lucilla clasped her hands behind his neck, stroking the close-cropped hair there, then tangling her fingers in the longer hair above and trying to drag him closer. Fournier pulled away from her mouth instead, and began nipping her throat, each scrape of his teeth like a lightning bolt across her skin and into her sex. He was working his way lower; she felt his fingers at her shirt buttons, slipping one free, then another. His hands circled her nipples and traced designs on the skin of her breasts before he settled in to suckle at her, the pulls of his mouth echoing in her womb. His right hand traveled slowly down her chest, then her belly, unbuttoning her shirt and smoothing the flesh beneath.
She turned to flame. She shifted desperately, lifting her hips to him, her hands roaming over his back, trying to feel every shift of muscle. This was better, so much better, than it had been with the despicable Clive. Already Fournier had spent more time pleasing her than her former fiancé. Of whom she had planned never to think again. She banished the fleeting thought of him easily, as she had an overwhelming distraction at hand and a hard, hot erection digging into her leg. She found the bottom of Fournier’s vest and worked it upward. His skin sang to her palms.
He sucked in a breath when she lightly scratched the small of his back with her nails. “More,” he demanded. She was willing to oblige him. She shoved his thin knitted vest higher on his back and dug her fingers into the straining muscles of his waist, then slid her hands lower, beneath the waist of his drawers, wrenching them down, glorying in his gasp and curse as his erection sprang free and slammed into her thigh. She gripped his buttocks firmly and yanked him to her, wanting his flesh melded to hers. He landed on his injured arm and made a sharp noise of pain. Before Lucilla could apologize, he stopped her words with a quick, hard kiss.
For
