drew the tip of his tongue around her, he coaxed rather than commanded.
She opened her eyes, raised her head as best she could and watched. Her arm seemed to rise, unbidden, so that she could run her fingers through his dark thatch of hair. She felt a closeness, a communion with the man, a feeling unexplainable yet perfectly understood. It was like nothing she’d ever felt before.
When he finally slid his fingers between her legs, curiosity overcame her fear, even though she held her breath, until the slow, nearly circular strokes set off a curious sort of pleasure that showed every sign of turning her limbs to water.
Oh, yes. The words came unbidden to her mind and repeated themselves. Oh, yes. Yes. Yes, yes, yes… “Do that,” she moaned, not realizing she’d spoken. “Please…there. Do that…”
She drew up her feet, bending her knees, allowing them to fall open for him, lifting her hips as he seemed to somehow spread her and stroke her at the same time, finding some previous hidden center of her that had to be acknowledged, demanded some sort of satisfaction.
I’m real, she rejoiced inside her head. This is real, this is happening, this is… And then she didn’t think at all. her body simply reacted to Gideon’s touch, flowering, quivering, pulsating, flinging her out over some abyss as pleasure held her aloft, in its thrall.
He filled her then, levering himself up and over her and then plunging into her in one swift movement.
From some distant place, out over the abyss, she saw herself wrap her limbs around him as if fearful he would leave her. She saw herself kissing his heated skin, biting into the straining muscles of his strong neck and shoulders, rocking with him, urging him on, almost grimly determined to give pleasure for pleasure.
Gideon pushed himself up and looked down at her, as if to gauge her response. “Now?” he asked, watching her closely. “Please God, woman, say now.”
“Now,” she responded, not quite certain what she’d just agreed to, because nothing could be better than what she’d already felt. That was impossible.
But it wasn’t. Gideon didn’t just move inside her now. He plunged, he took, he pumped. Ground himself against her and then took up the rhythmic movements again, each time faster, each time deeper, each time giving more, demanding more, and all while watching her, watching her, watching her.
“No,” she said at last, fear finally finding its way back through the haze of passion. A new fear, one she’d never before had to face. This felt too good, she might shatter with it, disappear inside the pleasure. Her heart might burst, her mind explode. Too good. This was too dangerously good. “Oh, God…no.”
“On the contrary. Oh, God…yes,” Gideon said, and then buried himself inside her one last time, their bodies fitting so tightly together they may have merged into one. She felt her own body clench and unclench again and again, even as his did the same, on and on, until at last he collapsed against her, chest to chest, and they both lay still, perhaps he as well as she in order to assess whether or not they’d just died.
A single tear escaped Jessica’s eye and ran down the side of her head, into her ear. It tickled. All right, she was still alive.
Gideon finally stirred, and she moved her hands over his sweat-slick back, reluctant to let him go as he made to leave her.
“Insatiable, are you, madam? I’m devastated to admit I’m of no further use to you for at least an hour,” he said in a joking voice as he turned onto his back, his forearm over his eyes. “I should have taken you up on your offer last night, although it’s possible the anticipation increased the pleasure. Clearly you were born for this, Jessica Linden. And at least I know now how your late husband died. Undoubtedly in bed, and with a smile on his face.”
As more tears threatened, Jessica quickly turned her head and surreptitiously wiped at her eyes with a corner of the sheet. “He wasn’t smiling, no,” she said, and then quickly shut her mouth so she could say no more. She wanted to rest her head on Gideon’s shoulder, to curl her arm about his waist and simply…cuddle. “Could…would you please gather your clothing and give me my privacy? I’ll join you in the sitting room. There’s wine in the decanter.”
“Suddenly I feel this strong urge toward leaving a purse on your bedside table,” Gideon said, his tone having returned to the careless sarcasm he seemed so adept with most times. He left the bed, most probably to gather his clothing from the floor. “Very well. But ten minutes, no more. I’ll help you with those bloody buttons, as it wouldn’t do to return to the gaming floor in another ensemble.”
“And not before you tell me more of what you hinted at earlier. You do remember that, don’t you?”
If he noticed she was speaking to him with her back turned to avoid seeing his nakedness, he didn’t call her on it. “I’ve rethought the matter. I shouldn’t have said anything. It’s none of your concern.”
Now Jessica did turn toward him, making certain the coverlet she’d reached for earlier covered her breasts. He’d already donned his breeches, thank the Lord. She didn’t think she could continue this conversation if they both were naked. “None of my concern? You all but guaranteed me my father and stepmother were murdered. I have a right to know why you think that.”
“Why would that be? You hated your father, fled from hearth and home many years ago. That was the way of it, you said.”
“Oh, and that means I shouldn’t care if he and his wife were murdered? Perhaps you think I should be doing a jig? No, don’t answer that! Besides, you wanted to talk to me about the Society, remember? Your father’s Society?”
“My mistresses don’t plague me with talk. I prefer my pleasure without prattle.”
“I’m not one of your mistresses and I’ll speak when I wish,” Jessica countered, at last far enough removed from the revelations of the past half hour that her mind had begun to function once more. “Must I add, Gideon, that you’re not my lover? You said the word inevitable. Perhaps it was. But now we move on.”
He looked at her blandly, as if what she’d said meant nothing. “Just get dressed,” he said, and then—finally—quit the room.
Leaving Jessica to wonder what on earth had happened, why it had happened so easily with this infuriating, totally exasperating man, if it was the man or something else that had changed inside her to make what had happened possible.
And, having happened once, was it possible for it to happen again? Surely not with the insufferable Gideon Redgrave, but he wasn’t the only man in the world. It very well could have been James who had been the aberration. Not that she was now about to go the route of Mildred or her ilk in order to satisfy her curiosity. She simply couldn’t allow what had happened with Gideon to happen with Gideon again. He was an earl and thoroughly unlikable, and she was a widow running a gaming house. He was not for her, and she definitely was not for him.
Although she could, being at heart an honest person, feel some gratitude toward the man.
“Not that he can ever know what he did, or else he’d be more than insufferable. Much better to allow him to continue to think of me as nothing more than one of a probably endless list of casual liaisons. Yes, this all is going to take some concentrated thinking,” she told herself as she held up her gown and frowned at the wrinkles, her hard-won practical nature finally coming to her aid. “And perhaps a pressing iron…”
