us together, apparently against our wills, yet he still manages to hang on to his essential apartness while I must melt all over him like heated sealing wax.
How could she want any man so much it blasted through her much-vaunted self-control and breached that cherished separateness of hers, especially this one? She sensed that the craving making her hands shake as she laid them against the warmth and masculinity and sheer nerve-singing fact of him was exerting just as strong a pull on him, if not even stronger, but he still had control enough not to moan with need or tremble with frustration and this bittersweetest longing. A curiosity burned within her to know more; one he certainly wouldn’t believe she had any need of, now she’d let him think she’d managed to accrue a procession of lovers with the critical eyes of the ton on her, the hawk-like watch of her elder brother, even from afar, and her aunt and uncle’s very critical eyes on her as they waited for a reason to denounce her and rid themselves of a charge they never wanted for aught but the money she brought with her in the first place.
The man was undoubtedly an idiot if he believed a word of that silly implication of hers. She could only suppose it was her inner demon of curiosity and the sheer sensual excitement within her that made her claim to be something she wasn’t yet again and get away with it. He might hate her eventually if they went on, but he was the only man she’d ever met who made her want him mercilessly just by inhabiting the same space, whatever space, even this dark, comfortless, unlikely meeting place. A siren voice whispered that he wouldn’t have been so easy to fool if he hadn’t wanted to believe her and do this, so she let herself believe it for a space borrowed out of the real world. It was a chance that wouldn’t come again—an interlude apart from the real Louisa and her unlikely lover. A chance she intended to take, then afterwards she’d somehow find a way to forget it and stick to her chosen course through life, even knowing what she’d be missing.
In the heat of this particular moment there seemed nothing to hold her back from following his lead and exploring the very different, masculine, grace of his leaner hips and round to learn how his buttocks differed from her own by being sparser and more taut with muscle. Now why had she never dreamt how arousing satin-taut skin over strong male muscle and bone could feel under her fingers as she dared to send them just that bit lower and search for the sensitive join of his leg to the pared-down curve above? Evidently he liked it almost as much as she had when he drew his teasing fingers along the lusher line of her feminine curves, before raising those wickedly knowing hands to soothe and rouse and tease her breasts into begging so shamelessly for his touch she could feel it, even through the layers she’d donned for this misadventure.
Torn between memory of how little he actually liked her, however much he might want her, and the promise of a lovemaking she’d never forget in all her long and spinsterly future, she abandoned the memory and embraced the promise and Hugh Darke. He would have delved under all those layers for buttons and access to her tightly furled nipples demanding his touch and his mouth as they remembered last night with a mind of their own. No, let him do that and she’d lose this. Let him think what he was doing for long enough to undo all the layers she was wrapped in and remember who she was, and she’d lose this one moment of enchantment among their usual disenchantment. It felt like an odd, mutual innocence at the moment and she even wondered at herself for thinking so.
She put thinking aside for later and whispered a demand for faster, a wanton command that he stopped wasting time and got on with it, as if all the worst rumours were true and she already had a pack of secret lovers and knew exactly what she was doing now. Trying not to dread that particular falsehood on his tongue, she pulled him closer to fit lush lips to his and felt need overtake reason as his kisses became even wilder and more arousing. He lifted her with one hand round her slim waist and the other beneath her buttocks until she was cradled into him like the most precious of beings, as he walked her towards those very convenient sacks of good Brazilian coffee beans. Wondering how he found his way so unerringly in the ever-deepening darkness, she felt him hesitate, begin to think about this, about him and her again and, even as he set her down on the lowest stack of sacks, pulled him down after her, to tangle him up in kisses before he stopped this wondrous banquet of the senses.
‘I want you,’ she murmured in a breathy voice she hardly even recognised as her own. ‘Now,’ she added with an instinctive, feminine demand that he seemed quite unable to resist.
‘It’s almost too late to stop already, but are you sure?’ he managed in a husky voice she loved, because it revealed just how true his desire-rasped words were and added a layer of extra enchantment to their seduction of each other.
‘Never surer,’ she told him, stopping his mouth with quick, frantic kisses so heated and needy that he groaned into her mouth in response as she felt him bunch up her second-hand skirts and petticoats and then there was the cooling April air, first on her bare knees, then her smooth thighs and ever upwards to expose the betraying hot wetness at the apex of those thighs.
‘Hot and sweet and all mine,’ he whispered possessively in her ear as his teasing fingers found that unmistakable welcome and explored it until she let out an emphatic, very articulate moan for more and he rubbed and caressed and melted the until-now secret place he’d found, and to think that she hadn’t even known she needed his touch there so badly until now.
‘Yours,’ she agreed recklessly as she felt pleasure almost beyond bearing pool and fight for release within her, but he removed his teasing fingers just before it became inevitable and took her word for it as he swiftly undid his breeches’ flap with one deft hand whilst holding his weight above her as he stripped his nether garments off in a fluid shove, before smoothing her willing buttocks deeper into the oddly comfortable beans at her prone back and parting her legs a little farther.
Louisa felt the nudge of his fiercely aroused member against her aching, heated core and knew this was the last chance to go back to how she’d been until now. Separate, aloof, alone. No, it didn’t sound in the least bit worth clinging on to in the face of being together, frantic and needy for each other. So she let her thighs fall either side of his narrow hips and lay a little farther back to bid him very welcome.
‘Witch,’ he murmured and his voice was a caress, even while it sounded as driven and latently powerful as the feel of him between her legs.
‘Pirate,’ she sparked back, imagining his face intent and intense above her in the late-afternoon darkness and somehow finding it even more seductive that they could see little of each other but shadows.
‘Blissful, wonderful witch,’ he added as he surged into her in one long thrust she knew was far too powerful to let him hesitate as he beat against the shock of her virginity. ‘Devious, lying, idiotic, enchantress of a woman,’ he gasped in protest as he tore through that slender barrier and centred himself at the very heart of her as if that was where he belonged, despite himself and her one-time resolution not to have this ultimate wonder in her life, before he loomed out the night and undermined it.
‘I am now,’ she said complacently, ‘but I want more’, and shocked even herself by riding the flash and burn of pain so determinedly that the novelty and fullness and sheer wonder of him inside her threatened to set her on the road to madness if he didn’t move, do something to assuage this burning need for more that still rode her like the most exquisite goad of half-ultimate pleasure, half-heavy, almost painful need.
‘You’ll get it, but only if you stay still for a while,’ he gritted, holding himself motionless with a mighty effort as he fought the primitive urge to slam into her until he’d climaxed and emptied himself into her as relentlessly as the beat of life itself.
Even then she flexed internal muscles around him experimentally, as if she hadn’t even known she had them until now and threatened to enchant as well as unman him. Minx she undoubtedly was, but vixen as well? Somehow he doubted it as he felt her adjust about him with an almost trusting innocence,
