Chapter Eighteen
The slide of wood and metal parts as the door closed was the sound of Sophie’s life changing forever. In the silence that followed the soft click she could have stepped away from him. Lord Banallt let the silence grow and thus gave her the chance to object or make an excuse that would send him away. But she didn’t. She didn’t want to. Downstairs, he’d whispered her name while he slept. Moaned, more like it. The sound had made her feel alive. She’d made up her mind right then that she wanted to know what it would be like to have him hold her with the knowledge between them that this time there would be no stopping. Would he moan her name like that?
Banallt slid his arm around her waist until her body fit snug against his.
She’d been waiting for this all her life.
The Earl of Banallt, wicked to the core, dropped his head, and Sophie responded. Her entire body wanted this. Him. With an intake of breath before his lips touched hers, she opened her mouth under his in a capitulation to her years of suppressed desire. Her body flashed hot with need. The door held her up as he continued to kiss her, gently and yet with a leashed passion that shook her to her soul. Tonight, she would discover what it was like to be with a man who desired her.
Banallt loosened his hold on her long enough to put the candle on a table mercifully near them, and then he brought her back into his embrace, both his arms around her this time. She melted against him. Their mouths met again, and this time his kiss was a little rougher. Less controlled. Less restrained. She brought up her hand and ended up clutching his coat and pulling him closer. His tongue swept into her mouth, and her brain simply stopped reacting to anything but holding him, tasting him, making sure he didn’t stop.
She slid her arms up and around his shoulders, rising on her toes. His hair, thick and cool as silk, soft as down, brushed the back of her hands. She buried her fingers in his hair, pulling his head to hers and giving herself up to their kiss and the passion that erupted from her. He wanted her; she felt his need in the grip of his arms around her and in the way his mouth fit to hers. Banallt wanted her. Knowing that made her want more. She felt as if she’d never been kissed in her life, that this was her first time.
With his arms still around her, he drew back. He lifted his hands to her face, cupping her head in his palms and brushing his thumbs along her cheeks. “Sophie,” he whispered. “Sophie… Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
For one chilling moment, he was every inch the cold and heartless Earl of Banallt. His hair hung straight and dark and black as pitch, and his eyes flashed with that dark light so peculiar to him. The sight threw her years into the past, when Tommy was still alive and Banallt was a dangerous man to be avoided at any cost. She pressed her spine against the closed door while he stared into her face, into her eyes with that wild expression in his gaze, and Sophie was set adrift in the pewter depths. She had no notion at all what he was thinking. Her stomach did a slow tumble, yet she knew she wouldn’t change her answer. Not for anything. She wanted this. She wanted him.
Banallt pushed away from the wall, and she could not read his intentions in his face nor from the way he stood. He glanced at the door he’d closed. “It’s all right,” she said. She had to force herself to speak. “If you don’t want this.”
Just when she was certain he was going to turn away from her, he grabbed her hand and led her into the room. Toward the bed. “I want you, Sophie.” His words sounded thick. “Can you really think anything else is possible for me?” He stopped walking and tugged on her wrist until he’d brought her close to him. His eyes devoured her. That was exactly what it felt like. His gaze devoured her. “Jesus,” he said, “I’m in a bad way over you. It’s lowering how desperate I am.”
He pulled out as many of her hairpins as he could, scattering them on the floor, and kept going until her hair fell to her shoulders and down her back. “There. That’s how I’ve imagined you.” He worked his fingers into her hair and held her head fast. “From the moment I saw you—you probably think I don’t remember, but I do. You standing there in the hallway, holding a lamp and looking as if you thought you might be murdered in your own home. I thought I’d been bewitched. My very own odalisque was standing before me.”
Banallt kissed her again, hard and deep. Her husband had never kissed her like this, as if she were the most precious and desirable woman he’d ever held. Despite his passion, his mouth felt soft. Sinfully soft. Kissing him back was easy. He pulled away, not far at all, holding her. He turned her back to him. Brushing her hair over one shoulder, he set himself to undoing the fastenings down the back of her gown.
She bent her head, trying to steady her breathing. She wasn’t an innocent. She’d been married. She knew about the intimacy to follow. She knew what Banallt would do. Her insides twisted. Banallt was used to beautiful women, and she was afraid she wouldn’t measure up to his other lovers. He would find her as deficient as Tommy had. A wry voice in the back of her head said, Well, then, he won’t be after you anymore, will he? But she would have had her chance, and tonight that’s what she wanted.
At the start of her marriage, Tommy had been affectionate, but it wasn’t long before he stopped coming to her. Fewer than six months after their marriage, he’d left on the first of his trips to London. Each successive visit lasted longer and longer until they could hardly be said to be living as husband and wife. She’d never gotten over the conviction that she’d never pleased Tommy intimately or otherwise and that if she had, he’d not have left her.
And if Banallt wasn’t pleased, either? If he left her, too? At least she wouldn’t lose another husband or have her heart broken again. She closed her eyes and tried to avoid thinking about anything at all. It didn’t work. When she exhaled, her breath trembled. She put her hands on her belly, trying to still the herd of butterflies there.
Banallt’s hands curved over the tops of her shoulders, just above her loosened bodice, and brought her up against his body. His palms warmed her skin, and his breath came soft and damp near her ear. “You’ve been in my dreams for so long, now that you’re real, my hands are shaking, Sophie.” His laugh was a soft and velvet rumble in her ear. “I may never get you undressed:”
She turned, pressing her hands to her upper chest to keep her gown from falling away. His eyes pierced her, and the backs of her knees tingled. “You mean that, don’t you?”
He hooked a finger in the bodice she held trapped against her body and pulled. “You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever known. You know that’s what I think. Don’t pretend you don’t.”
“Look at me, Banallt, and say that. Really look at me.” She ran a finger the length of her unfortunate nose.
“I look at you and see a woman who makes my hands tremble.”
She let go of her gown. They dealt with her corset and the ties and strings that fastened her gown, until at last she stood before him wearing only her shift and stockings. The curve of his mouth was familiar, as was the dark cast to his eyes, and her heart skipped a beat as the sight brought back her habit of setting her physical reaction to him someplace far away.
“I never used to like dainty women, until I met you,” he said. “But now I can’t imagine anyone but you satisfying me. Only you will do.”
Sophie let herself fall into the moment. She didn’t want to think about the past or all the awful rumors she’d heard about Banallt, both now and in former times. She wasn’t married anymore. Tommy was years dead. She was free to take a lover if that’s what she wanted. This sin was one she could live with. She walked past him to the bed and climbed the wooden steps to the mattress. She sat on the bed and held out a hand to him. “Come, Banallt,” she said.
He followed and pressed her against him as she kissed him. While she explored his mouth, he slid his hands underneath what was left of her clothing and undid her garters. He stopped kissing her in order to look at what he was doing. He pushed down one stocking then the other, and then he was back to drop a kiss on her shoulder. Her eyes flickered open to take in hair black as night dangling past a pale temple and neck. Banallt. This was really him. She lifted her hands and plowed her fingers through the thick locks. Her first few times with Tommy had been like this for her. Breathless, dizzying, her heart in her mouth with anticipation.
He knelt and brought her shift up and over her head. Sophie had never been undressed with Tommy, not even under the covers. “Lie back,” he whispered. “I want to look at you.”
She did. But she felt awkward, uncertain, and embarrassed, too. Ashamed that she would allow anyone to see her naked. She didn’t know what to do with her hands, and the fact that she was nude, and he wasn’t, embarrassed her. He slipped a hand behind one of her knees and brought it up.
“Spectacular,” he said. She couldn’t bring herself to look directly at him, but from the corner of her eyes, she saw him looking at her body. Her stomach hollowed out and yet, part of her enjoyed the wickedness. “Are you cold?”
She nodded. The fire had died down and the air had a chill edge to it that made her skin tight. A sinful light danced in his eyes, and a slow, intimate smile spread across his face. “Can you bear it just a while longer?”
She nodded. His eyes, flat, nearly dead, fixed on her, but something in her reacted to that lifeless silver. His eyes had always fascinated her. From beneath her lashes, she watched him scoot down so that his head was level with her stomach. He put his hand on her belly, spreading his fingers over her, angling them outward. His fingers curved around her hips and then to the insides of one thigh and then the other. A shiver centered very near where his hands now lingered. He rolled away, and when he reappeared in her line of sight, he lay on his side, palm propping up his head. He pushed his hair away from his face and settled a hand on her belly.
“You are very beautiful, Sophie,” he said.
“You make me feel as if I am.”
“Never doubt it, darling.” His hand wandered up, and her breasts tightened. He drew a finger along the underside of her breasts and then, slowly, upward. Her breath hitched. She caught a glimpse of flat pewter eyes, of a lock of black hair sweeping over his forehead. The lusterless color of his eyes leaped again to that hidden gleam just before he fit his mouth over her breast. The warmth shocked her, and then the damp and the sizzle shot through her entire body. She moaned. She wasn’t even sure if the sound was in her head or if she’d actually groaned. So this, she thought, was what it felt like when a rake made love to a woman. His tongue touched her nipple, and she bowed toward him. His other hand stayed splayed on her belly, pressing down. He shifted. The movement made a soft shirring sound along the top of the bed covers. His mouth teased until she thought she’d lose her mind.
A moan rose in her throat. Lord, how undignified. Banallt paused, then lifted his head and looked into her face. It was like seeing him for the first time. Oh heavens. The notorious Lord Banallt. A man she’d fantasized about when she was a girl and who had burst into her world when she was overwhelmed with her unhappy life and marriage, hardly living at all. Banallt. His eyes flashed like tarnished silver in the light. In a fog of passion, she slid her fingers free of his hair, down his throat to his upper torso. He scooted up the bed, leaning against the headboard with his arms upraised to clutch the top of the board.
“Come here, Sophie. Yes,” he said when she was kneeling between his legs. “Just so.” A corner of his mouth curved. He put his hands on either side of her neck. “Do you like being naked when I’m not?”
“I’d like to see you.”
Banallt clucked his tongue. He drew his knees up, even with her sides. “Now, darling, that’s not what I asked.”
“No,” she said. “I don’t like it. It makes me wonder when, not if, you’re going to leave me.”
“Ah. Yes, I understand.” The smoky edge to his voice made her tremble inside. “But, you see, Sophie, the thing is, I’ve had a particular fantasy about you. Very particular.” His eyes drew her into an intimacy that shrank her universe to just her and Banallt. “It started not long after I met you. When you still disliked me simply for my association with your husband.” He drew the tip of an index finger from the base of her throat to her lower belly. “While you were wishing I would drop off the face of the earth, I had this particular image of you in my head and in my dreams at night.”
A shiver went down her spine. He must have felt it, because his smile deepened. “What fantasy?”
“You nude.” His finger dipped in and out of her navel. “Me with all my clothes on. I’d touch you here.” His palm slipped over her mons, and two of his fingers slid between her legs. “You’d be wet. Mm,” he whispered. “As you are right now. And I’d slide my fingers inside you. Like so.” He drew her toward him. “I’d kiss you. Like this.” His mouth found the hollow at the base of her throat, his tongue dipping and swirling.
Her body softened, and she leaned toward him. How wonderful that felt. “Banallt.” His name ended on a sharp intake of breath, because his fingers continued to slide in and out of her passage while another rubbed, and with each moment Sophie’s body raced toward pleasure. She bowed against him, holding him, trying to open herself to him and what his fingers were doing to her.
“And then, when you’re almost there, desperate to have me bring you—” He stopped. “I’d look at your face and see your eyes hazy with passion, on the very edge. And I’d lay you back.” He moved forward, holding her until their bodies were stretched out on the bed again. “You’d be so soft, everywhere I touched you.” Now he touched the very inside of her thigh and nudged her legs apart so he could see everything. Cool air washed along her body. “I’d bring you with my mouth,” he whispered. Then his mouth was on her. There. Exactly there.
Lord, his mouth was on her, open and firm against her most inner and private parts. His lips, his tongue, the side of his face touched her, pressed against her thigh. The sensation that she was dissolving gathered inside her, stealing her wits. His hand slid over her belly, his fingers spread flat, pressing down. His other hand pushed her thigh wide, more and more, and she dropped deep into a world that did not exist unless Lord Banallt touched her.
She quivered and arched toward his mouth, and at the peak of her motion, he touched her breast, the very lightest sweep of a fingertip over her while his mouth covered her down there. His tongue flicked out. She moaned, a wanton sound that wasn’t her at all. Except it was. She forgot everything but right now. The world slid away. Only Banallt was left. Only his touch, her breath. Her body opened to him, and in the very last moment in which she could think, she knew she would love him the rest of her life, just for having given her this moment.
Banallt pulled himself over her, one hand still between their bodies. “And then I’d come over you, darling, hard for you, aching for you, dying to be inside you, to have you beneath me.” His hips tilted back.
“What else?” she whispered.
“Your tender skin feels my clothes, and I reach to unbutton.” He bit his lower lip as his hand worked at the fastening of his trousers. “I’d push your legs apart—” The outside of his thigh pressed against hers, and Sophie sucked in a breath. His hard-muscled leg slid along hers. The buttons of his waistcoat pressed into her, and along the length of her legs the fabric of his trousers rubbed her.
“I can withdraw,” he said softly. “If I did that, there’s little risk you’ll get with child.” With his fingertip, he made a circle on her belly. “Will you say yes, darling?”
He touched the outside of her thigh, trailing a fingertip along her skin. Her breath caught. Every muscle in her body tensed. She put a hand over her mouth. His fingers moved between her legs and touched her nether hair. Her heart pounded, and her body went rigid. His hand flattened on her thigh. He drew a finger along the inside of her leg.
His body was in position. All Sophie had to do was tip her hips toward him. She did, and he was there, at her opening, sliding in, filling her, setting every nerve in her body on fire. Then he was inside her. He dropped his head and sighed into the hollow of her throat. “Sophie. God, Sophie. How beautiful you feel.”
Pleasure rippled through her; something deep inside her felt ravenous. She drank him in. She’d never felt such longing, like the edge of a storm about to break. A lock of hair fell in a slash of black across his cheek. An aesthete’s face, lean and hawkish. He watched her looking at him, and the corner of his lip curled. The darkness in him beckoned. Thousands of butterflies dipped and dived in her stomach. The same smile quirked at the corners of his mouth.
“Banallt,” she whispered. He was inside her body, and she was beyond anything but the sensation of his movement.
“You are mine, Sophie,” he said in a voice as dark as his eyes. “Mine. You ought to have told me yes the very first time I asked you. Admit we should have done this much sooner. Oh Jesus, Sophie. Maybe you do have reason to hate me, but right now at least have the decency to admit you love this.”
“Yes.” She let out a trembling breath. “Yes, I do love this.” His eyes went soft, and when she rolled her pelvis, he arched toward her. “I used to hate you, Banallt.” He leaned over her, and his hair fell over her shoulder. She twined her fingers in it and tugged. “When you left Rider Hall that night, I hated you with all my heart.”
“I know. I deserved it, too.” He stilled. “But now it’s different. You don’t hate me anymore, do you?” She shook her head. A smile spread over his face. “Good,” he whispered.
Once she understood what he meant by the gentle pressure on the underside of her knee, she bent both knees, feet flat on the mattress. She closed her eyes so tight colors exploded behind her lids. He circled her wrists and brought them above her head, pinning her. And she didn’t care at all, because she hadn’t ever in all her life imagined feeling this way.
She freed a hand and threw an arm around his neck and pulled his head to hers. “Banallt.” A low sound tore from the back of her throat, and she bowed toward him, one leg thrown over his, feeling the rasp of his clothes against her body. “More,” she said. “Please, more.”
Banallt answered with a movement of his own, a pushing, sliding motion into her and then over her. She felt his body, the shape of him, covering the length of her. Air came into his lungs with a gasp.
Their gazes locked. He made her feel beautiful. With him she was desired and special. The tickle in her belly spread out from her center. He studied her face while he bore down, farther inside her. His fingers spread around her thigh, sliding beneath, clutching and pulling up, and then he stopped moving. She gasped. He drew out, only a short way, and readjusted himself. He propped one elbow above her shoulder and gripped her thigh, pressing down on her, into her. He threw back his head, drew partially out of her, and then slid back in, hard enough for her to feel the friction deep inside her.
She moved, this time toward his forward pressure. He let his weight press down, into her. He pulled her thigh up and surged into her, farther and deeper, then away and back again until at last, something broke inside her. She cried out, but he came into her so fast and so far that all the air whooshed out of her lungs and cut off her groan. He pushed and pushed and still he fit. “God help me,” he said. “Too soon.”
He stopped moving for the space of a heartbeat. He bent his head to her shoulder and rocked his hips, pressing inside her. His hair fell forward around either side of his face, a frame of black, silky where it brushed her collarbone. “I am in paradise.” His hips rocked again.
She closed her eyes tight. She felt his lips on her cheek and then on her eyelids, placing gentle kisses. He pulled nearly all the way out of her and then pressed in. “Jesus, you are tight, and I am as hard as ever I have been in my life.”
He had his elbows above her, pressing the tops of her shoulders. A quiver of anticipation shot through her, wrenched her passion higher yet. She grasped for it—or maybe, just maybe, he paused long enough for her to reach for it. The quiver pooled in her belly again, as it had when he’d put his mouth on her there, as it had when he first slid inside her. She took a breath and then another, and then she stopped thinking about how impossible it was that Lord Banallt should be inside her, because all she could think of was how he filled her and how hot he felt, and how good she felt. And how wonderful he looked. How beautiful his eyes were when he looked into her face. She lifted her pelvis off the mattress and strained to meet him.
“Sophie,” he whispered. His eyes darkened. “Sophie.” He did what he’d promised, which was withdraw. She threw back her head and protested with a groan. He grabbed her hand and curled her fingers around him, gripping hard as he came.
After a bit, he grabbed her arm and said, “I’m not done with you yet, madam.”