Chapter Six
Bodie almost knocked Eleanor’s hotel door down an hour later. How he’d sat through the game as long as he had, he didn’t know. His brain had been turning in circles, his actions operating on some kind of autopilot—crap autopilot, considering how much money he’d lost, but somehow he’d managed to give the appearance of playing cards.
The door remained stubbornly closed and he muttered, “Come on, damn it,” under his breath as he belted it again.
He didn’t really see Eleanor standing there through the red mist of his anger. God alone knew what his blood pressure was right at the moment. “You were a virgin?” he demanded. She blinked, then blushed, but he was too pissed at himself and her to care.
She sucked in a breath. “Why don’t you say it a little louder, so the rooms down near the lifts can hear it too?”
She stepped back from the door, and Bodie stalked inside, straight to the large window. “Imagine my surprise,” he said, looking out over the twinkling lights of Darling Harbour as his heart hammered in his chest, “when Ryder tells me all about his sweet virginal sister Nell who’s supposedly saving herself for the one.”
“And my state of virginity was being discussed at your poker game because?”
The mist thickened. “It came up,” he snapped.
Bodie took a few deep breaths designed to settle the hard edge of his anger and dissipate the swirling red mist cloaking him in irrationality.
It didn’t help.
He whipped around to find her standing calmly just behind him. Her hair, swept up into some fancy, decorative creation, left her neck and shoulders bare, which was distracting as hell.
Jesus Christ, he wasn’t here to ogle her.
He folded his arms and glared at her. “I didn’t know.”
She quirked an eyebrow. “How were you supposed to know? We don’t tattoo it to our foreheads, you know. Or do you expect some kind of blood bath on the sheets from your virgins?”
Bodie’s jaw clenched at her flippancy, ignoring her implication that he was some kind of man-whore. Up until a year ago he’d been a one-woman man. “You should have told me.”
Just like she should have told him about being Ryder’s sister. She’d hidden a fuck ton of stuff from him that night.
“You want to give it back?”
A blood vessel throbbed dangerously at Bodie’s temple. “If I fucking could, yes.”
She sighed, her shoulders lifting, her chest expanding, which dragged his gaze lower. To her cleavage, all soft and bouncy and pushed up in gorgeous offering like it had been that night, and he remembered how desperately he’d wanted to dive in.
The same kind of desperation assailed him now as he took in the flouncy, ruffled floor-length dress with the tiny waist that could easily have been at home in the pages of a history book.
“What would you have done differently?” she demanded.
Bodie pulled his gaze up from all her softness with difficulty. Her fiery whiskey eyes were flashing. “I don’t know, Eleanor, but maybe I might have gone slower, taken my time a bit. Asked if you were okay. Or whatever the fuck it is a guy’s supposed to ask a woman during her first time. Maybe I might have even taken all my bloody clothes off.”
She folded her arms, and his gaze was drawn again to the sweet swells of her cleavage. “For the record, I was fine. I have absolutely no complaints.”
The throb of anger was morphing into an entirely different throb now as that night came back to him, and she watched him all soft and sweet and round and tiny-waisted telling him she had absolutely no complaints.
The sweet pulse of desire slithered through his veins. He ignored it. He hadn’t come here for this.
“I…should have known.” He shoved a hand through his hair, denying the gnaw of need whispering through his flesh. “You were so shy, so…tight but I just assumed…”
She raised both eyebrows at him this time. “Assumed?”
“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “That you did…Pilates or Bikram yoga?”
“Bikram yoga?” She laughed, exposing the vulnerable line of her throat and, in his mind’s eye, he could see himself muzzling her there. “In Bungindally?”
He groaned. “Look, I don’t know, I just…”
She stood before him, clearly waiting for him to complete his sentence, but how could he concentrate on his virgin rage when she was all soft and pushed up and bouncy like that and her bed was sitting in his peripheral vision all white and beckoning?
“You what?”
“I…Christ.” He shook his head, his distraction complete. “What are you wearing?”
She blinked, then glanced down her body before returning her gaze to his face. “It’s a Victorian-era dress based on a pattern from the eighteen-fifties. I made it.”
It didn’t really help. Because all he could wonder about was what else she might have made for it? Like, maybe some of that Victorian underwear he’d seen on her site? Corsets and petticoats and pantaloons. Crotchless pantaloons.
What was she wearing under all that fabric?
He swallowed. “You’re very talented.”
“Thank you.” She shook her head dismissively at the compliment.
“I mean it.” Bodie wanted her to know he was impressed. “I’ve…visited your website. I know how many hours goes into something like that.” He nodded at the dress, his pulse spiking as he wondered just how quickly he could get her out of the damn thing.
“Really?” She seemed taken aback by the admission. “You’ve been to my website?”
“Often.”
Bodie supposed he shouldn’t give so much of himself away. His father wouldn’t approve a bit, but the interest in her gaze, the delight in the way she smiled at him, made him pleased to have opened up. A new throb roared to life in his chest.
“And does the rugby guru have a favourite frock?”
Bodie chuckled. He wasn’t sure how they’d gone from her withholding vital information from him to frocks. Or from rage to desire for that matter, but the atmosphere fairly hummed with it.
“I’m more a fan of the ummm…undergarments.” And now he was flirting.
She smiled. “I bet you are.” She was flirting, too.
His pulse rate picked up again, not racing but thudding harder in anticipation, desire buzzing like electricity through his system with every contraction of his heart.
This was not good. It was crazy. It wasn’t enough that he’d made her come against the door four hours ago, he wanted more. He wanted her again.
He couldn’t seem to get enough of her.
And if the sudden husky burr to her breathing was anything to go by, he wasn’t the only one feeling it.
Crap. He really hadn’t come here for this.
“I should probably go.”
He stepped away from the window, making a beeline for the door, passing between her and the bed, but then she stepped into his path and he halted. He was suddenly grateful for the closeness of the bed as every bone in his body seemed to dissolve.
Except for the one in his pants. It was like granite.
“The problem with these frocks,” she said, taking a step closer to him, “is how difficult they are to get in and out of without help.”
Bodie swallowed as his gaze dropped to the soft bounce of her cleavage. “Yes… That would be a problem.” Bodie assumed that her friend had helped her get into the thing.
She shrugged and took another step. “I can do it, of course, but it’s much easier with another person.”
“Right.”
Their gazes locked and held for long moments before she turned her back to him. “Do you think you could help me with these buttons before you go?”
The aroma of orange blossoms filled his nostrils as Bodie’s gaze snagged on her hair. It, too, was done in the kind of style he’d seen in history books. The fine chocolatey strands styled into a mass of soft ringlets. A handful of dainty flowers pinned and tucked amidst the curls seemed decorative but Bodie thought they might actually be keeping the whole thing together. A couple of strands of hair had either fallen down to tease her neck or had been deliberately pulled to do so.
Either way, it made him want to press a kiss to her nape. Maybe even nip it a little.
“Bodie?”
Her uncertain, husky voice broke into his reverie and he glanced at what looked like a hundred buttons starting at the notch of her spine that divided nape from back and ending below the waist. His fingers itched to touch them.
“I don’t suppose I can just undo the top one and rip?”
It was a joke, but his fingers tingled to do just that, and he was very much afraid that he might be tempted to follow through if she didn’t specifically tell him not to.
Rip her dress open like she’d done to his shirt in Bungindally. Follow the dictates of a body demanding he go all Incredible fucking Hulk.
She laughed and it was soft and low and rough, cupping his aching balls in a velvet hand, reminding him that while she’d gotten off a few hours ago, he had not.
“It took me a day to make and sew on all those buttons and their loops.”
So, that was a no then.
Bodie took a steadying breath and slid his fingers to the top button. He fumbled it immediately, his fingers feeling too big and clumsy for the delicate work. Give him a football and his hands were sure and steady, but a row of fabric-covered buttons…?
Fine motor skills had never been his forte.
He took another breath, stooped a little closer, and tried again. This time he successfully freed the slippery button made from the same fabric as the dress from its delicate lacy loop. One down, about a hundred to go.
If the slow reveal didn’t cause him to stroke out…
Within ten buttons he was starting to see skin, and he stopped counting as his body tuned into other things. Like the uneven pitch of her breathing and how his breath disturbed the tendrils of hair that had escaped from her do and the goose bumps feathering her skin.
And her big-ass bed one step to his left.
The silence grew and stretched around them. Who’d have thought the brush of fingertips against fabric could sound so loud? Or air escaping from lungs could tumble out like a hurricane then be cut off like a garrotte at the discovery of a snowy white corset.
More buttons revealed lace and boning and the hourglass curve of waist and hip and it took all Bodie’s willpower to keep to the task and not to stray. There was something to be said for modesty and a slow reveal, and Bodie was never going to underestimate the power of the tease ever again.
It was the most delicious kind of torture, touching her like this—methodically, impersonally. When all he wanted to do was let his hands wander, explore, discover.
He popped the last button. “Finished.” His voice was like gravel, his dick like stone, his balls so damn heavy they were practically dragging on the ground.
“Thank you.”
He barely had time to register the gratifying unsteadiness of her voice before she shrugged her shoulders, pulling each puffed sleeve down her arm and off completely, removing the dress to the waist and revealing the corset almost in its entirety.
Despite the fact he couldn’t see much of it from here, blood rushed to his cock. Where it was going to go he had no idea—there was no room at the inn down there, it was already as tight and full as humanly possible.
“Can you undo the petticoat tie?” Another husky request.
Bodie glanced down to find some kind of plain cream garment cutting off the view of the corset from the waist down, tied at the back with a pink ribbon. He slid his fingers onto the simple bow and rubbed the fabric between his fingers.
“This pink ribbon?”
Bodie needed to be sure. Who knew there so many damn working parts to this kind of get up? Although he was all for undoing all the ribbons and all the buttons and whatever else he could. He eyed the back of the corset—how did that come undone?
“Yes.”
Bodie, his lungs feeling too tight for his chest, pulled one of the tails and the bow slid undone, the fabric of the petticoat loosening immediately from Eleanor’s waist.
“Thank you,” she said again, then, as he watched, she pushed the dress and petticoat down in one movement until it pooled around her on the floor.
She stepped out of the circle of fabric and pushed it out of the way with her foot, turning to face him. She was in nothing but a corset and a pair of pantaloons. Her breasts were pushed up and almost spilled out of the corset completely, her waist nipped in to form a perfect hourglass, the bottom of the corset dipping down to form a peak between her hips. The pantaloons were short, not long, coming to mid thigh and puffy around the hips. With rows of lacy ruffles on the ass.
Goddamn, sexy as fuck, ruffles.
Jesus. How had men of that era ever got anything done knowing their woman was somewhere in that get up?
If she’d leaned in and stabbed him he couldn’t have been any more stunned. “Bloody hell,” he whispered, staring at her, not able to stop.
More blood diverted and Bodie groped for the bed beside him as he became light-headed. A stupid idea, considering his eyes were now level with those sexy pantaloons. He fisted his hands in the bedcovers to stop himself from reaching for her.
“So…” He cleared his throat because gawping at her like an idiot was starting to get old. “This is the kind of…underwear they’d have worn back then?”
It was the first thing he could think of instead of something lewd and un-Mr Darcy-like such as let’s fuck but still, he couldn’t believe he was talking about two-hundred-year-old fashion with a raging twenty-first-century boner.
“No.” She shook her head slowly as if she couldn’t believe he was talking about it either. “The corset isn’t a proper one, there are hooks and eyes at the back. But I didn’t have time to get into the proper one with the laces earlier.”
Bodie almost forgot that he was the reason she hadn’t had time as the thought of a lace up corset cavorted in his head like a burlesque dancer.
“And they would have worn a chemise under the corset to keep it off the skin, but we tend to wash more frequently than they did, so I usually give that a miss. They probably wouldn’t have worn these short pantaloons either underneath such a formal dress but nobody at the function knows what’s on under your skirts, and I’ve just made them and wanted to try them out.”
Bodie swallowed, thrilled that he knew what was under her skirts. “I’m pleased you did.” He stared at them, their lack of sheerness exciting as hell. Knowing what was under them but not being able to see, forced to use his memory, his imagination, cranked his anticipation to a loud screech.
“You like?” Her voice was quiet, her cheeks pinking up, her gaze not quite reaching his.
Eleanor Davis was a conundrum. She stood boldly before him in her underwear after requesting he help her unbutton, yet her blushes were never far from the surface and she could barely meet his eyes at the moment.
“Oh…I like. In fact, I think you should wear only them at all times in my company.” He smiled, trying to tease her out of her shyness.
“Oh really?”
“Are they…”
God, it was completely inappropriate to ask what he wanted to ask. This was Ryder’s sister, for fuck’s sake. But considering what he’d already done to her—on two separate occasions—this was tame. And he needed to know.
He cleared his throat again. “Crotchless?”
She didn’t say anything for long moments, her gaze locking with his, the fiery whiskey hue sparking and flaring as if she was fighting the same kind of battle he was. Finally she moved, stepping closer. One pace. Two. Stopping in front of him, her knees putting pressure on his to open.
Bodie couldn’t have stopped them from admitting her had his life depended upon it. He eased his thighs apart and she stepped forward until she was right between his legs and he was forced to fall back on his elbows or do something completely ungentlemanly and bury his face in her pantaloons.
Another long pause as if she was trying to gather her courage, her chest rising and falling in a wonderfully agitated rhythm that shifted her cleavage in a breathtakingly sexy way. Bodie salivated as he thought about running his tongue along the soft swells pillowing from the snowy white corset.
Slowly, she slid her left knee over his thigh until it was anchored on the mattress, parting her legs. The smell of orange blossom and musk invaded his senses.
“Why don’t you find out?”
Her voice was husky and tremulous, and even though Bodie could see it had taken all her bravado to be so fucking bold, she didn’t break eye contact.
Whatever valid reasons there were for him getting the hell out of this room and running as far away from Eleanor Davis as possible—and there were many—they all meant squat in this moment. He slid his hand onto her left thigh as he slowly levered himself up into a sitting position.
She shivered and her skin puckered into goose flesh beneath his touch as their gazes locked. Slowly his hand moved higher, traversing the fabric hiding her from his view. His heart punched hard against his rib cage and her breathing roughened as his hand trekked closer and closer to her inner thigh, finding the seam before brushing higher and higher.
A groan slipped from Bodie’s throat as he found the opening of the fabric, gaping wide, begging to be taken advantage off. Christ, he could smell her, an intoxicating mix of old-fashioned citrus and aroused woman and his whole body tightened.
“Tell me to leave,” he whispered, his gaze clinging to hers.
He’d go, if she asked him.
But she shook her head slowly, her hand sliding to his shoulder, the slight dig of her nails reminding him of how good they were together. “Stay.”
He drew in a ragged breath, their gazes still locked as his hand breeched the opening of her pantaloons and found the seam of her sex. Her eyes widened and her breath hitched, and Bodie’s heart just about burst through his chest at the heat of her.
“Fuck.” He groaned as her slickness coated his fingers. “You’re wet.”
He pushed them inside her then and she gasped, grabbing his shoulder as her eyes closed and two sets of nails dug into his shoulders and he wanted her just like that always, her breathy moans driving him crazy, ecstasy etched on her face.
“Why can’t I get enough of you?” His voice was low and gravelly.
It should be enough that she was Ryder’s sister but it wasn’t.
Her eyes opened, pinning him with their intensity, the spill of her cleavage rising and falling in utter hypnotic glory. “I don’t know.”
Bodie didn’t have any time to analyse her comment before she was sliding her other leg over his thigh and leaning down, and he was stretching up, muttering, “You are a vixen,” against her mouth and then they were kissing deep and wet and long.
Then somehow she was straddling him, that damn gape in her crotch lining up perfectly and her moans were in his head and citrus was invading every breath he took and his heart was tripping and air was sawing in and out of his lungs as his hands roamed over the hard cage of the corset, hungry to feel every inch.
Her hands were between them, plucking at his belt and unzipping his fly and pulling his aching cock out of his underwear and guiding it between her legs and he thanked Jesus and all the sweet, sweet angels for crotchless nineteenth-century underwear as the head of his cock slid through the wet heat of her sex.
She moaned, and all he could think about was being inside her, deep inside, all the way to the hilt, making her pant and cry and scream his name.
Nothing but her and her pleasure and all her tight, slick heat driving him on as he slid inside her.
He groaned at the perfection of the moment and kissed her, swallowing her cry as he entered her. Swallowing her whimpers and her moans as his big hands spanned the waist of her corset, using the hourglass curve to his advantage, lifting her off and thrusting her back down on his cock—hard. Wrenching out of the kiss to watch the bounce of her beautiful cleavage, the light blue veins mesmerizing as her breasts threatened to spill out.
She whimpered with every withdrawal and cried out with each thrust and quickly, so quickly she was clutching convulsively at his shoulders and shaking and trembling and her wild noises swelled like a rock concert in his head until she gasped and jerked to a halt and finally bellowed his name.
Bodie muffled her ecstasy with his mouth as she shuddered in his arms, clamping tight around him, pushing him higher and higher until he was shuddering too, deep, deep inside her, his heart pounding, his head pounding, his fucking toes pounding as he wrung every last ounce of pleasure out of it for both of them before collapsing back against the bed gasping and sated, Eleanor sprawled on top of him.
Fuck!
He felt like he’d been sucked into a whirlwind, spun around a thousand times and twirled out the other side. His head was spinning. God knew he’d been mauled on the field plenty but never so thoroughly as this. Who knew a five-foot-nothing chick could be more effective than a hulking line backer?
And, yet again, he was still fully dressed.
“It seems like getting you off with all my clothes on is going to be our thing.”
Warm air tickled his neck as she belly laughed, and he almost groaned out loud as the shift of her abdominal muscles had a very intimate ripple effect.
Christ! He shut his eyes as he realized he was bareback inside her. He hadn’t even thought about a condom.
He always thought about a condom. He was either totally fucked or utterly, hopelessly bewitched. Maybe both.
“This is probably not the best time to raise this.” His hand slid to her back, the bones and furrows of the corset sexy as fuck beneath his palm. “But I didn’t even think about a condom.”