The Pleasure of Your Kiss Page 22

  Ash stopped breathing altogether, mesmerized by her confession. He made a valiant effort but could not stop his gaze from dropping to the parted pink petals of her lips, from imagining what they would look like—and feel like—wrapped around him.

  “If it would make things more … bearable for you, I could show you what they taught us,” she offered earnestly. “Would you believe they used a cucumber?” Another one of those adorably sly glances over her shoulder. “I pretended to be disinterested but I smuggled one out when no one was looking and took it to my alcove so I could practice. I might not be as adept at it as Yasmin, but I’m sure you could talk me through it. After all, don’t they always say practice makes perfect?” A husky little giggle escaped her. “I used to spend all of those hours practicing my scales on the pianoforte just to please Papa. There’s no reason I can’t practice to please you, is there?”

  “Yes. No. Yes,” he blurted out, tearing his gaze away from her mouth. Her oh-so-soft, oh-so-luscious, oh-so-tempting mouth. “There are any number of reasons why you can’t practice on me.” Oddly enough, even as he said the words, he couldn’t think of a single one. He couldn’t think at all.

  As if sensing his mounting distress, she reached up to caress his face, her expression tender and her eyes darkened with sympathy. “This is all so unfair. I can only imagine how difficult this must be for you.” He didn’t even realize her other hand had escaped his grip until she brushed her fingertips over the part of him already straining to escape the front placket of his trousers.

  Ash had somehow managed to stop her from touching herself, but no force in heaven or on earth could have given him the strength to stop her from touching him. He couldn’t have moved in that moment if a stone block had been about to tumble from the sky and crush him to death. Not that there was any need for a stone block. As Clarinda curled her fingers around him, stroking his rigid length through the snug fabric of his trousers with bewitching boldness, he thought he was going to die right then and there.

  “Please, Ash,” she whispered, the wild look in her eye warning him the effects of the aphrodisiac were just beginning to make themselves fully known. “I can’t wait anymore. It’s been so long … too long. I want you … I need you …”

  How many nights had he lain awake and dreamed of her whispering those very words? It was so hard to deny her anything when she was looking at him like that. He had only done it once, and he had spent every moment since then keenly regretting it.

  He sat as still as a marble statue as she slid into his lap, neatly straddling him. Now it wasn’t her hand pressed against him but the damp heat between her thighs. She wasn’t wearing any undergarments beneath the shift, and he could smell her desire. It was more powerful and beguiling than any exotic perfume or oil—Musk of Clarinda, its sole intent to drive a man wild with lust. To turn him into a ravening beast with only one thing on his mind. If Ash could have found a way to bottle it, he could have made a fortune.

  Tugging up the hem of his shirt with her other hand, she writhed against him, making helpless little sounds deep in her throat. “It’s so very hot in here. Aren’t you hot?”

  As she rubbed the fulsome weight of her breasts against his chest, Ash had never been so hot, not even when the tropical fever had raged through his body, robbing him of both his senses and his name.

  “I know you don’t care for me anymore, but there’s no need for you to be so cruel. Oh, please, Ash … won’t you help me? I’m on fire down there … burning … burning … ” Clarinda was shivering and crying now, nearly incoherent with need. “I want … I need … ” A ragged moan tore from her throat, the piteous sound arrowing straight through his heart.

  Her shaking hands reached between them, fumbling clumsily with the fastenings of his trousers. All he had to do was lean back on his elbows and let her have her way.

  In this state there would be nothing she wouldn’t let him do to her, nothing she wouldn’t do to him. He would be able to use her nubile body to fulfill his darkest and most erotic fantasies, including the ones she had already fulfilled in his dreams a hundred times before.

  It was no longer possible for him to pretend she wouldn’t know what he had done to her. If he unleashed himself on her now, there wouldn’t be a muscle anywhere in her body that wouldn’t know she had been loved … and loved in every way that a man could love a woman. If she tried to swear she didn’t remember a moment of it, they would both know she was lying.

  Ash could still remember chasing her through the meadow on a beautiful spring day while she teasingly made him beg for the simple favor of a kiss. It was his turn now. He could tease her, make her beg, shatter her pride. He could bring the high-and-mighty Miss Clarinda Cardew to her knees and punish her with pleasure for every transgression she had ever committed against him.

  As the irresistible temptation of Clarinda’s mouth descended on his, turning his face away from her kiss was one of the most difficult things Ash had ever made himself do.

  “Shhh,” he murmured, wrapping his arms tightly around her and rocking her like a baby. “It’s all right, angel. Everything will be all right.”

  He knew what he had to do. Knew there was only one way to take the edge off of her need. Even if doing so might kill him.

  Perhaps if he thought of it as some sort of scientific experiment, something to be dissected with clinical precision in a paper delivered before the Geographical Society of London, he might survive. Perhaps then he could remove his own emotions, his own desires, his own savage need to possess her—to bury himself in the softness she was still grinding against him—from the equation.

  Ignoring her whimpered protest, he urged her around in his lap until she was sitting between his splayed legs with her back pressed to his chest. He slid one arm around her waist, gently but firmly imprisoning her in place.

  She dug her fingernails into his muscled forearm. Her breath hitched in a shuddering sob. “W-w-what are you doing?”

  As one of her helpless tears splashed on his arm, he knew beyond the shadow of any doubt that he was making the right decision. For her. For himself. Perhaps even for Max. “Taking care of you,” he whispered, sweeping aside the moonlit fall of her hair and pressing his mouth to the graceful column of her throat. He might deny himself a taste of her lips, but he could not resist sampling her sweet-smelling skin.

  She settled back against him, her unspoken trust in him more touching than anything that had come before.

  Forcing himself to ignore the enticing weight of her breasts resting against his forearm, he slipped a hand between her legs. He didn’t have to coax her into spreading her thighs for him. They fell apart of their own volition as she let out a sharp cry and arched off the couch, pressing herself into the cup of his hand. He gently squeezed, molding the sheer silk of the shift to that enticing mound and acclimating her to the shock of his touch.

  Her flesh felt feverish beneath his hand, hot enough to scorch. He didn’t dare let his hand slip beneath the shift. He was too desperate to get any part of himself inside her again, even if it was only his finger. Or fingers. She was already so wet for him that the silk was clinging to her like a second skin.

  Even the most callow of lads could easily have located the hooded little bud tucked between the delicate petals of her womanhood. And Ash was no callow lad.

  He brushed the pad of his longest finger over that bud only to find it as hard and swollen as a ripe cherry just begging to be plucked by a man’s finger … or his tongue. He had hoped to bring the fires that were burning her alive under control, but the stroke of his fingertip against that exquisitely sensitive bundle of nerve endings was more like striking steel to tinder, igniting a conflagration of lust that threatened to burn them both to ash.

  Clarinda bucked against him like a wild thing, gasping for breath. He cinched his arm tighter around her waist to hold her fast, gritting his teeth against a groan and fighting to steady his own breathing. He could feel the taut rope of his control already
beginning to fray.

  “Just relax, sweetheart,” he bit off through his clenched teeth, wishing he could do the same. “Give yourself over to the pleasure.”

  Determined to do everything he could to make that possible for her, he began to rub the very tip of his middle finger over her in taut little circles. Her hips arched off the couch, rotating in a sinuous counterrhythm as her body instinctively responded to the silent but glorious music of that ancient dance.

  Ash took that as his cue to expand his attentions, petting her, stroking her, deftly fingering her through the silk until it was all but dripping with the proof of her desire for him. His entire being was focused on one thing and one thing only—lifting her to the peak of pleasure so he could send her soaring. He might not be able to accompany her, but he would be waiting with open arms to catch her when she came crashing back down to earth.

  “Oh, Ash … ” she moaned, her head lolling back against his shoulder, then twisting around to give him a fierce look through eyes glazed with passion. “Promise me …”

  “Yes?” In that moment he would have promised her anything.

  “Promise me … ” Her moan deepened to a groan as the callused pad of his thumb flicked back and forth over that engorged bud, mimicking the precise motion of what he was longing to do to her with his tongue. “Promise me … you won’t stop.”

  She had always been able to make him laugh, even in the most unlikely circumstances. Ash buried his lips and his chuckle in her tousled hair. “I promise you I won’t stop. I’ll never stop.”

  The rocking motion of her hips and the shuddering twitch of the silky flesh beneath his fingers warned him that she would make a liar of him soon enough. Finally encountering a temptation he was helpless to withstand, he lifted his face from her hair and stole a glance over her shoulder. The sight of his strong, masculine hand cupped around all of that delectable womanly softness made him want to growl like a savage.

  He used his thumb and forefinger together to deepen that delicious friction. Clarinda whipped her head back and forth, the silken strands of her hair catching on his own moist lips. “Oh, Ash … oh, my … oh, God!”

  Her hand shot downward to cover his much larger one. Gripping him with surprising strength, she rode his fingers over the edge of pleasure and into ecstasy, a broken wail spilling from her lips like the sweetest of songs.

  Ash was prepared for her release, but not for how close he came to following her over that dangerous precipice. He hadn’t unintentionally spilled his seed outside a woman since he’d been a love-struck lad waking up with wet sheets from dreams of a certain saucy-tongued, green-eyed minx. But it took every ounce of will he possessed to stave off the rapture that threatened to come rolling through him like a tidal wave, obliterating everything in its path.

  Still cradling a trembling Clarinda, he collapsed against the bolster, his chest heaving as if he had been running for a long time. And perhaps he had. Running away from the woman in his arms, although in that moment, he could barely remember why.

  Blissfully oblivious to the havoc she was wreaking by rubbing her bottom against his unabated arousal, Clarinda sighed with contentment and wiggled around until she could twine her arms around his neck and rest her cheek against his chest. Her eyes were already fluttering shut. She yawned like a sleepy little lion, the unself-conscious gesture making her look exactly like the little girl who had stolen his clothes while he and Max had been swimming in one of the ponds on their father’s estate.

  Now that she no longer had to battle the effects of the aphrodisiac, she was free to surrender to the more pleasant influences of the opium. With any luck, she would sleep until morning, her dreams unfettered by regrets from the past or fear of the future.

  Ash was to be allowed no such luxury.

  He had come here planning on escape only to end up trapped in a web of his own making. Wrapping his arms around her even more tightly, he pressed a kiss to her sweat-dampened brow and settled back for what he knew would be the longest night of his life.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Clarinda awoke from the most satisfying sleep of her life with the morning sun slanting across her face and a smile on her lips. Still too deliciously drowsy to actually pry open her eyelids, she balled up her fists and stretched her tingling muscles from head to toe, indulging in a yawn so fulfilling she was tempted to roll to her other side and go right back to sleep.

  She reluctantly opened her eyes to find Ash sprawled in a chair a few feet away, glowering at her with what appeared to be thinly disguised hostility. His warm caramel locks were tousled, his jaw unshaven, his shirt laid open at the throat. Clarinda frowned in bewilderment. Actually, it was laid open all the way to the middle of his chest, exposing the well-muscled planes of his chest with their delicious dusting of crisp, golden-brown hair.

  He didn’t look nearly as well rested as she felt. Judging by the brooding shadows beneath his eyes, he didn’t look as if he had slept a wink all night. Despite his rumpled appearance—or perhaps because of it—he looked absolutely irresistible.

  And more than a little dangerous.

  She gave him a quizzical look, wondering what on earth he was doing in her bedchamber at that time of the morning.

  He nodded toward her body, his eyes heavy-lidded and his jaw set in a harsh line. “You might want to cover yourself.”

  Growing even more confused, Clarinda glanced down to discover she was draped in a scrap of sheer fabric that would have been considered indecent as a nightdress back in England. Spotting red smears on the front of it, she felt a brief moment of panic. But a closer inspection revealed that what she had mistaken for blood was only rouge.

  Glancing back at Ash to discover his smoldering gaze was still lingering below her neck, she reached down to the end of the unfamiliar couch and snatched the silk sheet she found there all the way up to her chin.

  She cast him a wide-eyed look, her heart beginning to pound in an erratic rhythm. “Did you … did we … ?” His face was so forbidding she couldn’t bring herself to finish.

  His black chuckle contained little humor. “If we had, you would have remembered. I would have damn well made sure of it.”

  Unsettled even more by that provocative promise, she touched a hand to her brow, struggling to sift through the drifting fog in her head. Despite her debauched appearance and a faint throbbing in her temples, she seemed none the worse for wear. The last thing she remembered with perfect clarity was the two old women urging her to sit on the side of the couch so they could pour their bitter brew down her throat.

  Everything became fuzzy after that. She remembered the sultry caress of the night breeze against her skin, being enthralled by the lurid mural painted on the ceiling above the couch, one of the women urging her to rest for what was to come. Then Ash had been there, his handsome face looming over her in the moonlight.

  Other, more unsettling images came to her in flashes—her hands desperately tearing at his shirt, her fingertips boldly tracing the impressive outline of his arousal through his trousers, her mouth kissing … tasting … pleading …

  As those images and a host of others came flooding back in excruciating detail, Clarinda snatched the sheet up over her head. Wondering if it was actually possible to die from mortification, she moaned aloud. “Dear God, what was I thinking? I can’t believe I told you about the cucumbers and begged you to let me put my mouth on you.”

  “And I can’t believe I was fool enough to turn you down.”

  She heard the resolute click of his bootheels crossing the tiled floor.

  He tugged the sheet from her tightly clenched fingers, peeling it back to survey her burning face. “There’s no need for you to be embarrassed. I warned you that the elixir the women gave you would make you do things you wouldn’t normally do, want things you wouldn’t normally want.”

  She could hardly tell him that wasn’t why she was embarrassed. She was embarrassed because she had wanted those things. Because she still wanted t
hem.

  Realizing she had little hope of reclaiming her dignity while lying flat on her back and cowering beneath a sheet, she slowly sat up. “Why? Why would those women have given me such a thing?”

  Ash settled one lean hip on the edge of the couch, taking care to keep a safe distance between them. “Sometimes in a place like this where men appear to have all the power, women have spent centuries developing clever little secrets their men know nothing about. I’m sure the women genuinely believed they were helping you … making what you were about to endure more … agreeable for you.”

  Clarinda was horrified to realize they probably would have given her the same elixir if it had been Farouk coming to her bed. Or any other man, for that matter. And how many men, no matter how well-intentioned or noble in character, would have been able to restrain themselves when faced with the overpowering temptation of a woman half out of her mind with lust begging them to make love to her?

  “Well, it certainly made me more agreeable,” she said glumly. “Had I been any more agreeable, you would have had to beat me off with a stick.”

  “Don’t think I didn’t consider it.” Suddenly Ash was the one having difficulty meeting her eyes. “Just how much do you remember?”

  Clarinda desperately wanted to lie. Wanted to tell him she remembered nothing beyond her pathetic pleas for him to make love to her and to allow her to do any number of deliciously wicked things to him. But she had long ago learned the terrible price of keeping secrets from him.

  “Everything,” she whispered, pushing her tangled hair out of her eyes to meet his wary gaze. “I remember everything.”

  She remembered every deft stroke of his fingertips, every deep-throated moan he had wrenched from her lips, every shudder of pleasure she had experienced all the way up to that soul-shattering moment when her entire world had exploded into indescribable bliss beneath the skilled caress of his hand.

  The only recollection that made no sense was a hazy memory of him cradling her in his arms, brushing his lips over her hair with the helpless tenderness of a man in love, which she knew he hadn’t been for a very long time. If ever.