She softly moaned, awash in blissful sensation-his erection buried deep inside her, his fingers delicately stroking her nipples, her vagina bathed in a fresh rush of slick arousal.
“I can’t reach you,” he whispered, tugging on her breasts to bring her closer, half rising himself in a ripple of stomach muscles until her nipples were within reach.
As his mouth closed over one taut peak, she gasped at the flame-hot rapture streaking downward to meet the seething pool of frenzied nerve endings in her vagina and clit. Obsessed, ravenous with desire, she ground her bottom against his crotch in a frantic gyration of her hips, greedy to feel every virile flesh and blood contour of his huge, rigid erection.
He watched her through his lashes with an inexplicable pride, as though he was the means and instrument of her delight, as though he had discovered this unravished beauty who wished now to be ravished by him.
How was it that her innocence stirred him so profoundly? Why did her dewy-eyed sensuality disarm him so completely? More shocking-why did Miss Russell and the thought of permanence suddenly leap into his mind? Never one to allow an injudicious thought to endure, however, he quickly turned his attention to more pleasant conceits.
She came twice more before he decided to take his turn. It was either that or come in her-a consideration so beyond the pale he instantly dismissed it. Although she said afterward, “It wouldn’t really matter if you came in me once would it?”
He stopped breathing for a second, her words the equivalent of a trap about to spring. “It probably wouldn’t be a good idea,” he replied in an excessively courteous tone. “For your sake, of course,” he added, quickly easing away from her. “Let me get a towel.”
What had come over her to even voice such a question? Claire restively thought, alarmed at how close she had come to disaster. It just went to show, how passion could overrun reason. How the gratifying pleasures of sex with a gorgeous, superbly endowed man like Ormond could affect one’s better judgment. How infatuation could turn too quickly to fondness or more when in Ormond’s embrace. It would not happen again, she silently affirmed.
When the viscount returned to the bed, he brought two items of jewelry as a means of diverting the lady from further thoughts of his coming in her. Jewelry, he’d found, generally soothed over any and all awkwardnesses.
As he placed the two items in her palm, Claire murmured, “You shouldn’t.”
“Take them, they’re small.” Sitting next to her, he added, “Try them on.”
They weren’t small, of course, the necklace and earrings of large pearls an extravagant gift. “Are you sure?”
“I couldn’t be more sure.”
Indecisive, she looked at the pearls, then at him.
“Come, darling.” He held out his hand. “Pearls are a innocuous gift. Let me help you put them on.”
She had never had so grand a gift. “I don’t know…”
“Leave them here to wear if you’d rather,” he offered, suspecting her reservations had to do with propriety. “No one need know.”
Her misgivings eased by Ormond’s discrete alternative, she gave into wistful desires. “I thank you then, most kindly. They’re very beautiful.”
Her delight pleased him more than he would have thought possible. After helping her put on the baroque pearl earrings and necklace, he watched her flushed smile as she gazed at herself in the hand mirror he’d brought over. How fortunate he was to have invited Miss Harriet to his masquerade, he reflected. If not for that calculated lure, he would not have met this little auburn-haired tigress with her lush body and greedy cunt. And he would not now be trying to decide how long he wished to keep her.
Which thought prompted him to rise from the bed, walk to the armoire and take out one of the new gowns he’d commissioned. He, better than most, understood how a new wardrobe could influence a lady’s decisions.
“No, no, I can’t possible take it!” Claire exclaimed as he carried over a sumptuous yellow tulle gown embellished with diamont sparkles that shimmered like sunbeams.
“I thought this color would go well with your coloring,” he said, ignoring her protest and dropping the frothy cloud of tulle on her lap.
“Oh, my goodness,” she whispered.
“You could wear it to Catherine’s next entertainment,” he said, knowing that Madame Leonie’s creation had accomplished its mission.
“How did you know the size?” Claire inquired a few minutes later, twirling before the cheval glass, wide-eyed in awe.
“I guessed.” He was standing nearby after having hooked up the back of the gown, admiring her mounded breasts spilling over the low décolletage.
She stopped twirling. “Because you do this often.”
“Never,” he lied. “Don’t look at me like that. I was fortunate. I guessed right, that’s all. Now come here so I can take it off. I’m going through withdrawal already.”
“What if I say no?” Whether she was half teasing or dead serious, she wasn’t quite sure. Her obsession with him was unnerving; everything about this luxurious apartment he’d forged in a day for his sexual pleasure was disquieting.
“I’d say don’t waste your time.” He crooked his finger. “Come here.”
“I don’t have to do everything you say.” Could she resist or couldn’t she? Did she even want to when he offered a degree of pleasure beyond her wildest imagination?
“Of course you don’t,” he murmured, advancing toward her.
“James, don’t you dare!” She ran behind a chair, her feelings volatile and capricious. Her body on the other hand, already liquid with longing.
He stopped in his tracks, gauging her response, assured after surveying her flushed cheeks and heaving breasts that what she said and what she meant were at odds. “That chair’s not going to save you, darling.”
“If you must know, I’m fighting my obsession with you. There, I have confessed. You may add me to your adoring ranks of females.”
“We are both obsessed, darling. I’m obsessed with everything about you,” he said, surprising himself with his honesty. “And to be perfectly frank-” he paused for a moment, debating whether to voice his surprising thought-“I’ve never felt this way before.” There, that was truthful and ambiguous at the same time; he relaxed.
“Oh, that is excellent above all things,” Claire said with relief, “because I’m not sure I can actually do without-well-” she paused, her gaze on his upthrust erection lying flat against his stomach.
“This?” Back on familiar ground, he smiled. “It’s all yours,” he added, running his fingertips up his turgid cock.
She took a small breath as his erection soared higher. “I don’t know what I’m going to do,” she whispered, passion and reason at loggerheads.
“I do,” he said, very, very softly, moving forward, lifting the chair aside. “You and I are going to make love,” he murmured, taking her in his arms. “And afterward I’m going to hold you close and tell you how wonderful you make me feel.”
“This is very strange,” she breathed, gazing up at him.
“It’s good strange, darling.”
She nodded and smiled and gave herself up to the pleasure he so casually dispensed.
Her gown was removed with dispatch. Ormond’s facility for undressing women was second to none. In the course of the afternoon, they made love in infinite, passionate variety. She had a tyro’s enthusiasm that could awaken the most jaded appetites, while his expertise was put to the test by the lady’s insatiable desires.
At last, recognizing she was becoming weak from pleasure-her last climax ending in a voiceless sigh-he paused for an intermission.
Not that he wasn’t still in hot pursuit.
But for the interim, he was hugely and unconditionally gratified.
Chapter Twelve
Turning his head on the pillow a few moments later, Ormond gazed at Claire lying beside him. “You make me happy,” he murmured, a contentment he’d thought forever lost, recaptured. A slow smile lifted the corners of his mouth. “What conjuring spell have you placed on me?”