"Now your hair," he said.
She pulled the already loosened braids out of their ribbons and ran her fingers through her hair, flicking it over her shoulders.
"Stand up."
She rose slowly, vaguely aware that her knees were weak, her body in ferment; all-consuming desire thrummed in her veins. She stood still, her hands at her sides, gazing into his face as he looked at her in a long, lingering appraisal that sent a violent jolt through her loins.
"Turn around."
She turned as if in a dream, looking down at the bed, her back and buttocks prickling with the knowledge of his eyes roaming over their damask curves. She felt him come up behind her, and his body pressed warm against her back, his hands moving around to caress her breasts, holding their roundness in the palms of his hands, circling her erect nipples with the pad of his thumbs. His lips brushed her ear, his breath warm on her neck.
"Please." The whispered plea for she knew not what was the first word she'd spoken since it had begun, and it reached Hugo through the mists of his own consuming arousal… an arousal that had arisen out of his anger with such suddenness, he hadn't attempted to take ahold of it but had allowed it to take them both where it would.
"What would you like?" he murmured now against her ear. "You have only to tell me."
She shook her head, unable to find words for what she didn't understand. Her hands moved behind her to clasp him more tightly against her body, her feet shifting on the bare floorboards.
"Let me see if I can guess." There was the faintest hint of understanding humor in his voice now. He took a
step forward, half lifting her, and they tumbled together onto the bed.
Hugo rolled sideways, keeping her flat on her belly with a warm palm in the small of her back. Propping himself on one elbow, he kissed each pointed shoulder blade before nipping and nuzzling down her back, his lips brushing across the flare of her hips, blazing a trail down her thighs, his tongue dipping into those silky hollows behind her knees. She squirmed and moaned in soft delight as he revealed her to herself, showing her what pleasure her body could afford her. And when he'd finished with her back, he flipped her over and began his downward journey from the pulsing hollow at the base of her throat.
"Did I guess correctly?" he murmured with a tiny smile of satisfaction as he moved up her body again, feeling how alive she was, every square inch of her skin sensitized. Her head moved in inarticulate answer and her eyes met his with such a richly sensual glow of demand as her hips moved with urgent expression that the reins on his own tightly harnessed passion finally snapped. Using every skill garnered from experience, he'd held himself in check while he taught the tender novice an educated response to match her impulsive, unlearned eagerness, but he could wait no longer.
Slipping his hands beneath her arching buttocks, he lifted her higher as he eased into the moist, welcoming sheath of her body. She shuddered around him, instinctively tightening her inner muscles so that he drew breath with sharp pleasure. Holding her on the shelf of his palms, he moved within her until she picked up his rhythm and the warm-muscled roundness he held clenched and released in harmony with his movements. He drew her legs onto his shoulders, and her eyes widened in surprise as the sensation changed and she felt his flesh deep within her own.
He held her gaze, watching her face change, reveling in the candid openness as expressions chased themselves across her features, registering every shift in sensation. He knew she was capable of no artifice; she could no more feign pleasure than she could disguise it, and the knowledge deepened his own pleasure in a way he wouldn't have believed possible, releasing him in some way from the dark, furtive games of his sexual past.
"No, don't close your eyes," he whispered as the thin, blue-veined lids veiled them for a moment. The long-lashed lids swept up immediately, and she smiled at him with such radiance, he thought he was going to drown in her beauty.
He knew the moment she was almost at the pinnacle. Deliberately, he moved his hand to touch the exquisitely sensitive bud at the point of their fusion. Chloe cried out, her body convulsing around him, her spine arched, and tears again filled her eyes that still locked with his, drawing him into her moment of bliss, submerging him in the midnight-blue depths.
With a wrenching gasp he withdrew from her body the instant before his own climax rushed upon him. He gathered her to him as the tide took him on its tumbling ride of ecstasy and held her until he was tossed to shore. He fell backward, still holding the slight body against him, until his heart slowed and his head cleared.
"Oh, Chloe," he whispered. "What wicked magic did you brew?" He rolled sideways, still holding her, and smudged the tearstains on her cheeks with his thumb. He'd had many women, but never had he seen a woman cry at the climactic moment. This diminutive bundle of passion had twice wept with joy.
Chloe blinked, smiled, and stretched out along the length of his body. "No magic."
"Yes, magic," he disagreed with a rueful headshake. "That was not the lesson I intended teaching you."
"But it was the lesson I intended to learn," she said with more than a hint of smugness.
He laughed and lay on his back, pulling her with him so she lay atop him. He pushed the tumbling hair back from her face and examined her countenance. "It would seem I've been boarded and taken for a prize."
"Is that what they do with ships?"
"In wartime."
She lowered her head and kissed the corner of his mouth, a delicate butterfly kiss that barely brushed his lips. "But this isn't war."
"No," he agreed. "You're a piratical minx, but you're not built for warfare."
"A pirate?" She gave a little gurgle of laughter that entranced him anew. "I think I shall make an expert pirate."
"Heaven help us both, but I think you will too," he murmured. There was a power here too strong for one man to resist on the grounds of scruple. Somehow, he'd steer a path through it.
"But I don't like it when you withdraw at the end in that fashion," she said suddenly, a crease appearing between her brows. "If it was so that I won't conceive, I would prefer to take the potion."
Hugo stiffened and abruptly rolled her onto the bed beside him. Leaning over her, he spoke with soft vehemence. "You will not ever again take that filthy stuff, Chloe."
"Why not'"
The crypt rose in its dank evil, its smell filling his nostrils. Stephen Gresham's voice rang in his ears. The man's vicious hungers spread themselves on the carpet of memory. This girl was his daughter. A creature with
all the appetites, vital and glowing with a devouring lust for life's pleasures.
"What is it?" She saw him go from her, back to the world of his painted devils, and in fear she touched his face. "I'm sorry, Hugo. Please. Whatever I did, I didn't mean it."
He pulled himself back to the sunlit room and the reality of the woman he'd just loved with such shared joy. He spoke evenly. "There are many things you don't understand, lass. You will have to trust me to know what's best in these matters."
"I do… I will," she said hastily. The bright morning seemed to have dimmed somewhat. "But you're not sorry, are you? You don't regret what happened?"
How could he regret such pleasure, or deny the spur of unstoppable passion? He was not harming Chloe, he knew that now. She was an equal partner for all the disparity in their ages. And maybe he was the best person to guide the vast appetite she had for life in all its earthly facets. Perhaps Elizabeth had sensed that too. Even in her laudanum trance she would have had a mother's recognition of her daughter's nature. Had she been afraid that once free of the restraints of her girlhood, her daughter would follow where her appetites and her stellar beauty led? Unguided, they would lead her to ruin. Had Elizabeth recognized Stephen in their daughter?