His Lordship's True Lady (True Gentlemen #4)(76)
Perching like London’s most unlikely gargoyle outside Lily’s window and watching her drift off to sleep before the fire.
Climbing into bed with Lily for any reason, even to comfort her amid upheaval that would have sent a woman of lesser fortitude into strong hysterics.
Making love with Lily.
Hessian had tried to stand fast against the need to hold her, touch her, kiss her. Without even trying, Lily had blasted through his best intentions, and here he was, hard as any standing stone decorating the Cumbrian countryside.
“Lily, this isn’t wise.”
She stroked his hair. “It’s much too late for wisdom, Hessian. Wisdom would have prevented my mother from risking my conception—and my father, whoever he might be. Wisdom would have put somebody trustworthy in charge of Mama’s money rather than my varlet of an uncle. Wisdom would have seen me raised somewhere other than a coaching inn and never let my sister be lost to me. We must make our own wisdom now.”
Her illogic was beguiling, her touch was irresistible. Hessian allowed himself a protracted kiss that started off tender and ended up incendiary.
Bad idea. Glorious, bad idea. “When I come back from Scotland, we can discuss—”
Lily resumed kissing him, bringing up the topics of desire, pleasure, and present joys rather than distant negotiations or headlong journeys. She had a firm grasp of the subject matter and a firmer grasp of Hessian himself.
“I want you naked, Hessian, and I want you badly.”
As an accomplished horseman, Hessian knew of two strategies for dealing with a runaway mount. The first, learned early in a horseman’s career, instructed the rider to use main strength to pull the horse’s head around to the rider’s knee, to force the beast to travel in smaller and smaller circles, which necessarily resulted in a reduction in speed—or in a series of vigorous bucks aided by the physics of a curve taken at a gallop.
The second strategy was one Hessian had come upon on his own: allow the creature to run free. Revel in the privilege of being one with an equine glorying in its natural spirits and pray God the footing was sound. Exhaustion usually brought the horse back under control soon enough, without a fruitless and often dangerous battle waged by the rider.
Hessian also theorized—hoped, more like—that knowing the occasional wild dash was permitted allowed a spirited animal to better tolerate domestication. Horse after horse had proved his theory worthy.
Hessian was not a horse, but the compulsion to dash headlong, despite all caution to the contrary, pounded through his veins.
He extricated himself from Lily’s arms and sat back. Her gaze held reproach and disappointment… until he untied the bow in the center of her nightgown’s décolletage. Then she smiled, and the considerable animal spirits lurking in Hessian’s soul sprang into a joyous gallop.
“This is not wise,” he said. “But for us, now, I cannot think it wrong.”
He pulled his shirt over his head, and Lily’s smile became all the encouragement he needed to shed his breeches and help her out of her nightgown. She beheld him as if he were her every passionate fantasy brought to life, and then she beckoned.
Hessian straddled her, his eyes closed lest the sight of her unclothed send his best intentions straight into the ditch. She brushed her hand over his chest, stroking the fine hair more than his skin. The effect was maddening, until her hand drifted lower and lower still.
“The last time,” she said, “I didn’t get to see you. I like this better.”
Hessian loved this—loved the gloss of her fingers over his cock, his stones, every part of him that knew nothing of plans, schedules, or calendars, and everything of wild pleasure.
“I like it all,” he said. “I like your every touch, your sighs, your kisses, your passion. I like your silences and your tart tongue. I like—I like that rather a lot.”
She’d sleeved him with her grip and begun a slow stroking.
Then, “I like that rather too much. My turn to play, Lily.”
She was gracious in victory, letting him put his hands and mouth to her breasts, until she was an undulating sea of desire beneath him.
Hessian had been faithful to his wife, but he’d not been a saint before or since his first marriage. Nothing in his experience prepared him for the enchantment that intimacies with Lily wove. The experience was profoundly physical—and pleasurable—but also an encounter of the heart. Pleasing Lily was not only a matter of consideration, but also the measure of his own satisfaction.
“Hessian Kettering, you have toyed with me long enough.”
Not nearly. He braced himself above her nonetheless, because the hour was late, and morning would arrive all too soon.
“That feels…” Lily’s sigh was the sweetest benediction. “You feel marvelous.”
Her body eased around him in glorious welcome, and then thought was impossible. All was pleasure, stretched between clamoring desire and a lover’s determination to deliver his lady more satisfaction than one mortal woman could endure.
Hessian succeeded—barely—for Lily had apparently been intent on a reciprocal goal. She lashed her legs around his flanks and counterpointed his thrusts until Hessian’s control began to slip.
Lily unraveled beneath him, and Hessian withdrew even as his own satisfaction overtook him. He shuddered his release against her belly, heaving as if he’d been run to ebullient exhaustion.