To Taste Temptation (Legend of the Four Soldiers #1)(69)

She sobbed, helpless and angry, and more angry that she let her innermost feelings show. “Stop.”

He shook his head slowly, pressing into her again, his hard body causing hers to flower open, vulnerable to all the sensations he was making her feel. His eyelids dropped for a second as if he, too, were overwhelmed by what he did. Then he raised them and looked into her eyes. “No.”

He bent his head to lick the sweat at her hairline. She felt the gentle abrasion of his tongue and at the same time, the pressure of his cock inside her as he hitched his hips higher, grinding with devastating accuracy onto the one spot that could not withstand his ravishment. He withdrew a fraction of his length, but she felt the friction as his cock pulled against her oversensitive flesh. Then he was bearing down again, grinding, grinding, grinding against her exposed clitoris, and she couldn’t stand it anymore.

She came apart, all the secrets, doubts, worries, and hopes that she had kept tightly bound to herself flying outward, free and unharnessed, exposed to the chill morning air and to him.

To him.

And she looked up in time to see him grit his teeth and tremble, undone as much as she, as he released his seed within her.

HER TEACUP SHOOK as Emeline raised it to her lips later that morning. She frowned at this outward manifestation of her inner turmoil and sternly made her fingers stop trembling. Around her, no one else in the breakfast room seemed to notice. Except for perhaps Melisande, sitting across from her at the little round table they shared and sending her a too-perceptive look. It really wasn’t something to be valued in a friendship, sensitivity to others. It only led to awkward questions and overly sympathetic glances.

Emeline pointedly looked away from her dearest friend in the world and tried to focus her mind on something other than the overwhelming lovemaking she’d experienced just that morning. And the night before. And the morning before that. She frowned at her teacup, now perfectly still. Perhaps an overabundance of sex was curdling her brain. That would certainly explain her inability to think of anything else. It couldn’t be healthy to be thinking, brooding, obsessing over a man and his long legs and wide chest and hard, hard, hard penis. Emeline coughed on her tea and looked guiltily at Melisande.

Who said, “I’ve translated the title of the first fairy tale in that book you gave me. It’s called Iron Heart.”

“Really?” For a moment, Emeline was diverted from her troubles. She remembered the fairy tale. Iron Heart. It had been about a man who was brave and strong and true. A man like Samuel, she suddenly realized. How strange.

Across from her, Melisande cleared her throat. “Lord Vale was asking about you last night.”

Emeline nearly spilled her tea. Hastily, she set down her teacup. Obviously she just wasn’t cut out for this type of subterfuge. Her nerves were overwrought. “What did you tell him?”

Melisande raised her mouse-brown eyebrows. “Nothing. He wouldn’t have noticed me, anyway.”

Emeline was distracted from her own worries by her friend’s cynical self-assessment. “Don’t be silly. Of course he’d notice you.”

“He doesn’t know my name.”

“What?”

Melisande nodded, no trace of self-pity in her steady brown eyes. “He hasn’t a clue who I am.”

Emeline looked over to where her fiancé sat among a bevy of young ladies. He was gesturing widely, evidently in the midst of some story, and his right hand nearly clipped the cap of the lady sitting nearest to him. She again wanted to snap at Melisande not to be silly, but the truth was, Jasper probably did indeed have no clue what Melisande’s name was. He’d always paid more attention to the most beautiful ladies in their circle. That was only to be expected, she supposed. Men were rather shallow that way, caring more for a lady’s looks than her feelings or mind. Most men, anyway. Samuel sat in the opposite corner, flanked by his sister and Mrs. Ives—a rather plain lady of advanced years. He had his head tilted to the lady as she said something, but his eyes caught hers just as she looked at him.

Emeline looked away, feeling heat invade her cheeks. Damn the man. It wasn’t enough that he’d used her body until it ached this morning in a terrible, pleasurable way; now he must invade her every waking thought.

“...do hope you used a preventative,” Melisande was saying across from her.

“What?” Emeline asked too sharply.

Her friend glanced at her as if she could tell that Emeline’s mind was elsewhere. “I said I hoped that you used a preventative last night.”

Emeline stared. “What are you talking about?”

“Something to prevent a baby—”

Emeline choked.

“Are you all right?” her bosom beau asked as if she hadn’t just shot a cannon into the conversation.

Emeline waved at her as she took a drink of tea. Briefly, she contemplated denying that she’d spent the night with Samuel, but the conversation seemed well past that point. Instead, she settled on the more pressing matter. “Quite. How...how—?”

Melisande stared at her sternly. “I can’t think how you can embark upon an affair without taking appropriate measures. There are sponges that fit in the female body—”

“How in the world do you know of such things?” Emeline asked in real wonder. Melisande was unmarried and presumably a maiden.

“There are books if one is interested.”