Chapter 9

CHAPTER 9

F lora made her choice.

She threw all caution to the wind and let her desires lead her where they would. And where they led was beneath the waistband of his breeches. To his member. His cock, undoubtedly. Jack Balfour seemed the sort of man who would say cock—blunt and straightforward, and yet still erotic.

He hissed in a sharp breath. “Flora.”

“There,” she encouraged on the barest whisper. “Was that so hard?”

He nearly laughed but stifled his exclamation into a silent huff of humor. “Yes,” he returned low against her ear. “Infinitely so. Especially with your clever hand making me hard .”

Yet despite this protest, he clearly liked it—he flexed his hips ever so subtly into the press of her hand. And so, without any further ado, she used her other hand to loosen the buttons of his fall front breeches. Slowly, deliberately, so he could stop her if he wished.

But he did not stop her, and in another moment, she delved into his breeches to take up the tender, hard length of him.

He inhaled another swift breath. “Two hands for beginners, I should think,” he muttered.

It was her turn not to laugh. “Jack,” was all she could manage. What a delight it was to flummox and please him all at the same time.

“Say it again.” His voice was dark with whispered need.

But she didn’t—not just yet. Not when she had him in hand. Not when his flesh was somehow smooth and astonishingly stiff all at the same time. And certainly not until he sucked in a long breath as she wrapped her second hand around the bare heat of him. “Jack.”

“Oh, lass.”

“Flora,” she whispered. “Do you like that?”

“God’s balls. Yes. Please, Flora.” He took hold of her shoulders. “Are you trying to kill me?”

“Only a little,” she admitted. “Is that not what the French call it, le petit mort , the little death?” She liked this heady admixture of attraction and wit and flirtation and erotic pleasure.

“The little death is for women,” he gritted.

“I don’t see why we shouldn’t share.”

He could not stop his laugh from echoing out into the glasshouse, and they both froze for a long moment, fearing for their discovery. But there was no other sound, no answering challenge.

Jack peered cautiously over his shoulder, through the foliage. “Thankfully, it seems that we are once again alone, lass.”

“Flora,” she repeated. “It seems only right to speak intimately while I’m grasping your person, Jack. Did they lock the door behind them?”

“You are killing me,” he sighed. “But if you will be so kind as to let go of my cock, I will endeavor to find out.”

“If I must,” she agreed, doing as he asked by buttoning up his breeches.

“Thank you.” He checked the buttons himself, straightened his coat and cuffs, and made his way across to the door, whereupon he threw the bolt. “Damn my eyes,” he said with some relief. “Where were we?”

“Very pleasantly engaged.” She shared his relief. “Gracious, but that was…educational.”

His smile turned roguish as he came back to her. “And what did you learn?”

Flora decided that the slightly teasing but straightforward approach worked best with Jack Balfour. “That you like it when I hold your cock .”

He did not demure. “Very much so.”

“And whoever that was—no, don’t tell me!” Flora held up a hand. “I should never be able to look them in the eye again or make pleasant conversation at a party. I shall be attempting to banish their names from my mind from this moment onward.”

“As you should do with my name once we part.”

“I don’t think so,” she countered. “I think I won’t mind looking you in the eye, for the remembrance of your?—”

“Don’t say it.”

“Cock,” she mouthed silently, “will always give me great pleasure.”

“My dear?—”

“Flora.”

“Flora,” he finished. “I do feel compelled to tell you that I am more than capable of giving you something far more memorable than that.”

“I am delighted to hear that, Jack, because that was the other part of that very educational interlude that I found curious.”

“Aye?”

“Aye,” she confirmed before she firmed her courage. “I think I should very much like to have whatever that was—” She made a vague gesture to indicate the goings-on on the chaise. “—done to me.”

He grew instantly still in the way of a man with a loaded weapon. “Be careful what you ask for, Flora.”

Again, she was no green girl to be instantly rejecting and rebutting his words. She felt, instinctively, that if she was going to choose this, he was the man to choose it with. “I promise you, Jack, I have spent the whole of my admittedly short life being excessively careful. Being diligently prudent. And I have been left entirely unsatisfied with prudence and caution.” She looked up at him, so near but not yet near enough. “I should very much like to be if not exactly reckless, then sensibly indiscreet. With you,” she added for clarity. “And your rather marvelous—” She dropped her glance in the general direction of his nether regions.

She did not get to finish, because suddenly he was there, his hands cupping her face, drawing her mouth up to his. Covering her lips with his. Pressing her back onto the chaise with the welcome weight of his body.

Everything within her ached and sighed with pleasure all at the same time.

“—your marvelous mouth,” she finally finished.

He broke off from their kiss for a ruthless moment. “Not another word.”

And then his leg insinuated itself between hers at the same time that she felt his hand at her thigh, fisting up the long fall of her skirt, drawing it ever higher until she felt the cool air on the skin exposed above her garter. And then his hand—that lovely articulate hand—was stroking the inside of her thigh, following the line of her leg up until?—

His mouth covered hers, swallowing the sound of her astonishment. And pleasure.

He touched her again, fingering her flesh gently but purposefully. Oh, so purposefully, creating such sensations that she all but mewed into his mouth.

This man whom she had only just truly met that evening, whom she had only planned to tease and make like her. This handsome, outrageously attractive, witty, poor, penniless man who had his fingers inside her and was giving her exquisite bliss.

And he knew it. “Shhhhh,” he breathed into her ear the very moment she felt a moan coming on. “Not a word. We don’t want anyone to hear us .” He kissed the hollow behind her ear, and she found herself turning her head to grant him greater access.

“I take that back,” he whispered. “The only word—” He paused to place a kiss on the corner of her eye. “—is stop. If we do anything—if I touch you in a place you don’t like, or in a way you don’t like—you have only to say, ‘stop.’ What I do, I do for you, so if you don’t like, you tell me. Aye?”

“Yes.”

All the while he was whispering his instruction, his other hand had been gliding across the skin above her bodice, and she felt herself all but arching her back into the phantom weight of his palm. Hoping he would do exactly as he did, delving his fingers into the valley between her breasts to find the drawstring to her bodice.

He loosened her bodice, pushing the fabric aside, running his fingertips across the rounded swell of her breasts above the confines of her stays. And then he scooped his fingers into the soft cup of her stays to find and tweak her tight, aching nipples.

Her head fell back on a silent gasp and in another moment his mouth covered hers, kissing away her moan with his lips and clever tongue. He pushed her bodice lower, so it gaped across her chest, sliding her sleeves off her shoulders so her upper arms were trapped snug by her side.

And then, with one hand cradling her nape, and the other hand cupping her mound, he lowered his mouth to suck hard upon her nipple. And everything within her, every feeling and emotion came together to create a need so fierce and powerful it took away all thought all reasons. All of her senses became one—she could only feel.

Feel want. Feel need. Feel pleasure.

Within her, his fingers set up a gentle, steady rhythm, playing and caressing until it was almost too much—too much pleasure and need and aching incandescent joy—and not enough, all at the same time. She pushed up into the weight of his hand, so the pressure and pleasure became one and the same. So the rush of heat and desire began to bloom from within her belly and spread to the very edges of her being.

Flora opened her eyes to look at him in the velvet dark, this beautiful man looming above her. This thoughtful man touching and playing and murmuring incoherent words of passion and encouragement. Her body seemed to be winding itself around his hand, coiling higher and higher, closer to some unseen joy. Some not-so-distant meeting of mind and body and soul and pleasure so beautiful she wanted to laugh and cry all at the same time.

And so, she did. She laughed out his name while tears streamed down her cheeks. She smiled and gasped and smiled and cried until she could do nothing more.

The edges of her vision went dim, and she screwed her eyes shut tight and heat and joy and honeyed fire burst within her, and she was for the first time in her life, perfectly and incandescently exhausted. And happy.

So very, very happy.