8. Chapter 8

Chapter 8

W ill wrapped his arms around her, and she braced for impact. When they crashed to the bed, his weight pushed the air from her lungs, and Adelaide lay speechless, motionless, underneath him, with his head buried in the space between her shoulder and neck.

Her nostrils filled with his clean scent; he must have used the same citrus soap that had accompanied her bath, but on him it reminded her of fresh summer mornings, of fields of wildflowers and bright sunshine. Perhaps he wouldn't notice if she smelled him a bit longer, since she'd already caused this debacle and couldn't possibly mortify herself further.

But the man was blasted heavy. Adelaide shifted beneath him, and Will hissed against her jaw. “Don’t. Move.”

Ever obedient (ha!), she froze. “Why not?”

His chuckle was low and lacking in humor as it rumbled from his chest across hers to pool deep in her belly. “Because…” He broke off with an oath. “I never should have come into your room.”

White-hot humiliation burned in her throat. She had forced him to chaperone a wayward bride, and now she was lusting after him and interfering with his sleep. How selfish of her. She pressed her hands to his chest and pushed. “If you’re so unhappy, why don’t you get up?”

This time, a subtle rock of his hips accompanied his chuckle. “If I get up, I’ll shock you and embarrass myself.”

Then she realized what she’d missed when she had her nose to his hair, memorizing his scent. The hard ridge of his arousal pressed into her thigh, the length blazing through the scant layers of fabric. “Good gracious,” she whispered, and he groaned as he pushed up, putting space between their chests.

“I’m sorry Adelaide.” The tips of his ears were pink and a darling blush stained his cheeks. “You deserve to be treated better than this.”

“Will, wait.” He stilled, held her gaze. For once she was without words, overwhelmed by the sheer want pounding in her veins. “You’re—are you attracted to me?”

“God, Adelaide.” He leaned forward, buried his head into her shoulder again. When he spoke, his lips brushed her clavicle. “Was it not obvious?”

She grinned, humiliation dissolving like morning mist. “It is now!”

He sat up and smirked, but then shook his head. “That’s why I shouldn’t be in your room. I don’t know if I can resist the temptation.”

“Why would you need to resist?” She attempted a coy lift of her brow. “Perhaps I wasn’t obvious, but I’m attracted to you as well.”

She’d barely said the last word when he pushed away, his erection tenting the front of his breeches as he paced from the bed. “That’s the problem. I can’t be attracted to you.”

Sitting up, she fixed him with a glare. “Why can’t you be attracted to me?”

“Because you’re too—” He gestured towards her, but cut off with a disgruntled huff.

Adelaide’s mind supplied dozens of plausible endings to that sentence. Too loud, too talkative. Too modern, too smart. Too plump. She’d heard them all from her mother, gossips at balls, the men who avoided her in society. For every insult she brushed off, two more sank in, until all she knew was a pulsating too much , like an insidious heartbeat.

He raked his fingers through his hair, and she didn’t miss how his bicep bulged with the action. “Because of where you’re going,” Will finally said.

She tucked her hands between her knees, feeling like a chastised child. “My wedding.”

“Your wedding,” he echoed. “If I didn’t know—”

Adelaide was already on her feet. “If you had met me tonight, here at this inn, would you have approached me?”

His brows knit together, but after a long beat, he nodded.

Heartened, she stepped closer. “And if I asked you to come back to my room…” She stopped, licked her lips, reveling in the hunger that blazed across his expression. “Would you spend the night with me?”

His Adam’s apple bobbed with his swallow. “Yes.”

The single affirmation washed over her skin, sending gooseflesh in its wake. “Then let’s pretend to be strangers. We won’t see each other again after tomorrow, and I’ve made no vows I can break.” She filled her lungs, lifted her chin. “Spend the night with me, Will, in my bed. With me .”

The last word had barely crossed her lips before he was there, capturing her mouth with his. His hands spread wide across her waist, over her hips as he tugged her against him. When she gasped at the press of his fingertips on her bottom, he took advantage, sweeping his tongue against hers until her knees wobbled.

“This arse, Adelaide,” he growled against her lips. “I’ve never seen anything like it. Perfection.” He squeezed and fondled, sending shivers of pleasure up her spine.

“Mine?” she gasped. “It’s too—”

“Stop. I can’t stand it if you speak badly of yourself.”

His voice was gentle but contained steel, a foundation for something stronger. Perhaps something she could cling to that wouldn’t fail her. “I won’t,” she breathed. “For you.”

He nipped at her bottom lip, then soothed it with a kiss. “For yourself.” His lips dragged down her neck, and he lashed his tongue on her pulse point. “For me.” A scrape of his teeth along her collarbone. “For us.”

For us? She wanted to question him, to bombard him with queries about what those two words might mean to him when the very notion of us could only last for a few hours, but one hand had left her bottom and now cupped her breast with the same tenderness he’d handled her, all of her. Her nipples tightened to impossibly hard peaks under his palms, and when he pinched one between his fingers, the sensation arced to her sex and her knees gave out.

Will caught her with one arm in the small of her back, lifted her against him, and he was nothing but strength, solidity, supporting her soft places. He backed her up to the bed, then set her down on the edge. His eyes blazed as he looked her over, taking stock of every inch of her trembling body. “Lie down on the bed, Adelaide,” he said.

With a nod, she shifted backwards, and once her head touched the pillow, he was over her, propped on his elbows with his weight to her side as kissed down her neck, across her collarbone and the swell of her breasts. When he reached the tie holding the neckline of her chemise in place, he paused, met her eye. “Yes?”

An utterly unfamiliar warmth spread through her. For all his strength and power, he wanted her consent, to ensure she was in control of every moment. After spending her life attempting to make her voice heard, he took a time when she was at her most vulnerable and listened.

For now, she could hand the control safely to him. “Yes,” she whispered, then repeated with more enthusiasm. “Yes!”

A smile pulled at the edge of his mouth, then vanished as he tugged the silk ribbon loose and lifted the fabric away from her chest. He revealed one breast, then the other, and her breath fractured in her throat. His lips parted as he cupped one soft orb in his hand. “Perfection,” he purred. “You fit my hand just like I thought you would.”

“You—you’ve thought about this?” Why was it so hard to breathe when this man looked at her like that, the utter concentration and reverence tangible in his gaze?

He leaned down and pressed a lazy, open-mouthed kiss to the side of her breast, then the underside, covering the soft flesh but never touching the aching peak. “Since the moment I saw you.” His attention switched to her other breast. “I couldn’t stop thinking about you.”

His thumb flicked over her nipple and she cried out, arched her back to press herself further into his touch, but he pulled away, stroking her hair from her brow instead. She wanted to kick him.

He chuckled as his lips drifted over the shell of her ear. “Patience, my sweet. Can you be patient?”

“No, I can’t,” she whined, bucking her hips in a desperate bid for friction, something to ease the ache that thrummed between her thighs. “Please, Will, touch me.”

His fingertips dragged down her arm, and goosebumps erupted in their wake. “I am touching you.” Another kiss along the inside curve of her upper arm, then a gentler one to her lips. “You deserve for me to be patient with you.”

“I’m not a virgin.”

He froze, leaned away. Dammit, Adelaide!

“If that matters to you,” she continued, unable to stem the flow of ridiculous, humiliating words. She clamped her eyes, but not her mouth, shut. “Not that it should, but it was only one time, with a friend. We were both virgins and—”

“Adelaide.”

“But you don’t need to worry about it being my first time or anything, or that you’ll hurt me or—”

“ Adelaide.”

She opened her lids, one at a time, to find him watching her with a furrow between his brows. “Yes?”

He exhaled in a rush. “That… that was a lot.”

“I know,” she whimpered, burying her face in her hands. “I’m so sorry, but I can’t control it sometimes.”

“Control what?” He smoothed a lock of her hair and curled it around his finger.

“My words,” she breathed, taking her hands away. “I talk too much. You know I do.”

He slid his knuckles down her cheek, caught her chin in a delicate touch, and turned her to look at him. “Stop saying you’re too much. If you want me to know something, say it. Trust that I’ll listen.” His lips brushed over hers, then again more deeply, leaving her breathless. “And I will be careful with you, even if you don’t want me to be gentle.”

With care so deliberate it was excruciating, Will explored her with his hands and mouth, lips and tongue, every moment intentional and calculated, as though he’d spent weeks, months planning them instead of mere hours. Soon she was writhing, arching into his touch, except his blasted fingers hadn’t yet roamed to where she most needed them, where she ached.

“Will,” she moaned, “please…”

He lifted his mouth from her breast and smirked. “Please what, my sweet?”

“There is more of me to explore.” She gasped as he pulled her nipple into his mouth, suckled, then released. “An entire southern hemisphere, in fact.”

The skin between her breasts muffled his laugh, the coarse hair of his beard making every nerve stand on end. “Patience, remember?”

“You’re distracting me,” she moaned, her words breaking as he devoted his attention to her strained nipple, the ruched areola so tender every kiss, every touch sent her shuddering with want.

His wicked green eyes met hers and her breath caught. “Trust me. It will be worth the wait.”

Her rational mind screamed her opposition, that she had authority over her own body, and who was he to deny her pleasure? But something primordial reached from low in her belly, wrapped around her and soothed her, even as arousal threatened to undo her. Trust , the primal beast whispered. You can trust him with this.

“I—I’ll be patient,” she managed, and Will groaned, rough and animalistic.

“Can you come like this, sweet?” His fingers skimmed over her breast, brushing the erect peak and making her entire body jolt. “Just from your breasts? You’re so responsive.” He dragged his teeth over the peak, nipped the barest amount, then laved his tongue to soothe the skin.

“I d-don’t know…” Her mind had abandoned ship, had left her adrift in a sea of pleasure.

“I think you can.” He hesitated, pressed a gentle kiss to her lips, then took her hands and wrapped her fingers around the wrought-iron rungs of the headboard. “Trust me.”

Adelaide could not have described what he did or how long it took, but his caresses and kisses dragged her slowly, inexorably towards her climax, but stopped shy each time, until perspiration dotted her skin, her core clenched around nothing. Meanwhile, his rough fingers traced wicked patterns over the bare skin of her thighs until she thought she might burst from the anticipation. Nothing held her hands in place, but she restrained herself from releasing the headboard, wanting desperately to show him she trusted him, that she could be patient.

“Will,” she keened, “I can’t—I won’t…” Her words died on a moan as he took her lips once more and cupped her mound with his large hand, the heel pressing against her swollen nub and sending electricity jolting between the ache of her nipples to her core. The pressure was precisely what she needed but could never articulate, the last piece to send her ecstasy washing over her like a violent wave.

And as her body threatened to burst through her skin, Will was there, holding her close, whispering what she assumed to be something soothing that she couldn’t hear over the buzz in her ears.

When she realized her fingers were cramping, she released the headboard and her hands fell to the side. Will propped himself up on his elbow and watched her with an amused glimmer in his eye. “Satisfied?”

She hummed and shimmied from head to toe. “Yes, very.”

He clucked his tongue and leaned closer, brushing his nose along the edge of her jaw. “Christ, you’re beautiful when you come.”

Her breath escaped in a nervous chuckle as he shifted to kiss down the length of her sternum. “Not like a screaming banshee?”

He looked over the curve of her belly, and she nearly swooned. “Far from it. Do you want to come again?”

“ Yes ,” she bellowed with enough force to make him wince. “I mean, if you want to, that is—”

His smirk was deliciously wicked. “Relax, sweet.”

The first touch of his tongue on her cleft, a long, slow draw along the swollen petals of her sex, sent her body jolting off the bed. He banded one arm low over her stomach, stilling her. “Patience,” he chided, meeting her gaze with a glimmer of amusement in his eye.

Will savored her most intimate flesh with kisses and caresses of his tongue, and when he slid one finger into her slick channel, they both moaned aloud.

“You’re so wet,” he crooned. “So damn pretty. I’ve never seen a more perfect cunt.”

The harsh word delivered in his raspy voice sent her interior walls rippling against his fingers, the controlled glide unbearable for the tremors of sensation she felt down to the tips of her toes. She squirmed, eager for more—more what she couldn’t say because for once she couldn’t find a single remark to insert into the situation, reduced to unintelligible moans and gasps.

How mortifying.

How delightful.

Will’s arm stiffened over her abdomen as he lifted his head. “Stay still.”

“I need…” Her cheeks burned. How could she describe what she needed when she didn’t know herself? “I need…”

“That’s it, Adelaide.” The rasp in his voice changed, warmed, and she wanted to please him, to have him praise her again. “Tell me what you need, what feels good.”

His wicked finger slid in and out once more, leaving tendrils of electricity in its wake. “More of that,” she whispered, and he hummed against her inner thigh.

“Like this?” A second finger joined the first, and she moaned at the exquisite stretch. “Tell me, Adelaide. Is this what you want?”

She whimpered her affirmative. Her one previous encounter with a man was nothing like this, the awkward coupling over before she could inventory the wild responses of her body, how her mind devolved into something primal that sought pleasure alone.

When his tongue lapped against her clitoris, she gasped and nodded wildly. “Yes, that! Will, I want that!”

“So good, sweetheart,” he murmured, then hissed when her fingers dug into his hair, the dark locks like silk. “So beautiful. Use me to make yourself come.”

Will took his arm from her midsection and held her hip, caressed the rounded lower edge of her belly where it met her thighs. Then his fingers squeezed the soft flesh of her bottom, kneading it, shaping it, as though the generosity of her figure fascinated him.

So beautiful, so good.

His words echoed in her mind, in her heart as she shifted her hips, directed his head to where she needed him, until his tongue buffeted against the swollen bundle of nerves with a pressure that threatened to destroy her, his fingers thrusting inside her steadily, patiently. As though he could spend the rest of his life between her legs, pleasuring her.

Her climax built in waves, until it was so powerful, so devastating, she almost feared it. Will must have sensed how close she was, how her body trembled, because he replaced his tongue with his thumb, his other hand increasing the pace of his thrusts. “That’s it, sweet. You’re so close. I want you to come for me, Adelaide. Come for me.”

His face was the last thing she saw before she came apart, his pupils devouring the green irises to leave only deep pools of lust, his beard damp from her arousal. She couldn’t contain her cries as she bowed off the bed, pulses of light and heat rushing through her veins, bursting from her fingertips, going on and on as Will’s words of praise carried her further on the wave of her release.

In time she became aware of him moving her, laying soft kisses over her cheeks and lips. The sound of water, the citrus smell of soap. Then she sucked in her breath as a cool cloth touched the interior of her thighs.

“Hush, darling,” Will whispered. “Let me take care of you.”

If there was ever a way Adelaide would allow a man to hush her, Will had found it in two mind-altering climaxes. She had no strength to resist him, to insist she could manage for herself. After he cleaned the perspiration and evidence of her release from her skin, she took the water he offered in deep sips until he was satisfied. Her effort exhausted itself as she kept her eyes open for long enough to see the tenderness of his expression as he tucked her beneath the bed linens.

Although, judging by the appearance of his trousers, Will would not rest as easily as she.

“What about you?” she whispered. “Do you need—”

“I need nothing, but you need to rest.”

Lord, but she wanted to please him in return. But as delicious—and fatiguing—as their encounter had been, she’d left him unsatisfied and was desperate for more time in his presence. She would have to make it up to him in the morning. “Will you stay with me?” she whispered, her eyes already closed. “Please?”

The bed shifted under his weight, and soon his solid form pressed against her back, surrounding her with warmth. “I won’t leave you. I promise.”

Something in the deep recesses of her mind scratched its fingernail along her consciousness. Of course he’s leaving you. This night only happened because he’s leaving you tomorrow.

But her exhaustion was too powerful, too profound to acknowledge the thought as sleep overcame her, the man behind her keeping her safe.