Chapter 6

CHAPTER 6

WHERE A COUPLE NAVIGATE TENDER FEELINGS

W hen he reached his bedchamber, Nigel nudged the door open with his boot. Crossing to the center of the room, he gently settled Arabella to the floor. His curtains were fluttering madly in the gusts ripping through the windows. They were a pale, milky white velvet, unlike current fashion dictated, giving the space a hauntingly serene feel.

When she was steady on her feet, he stepped back, allowing her the choice to leave him. To say no. To pick someone else . To change her mind about him.

He wasn’t noble. She’d created a fictional man in her mind. That silly nitwit Ambrose was closer to her dream than he was. She didn’t want to know the things Nigel had done to survive. And he didn’t want to tell her.

She trailed her hand up his jaw and tapped his temple. “Stop it, darling man.”

Grabbing her wrist, he pressed a kiss to her palm. Bit into the fleshy heel of her hand while wondering what she looked like beneath those pesky layers. “Last chance, Bell.” Though he truly wondered if he’d let her leave.

Maybe if she begged .

When he prayed she’d beg for other things.

Releasing an age-old, knowing smile, she turned, presenting her back. The row of hooks and ties holding her gown in place invited his touch. Although his hands were shaking, a novel sensation, he didn’t pretend ignorance of the bindings. His experience was what it was. His past was what it was. His feelings for this wondrous woman were what they were.

As he’d been told a thousand times by his father, a man didn’t choose.

Love chose you .

Unexpectedly, like a blow to the head.

To reclaim a trace of control, he teased her during the process. Ten hair clips, his lips dusting the nape of her neck with the removal of each. A kiss to any exposed patch of skin with each hook released on her gown. One tie, one nibble. Earlobe, shoulder, wrist. Until he was on his knees, her gown puddling around her ankles and flowing over his boots. Then he stood and started again. Eyelets on her corset, drawstrings on her drawers. Caresses followed each advance in her unveiling.

Until she stood swaying, her breath rasping from her lips, her skin littered with goosebumps and a fine sheen of sweat.

In nothing but a gossamer chemise that left little to his imagination.

She was slender and slightly taller than he’d recalled. Shapely, but in the most graceful fashion. He grabbed a handful of her gorgeous, flaxen hair and brought it to his nose. She smelled of lemons and lust.

Leaving Nigel worried he wasn’t going to last long enough to pleasure her.

Therefore, he formulated a plan.

Pressing his chest to her back, he filled his hands with her surprisingly plump breasts, her nipples pebbling beneath his thumbs. She curved into him, nestling his cock against her bottom. He held back a groan with every scrap of his strength. “I’m going to make you come before I remove one stitch of my clothing, imp. With my hands and my mouth. Unless you stop me. Do it soon if you’re going to stop me.”

In reply, she issued the supplest moan he’d ever heard .

Not going to stop you , it said.

Glancing around, he realized there were few options in the room. The bed, of course, which he was saving for the moment he slid inside her.

And the desk.

A hulking mammoth of an antique his mother had given him upon his graduation from university. Some said Henry VIII once owned it.

That would do.

Spinning her around, he took her lips in a kiss meant to destroy and backed her toward it.

Christ , she kissed like a lightskirt, he marveled, losing focus for a lengthy second. She held nothing back, nothing.

Sitting Arabella on the desk, Nigel raised her chemise. Thighs, waist, tummy, breasts— ah , her glorious breasts—shoulders, then the wisp of silk fluttered to the floor.

And, saints love her, she didn’t bat one eyelash. Flinch or try to cover herself. A Macauley through and through, this girl.

Extending her leg, she drew her toe along the impressive erection tenting his trousers. “What if I make you come first?”

Nigel laughed, bringing his hand to his lips to cover it. When had he enjoyed being with someone as much as he enjoyed being with her? “You could try.” Bracing his hands on the desk on either side of her, he leaned in, taking her nipple between his lips. Then his teeth. She hissed out a sharp breath and bowed into the touch. “But I’m a very competitive bloke.”

From there, the world dissolved, like the view through a rain-streaked windowpane. The sound of carriage wheels striking cobblestones, the distant clamor of thunder, Arabella’s faint cries as he sucked one nipple and moved to the other muted in his mind. The taste of her streaked across his tongue and flowed down his body, where it landed fairly predictably in his cock. Curling his arm around her waist, he scooted her forward until she was open before him, legs spread.

Going to his knees, he gazed up at her, marveling at his wealth. Her back was arched just so, throwing her body forward. Her nipples tight little buds, a dark, dusky pink. Her lips open with the aroused sounds coming from her throat. Groaning, she’d tunneled her fingers in his hair and knocked her knees into his shoulders to urge him to touch her.

What had he done to deserve this lovely, spirited, beautiful young woman?

“Hang on, imp.”

She scored her nails across his scalp, sending a shiver through him. “Show me,” she whispered, her head thrown back. “You said you would kiss every inch of me. Kiss me here, like you promised.”

“It was more of a threat,” he murmured and began the assault.

She smelled of the floral fragrance she probably tossed in her bath, he noted, as he trailed his nose along her thigh. He parted her glistening folds when he reached them, playing lightly, tongue, fingers, breath. When he blew on her the second time, she cried out.

Ah, she likes this.

She looped her legs over his shoulders, and he thought, brilliant idea .

Then he recorded every twitch, every sigh, every tensing of her fingers—until he had an excellent read on her stimulation points. It was like watching the gaming tables and observing a gambler’s tells. Nigel was the best in the business for spotting them, hence his incredible success.

And Arabella Macauley wasn’t even trying to hide hers.

When she was breathless and wholly engaged in what he considered a tentative foray, playfully intent, he slid a finger inside her as he took the swollen nub of her sex between his lips. She tasted divine, her juices coating his tongue and pushing his shaft into a throbbing press against his trouser buttons. Realizing he wasn’t going to last long if he delayed, he sucked and stroked while she moaned, rocking into his face.

For an untried woman, she was amazingly responsive. And free. Willing to be who she was , in the most private of places, confidence it had taken him years to find.

Images of what he was going to do to her after they made it to the bed sent his head spinning. He had a feeling she’d be keen to try anything. (There were things he wanted to do and never had, a long list of them.)

“Streeter, please, now .” She palmed her hand on the desk and bowed into him. Her hair had come loose, and damp strands were clinging to her neck. Her thighs were rosy from the stubble on his jaw, her sex flushed. He’d never seen a more beautiful sight—and never expected to.

Curling his hand around her hip, he guided her into a rhythm matching the stroke of his tongue, the plunge of his finger. She began to shake, a delicious quiver that started at her feet and raced up her body. Since she was wrapped around him, he was able to record the advancement of her release. Each dazzling second, a first for him. The cries, the trembling, the flood of heat and moisture, her muscles tensing, tensing, then releasing in a deluge of spent energy and dazed arousal.

Gasping, she collapsed to the desk in a side sprawl, catching him in the center of the chest, and almost knocking him off his feet. “Leave me. I’m not going to survive,” she panted through the flaxen tangle dangling across her face.

Smiling, grinning actually, he scrubbed his wrist over his lips. She’d come all over him—and that wasn’t over, no matter what she believed. They were going to be in utter ruins by the time they were through.

Because the bliss was only beginning.

Gathering her tenderly in his arms, he carried her to the bed, and deposited her atop the mattress. Pressing a kiss to her brow, he brushed her hair from her eyes. “You are goddamn gorgeous, Bell. The finest sight I’ve been invited to witness in all my thirty-three years. I wish it weren’t so many years between us… but there is it.”

She snorted a laugh past the arm she’d draped across her face. “Who gives a shite about eleven insignificant years? I’ve always been more mature than the rest of the Leighton Cluster children. I should be angry about all those silly doxies you’ve trifled with.” She lifted her arm and peered at him, her expression completely dazed but with a spark of fire. “I hate them, the greedy chits, but I love what you can do with that wicked mouth and those talented fingers.” She sighed and closed her eyes. “So, I suppose I win in the end. ”

Loving her, simply loving her, he leaned to kiss her, unleashing the sensual magic swirling between them. She flowered beneath him, eager. He waited until she moaned and lifted her hips, telling him she wasn’t finished, not at all.

Straightening, he moved out of reach. “Patience, imp.”

“Come back,” Arabella whispered from the shadowy spot beneath her arm.

He wrenched his waistcoat free and the shirt she’d destroyed in her earlier frenzy. The remaining bone button hit the floor and rolled beneath the bed. At the sound, she perked up and began to watch the proceedings. Her fingers clenched in the counterpane as she swallowed.

Nigel wasn’t shy, and her hot gaze only provoked.

He fenced, boxed, and swam in the Serpentine several times a week when weather permitted, an activity he and his father had been doing for years in the dead of night. A habit from Toby’s boyhood, when a lake was the only means of bathing.

Gliding his knife from the sheath strapped to his calf, Nigel tossed it to the floor. Tugged one boot free, then the other. Unbuttoned his trousers and slipped them down his legs. When he stood in his drawers, his cock an inspiring display of hunger, he paused, teasingly curving his thumb in his waistband.

She rose to her elbow, her smile crooked. “Are you waiting for my endorsement?”

He recorded the skip in his heartbeat with no small trace of fear. Arabella held him in the palm of her hand, in a way no other woman had. It was alarming and… astounding. Joyous. Like the brief period where he’d been captivated by opium—a habit Macauley had crushed before it truly began—ecstasy cascaded through his bloodstream.

“Once I climb in that bed, you’re mine, imp. Mine . Remember my promise about no half measures.”

She giggled, a girl not acknowledged as silly in any way. “I’m already yours, Nigel Streeter. I always have been.”

Well, then. Ripping off his drawers, he strode across the chamber, the bed dipping with his weight. Before she let nervousness claim her, he took her face in his hands, and kissed her as if life would cease without her. The first touch of his skin to hers with nothing between them tore through him like a rogue wave across the sea.

In that second, he marveled at the realization that he couldn’t survive without her.

Bracing his forearm on the bed to hold off some of his weight, he settled atop her, and they joined in a frenzy, limbs intertwining, hands roaming. He longed to discover every peak and valley of her slender body, every crease, every freckle. Her scattered breath, her sprinting heartbeat, the ragged pulse beneath her skin. She was sunlight, and he was dusk, but it worked, their merger. On some mad level, they balanced each other in ways he’d heard about his entire life.

The Duchess Society, after all, were notorious for finding true love.

Only, Nigel hadn’t chosen Arabella. He hadn’t known .

Nonetheless, when he paused to gaze at her, in his bed, slowly creeping into his heart, he thanked the gods she’d found him.

She was soft from her release. Warm, moist, vulnerable. Her skin sleek beneath his fingertips, her teeth bold as they sank into his skin. The sensual moves he usually incorporated, he left behind. Not by choice. Once they were swept into the act, he lost contact with that side of him. The tense negotiator working on the practical exchange.

Nudging her legs open and slipping between them, his rigid cock finding her velvet folds, was the least practical place he’d ever found himself.

“I want—”

“Not yet,” he whispered against the side of her breast. Taking her nipple between his teeth, he went a little rougher, a little deeper, than he had before. Out on the lane, glass shattered against cobblestones, and he’d never cared less what was happening in the world outside this bedchamber.

When she glided her hand over his waist, he lifted his hips, encouraging her.

“You’re so hard,” she murmured, her fingers circling his cock. “I hadn’t fully imagined. Whispers in parlors from the experienced ladies to the inexperienced ones can’t match actual touch.” She exhaled softly, her breath striking his cheek. “I wonder…”

“I’ll slide right in like you were made for me, imp, never fear. ”

His hand covered hers, showing her, this time without cloth between them. Long strokes, her thumb bumping the swollen head. The pulse chimed between his shoulder blades and rolled down his back and into his buttocks. “I warn you,” he whispered, ragged, his breath coming fast. “I won’t last long. Not with the preliminary antics tonight. I’m halfway there already.”

She looped her leg over his and lifted her hips, grinding against him. “That’s what second times are for, darling rookery man.”

Laughing in delight, he took her lips, tangling his tongue with hers. His fingers found her ready, dewy. Sliding a finger inside, then another, they matched rhythms, graceless one moment, faultless the next. Thrusting, fondling. She experimented with relish, discovering new things about him. He loved having his nipples sucked, an activity he’d never slowed down long enough to try. And the tiny nips she gave him on a decidedly sensitive spot beneath his collarbone drove him mad. Her hair flowing over his face and chest was an aphrodisiac, like a jolt of liquor firing through his veins.

When he was nearly undone, he took her hand and pinned it by her head, trapping her. Her other was locked at his waist, urging him into a yet-unmet cadence. She was close herself, cheeks flushed, chest heaving, eyes bright silver crescents he wanted to lose himself in. “I desire you more than I’ve desired a damned thing in this life, Arabella Macauley. More than safety, more than my next meal, more than wealth or respect or success.” He tipped her chin, making sure her gaze was on his when he possessed her. “Understand me because this isn’t merely another conquest. There is no one but you. I’ve never had another woman in this bed. This is us . Only us.”

Before she could speak and conceivably say things he was terrified to hear, he laid his mouth to hers, fit her knee against his hip, and nudged inside. It was a tender, tantalizing, languid glide, inch by delicious inch. Silky skin surrounding his length, her heartbeat striking his chest in a feral tempo. Her fingers tugging his hair, nails scoring his skin, body rising to meet his thrusts. The bed, another cast-off from his family’s coffers, squeaked with the swelling movement. There was a pause of resistance, her muffled cry against his lips, her shiver, then they were free. Climbing a mountain he’d never scaled .

Making love.

When before, it had simply been sex.

She bit his earlobe and whispered wicked things in his ear, sending his fever higher. Their skin grew moist; the air thickened with their scent. The sounds of pleasure rippled across the chamber. Sighs, moans, bodies meeting.

“Bell, ah, God , I want you. You are turning me inside out.”

She trailed her lips down his neck. “You have me, Nigel, you have me.”

From there, they raced to the finish line. Tangled arms and legs, furiously rocking into each other. Bumping, grinding, pulsing. Heat swept over him, prickling his skin. He shouldered a bead of sweat from his temple and realized, manage this, lad, or you’re arriving without her.

The bud at the top of her sex was swollen, flowering for his touch. He circled the bundle of nerves as he braked his thrusts, giving himself a few seconds. “Come with me, imp. Now, please. Please .”

She groaned, her body bending and knocking his hand off target.

Thankfully, she spiraled into bliss, shaking and shivering, pulling him into the most mind-numbing orgasm of his life. Lights flashed behind his sealed lids as his heartbeat exploded in his ears.

They trembled, grasping and groaning, locked together, clutching each other at the end.

Novel in every way.

When they’d quieted, he laid his brow to hers, holding his weight off her as best he could when he couldn’t feel his arms. “Am I too heavy?”

She blinked, yanking a strand of hair from her face. “Heavy,” she murmured as if she’d never heard the word.

Laughing weakly, he rolled and took her with him, until they were lying face-to-face on his shaky-arse bed. Now, he could see why the piece had been relegated to his parents’ attic.

She nuzzled into his chest, finding an ideal spot. Kissed his neck and danced her fingers through the hair on his chest. A part of him she seemed to like when he’d never given it much consideration past his adolescence—when every hint of maturation had been a gift .

She hugged him, squirming, bumping him from chest to hip to ankle. Her feet were slim and petite and cozying against his.

He hesitated slightly before pulling her in and completing the fit. Rain plinked off the windowpanes, lulling him into the most peaceful existence of his remembrance. The piquant scent of their lovemaking rode the air, and he breathed it in like nectar.

“Give in to me,” Arabella whispered, amused, her ability to see him fucking terrifying. A dash of moonlight cascaded across her lovely face, and his heart drifted away like a butterfly to her. “There’s no holding back now, Streeter. Not when I’ve seen you at your weakest.”

Nigel hugged her, the first time in ages he fell asleep with his heart absent of loneliness.

And the very first time while holding the woman he loved.