Chapter 29

29

When Sophie awoke, Rafe was sitting beside her. He had drawn the curtains and lit a few candles, and the room was even cosier and more intimate in the soft light. He’d brought her a tray with lots of tempting little morsels of food, napkins, and a bottle of rich red wine with just one glass. They would have to share, he told her. She sat up, suddenly as ferociously hungry as he had predicted, and they set about the meal. She was still naked and did not think to cover herself, but found that she was eating in a deliberately provocative manner, sucking her fingers, shaking back the dark cloak of her hair to bare herself to him again. He was sitting beside her, propped against the pillows as she was, and after they had eaten their fill and were merely toying with the food he took the glass from her hand. He sipped, holding her with his eyes, and then dipped his finger in the dark liquid and very deliberately dribbled a trail across the upper slope of her breast, then lowered his head and licked it slowly from her, careful not to miss the smallest drop. Her nipples peaked, pleasantly sore still from his attentions but eager to be tongued and tweaked and nibbled again. She shuddered with returning desire, and with the sudden knowledge – half enticing, half alarming – that he’d be quite prepared to do it all once more.

‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s my turn now. I’m going to do to you just exactly what you did to me – the only difference is there’s more of you, and so it will take longer.’

‘Do what you will with me,’ he said very low. ‘Fast or slow, I don’t mind.’ He swung round and sat up, setting his feet on the floor, and she slid from the bed and knelt between his legs so that she could take off his top boots. ‘Stay there a second,’ he said. ‘Let me look at you. You’re so beautiful.’

‘I can’t linger, my lord. I have a great deal to do. Does your valet generally perform this task for you?’ she asked, grasping the shining leather and tugging. He was a gentleman of fashion, not a dandy but a Corinthian, and he must surely have a valet to take care of his clothes.

‘I suppose he does, but I can assure you that it’s really not the same.’

‘I should hope not,’ she said, setting one boot aside and commencing on the other; they were tight, and not easy to remove, but at last she had the second one free, and moved to unfasten the buttons at the knees of his breeches. She slipped her fingers under the hem and caressed the skin still hidden there, and then she pulled down his stockings, as slowly as she could manage. It seemed she was more impatient than he by nature. His calves were firm and muscular, and she stroked them appreciatively, then bent to kiss his feet, her hair falling in dark curtains about her face.

‘Sophie…’ he groaned.

‘Shush! I’m wondering what to do next. Your coat, I think.’ She stood between his thighs – he was still sitting – and began to peel back his tight blue superfine coat from his broad shoulders. He helped her, shrugging out of it, and his plain waistcoat came off much more easily, after she had slowly undone each of its buttons. He had far fewer buttons than she did – it didn’t seem fair. But she was tantalising him quite satisfactorily, she thought: he’d plainly been entranced by the sight of her kneeling at his feet, breasts bouncing with the effort of dragging off his boots, and the removal of his coat and waistcoat had presented him with the same prospect, far closer. It was an effort for him not to seize her, she knew instinctively.

She could just pull his shirt over his head in one swift movement and have done with it – but no. Too fast, too easy. She moved to straddle him, her bare thighs and bottom resting on the soft buckskin leather of his breeches, and began inching up the fine lawn of his shirt, untucking it from his waistband and pulling it higher with painstaking slowness until just a glimpse of his sculpted abdomen was revealed. Really, who was tormenting whom here?

Gathering the fullness of the fabric in both hands, she raised it higher, and he lifted his arms obediently so that she could pull it right over his head and discard it. But she didn’t. When it was high enough to cover his face and trap his arms, she stopped. She held him there, her prisoner, and pressed her body close against his, glorying in his warmth, the intoxicating masculine scent of him, and the fact that the tables had turned and he was in her power now.

She slid her core against the hot leather that covered his groin, his hardness straining against her, and rubbed her breasts deliberately to and fro over the whorls of dark hair on his muscled chest. ‘Sophie,’ he said, his voice hoarse and muffled in the folds of material, ‘you are pleasuring yourself against me, and I cannot see it! Do you have any idea how unfair that is?’

‘Just a little pleasuring, and just a little unfair,’ she said breathlessly, her skin sensitised by his rough hair, the hard muscles and the smooth leather. ‘But now it is time to move on.’ She pushed him firmly back to lie flat upon the bed, but she did not remove his shirt to release him. He could have pulled it over his head and freed himself quite easily – but that would be against the unspoken rules of the game they were playing, and so he did not.

Her hand was on the buttons that closed the fall of his breeches. She gripped one strong thigh between hers as she undid him, and shamelessly she ground herself against him while her fingers worked. They were both panting now, and she thought she might climax again long before she had done with him. She was both sorry and not sorry when it was time to dismount from him and pull down his breeches; when they were cast aside and he had sprung free in all his magnificent erectness, she could only be glad. She wanted to eat him – but again, that would be too easy.

She darted out her tongue and licked the glistening slit at the head of his member, just a fleeting taste, and he groaned, his body bucking under her, but she pulled away. She straddled his thighs and paused to consider. He was hard against her curls, so close to where he needed to be, just a few inches away, but not quite there. She could see and feel him twitching against her. Then she smiled to herself – of course her face was not visible to him – and twisted her locks into a great hank, which she then used to flick and tickle all across his chest, while her thighs gripped him and he thrust involuntarily up against her. Between tantalising flicks of her hair she found one hard, pebbled nipple and sucked on it. When she ventured to nip him a little with her teeth, he jolted so hard that he lifted his body and hers right off the bed.

‘Was that pleasure or pain?’ she whispered, and as her breath feathered his skin he shuddered.

‘I don’t know. Does it matter? Do it again!’

She did, and now that she was beginning to understand what he liked she was more confident. She kissed and nipped her way down his body, leaving him gasping, following the line of dark hair that pointed the way – although she was not likely to get lost, she thought, with such a substantial signpost beckoning to her. There was something intoxicating about his responsiveness and the power she had over him. She could do anything . She’d never been shy, not since she discovered how to give and receive pleasure, and now she was made bolder by the fact that Rafe could not see her.

God, he was beautiful, with his hard planes of muscle scattered with dark hair. Not like a statue, or no statue of a Greek or Roman god that she had ever seen – no smooth marble perfection here. She lay down between his muscular thighs and amused herself by kissing them, and biting them where she found that he was most sensitive. Each little bite set him writhing with electric intensity upon the sheets. She made teasing forays up to stroke and kiss his silky hardness, and he was so aroused and so far beyond ready for her that after a while she could no longer resist tasting him more fully. She’d wanted to tantalise him longer, but – she couldn’t. Her lips were on him, her mouth and her hand. Her world shrank to the pure sensation of tasting him, touching him, pleasing him and herself. He lost himself in her. When at last his body was no longer racked with his intense and prolonged spending, she laid her head on his thigh and closed her own eyes, drinking in the scent of him, sweat and seed and spicy maleness, and the lingering taste. He was still blindfolded, his arms still tangled in his shirt. He’d cried out as he came, but he hadn’t spoken and he hadn’t been able to embrace her, captive as he was.

Now he said, ‘Sophie…’ There was a great deal of feeling in the single word.

‘Rafe. Yes, I’m still here.’

‘I thought you might be.’ There was a lazy, satiated smile in his voice. ‘May I disentangle myself now? I want to hold you.’

‘Of course.’

He was free in an instant, and she moved up his body to lie in his arms, her head on his shoulder. He was, to her delight, no longer immaculate, but as flushed and dishevelled as she must be. ‘I think you must know how much I enjoyed that,’ he murmured. ‘And I believe you did too, but I wonder how much.’

‘Very much,’ she said. ‘But not very, very, very much.’

He was so quick, and understood her instantly. ‘Well, that must be rectified.’

She lay back on the tangled sheets, inviting him, and he ran his hand down her body, slipping his fingers into her curls to find them damp, her secret places ready for his touch. ‘Mmm…’ she said. ‘Yes, just there. Oh, you are a man of many talents, Rafe.’ She was very aroused, she had been close to climax when he’d spent himself, and his clever fingers took her closer still with their first touch.

‘So gloriously wet,’ he whispered, sliding his fingers into her. She bit her lip and took one engorged nipple between her fingers, playing with it and arching her back as he pleasured her once more, pushing herself up against his hand, convulsing as he worked her, surrendering to the delicious waves of oblivion.

Afterwards she lay in his arms, dazed, and he pulled up the covers over them both. ‘Is it late?’ she said languidly. ‘I’ve lost all sense of time.’

‘I think it must be.’ The house was very quiet; it felt as though they were the only two people awake in the world.

‘Will you stay here tonight? I think you don’t normally sleep here.’

‘I never do, but I will tonight. I took a foolish vow long ago never to spend another night under Wyverne’s roof. But this is the time to break it, I think.’

She stirred restlessly. ‘I don’t want you to do violence to your feelings on my account.’

‘My feelings are different now. I’m not leaving you. Even if I could tear myself away from the warmth of your embrace, which I don’t think I could, I wouldn’t rest easy knowing you were here alone.’

‘I must admit I don’t want you to go. But I do need to leave your arms for a moment. It would be most romantic to fall asleep like this, but I am not entirely comfortable.’

He understood her instantly, and told her that there was a necessary behind the screen, which she had known already.

When it was his turn to use it, she returned to the bed. She was damp with perspiration, and so was he, and the room smelled inescapably of sex. There could be no mistaking… And with that thought, the clever, calculating part of her brain, the part that had seized on the chance to stay alive and thrive when it had been offered her by Nate, clicked into operation and gave her the solution.

He came back to her and joined her in the warm bed, and as she relaxed into his arms once more she said, ‘Rafe, I think I know how we can ensure that I escape suspicion, and no longer need to hide away here.’ She felt his body stiffen, and added hastily, ‘Don’t misunderstand me. There’s a large part of me that would like to stay here forever. It’s so tempting to feel safe in your embrace, and God knows I don’t want to leave you. But I must. You know as well as I do that my situation is desperate, and to think that I can stay concealed here for long enough to escape discovery is simply unrealistic. You can’t stay here all the time or guarantee my safety when you must be absent. Someone will realise eventually that I’m here, even if it takes days or weeks. And then I’ll be in a desperate case.’

‘I know,’ he said a little bleakly. ‘Everything you say is entirely correct. I collect that you have a plan?’

‘I do. And I do believe it could work. But I don’t think you’re going to like it.’