12. Chapter Twelve

Chapter Twelve

As she exhaled, he caught her breath. She heard it, felt it. It rippled the air.

The acrid whiff from the extinguished wick lingered before it dissolved. Grey smoke caught the moonlight before it, too, disintegrated.

Rosanna let her arms go limp by her sides. She dropped the candle holder. The carpet smothered its brassy echo as it landed.

For a moment, there was only breath, hers and his, hot and humid in the small space between them. The rough tickle of his stubble grazed her cheek, and his lips brushed her ear. One hand settled hard on her waist. His other began a gentle dance of fingertips over her nightgown, so light that, at times, he barely indented her skin. At others, only the faintest touch of fabric gave any indication of his presence. He pulled her closer, her thighs spreading wider as he settled her into his lap. At the same moment that he pressed a kiss into her ear, his thumb glanced her nipple. A shiver arced through her, and a small gasp escaped her lips.

‘I liked that,’ she breathed.

He laughed, softly. ‘I know.’

Rosanna tried to calm herself, but his words sent an unexpected tension, a bite of apprehension through her. As Phineas scraped his teeth over her earlobe, her body pinched with an anxiety born from somewhere so deep inside, she’d forgotten she’d locked it away. Were they smaller, more delicate lovers he had known? More complaisant than her?

‘How do you know?’ she asked. ‘Have you had many women? Do you have a routine?’

‘Shh,’ he whispered, and, placing both hands lightly on each cheek, he drew her close, kissed her forehead, her nose, her lips. ‘I know because I listen. We reveal ourselves with more than words. Everyone speaks with their bodies, their eyes, and their breath. Relax, Rosanna. Let me hear what you have to say.’

He obviously had no use for anything she might say aloud, because before she could draw breath, he pressed his lips to hers. As languorous as a ray of summer sunlight, he tasted her, explored her; and when she half opened her mouth in invitation, he pushed harder, seeming to shift from delicate to ravenous. His hands on her thighs tensed and eased, his nails slightly scratching her skin with each movement. Perhaps listening. Waiting.

What did she want to say?

Your kisses destroy my logic.

I wish you’d touch me again.

Rosanna rested her arms on his shoulders, wrapped them around him, then pushed her fingers through his hair. So commonplace, the straight, compliant cut of the everyday London clerk. She tousled it, caught a handful in her fist, and released.

Phineas’s touch held less teasing now. He negotiated the hem of her gown, grasped handfuls of her hips, pushed his body higher. What stories was he telling? The hardness beneath his trousers rubbing her thigh, the hunger in his eyes, the heaviness of his breath. His slow tug on her dressing gown cord, coupled with the rough way he shoved it from her shoulders, told a deceptively simple story.

He wanted her.

And then her nightgown was over her head, discarded somewhere on the floor. He had only unfastened a collar button, while she sat astride him completely naked, and the disparity felt dangerous and obscene. Phineas took her nipple in his mouth and flicked his tongue over the tip. Rosanna’s entire body tensed with exquisite joy. It was like spring burst from her heart, like life curled its tendrils across every inch of her skin. Teeth scraped, and fingertips pinched, and she let out a strangled groan in a tenor she was certain she had never hit before.

‘I cannot decide,’ he said, his voice muffled against her body as he kissed his way over her collarbone, along the line of her neck, over her chin, then back to her lips, ‘if I should show you the pleasure of my fingers or my mouth. And you give me no clue as to what you might prefer.’

‘I’ve not known either,’ she whispered. ‘Except for my own hand. Surely, you know that?’

Phineas groaned hard against her. He rubbed his thumb across her breast, following the line in the centre of her chest, then travelling across the indented curve made by the stretch of skin between her hip bones, like he was mapping her body. Every sensation, every bump, every kiss, every touch felt reverential. ‘You are too pure for me. I will treasure corrupting you.’

He held her tight, his body stiff. Rosanna shivered in anticipation of his decision. She did not know what she wanted from him, could not know what she might prefer, but she knew she wanted to be subsumed in his attentions, to disappear in his gaze, then let herself be devoured, over and again. She desired to become a slate as blank as he presented himself to the world, for him to write his passions across her body as he did now. He grasped her bottom and pinched the skin like he meant to pulverise her with his desire, then flexed his fingers and gently swept them across her thighs. He breathed into her neck, and she groaned into his attentions. She unfastened button after button of his shirt until she could press her palms against the lusty inhale and exhale of his chest, over the mark that concentrated his secrets with dozens of shameful blue dots, her body desperate with a capital D to draw his story from him. But not tonight. Not now, not in this moment of passion and pleasure and presence.

‘Which do you like more?’ she asked. ‘Touching or tasting? I leave myself open to your preference.’

‘Oh, you beautiful creature.’ His fingertips scratched harshly over her thighs, then skittered upwards, her every sinew shivering with his lightness. One hand scrunched her hair and pulled her against his mouth to kiss her with that same, steady attention. ‘Do you like my fingers in your cunt? Do you like it when I stroke your clit?’

He rubbed a little, then eased before he drew a long, slow line between her folds, a shallow swipe that set every nerve blazing and made her thrust as she tipped her head back to groan with abandon. He felt so delicious, so light and incongruous, his attentive touch at odds with the man who made her grit her teeth in frustration. He grabbed her hair so tight it bit her scalp, and yet his fingers teased at her, as soft as rain and as gentle as a petal. And like the dastardly, delightful, devilish thing that he was, he stole even her grunt of pleasure with his mouth. Then his fingers were inside her, not a little, but hard, his knuckle rubbing against her entrance, two, three digits, the sensation all-encompassing. He slid his fingers deep, then retreated with torturous control before thrusting inside her again. It felt so good it hurt, and her next moan was a mix of pleasure and pain.

Phineas eased. ‘You are magnificent. I could destroy you. Come for me before I hurt you.’

‘Come?’ She rolled her hips, trying to feel more of him, wanting him deeper. With his fingers firm inside her, he rubbed her clit with his thumb and took her nipple in his mouth.

‘Ride the good feeling until you burst. Don’t hide it from me. Don’t hide anything. Show me, darling.’ He pressed his nose against her cheek, nipped her lobe, caught a kiss. ‘Surrender.’

She didn’t think she could kiss and breathe so much at once. Could exhale her wants and inhale his bliss, could expel the shadow of her old self and breathe in the possibility of Phineas.

Like everything in her life that flooded her with emotion in a heartbeat, her pleasure began slow and timid, then roared and rushed through her like water through a bursting dam. Her body, braced against his, thrust against his palm in total surrender, every little jerk part of an ever-escalating crescendo of furious bliss. She forced his face between her breasts, and he bit her hard as her body rattled and roared. Quivering, she tipped back and moaned her exhilaration at the ceiling.

They stayed locked together, tense and shivering through a protracted muteness. Rosanna could not form words, only the blurred shape of them as every firm edge seeped into the indistinctness of ecstasy.

Phineas’s breath raced warm over her tingling skin. Not his usual steady, controlled inhalations, but heavy and out of sync. ‘Touch me, please. Stroke my cock. Let me feel you as you feel me.’ He unfastened his trousers, loosened them a little, then slipped his manhood free. ‘Like this,’ he murmured as he wrapped her hand around his shaft and covered it with his own. ‘Follow my pace. You’ll know soon enough. I’ll show you.’

Her first few strokes were awkward, perched as she was across his lap, but with his help, she found his rhythm. Her own body hummed, fuzzy with fading light. Phineas leant against the chair, his eyes alternating between closed and intent on her. Soon, she recognised the momentum of the wave and stroked him a little faster, gripped him a little tighter.

‘You are extraordinary.’ He buried his face between her breasts and clasped her waist roughly, his hold both pinching and primal. A few short breaths and a grunt, and his cock throbbed. He covered both their hands and his body with a handkerchief before he exhaled the lightest moan and arched his back.

The moonlight kissed pockets of light under his eyes, which closed softly. As he released his pleasure, his rigid barriers fell away. And for all his common looks, his ridiculous ordinariness, in that second he took on a statuesque beauty. He had the longest eyelashes, which brushed little shadows over his cheeks. The smallest bracket hugged the edges of his lips as he almost smiled, and a hint of a crease whispered the possibility of that dimple.

He blinked a few times, then completely opened his eyes. The softness that had fallen on him evaporated, and every little intricacy retreated as he took on the demeanour of the man she had always known. Instead of sitting astride him completely naked, they might have been meeting one another outside their front doors.

‘You have sufficient knowledge now to hold your head high?’ he asked, tucked himself away, and fastened his trousers.

‘I shall tell them they should all find a clerk to be their lovers. All that writing gives them dexterous fingers.’

He leant to the side to retrieve her nightgown before flicking it at her. ‘I’m going downstairs to the library. I’ll walk you to your room.’

The staircase was wide enough that they could have walked side by side, but Phineas hung back, following her as she descended the levels to her room on the first floor. On the landing right before her door, she spun to face him, and he moved a little closer until his chest touched hers.

She could invite him in. Into her bed. Into her life.

He stood waiting, his arm resting on the doorframe. Then he reached behind her, fidgeted with something, and the door fell away. She squawked as she stumbled into her room.

He chuckled. ‘Goodnight, Hempel,’ he called, back turned, and already descending the stairs.