Chapter 20
Every woman should, habitually, make the best of herself.
~ The Habits of Good Society: A Handbook for Ladies and Gentlemen (The Last London Editor; 1860)
He could not help the grin that dimpled his cheeks. “Then,” he told her huskily, “I suppose I shall have to marry you.”
The daft woman didn’t say anything for nearly two minutes.
“Victoria?” he asked gruffly.
She blinked.
“I have just proposed. Are you going to say anything?”
She blinked, again. Then her lips scrunched to the side in an adorably perplexed expression. “Proposed? You practically said it as if I was the one doing the asking!”
“Does it signify? I want to marry you. I am quite certain you are not adverse to the notion, either.”
She wrinkled her nose at him.
“Are you?” he demanded, inexplicably hurt.
Victoria shook her glossy head. “No, I am not.”
“Then why is this a problem?”
“It is not.”
“Victoria, you are trying my patience.”
She grinned at him. It was wide and beautiful and when she smiled at him like that, all he could think of doing was kissing her senseless. “I was just thinking, you impatient man.”
“Thinking? What the devil about?”
Vicky cast him a peeved look. “You’ve just proposed, haven’t you? A girl should have a lot to think about when such a thing occurs, should she not?”
He raised his brow. “You are being deliberately difficult.”
“I am not. You merely cannot see the benefits of weighing up your choices to find the one that best suits your needs.”
“What other choice do you have?” he growled, irked by her cockiness and the teasing light that glinted in her wondrously blue eyes.
“I could always leave here, return back to Hawthorne, and forget that this ever happened.” She stared at him owlishly, her hands clasped behind her back as she rolled on the balls of her feet.
“I could compromise you before you had a chance to do that,” he taunted her, watching her expression carefully. “I’d make sure it was known, too, so you’d have to marry me.”
Her lips twitched slightly at the corners, threatening with a grin. Her mood, he realised, was contagious. “Which brings up the next dilemma that was on my mind,” she said thoughtfully. “I could marry you, as that is what you seem so intent on, and I could stay with you now because something tells me that you would be unable to wait for the wedding night-”
“Would you?”
She shook her head, her lips compressed to stifle a smile. “-so that means I am going to have you as a husband and it will be trying, I’m sure, to have an overbearing, conceited-”
“Victoria-”
“-arrogant-”
He took a menacing step towards her.
She stared up at him laughingly. “-silly-”
“Silly?” He took another step forward, pleased that she held her ground.
Vicky nodded. “Definitely silly,” she told him pointedly.
“I can think of far more appropriate adjectives to use,” he rumbled seductively, taking yet another step towards her and effectively closing the space that separated them.
“I’m sure you could.” She smiled. “But I like mine.”
He slid his fingers against the span of her slim waist, gently tugging her towards him, and she came without resistance, the tips of her breasts grazing the front of his coat lapels. “You would, you little hellcat,” he murmured.
“So,” she informed him with a catch in her breath and he revelled in watching those eyes of hers darken with longing, the subtle dilation of her pupils. “As you can see, I had to think about this very carefully.”
“Indeed.”
“Any moderately intelligent woman would.”
“Naturally.”
“And I consider myself of above-average intelligence.”
“You are a veritable bluestocking.”
She gave him a sultry smile. It made his body yearn and he spanned the fingers of his other hand against her cheek, gently tilting her face towards his mouth.
“You can understand why, then,” she murmured, her eyes downcast, “I had to think about whether I’d be willing to marry you.”
“Victoria?”
She raised passion-dazed eyes up to his enquiringly.
“Mmm?”
“Shut up.”
She wasn’t going to and she even opened her mouth to say something further, but Gabriel didn’t allow her the opportunity. He brought his lips down on hers with such exquisite force he thought he could never get enough of the taste her and when she opened beneath him, submitting to his ardency, it was like coming home.
He groaned with the pleasure of it, delving his tongue deep within her mouth and finding no barriers of resistance. She tasted sweet and pure, deliciously innocent and intoxicating. His body palpated with the feel of her crushed against him, came alive with the heat emanating between them. He was like a man starved for the taste, the feel of her, and while he longed to cherish these moments, to languish over her, at the same time he could not get enough of her, he wanted more and he wanted it now.
She entwined her arms around his neck and clung to him, submitting fully and sweetly to him, and Gabriel groaned. He pulled her against him, letting her know what she did, how much he needed her, and revelled in her gasp of pleasure and in the way she shifted her belly against that incredibly hot and hard part of his body. It was amazing how suddenly she could drive him from insane heights of madness to ecstasy in just a moment. But she could and Gabriel knew it was because it was her; it was Victoria, and not some other woman, but someone more special and meaningful to him.
Poignantly, he realised that this moment, this one perfectly cohesive moment when he was about to join his body with hers, would be one of the most important pinnacles of his life. Gabriel gently broke the kiss, longing to imprint the image of her just as she was into his memory, and caught his breath. God, she was beautiful and, lost in passion as she was, Victoria made his heart skip a beat. Her cheeks flushed and her lips slightly parted and swollen from his kisses, Vicky stared up at him with dark, questioning and slightly confused eyes.
“Gabriel?” she breathed. “Is something the matter?”
He smiled languidly. “No, darling,” he told her tenderly. “Nothing is wrong at all. Everything is perfect.” He kissed her playfully on the nose. “Just perfect.”
She smiled up at him softly and he thought his heart expanded with the gesture, but when she rose on her toes and gently brushed her lips against his, Gabriel thought he would die. With an inarticulate growl of desire, he fastened his hold on her waist and crushed her to his length, whatever strenuous control he had over his body disintegrating with that sweet and artless gesture, and brought his lips down against hers with unrestrained need. His blood was pounding in his ears, hot and demanding, and Gabriel feared that he couldn’t hold back. He needed her, he longed for her, and if he didn’t have her, soon, he thought he’d surely die.
His hands were everywhere, luxuriating in the feel of her body, the softness of her curves and the fullness of her breasts. She gasped against his lips and when he dropped his mouth to the sensitive column of her neck, she whimpered and laced her fingers through the dark locks of his hair, clutching him to her unconsciously.
His fingers traced the scalloped neckline of her gown, trembling as they grazed the swell of feverish skin there, and then he eased the gown off her shoulders. She gasped when he nipped lightly at the ridge of her collarbone, her fingers tightening reflexively in his hair, and then moaned when he opened his mouth over the globe of her breast. A need unlike anything welled up inside him as he tasted her, laved her with his tongue and nibbled gently at the tautened bud of her nipple. She was panting, squirming at his caress, murmuring inarticulate things that sounded like, “Oh, my God.”
He rumbled breathlessly with laughter, raising his head slightly away from her so that he could study her face. “I told I would devour you,” Gabriel told her raggedly.
She groaned, her eyes squeezed shut. “You’re killing me,” Vicky mumbled. “I’ve never-”
He kissed her quickly, swallowing her unspoken words, and he couldn’t bear the agony a moment longer. With tense, impatient movements, Gabriel removed his cloak and broke their connection only to lay it out on the leaf-strewn ground before he guided her awkwardly to her back on the garment, laughing slightly at her clumsiness when she nearly tripped over the back of her gown. The action only resulted in her seizing his arms for balance and drawing him closer to her as he safely caught her about her waist and lowered her with an aching poignancy.
His lips find hers again and Gabriel could not prevent the demanding force with which his tongue darted into her mouth. She was clawing at his back, his sides, raking her fingernails into his skin through his shirt and Gabriel growled, rearing back and tearing the shirt off his shoulders. Her eyes widened at the vehemence of the gesture and he forced himself to remain like that, kneeling between her legs. Those vividly blues eyes openly admired his chest and he resisted the urge to chuckle. Shy, Victoria was not, and she made it eloquently clear that she liked what she saw when those lips curled into a self-indulgent smile of a woman pleased with what somebody had given her. Tremulously, she raised her hand and splayed her fingers against the taut ridges of his chest and with agonizing slowness slid them down his abdomen. It was utter agony letting her caress him like she was and remain unmoving, watching the nuances of delight cross her face as she did so. But when her fingers brushed against the waist of his trousers, he stiffened and caught her hand, halting its progress before lowering himself atop her again.
“Minx,” he growled against her lips and he began to gather her dress and petticoats up her thighs, crushing the delicate fabric with his forceful movements. Her soft thighs bared on either side of him, he skimmed his hands along her heated skin, aware of her trembling and panting beneath him. The only obstacle separating their bodies was the sheer fabric of her drawers which he easily slid off her legs. Gabriel slid his fingers along her inner thigh, inching towards the part of her he found aflame with liquid heat and she gasped, wrapping her arms convulsively around his shoulders.
“Gabriel,” she whimpered raggedly against his ear.
But his control was a fragile thing as it was and he was eager to bury himself deep within her. Knowing that her first time was likely to be painful, he fumbled briefly with the fastenings of his trousers and replaced his fingers with his erect member, guiding himself carefully inside her, the excruciating tightness and heat nearly his undoing. He had to stop, fearful that he was going to explode before he had even begun, and buried his face against her neck.
But the impatient hellcat was shifting under him, unwittingly sliding him deeper within her with each movement of her hips, and Gabriel groaned. “Oh, God, Vicky.”
Inexplicably, he felt the resistance of her virginity pressing against him and remorse threatened to choke him. “I’m sorry, darling,” he murmured, capturing her lips in a searing kiss of need and yearning and unrestrained hunger. “I’m so, so sorry.”
With one swift thrust forward, he was buried fully inside her and she was so beautiful, so intoxicating, that she only gasped slightly with the pain, her body convulsing beneath his as she kissed him sweetly in return. He remained still within her, unmoving, his body poised and taut for release, and he raised his mouth away from hers but a fraction of an inch. “Are you alright?” he asked her hoarsely.
She nodded her head, a fat teardrop squeezing out the corner of her eye and rolling down to disappear in the hair by her temple. Guilt burned him viciously. “I’ll stop,” he said but was halted by the vigorous shaking of her head.
“No,” Vicky said sharply, giving him a teary smile. “I’ll kill you if you stop.”
He was lost. She was so wonderful, so Vicky, he could not prevent his hips from rolling slowly against hers; her soft mewl of breathless surprise, the way her fingers scoured the skin of his back, excited him, drove him wild, close to the edge of oblivion as he pushed deeper, harder. He wasn’t sure he could hold back any longer, wasn’t sure he could contain himself; she felt so good, so lovely, so utterly right…
Incoherently, he groaned her name, “Victoria, I can’t…” Mindlessly awash in the pleasure she caused him, he drove into her faster, driven by the inexplicable need to lose himself with her, and placed his hand between their moving bodies, caressing the sensitive point where they joined, and beneath him he felt Victoria clench with release. She gasped and shuddered, crying out softly to the trees above their heads, and he poured himself into her, his whole body shaking with the force of his expenditure, her name a whispered grunt on his lips as he ground his mouth against hers.
He had never felt like this before… It had never…
Shuddering, the palpitations of his ecstasy subsided, and Gabriel rolled to one side, taking her with him so that Vicky rested her head on his shoulder while he allowed the violent tattoo of his heart to lessen. His body thrummed gently with the after-effects, content with Victoria in his arms and pressed closely to his heart. Bemusedly, he contemplated the possibility that this was probably the most content he had ever felt in his life before, after plundering the innocence of a woman who drove him mad with anger one minute then hot with need the next.
The sounds of the forest began to dribble slowly back to his ears. The birds sang above them and a cooling breeze rustled the dry leaves of the trees together coaxingly.
“Gabriel?”
Victoria’s voice drew him out of his reverie and he tilted his chin towards his chest so that he could look at her. Delicious sated, her sable hair was rumpled and wild about her face, her creamy shoulders bare where he had pulled her gown down and her breasts crushed against his chest. God, she was beautiful.
“Gabriel?” she said again, uncertainty flashing in those blue, blue eyes.
He smiled at her softly, tenderly kissing the top of her rumpled head. “Yes, darling?”
“Do you still want to marry me?”
The absurdity of the question made him laugh. Trust Victoria Colton to pose such a suggestion after an explicit act of glorious love-making. His shoulders shook and he found her glaring up at him.
“I’ll understand if you don’t,” she told him mulishly.
“You are a ridiculous woman,” he returned cheerfully. “I want to have you as my wife more than I did before.”
“Oh.” She dropped her gaze to his chest, her sooty lashes lying like elegant fans against her cheeks, and she idly began to stroke the muscle of his upper arm in slow, languorous circles. Just her thoughtless touch made his body stir with the beginnings of lust again. After a moment, she raised her eyes to his and there was a hardness about them. “You will have to get rid of your mistresses,” she told him sternly.
Laughingly, he kissed her.