Chapter Twenty
Emily didn't know why she said it, or even why she needed to. There was an unbearable weight upon her chest, constricting her heart, emitting a low roar in her ears, and she needed a distraction. She could not endure this feeling, this pain, and her grief was too great to comprehend- the death of a mother she hadn't known, who had abandoned her at a young age, and now who she would never know.
And the man she thought she might love had withheld this vitally pertinent information from her.
It was too much. Emily couldn't endure it. She didn't want to sort through the myriad of emotions that were fighting for control through her body- she wanted to forget, to escape, and Sebastian could aid her with that.
"Kiss me," she begged, again, her voice strained and aching. Every part of her anatomy trembled with uncontrollable, palpable force. She didn't want to relinquish control and allow the torrent of what she felt, of what she contained, to ravage through her body, to tear at her limbs and her mind.
"Emily-"
"Sebastian, please." She felt the tears stream down her cheeks, unchecked, but she hardly minded. His arms around her, securing her frame to his hard body, were comforting, solacing, which was strange considering he was the cause behind her distress. Emily studied the angular, shadowed panes of his face through a mist of tears, silently begging him to love her.
He sighed, the sound ragged and harsh to her ears. "If I kiss you," he told her quietly, "I'm not going to stop. If I don't stop, I'm going to take you to bed. Once you are in that bed with me, I expect you to marry me. Can you promise me you will do that?"
He couldn't ask that of her now, not when she felt so very vulnerable. Her bottom lip trembled and she fleetingly contemplated what he was asking: Marriage- to a man who had the audacity to refrain from informing her of the death of her mother, who had secretly harboured the news for days afterward. She needed to think, to reason, something she was incapable of at present, but yet he was demanding it of her. Emily shook her head. "Don't ask that of me yet," she mumbled. "I can't."
"Yet you'd so willingly lie with me and become a fallen woman?" he berated harshly and then winced, his words followed by a vehement oath.
Emily closed her eyes against the truth of his words because that was exactly what she had been asking, had been willing to do, merely for the escape and temporary pleasure of losing herself in this devastatingly handsome man.
"I apologise," he growled. "That was uncalled for."
Emily inhaled a shuddering breath and firmly extricated herself from the sanctity of his embrace. "No, you're right," she told him. "I should go."
She made it two steps towards his door when his voice stopped her. "Don't."
"I should."
He shifted and she felt the air warm around her as he closed the distance that separated them. Gently, he eased his hands closed around the tops of her arms, pulling her back against his chest. "I know," he murmured, his mouth close to her ear. His warm breath teased the loose wisps of hair that lay against her cheek. "But I don't want you to."
"I don't want to," she sighed, infused with his nearness, his warmth.
"Then stay."
"I can't make that promise."
"You will." Gradually, his lips descended until they encompassed the sensitive shell of her ear. Emily was suddenly aware that her tears had seized to fall, that her body has soothed its insurgent tremors to be replaced by altogether different quivers. "I'm willing to take that risk."
She felt his smile against her ear, his lips moving with experienced ease, lingering over the most sensitive ridges. She melted from the inside out, deliciously revelling in his caress as thoughts slowly flitted from her mind, one by one.
With an inexorable motion, her body pressed back against him and the taut ridges and planes of his chest, abdomen and thighs imprinted themselves against her skin, burning their claim over her form. He brought his lips down the side of her neck, her skin tingling in response, and his hands swept along her waist, pulling her tighter to him. She sighed, relinquishing control and all thought to him, awash with pleasure and unknown anticipation.
Her world veered off its axis and Emily realised he had swept her into his arms and carried her to the bed, setting her against the pillows. For a moment, she was without his warmth as he left her side to pull his shirt over his shoulders. She watched, fascinated, as his muscles flexed and rippled with the movement, sheathed with intentional power and strength. There was a purpose behind his build, crafted from years of physical exertion, and she recalled his interest with pugilism. His strong arms and hands were testament to the blows he could deal, his torso corded with thick sheaths of muscles that spoke of stealth and predatory deadliness. She had noticed him before- of course she had- but had never allowed herself the pleasure to drink in the sight of him, to openly admire the masculine beauty of his form, always too reticent to be as bold. But now she did and she wanted to. She was the woman, his woman, whose turn it was to bask in his handsomeness and she enjoyed it.
Longing for him, Emily reached out a hand and he stepped into her touch. Her fingers flattened against the inflexible velvet skin of his belly, lacing through the coarse black hair that trailed below the waist of his breeches and over his navel. Her hand trembled and tingled, her heart fluttering madly within her chest, and Emily was at once shocked at her boldness and insensibly proud of it. She glanced up at him wonderingly, eyes wide, and noted the strained muscle of his jaw as he looked down on her. Unquestioningly, she rose to her knees before him on the mattress and placed both her hands on his flanks. At this level, she only reached about midway up his chest which still allocated him the advantage of towering above her, but Emily hardly noticed. Soundlessly, he stroked her cheek, tilting her face up to look at him, and she caught the impassioned blaze of his blue eyes.
"You're beautiful," she whispered, awed, and a tiny wry smile cracked through the seriousness of his façade.
"Em," he murmured teasingly, extricating the pins from her hair and setting them aside, "you're beautiful." Once all the pins had been removed, his fingers trailed through the thick locks that streamed over her shoulders and back. "So very, very beautiful."
His eyes gleamed as he surveyed her and she blushed under his scrutiny, touched by his words yet disinclined to believe them. Beneath her hands, his skin seemed to thrum and scald, encouraging her to move, to glide her palms across his ribcage and marvel at the sheer size of him. In comparison, she was dwarfed, miniscule, and a shudder of feminine pleasure rippled through her. However, even though he was lavishing her with flowery compliments, she felt compelled to return the sentiment and leaned slightly forward, dropping a kiss to one small, hard nipple. His skin jumped and she heard a seething hiss as he sucked in a breath. "You're rather nice, too," she said, glancing up at him shyly.
His eyes darkened and a very serious look entered his face. "Turn around, Em."
"Why?"
"Just do it," he growled softly, commandingly. And then, as an afterthought, "Please."
She looked at him sceptically, but complied nonetheless, squirming against the quilt until she knelt with her back to him. Wordlessly, Sebastian tugged and flicked at the stream of tiny buttons that curved down her back. "W-what are you doing?"
"Isn't it obvious?"
"W-why are you doing it, then?" she stammered, failing to control the heat that rose to her skin.
"I want to."
"Is there a point?"
The frock loosened about her shoulders and he tugged it down effortlessly, leaving her kneeling in only her chemise, corset and petticoats. Her heart pounded violently within her chest. The most exposed she had been for him was her nightgown, but this- this was different. Her underclothes were private articles that only her and her maid ever saw. Emily thought she would die with humiliation and then he gently urged her round to face him again.
Hugging her arms to her chest, she eyed him closely, searching for disapproval or some sign of amusement. His hands spanned the tops of her bare arms, warming her, and she found no show of any of what she expected on his face. Rather, there lay a burning, dark desire that shadowed his eyes and convulsed in his jaw. His mouth was a hard, demanding line and Emily longed to soften it, to extricate some of the tension she read on his countenance.
"I want to make love to you," he said quietly, his voice ragged. "In order for me to do so, we both must be naked."
Again, she blushed. "Oh."
"Emily, I don't want you to fear me," he told her intently.
"I don't."
"Then you fear your decision to stay." He peered into her eyes. Lord, he was handsome. Her breath caught, overwhelmed, and she narrowly side-stepped the need to draw his head down to hers and crush her lips against his. "I'll not coerce a promise from you. I will however demand that you are confident in your knowledge that you wish to be here, that you are here because you need me, and that once I make love to you, you will not regret it. Can you do that, Em?"
"I do need you," she whispered, "and I want to be here." She needed him, more than anything. He was her only family, and even though he had hidden the truth of her mother's death from her, she couldn't turn away from him, couldn't ever turn away from him. Explanations would come later, and she would listen, but for now his love was enough- it had always been enough.
"Darling, nothing must come between us," he murmured. "If you do not trust me-"
"I do." She blinked back fresh tears that pricked her eyes, overcome with new and old emotions. "Sebastian, I don't know what I'm doing. I'm not enlightened on..." she brushed her hand through the air between them vaguely "...matters between a man and a woman when they, uh, make love. I'm so nervous I can't think, and I don't know how I feel about my mother yet. I'm upset, of course-" her voice cracked and suddenly she was encased in his arms, her head pressed to his chest where she heard the steady beat of his heart.
"I know, love," he crooned. "I'm sorry I had to be part of the cause." Tenderly, he angled her face up and back, planting a lingering kiss over her lips, and then the tip of her nose. "Don't be nervous. Do I make you nervous?"
She shook her head.
He kissed her again, this time slanting his mouth over hers with a leisurely, pleasurably deliberate press. "Does this make you nervous?" he asked again.
God, no. That definitely did not make her nervous. It made her... hot. Emily shook her head, again. "No."
"I'm at a loss." His perplexed frown was most endearing and the playful light that entered his eyes inspired a slight, tentative smile to curl her lips. "I don't make you nervous; my kiss doesn't make you nervous. Then what?"
She dipped her gaze, taken by the lightness of his mood, touched that he could tease her with a fondness to put her at ease, to make her comfortable in his presence. "It's me," she whispered.
"You?"
Emily gestured to the front of her bodice where her breasts were spilling over the neckline of her chemise. "How could I please you?"
"But you do," he told her emphatically, his gaze dropping to the tops of her breasts. "More than you could ever realise, I think."
She rolled her eyes at that. "Sebastian, you and I both know-"
"I'll not hear one degrading remark uttered from those lips," he growled, yanking her against him. "If I have to spend my entire life showing you just how perfect you are, I will, but I very much doubt you would be able to walk for long periods after each attempt."
She muffled a giggle against his chest, feeling quite absurd and giddy all at once. His fingers were doing something rather odd at her back. "Why would I not be able to walk?" she wondered aloud.
"I'm about to show you."
She glanced up at him with a narrowed gaze. "I'm not sure I know what that means."
"A relief for me, I assure you."
"That I don't know what it means or that I won't be able to walk?"
His grin was devilish, his teeth glistening through the gloom. "Both."
Quite unexpectedly, her corset loosened and slid halfway from her torso. Emily gasped. "You beast! I didn't even realise-"
He waggled his fingers in front of her tauntingly. "I've been told," he purred seductively, "that I have magic hands."
"Devious is more appropriate," she said dryly.
"Don't act like you are not impressed," he chided. "There are not many who could unlace a corset like that."
"Practise, in this case," Emily told her acerbically, "makes perfect."
He gave her a bashful look, equipped with an adorable lop-sided grin. "Are you jealous?"
"Absolutely not."
"I'd never betray you, Em."
She couldn't meet his eyes, not yet. The newness of her feelings for him were undefined, swallowed with shadow and doubt and lingering speculation. Eager to draw his attention and the mood away from a topic of such tender melancholy, Emily gingerly stretched up and gently kissed his lips.
It didn't take much for Sebastian to return the favour and take control. His mouth quickly guided hers, showing her nuances that pleased him while his lips coaxed hers gently apart. She opened for him easily, allowing his tongue access to hers, and when she shyly returned his kiss, Sebastian groaned.
He dexterously slithered the flimsy fabric of her chemise from her shoulders, leaving the top half of her bare, and Emily shuddered with the awareness. She squirmed against him, shielding her nakedness from him, and when he felt her movements the kiss abruptly stopped and he pulled away. "Don't hide from me," he growled fiercely, glaring at the wrists that held her cumbersome bosom together at her chest.
"You- you want to see me?"
"Of course I bloody do." His gaze swept over the parts of her that were exposed and Emily's skin burned with the path of his perusal. Suddenly, a roguish smile cracked his face. "By God, you're covered in them."
Emily flinched, knowing exactly what he was referring to and hating it, despite the obvious realisation that he was amused. "My freckles," she mumbled flatly.
His grin turned crooked, indulgent. "I will spend an entire day kissing every one," he declared fervently.
"Sebastian-"
"Perhaps I should start now." For emphasis, he dropped his lips to her shoulder, where the light brown scatterings were most prevalent. "Mmm. Delicious."
"Sebastian, this is absurd."
"Perhaps if you allowed me to kiss something else-" He nipped the side of her breast, resulting in a startled gasp from Emily. Drat her breasts! They were so endowed she could hardly contain them in both her arms.
"Sebastian-"
"Here, let me help." His fingers cajolingly urged her arms to her side so that her breasts were open for his perusal. Her breath hitched.
"Sebastian-"
"I could devour you for years," he told her breasts.
"Sebastian!"
"I'm busy."
Oh, God. She was going to die, she was sure of it. Her face was burning. It felt as if her skin would sizzle right off her bone, yet his gaze was transfixed, hungry, and Emily didn't think she could take it any longer.
And then his head dropped.
Dear God, he wasn't about to do what she thought-
"Oh, my God," she whimpered as his lips closed around the turgid pebble of her nipple. It was unthinkable, simply scandalous-
His teeth tugged, gently rhythmic and answering spirals of exquisite sensation spiralled from the tip of her breast and spread out into every pore of her body, pooling with liquid heat at the pit of her belly. "Sebastian," she cried, "stop!"
He grunted, turning his head slightly to lather the other breast with just the same amount of attention. A large, long-fingered hand shifted up her waist and cupped the breast he had abandoned for the other, her reddened nipple straining through the V of his fingers.
Finally, he raised his head a mere inch away from her bosom, his eyes lingering over her, before his finger traced an idle circle around her tip. "They are even over here," he murmured, partly to himself.
"W-what is?"
He glanced up at her, a crooked grin on his lips. "Your freckles."
"Have them, then, if you like them so much," she said, irked.
"I love them."
"Hmmf."
His fingers were doing something deceptive again, she realised belatedly as she felt them at her hips. "Lie down," he ordered softly.
"Why?"
"Stop asking questions."
"Stop giving orders!"
He gave her an exceedingly dry look. "Very well. Perhaps you'd like to continue."
"Um..."
"Would you like me to do something?"
"Perhaps, a clue...?"
"No, no, I couldn't possibly. You appear quite capable to take the reins. Do go on."
She gnawed her lip worriedly. In a small voice, she said, "Perhaps you do know best in this case."
"Naturally."
"What must I do?"
His smile softened and he kissed her nose. "Lie down, sweetheart," he commanded softly, and this time she complied, slipping to her back on his quilt. His fingers went to the waist of her petticoats and gently eased them over her hips, down her thighs, and finally onto the floor. Emily valiantly quelled the urge to cross her legs, left only in her stockings and garters, which Sebastian applied due attention to next.
Removing the garters, his fingers brushing against the sensitive skin of her thighs, Emily did not quite comprehend his next actions until it was too late. Apparently, Sebastian thought it a marvellous idea to effortlessly part her legs and lightly nip the inside of each thigh before slowly following the path of each stocking... with his lips and his tongue.
Little mewls of surprise and pleasure escaped her lips with each breath, her entire body encompassed by a blazing rush of need and heat. She squirmed against him, at once wanting to push him away and pull him closer. Once he was done, she quickly clamped her legs closed and waited as he removed the last items of his clothing so that he joined her on the bed completely naked- like herself.
She wanted to avert her eyes, but she could not. He was too beautiful, too mesmerizing, and even though she had seen him as thus prior, she was unable to prevent the admiration from seeping onto her face. Immediately his warmth engulfed her and Emily snuggled close to him, partly hoping that by doing so it would shield at least some of her nudity from him and, at the same time, it felt really nice just to do so.
The musky scent of his skin suffused her nostrils as she nuzzled the area between his chest and shoulders and the slow glide of his hand along the curvature of her spine soothed her insurgent nerves. His voice, gentle and husky, was heard close to the shell of her ear, his coarse cheek abrasive against her temple. "What do you know about what's about to happen between us, Em?" Sebastian murmured.
A little hysterically, she wondered just what he could mean, and then the answer came to her. She knew nothing. Absolutely nothing. Before this, she hadn't even conceived it probable that a man and a woman could be naked together and that she would ever be the woman to be naked with a man. "Nothing," she whispered in return.
"Nothing? Has Sophie not... spoken with you?"
"No," she admitted. "I've heard that it is unpleasant."
He chuckled tenderly. "Only your first time," he said, planting a kiss against her cheek. "Then, I assure you, it can be rather nice."
She shuddered, remembering his kiss. If that was what love-making consisted of, then Emily thought it would be rather nice, indeed. However, she wasn't quite certain what "unpleasant" entailed, but Sebastian had already rolled her onto her back and his tongue was skilfully seducing her mouth, plunging low into her. She sighed, entwining her arms about his broad shoulders, holding him close to her as the worries flitted away. With Sebastian, she was safe. Nothing could possibly hurt her when he kissed her like this...
His "magic" hands swept up her waist, held her breasts high, before kneading them with shuddering pleasure. Above her, Emily felt every cadence of his muscular body. His form seemed to burn and come alive, intrinsically erotic and seductive all at once. It was not just his hands and his mouth that was seducing her, she realised breathlessly, but every part of him.
Her nipples were inflicted with quite the most scandalous of touches. She had certainly never forayed to that particular part of her body in such a manner and Sebastian seemed to discern exactly how to tease her to wondrous heights of intolerable need, her nerves reverberating with mindlessly delirious ecstasy. Every caress, every touch, seemed to create an answering pulsation at the apex of the thighs, at the juncture of her womanhood- a place she was ashamed to recall yet horribly demanded her attention, screamed for its own form of release she couldn't yet identify or barely acknowledge.
She mewled the loss of his lips when he tore his mouth from hers, but then gasped when he enclosed about her nipple, drawing her into his mouth with insistent pulls. His tongue, Lord- his tongue! was too wicked, and she cried out when he kissed her breast as he did her lips, lapping the bud with near-desperate strokes. She writhed under him, arching her back, senseless and wondering.
His deft fingers wisped across the skin of her waist, circling the ridge of her hip, traversing down her thigh, grazing her knee, and then trailing back up along the inside. When she became cognizant of where his intentions lay-wicked man- a bout of overwhelming shyness enveloped her and she clamped her legs together. His fingers collided jarringly with juncture of her thighs and a muffled groan of frustration rippled across her breast.
He nipped her with forced restraint. "Em," he growled, breathless, "don't keep me out."
An inarticulate moan of embarrassment and need unfurled from her chest, his probing fingers striving for entrance to the most intimate of places of her body.
"Please, Em," he rasped. "Open for me."
His voice was what provoked her to comply, the need and darkness she heard there filling her heart with a longing so poignant she could hardly deny it. With a gesture that was trustingly sweet, she relaxed her thighs and instantly his fingers found her and Emily thought she would probably die for it.
A thousand tiny sparks of fiery, watery tentacles coursed through every vein of her body, jerking her form with pulsating thrusts of desire. She had never- she couldn't imagine-
Her head tossed against the pillows and Sebastian caught the sounds she was unconsciously issuing with his mouth, plunging his tongue deep just as he slid his finger slowly, tantalizingly, into her depths. Her hips arched off the mattress, pressing him deeper, and her gasp was stuttered, shocked, choked.
He eased the wildness of her passion with soothing strokes of his other hand, gently coaxing her breasts and sides, until her hips settled back against the sheets and she easily accommodated the exciting, alien probe of his finger. As she did, he manoeuvred his thumb over her, pressing lightly against a hypersensitive part of her that restarted the ferociousness of her need, instinctively gyrating her hips against the cup of his hand again and again, until Sebastian had to pin her flat with his body.
When she opened her eyes- Emily hadn't realised she closed them- he was atop her, cradled between her hips, a very hard and warm part of him now pushing against the opening of her body, larger than his fingers, and a tremor of anxiety shot through her.
Everything about him was big, huge- it seemed impossibly unnatural that she'd be able to accommodate him in this way without causing at least some discomfort. Above her, his face was dark and taut, the muscles of his jaw unrelentingly hard. There was little light in the depths of his deep blue eyes, apparently smothered by the dark need of his desire, and it frightened her slightly- the tightly leashed control she saw there. Just what would happen if he let go, relinquished it as she had often thought of doing that evening, but for different purposes altogether.
"This might be the part of it deemed unpleasant," he explained through gritted teeth. "I can't do anything about the pain-"
"Pain?" She frowned her confusion.
He only grunted in response and shut his eyes. "God help me," he hissed, dropping his head. "I can't-"
She felt her body sheath him. Her slick heat seemed to wrap around his shaft with an unfamiliarity that was discomforting and strangely enticing. The newness of this invasion was short-lived for he thrust his hips up into hers and a pain sliced through her abdomen that was so exquisite she felt it reverberate through all her limbs.
"I'm sorry," he whispered raggedly, kissing the tear that slipped from the corner of her eye. "I'm so sorry." He kissed the other, too.
"It hurts," she whimpered. The dull throb in her pelvis, juxtaposed against the intrusion of his body, began to lessen slightly, and she felt bruised, yet strangely fulfilled.
"I know, sweetheart." With aching tenderness, he continued to kiss each tear that fell from her eyes until she felt the pain subside to something more tolerable and her tears stopped. When they did, Sebastian shifted, and she felt his hips lift slightly from hers as he extracted himself just enough to cause a slight tingling of friction.
But with the pain there was an odd fluctuation of pleasure, warming her from the core and spreading outwards. She gasped softly when he pushed forward with tender judiciousness, embedding his length emphatically into her sheath. Sebastian stilled and a shudder coursed through his body. She felt it ripple through his muscles under her fingers and sensed that it was taking everything he had to hold back, to restrain himself from whatever he needed to do to sate his own desire. Touched, she laced her fingers through the silken strands of his hair and turned his face into her hand, urging his mouth down to hers for her kiss. He complied, and when she coyly touched her tongue to his bottom lip, he sucked in a harsh breath.
The pain became shockingly less important as he began to thrust into her with driving need. At first, he filled her with subtle movements, mindful of the tenderness he had created between her thighs, and when she began to respond in kind to the exquisite ache, he pushed deeper.
He didn't speak. He couldn't, she suspected, nor would she want him to. The moment and the feel of him were perfect as they were and, gradually, she was able to set aside the brazen shock of their joined bodies and revel in the shared closeness, the newfound delirium such revelations created. It no longer seemed unnatural, but rather enticing and warm, flutters of eagerness igniting her belly as Sebastian's lovemaking plunged deeper, longer, harder...
And finally she stopped rationalising, stopped thinking, and became lost to the man above her. Her thighs parted wider, permitting him the opportunity to explore new depths, and she gasped and moaned, straining against him, straining for something.
The sensations grew stronger, unbearable, and when he sensed her body quivering with delight beneath his own, he increased his tempo, subtly enhanced the force of his thrusts, and with each she gasped, and cried, and clawed the skin of his back and neck. Emily met his kisses, encouraging him to expound and explore, her body thrumming with an insistent, primal beat, faster... faster...
She couldn't think, couldn't comprehend- he plunged deeper, searching, trying to bequeath her with something, something she needed beyond all else.
And then his body convulsed with a fevered pitch, his movements frenzied and uncontrolled, and she exploded around him, a million fragmented shards of blinding pleasure pooling in the pit of her belly and then inflating outwards, coursing through her limbs until she was left limp and breathless in the aftermath. Belatedly, she felt her muscles clamp around him, drawing a silken warmth of liquid from his shaft cocooned within her folds. His body was tense, tautened, and a strangled sound was muffled against her neck as she stroked the bunch muscle of his shoulder. Large hands fisted the sheets beside her head, crumpling them beyond repair, and then he collapsed atop her, shuddering.