Once A Rake. Rona SharonЧитать онлайн книгу.
him on the ground. “I didn’t come here out of pity! I came because…” Lord, this was so difficult.
“Because you needed my help with your charity.”
“There’s that, but…” Her voice shook. “You also remind me of Will, whom I miss dearly.”
“We mustn’t forget that.” He began to rise again.
She tightened her grasp on his sleeve. “Everything I said to you is true, but the reason I—” She was that wide-eyed little girl again—the one he’d scorned years ago. Her heart thundered in her ears. In a small voice, she said, “I came because…I missed you, Ashby. I missed you every day for the past seven years. I had to see you. I…” Tears streamed down her cheeks; the pain in her heart was unbearable. If he banished her forever, she didn’t know what she would do.
His eyes glittered as brilliant and hard as emeralds. “You shouldn’t have come to me at all.” There was fury in his voice, yet something else that sounded like desperation. He wrapped a hand around her nape. “Damn you,” he whispered, drawing her closer. “You make me remember things I vowed to forget.” He angled his head and covered her mouth with his.
Lightning seared her spine. His lips were faintly familiar, achingly soft. They molded hers, savoring the initial contact of their mouths. Knowing what was to come next, she parted her lips against his and sighed with pleasure as he tasted her with a gentle stroke of his tongue.
Sweet heaven. This was as far as they had gotten seven years ago, before he had torn his mouth away. This time, however, she refused to let him retreat. She locked her arms around his muscled waist and returned his kiss with years-old longing.
“Ashby…” She sighed, tipping her head back and rising to his kiss as if her life depended on it. Her lips clung to his, seeking, needing, beckoning, helpless to resist the mystifying craving he liberally exuded. She licked his tongue and shuddered at the delicious frissions that raked her. His kiss was heavenly, better than heavenly—it was utterly sublime. And dazedly, she wondered how she could be so fortunate as to have found her way into his arms—as a woman.
“This was well overdue,” he murmured, not allowing more than a sigh between their slow, sultry mouths.
“What was?” she asked, blissfully lightheaded, her eyelashes as heavy as bricks.
“This. Us.” He made love to her mouth with the patience and skill of a master seducer, flooding her with a wealth of feelings and sensations. “The night we kissed,” he went on in his low, mesmeric voice, feeding on her mouth as if it were a cup of Lydian elixir, “you unleashed the devil in me. Who’d have thought that a wispy innocent should kiss like Aphrodite herself? You made me ache to kiss you like this, not as one kisses a child, but as a man kisses a woman.” He deepened their kiss, tangling their tongues in a hot, sensual, nerve-thrumming duel.
Never in all her girlish dreams of him did she imagine his kiss would be like this—all the passions and yearnings in the world distilled into the soft motion of his lips, into the thorough explorations of his tongue. “You pushed me away then,” she admonished softly.
That night, she hadn’t been thinking; she hadn’t known the first thing about kissing a man. He was the one who had surprised her with her first brief lesson in what kissing should be like between a man and a woman when his tongue swept along the seam of her lips and licked inside her mouth. His assault had been shocking, electrifying, and all too fleeting. An instant later he had repelled her, as though he himself had felt repelled. If his sole concern had been her young age, he should have made that clear, instead of leaving her feeling awkward and…unappealing.
“What was I supposed to do? Ruin my best friend’s little sister? God knows I wanted to.” He put his lips to her ear and whispered, “You’ve no idea what a confounded mess you made of my life when your sweet mouth opened to mine…”
His warm breath in her ear had a narcotic effect on her. “Really?”
“Really.” He dipped his tongue in her ear, turning her brain to mush. Shivers swept over the back of her neck and snaked to her belly. “You were so young, Isabel,” he murmured, as he dragged his mouth along the side of her neck, inhaling her with scalding kisses. “My reaction to you was…reprehensible. I felt nothing but disgust for myself afterward. If I upset or offended you, I apologize. I botched the whole thing like a cloddish schoolboy.”
Her smile was unquenchable. “Thank goodness age is not a permanent condition.”
He held her head and scrutinized her face closely, his eyes smoldering. “Thank goodness.”
He recaptured her mouth and gently lowered her to the grass. Caught in a trance of passion, she felt his brawny torso coming down atop her, crushing her soft breasts. Her hands roamed his broad back in wide circles, embracing him close to her heart. It was an exhilarating sensation—lying beneath him, kissing him, embracing him, inhaling him—and felt as natural as breathing.
Their kiss went on and on, growing rougher and more demanding. He kissed her insatiably, soaking up her very essence and infusing her with molten heat in return. She wanted to absorb half of him into her and leave half of herself with him, so that he would feel linked to her as she felt toward him. No wonder she refused every man who showed an interest in her. Not one of them was Ashby. He had ensorcelled her girlish heart with a spell so powerful no other man could ever break. Everything became crystal clear to her at that moment: She wanted Ashby. She adored him, craved him, loved him, had never stopped loving him, no matter how hard she fought it or lied to herself about it, and she had every intention of keeping him forever.
“This mouth,” he whispered, as his hand sailed up her throat in a slow caress. “I could kiss this luscious mouth…these cherry lips forever…”
“Then you’ll have to keep me, too, as we are attached,” she returned breathlessly.
She sensed his slow smile against her lips. “What a shame…” His large hand came to rest on her thigh. Slowly it cruised up to her waist, over her ribs, lingered a while beneath her breast, and swept down the way it came. “If we go on like this much longer, you will have to stay with me forever,” he murmured, his voice was thick with need, his breathing growing harsher and heavier.
Yet he didn’t stop. His mouth moved possessively, leisurely over hers. As did his body. Shifting his weight to his arms, he moved atop her and lodged himself between her thighs in a shockingly thrilling, intimate position. Through the thin layers of her muslin gown she felt every inch of him hardening against her boneless body. His bulky frame radiated such heat she felt she was going up in flames. She lost herself in their long-drawn-out kisses. With each foray of his tongue her belly tightened, her body tingled, her response matured and intensified. The memory of his half-nude body sleek with sweat, laboring over timber, haunted her as some natural opiate. Of their own volition her fingers pulled his cambric shirttails out of his trousers and splayed over his bare back. His skin was warm velvet, stretched taut over finely tuned sinew. She fingered the two dimples at the base of his back and sailed higher along the muscled ridges flanking his spine.
A groan reverberated in his throat. He ground his taut body over hers, drawing a soft moan from her lips. Her feeble sense of propriety gave way to the dormant wanton awakening inside of her, wanting to eat him alive—and he seemed perfectly willing to let her do it…
A little voice began sobbing. “Danielli!” Isabel nudged Ashby aside and scrambled to her feet. With great tenderness she scooped the drowsy infant into her arms, murmuring soothing sounds, and encouraged Danielli to put her head on her shoulder and continue napping. “I should go,” Isabel whispered. “She’ll wake up any minute now and want her mother.”
Already on his feet, Ashby nodded grimly while tucking his shirttails into his trousers. He escorted them to the foyer in silence, but she was physically aware of his covert glances. Strange how neither one of them knew what to say when not too long ago they had conversed freely.
Phipps opened the front door. Two footmen carried Danielli’s perambulator down the front steps.