Scoundrel in the Regency Ballroom: The Rake and the Heiress / Innocent in the Sheikh's Harem. Marguerite Kaye
at his waist, relishing the shivering response her touch elicited as she used her hands to draw the map of his body. Her fingers encountered the barrier of his breeches. She pulled her hand back as if she had been burned. She was burning.
Nicholas looked down at her anxiously. Her eyelids were heavy over the deep blue of her eyes, the long dark lashes fanned out over her cheeks. Her hair was undone from its pins, rippling down her back in long ringlets, one tress curling provocatively over her flushed cheek. Her lips were swollen from his kisses. She looked every bit as wanton, even more arousing than in all his fevered late-night imaginings.
‘Serena?’
She stared up at him. He took her hand again, placed it back on his chest, relishing the feel of her skin on his, while desperately trying to read her thoughts. Was she frightened? For a moment he thought so. Because this was the first time? For a moment he hoped so. Because it was not? No, don’t think of that.
Beneath the soft silk of her blouse he could see her breasts rise and fall. He could see the hard peaks of her nipples. Carefully he tugged the lace at her neck, finding the fastenings, slowly undoing them, until her blouse was open to the waist. Her breathing quickened. Her hand curled into the muscle of his chest, but she did not stop him. He pulled the blouse free from the waistband of her skirt. He tugged at her undergarments, expertly freeing her breasts from the wisps of lace and fine lawn cotton that constrained them. At the first touch of his thumbs on her nipples Serena moaned, slumping back against the bales of hay.
She wanted him. Nicholas arranged her gently, supporting her against the straw. She was a picture to rob any man of control, with her golden hair spread out like a fan, her countenance flushed, her eyes heavy with desire. The creamy mounds of her breasts with their rosy-tipped peaks rose and fell alluringly against the white of her undergarments. Just exactly as he’d pictured. The blue velvet of her skirt trailed out beneath her. Nicholas drank his fill of the vision, his breathing heavy, his heart thumping erratically as desire surged painfully through him.
‘Nicholas.’
Serena breathed his name in that special way of hers, watching him through eyes slumberous with desire. She was no vision. She was flesh and blood and heat and luscious, perfect curves. And his, all his. Pushing her legs apart under the voluminous skirt of her riding habit, Nicholas knelt down in front of her. Cupping her full breasts in his hands, he licked the soft undersides, teasing her nipples into hard, swollen fullness between his fingers, pinching them just enough to make her moan with the overwhelming pleasure of it. He leaned in closer, circling her nipples with his tongue, flicking over the hard peaks, sucking gently, then hard, gently, then hard.
She was mindless. She was lost. She was frightened by what was happening to her, but in a way that made her want more. Heat spread out from her belly, a dull glow turning into a burning ember, sparks flying out through her veins, igniting her blood, making her burn. Was this normal? Serena writhed restlessly. She didn’t want him ever to stop. His mouth on her. His hands on her. He was making her do things. Things she didn’t know she knew.
She should stop. She couldn’t stop. She arched against him, pushing her body into him, finding the restraining cloth of her skirt, his breeches, an unbearable barrier. ‘Nicholas.’ She breathed his name again, slanting open her eyes to look at him, hot hands, hot mouth, hot eyes on her. She wanted this, and now she wanted something else too.
Nicholas lifted the hem of her blue velvet skirt, pushing it up around her waist to reveal the long graceful line of her legs. Little boots laced tight around delicate ankles. Silk stockings clinging to the outline of her calves, their ribbons tied under the lace-trimmed edges of her underwear. God, so beautiful.
Serena blushed because he was looking. Blushed because she could see he liked looking. Blushed because she liked him looking. She shifted under his gaze.
The movement caused the gap between her pantaloons to open, giving Nicholas a brief, tantalising view of blonde curls. He inhaled sharply, drinking in her body hungrily, feasting on the full length of her legs, the outline of her thighs under the delicate lawn of her underclothes, breathing in the smell of hay, her flowery perfume, the elusive musky scent of vanilla which seemed to emanate from her skin. With his eyes closed, he ran one hand teasingly from the top of her boot up over her stocking and along the velvet-soft skin on the inside of her thigh, feeling her rippling response. Running his hand over her other leg, he breathed in deeply, relishing the smell of her, the feel of her, the lines and textures of her. A multitude of sensations bubbled through his blood, making him swell with desire, wild with the anticipation of possession.
He reached for the gap in her pantaloons, unerringly finding the source of her heat. Gently, he touched, stroked, pressed. She responded, pushing against his hand. He pushed her legs apart, revealing all the glory of her soft curls, her creamy white thighs, her wet centre.
Serena felt the heat of his mouth, a gentle breath on her thighs. She tightened, her body a bow stretched taut to breaking point. He was licking. The slow sweep of his tongue made her gasp. He licked again, teasing her, circling around the rough edges of desire, homing in, then out again, stroking her with his fingers, pushing her back when she arched against his mouth, his determined control of her frustrating and stimulating at the same time.
Lost, lost, lost. Serena moaned and pushed and twisted against him, wet with need, overcome with wanting. Still the licking teased, brought her to the edge, withdrew, driving her into a frenzy, making her feel as if she teetered on the brink of some huge chasm, wanting Nicholas to push her, wanting to jump, unable to do so without him. She was terrified he would not make her.
Make me, Nicholas, she wanted to say, though she didn’t, she couldn’t, she wouldn’t. Please. He heard her. Did he hear her? Heat erupted suddenly, ripped through her, and she shattered, her whole body pulsing outwards from the centre of her climax, mindless, falling, whirling, lost. Her hands clenched on the straw at her sides, her heels dug into the bales supporting her, and she moaned over and over in a rhythm of her own, shaking, hot, trembling, wet.
Nicholas raised himself up, bending to kiss her. Serena reached up to pull him close, her mouth hot on his, kissing him back passionately, wild with the need to taste him, to make him feel what she was feeling, to take him to the place where she was.
He breathed hard against her, struggling with the fastenings of his breeches, desperate now to finish what they had begun. The final button on his buckskins gave way, and at last he was free from constraint. He took her hand, placing it on his erection, closing his eyes in pleasure at the feel of her butterfly touch fluttering over him. He was so highly sensitised he could almost feel the ridges and swirls of her fingertips.
Serena looked in awe at the thick jutting length of him. So strange. She could feel the pulse of his blood. She could feel the tension in him etched into every muscle. Here, here was where the centre of all that power was. He took her hand and wrapped it around his hardness. She watched his response with a mounting sense of excitement as she touched him carefully, stroking him, cupping him, watching him, learning from the way he moved, throbbed, moaned under her caresses. Something fierce clutched at her insides. Something powerful and horribly addictive. She ran her thumb over his silky smooth tip. She thought she’d done something wrong. Then she saw from his face that she hadn’t.
With a low husky growl Nicholas pushed her back against the hay. As he stood over her, made ready to plunge into her wet, honeyed centre, he became dimly aware of an insistent noise. The door to the barn was being rattled fiercely. He stilled, unable to believe his ears. Not now. Please God, not now.
‘Who’s in there? Is that you, Master Nicholas?’
Nicholas swore furiously. Tearing his eyes from the vision in front of him, he quickly fastened his breeches, carelessly thrusting the ends of his shirt into them. ‘Stay here,’ he whispered to Serena, making swiftly for the door, slipping outside before Farmer Jeffries could glimpse the scene inside.
‘I thought I recognised Titus,’ the farmer said. ‘Is there anything wrong, Master Nicholas? Only, after the shot, I came out to check things over for myself, and found your horses