Regency Scoundrels And Scandals. Louise Allen

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СКАЧАТЬ wondered hazily if she had lost consciousness for, as she regained her senses enough to differentiate between the parts of her own body and his, she found the nightgown was gone and she was moulded, flesh to flesh, heartbeat to heartbeat with Ashe.

      ‘Let me take you, Belle,’ he murmured and surged into her on one powerful thrust. Always before she had lain rigid under such an onslaught, enduring the meaningless, effortful, mercifully short male striving towards release. Only now Ashe seemed quite as concerned to bring her to that peak of ecstasy again as to reach his own, and it seemed that the beautiful body dominating hers was quite capable of going on for as long as it took. She wanted it to last for ever because it was so wonderful, and yet to be over at once, because she wanted to share that storm of completion with him.

      She felt the tension twisting into unimaginable heights, felt a change in his body, heard his breath rasp in his throat and curled her legs around his hips, pulling him in. ‘Ashe! Ashe, please…’ He gave one more thrust as she lost herself, then she was conscious—just—of him leaving her, holding her tight, gasping into her hair as they fell together, down into darkness.

      Ashe rolled on to his back, bringing Bel with him to lie cradled against his chest in the curve of his arm. She gave a soft whimper of pleasure and snuggled close as his groping hand found the corner of the sheet and pulled it over their damp bodies.

      He gazed up at the underside of the curtains as he let the aftershocks of their lovemaking shudder through his body. It had been beyond anything he had imagined and he could not understand why. Bel was lovely, sweet, eager. But she had come to him completely untutored and repressed—as close to a virgin as a woman could be after sleeping with a man. She had none of the tricks to pleasure him his mistresses had known—and yet the tentative wonder of her hands on his body, the awe in her eyes, the total trust with which she had given herself to him were powerfully erotic. And humbling, he realised.

      ‘Bel?’

      ‘Mmm?’ She snuggled in closer, rubbed her cheek against his pectorals and found his nipple with her lips. ‘Mmm.’

      ‘Stop it, wicked woman. Let a man catch his breath.’ She released the tense flesh and he saw her ear go pink at what she must have thought was a reproof. ‘I like it too much,’ he explained, mentally cursing her husband again, and she relaxed. ‘Are you—are you all right?’

      He had expected her to be shy at the question, to answer hesitantly. Instead she wriggled up until she was sitting, her knees curved into his hips, and smiled at him, the sheet pooling around her. Glowing, that was the only way to describe her. Her skin was flushed pink, deeper across her breasts. Her hair tumbled wantonly around her shoulders and her eyes, fixed on him, were wide and wondering. ‘All right?’ She shook her head, the curling locks shifting in the candlelight. ‘That phrase hardly seems adequate. I had no idea it was like that. Is it always like that?’

      It seemed he had not disappointed her. Ashe felt himself relax. He had not been conscious of a tension, but now he saw what a responsibility he had accepted and how hurt Bel could have been if she had chosen a man who did not live up to the trust she had placed in him.

      ‘I find it hard to believe that it would ever be like that for me again,’ he said seriously. ‘It can be as good—it will be—but that was special.’

      ‘Oh.’ Bel considered this, equally serious. ‘But I did not know what I was doing.’

      ‘You didn’t need to; you did what came naturally and that was…wonderful.’

      ‘Oh,’ she said again, dropping her lashes. ‘May we do it again? Soon? I mean, of course, when it is a convenient evening for you.’

      ‘It is very convenient now,’ he said smiling.

      ‘But—’She glanced down to where her wriggling had pulled the sheet away from his loins, and her mouth opened slightly in surprise as her gaze had the predictable effect on him.

      ‘You see what you can do just by looking? If you would like to explore,’ Ashe suggested, lifting her hand and placing it on the flat plane of his stomach, ‘we can see just how soon that convenient moment will arrive.’

      Bel was woken by the pressure of Ashe’s lips against her temple. ‘Sweetheart, I must go now. What do you want to do about the bed?’

      She struggled back to consciousness through what seemed to be a drift of rose petals, swansdown and fluffy clouds and found him sitting on the edge of the bed, fully dressed and smiling at her. ‘What time is it?’

      ‘Four.’ It was not a dream this time either, then. He had been there, he had made love to her—three times—he seemed pleased with her and she, she was still floating. Three times, each time different, each time blissful… ‘The bed?’ he prompted, grinning at her befuddlement.

      Bel pushed back her hair with both hands and looked around at the tangle of bedclothes and the tumbled pillows. ‘We will never make it look as it did before,’ she concluded. ‘If you can arrange the covers so it looks as though I was restless and pushed them right off, and pass me that copy of Byron…’ She heaped up the pillows and snuggled back into them, half-sitting, half-lying, then remembered her nightgown, found it on the floor and dragged it on. ‘There. I could not sleep, sat up half the night reading and fell asleep with my book.’

      Ashe straightened up from arranging the covers artistically and grinned at her. ‘Very convincing. But I think next time I had better wake up in time to make the bed—or we strip it first.’ He came round to the side of the bed, then bent and kissed her. Bel put up a hand, cupping his stubble-shadowed cheek and enjoyed the rasp of whiskers as she rubbed gently.

      ‘Thank you,’ she whispered. Next time, there is going to be a next time.

      ‘No, ma belle, thank you.’ Then he was gone, shoes in hand, slipping out of the room. The door snicked shut and she was alone. Bel tossed the volume of poetry carelessly on the covers as though it had fallen from her hand, reached out to pinch the wick of the remaining candle and lay back against the heaped pillows.

      Her body thrummed, lighter than air, yet so heavily relaxed it felt she might sink through the mattress. She felt wonderful, although she knew that in the morning she was going to be stiff and perhaps a little sore. It had been a miracle. Ashe had been a miracle. Bel’s lids drooped. As sleep took her again she thought hazily, This is so perfect. So perfect…

      Bel floated, blissful, through the next morning. The fluffy pink clouds still enveloped her, the sun shone, just for her, the birds were singing, just because Ashe had made love to her. At lunchtime she received a bouquet of yellow roses with a note that said simply, ‘One? A.’ and rushed out to purchase two new nightgowns, a pair of utterly frivolous backless boudoir slippers, a cut-glass vase for the roses and pink silk stockings. She then went and took refuge in Ackermann’s, browsing through the latest fashion plates until her maid was nodding with boredom and she could hand a note and a coin to the doorman without being noticed.

      ‘Please see this is delivered,’ she said brightly, without any appearance of secrecy. ‘I should have left it with my footman and quite forgot.’

      The man touched his hat respectfully and snapped his fingers for an errand boy. The note, hurried away in the lad’s firm grip said only, ‘Yes. B.’

      She, Bel Cambourn, respectable widow, was having an affaire. She had a lover. She was living out her fantasy and it was utterly perfect. Bel drifted round the end of a rack of maps, СКАЧАТЬ