Читать книгу Modern Romance Collection: October 2017 5 - 8 - Heidi Rice, Annie West - Страница 19

CHAPTER TEN

IT WAS LIKE DANCING.

Eleanor wasn’t sure she should let herself fall into something that felt a little too much like a fairy tale here in the middle of a ballroom, but his mouth was on hers again and she couldn’t seem to think of anything else. Or she didn’t want to think about anything else.

She didn’t want to think about how little she’d cared for her sister tonight, which made her feel small. Petty. Selfish beyond measure.

But not enough to stop.

She didn’t want to think about the fact that she’d left her room after tossing and turning for hours, and despite what she might have let Hugo think, she knew that she hadn’t been dressed like a governess should have been. Or even as a guest should have been when she’d eased her door open and crept down the hall. She been filled with a kind of despairing recklessness, a restless need that had urged her to do something with all the pent-up hurt and betrayal she’d felt after dinner. She’d convinced herself that it was an excellent idea to wander the halls of Groves House half-dressed. Hair down. Bare feet.

Had she wanted this all along?

But she didn’t really care if she had, because it felt like dancing.

Hugo kissed her and he kissed her. His hands moved from the nape of her neck, smoothing their way down the line of her back, and fastened thrillingly at her hips, drawing her against him.

He kissed her as if there was nothing else but that. Nothing in all the world but the slide of his mouth on hers.

“I can’t get enough of you,” Hugo muttered against her lips, as if it hurt him to say that. “I can’t get enough.”

And when he bent, then lifted her into his arms, Eleanor knew she should have protested. Nothing had made this any less wrong than it had been yesterday. Or a week ago. Or ever. She was still his employee.

But he was Hugo Grovesmoor. And Vivi was right here, in this house, but he hadn’t chosen her.

He’d chosen Eleanor. He’d called her beautiful and he’d kissed her, after meeting Vivi. After Vivi had launched a full-scale offensive, in fact, and gotten nowhere.

For the first time in her life, someone had chosen Eleanor.

She didn’t have it in her to pull away.

Hugo carried her through the house. Eleanor had no concept of what time it was, only that the last time she’d heard the clocks chime, it had been after midnight. But as far she was concerned, the night could last forever. She hoped it would.

She rested her head against Hugo’s wide shoulder, and let the house drift past her as he carried her. Through the halls and up the stairs that led to his private wing. And this time, he did not take her to his library, or to that dining room of his where she’d spent all evening feeling as if she didn’t exist, but further on. Down to the end of that same hall, and into the rooms that waited there.

She had a dreamy sort of impression of magnificence. Bold, masculine furnishings, dark woods and impressively large paintings and rugs so lavish it seemed a shame to walk on them. A massive stone fireplace that made her think of medieval castles, and that was only the living room.

But Hugo kept going. And with every step he took toward what had to be his bedroom, Eleanor’s heart kicked at her. Harder and harder.

And then they were there, standing by the side of a massive bed that would have dwarfed a room any smaller than this one, and Hugo was shifting her. Placing her down on the edge of his mattress as if she was infinitely precious to him.

And Eleanor felt shivery. Fragile all the way through.

Because she couldn’t think of another time in her life that anyone had treated her like that, as if she mattered. Oh, she assumed her parents had. But the truth was that she couldn’t remember any longer. What she remembered was taking care of others.

She tilted her face up, so she could study Hugo’s gorgeously male expression—hungry and intense—as he gazed back at her. He made her feel like she was dancing even when she was still. He made her feel small in all the best ways.

The truth was that he made her feel like the kind of girl she’d never been. Light, airy. Charming beyond measure.

He made her feel the way she’d always imagined it felt to be Vivi.

Eleanor still couldn’t believe that she was the one sitting here, on the edge of the Duke’s bed. That he hadn’t picked Vivi when he’d had the chance.

But she had no intention of throwing this away. This was her chance at last. To experience everything she never had before. To be that girl some part of her had always dreamed she could have been, maybe, if things had been different.

“I would tell you I don’t bite, little one,” Hugo said in that smokily amused way of his. It reverberated up and down her spine, then pooled somewhere low in her belly, where it began to pulse. “But that would be a lie.”

“I’m not afraid of you,” she managed to say.

Hugo looked amused. Something like delighted.

“No, you are not. And it is one among many reasons you are under my skin.” He studied her. “But still, you’re still looking at me as if you expect me to eat you alive.”

“Oh,” Eleanor said softly. “I thought that was exactly what you intended to do.”

Hugo let out a breath. Or perhaps it was a laugh. Either way, it shimmered in Eleanor like light.

“You’ll be the death of me,” Hugo muttered.

And then he was moving. He hooked an arm around Eleanor’s waist and hauled her along with him as he crawled toward the center of the bed. And then, marvelously, he stretched out on top of her and settled the whole of his lean, hard body between her legs.

“Breathe,” he told her, and she knew she wasn’t mistaking that unholy amusement in his dark gaze. His eyes looked even more like whiskey tonight, or perhaps it was just that this close, she couldn’t pretend that she was anything but drunk.

On him.

“I’m breathing,” she whispered.

“See that you continue,” Hugo ordered her in his lazy, aristocratic way. “I haven’t killed a virgin yet.”

And Eleanor loved the fact that he knew. That she didn’t have to make any long, drawn-out confession. When she’d thought about this moment—in those few and far between moments when she still imagined that this was any kind of possibility, that she might give herself to a man—she’d always assumed that she would have to offer extensive explanations. She would have to tell a reasonable story about why a woman her age had never quite managed to get here before, horizontal on a bed. She would have to talk about how distant she’d always felt from others her age, in part because she’d felt so responsible for Vivi, and how that had always seemed to leave her on her own. And she’d never been able to conjure up a way to tell someone that story without coming across as some kind of freak. Better to lock all that away. Better to convince herself that not only didn’t she care, but she didn’t feel the same things others did.

But Hugo didn’t seem to care about any of that. Not why she was a virgin at twenty-seven. Not how. The only thing he seemed to care about was that he was the one braced over her, gazing down at her as if she was a treat. As if he wanted nothing more than to bury himself in her.

As if it was only a matter of time before he did.

It took Eleanor long moments to realize what that sensation was that snaked his way through her. A blistering sort of relief.

Because she felt safe. Somehow, someway, Hugo Grovesmoor made her feel safe, here in his bed where that should have been the very last thing she felt.

She hadn’t known that was possible.

“Stop thinking so hard, little one,” he said then.

“That’s easy for you to say,” she retorted. And his mouth was at her neck, so she felt it when he smiled.

“This is very simple,” he told her, and there was a serious note beneath all that lazy heat. “If I want you to do something, I’ll tell you what and how to do it. Otherwise, all you need to do is enjoy yourself.”

Eleanor frowned at him, and he must have sensed it, because as he looked up that smile of his widened.

“That sounds very selfish.”

“Eleanor, please.” Hugo shook his head. “You cannot possibly be more selfish than I am. I promise you.”

And then he put his mouth against her skin again, and Eleanor stopped thinking about anything.

Hugo took his time.

He tasted her everywhere. First he ran his hand over every part of her he could touch. He traced her collarbones. He tested her figure, spending a lot of time on her waist and the generous curves above and below. He made her writhe side to side beneath him, and when he had enough of that, he stripped her of her wrapper and her silky little nightie, and he did it all over again.

But this time, he used his mouth too.

He took her nipples in his mouth and sucked on them until she sobbed. He played with her. He made her arch up against him and cry out, over and over, and only when she felt limp and outside herself did he shift down the length of her body.

And then put his mouth between her legs.

Shattering the world into a white hot panic.

He licked into her. What he’d done with his fingers in the library had been astonishing enough, but this was worse. Better.

This was unlike anything Eleanor could possibly have imagined.

And when that wall came at her this time, she wasn’t afraid of it. She let him throw her over the edge once, then again, and she shook and shimmered all the way down.

When she opened her eyes again, Hugo was naked too. And he was crawling his way over her again, his eyes locked to hers.

“You’re holding up beautifully,” he said, that curve in his lips. “I haven’t even had to tell you to lie back and think of England.”

“I always thought that would be unsanitary,” she blurted out. That curve in his mouth bloomed into a real smile.

“You may well be the death of me, Eleanor. Here. Tonight.”

“It always sounded so...” She trailed off, aftershocks still shuddering through her.

“It is so,” Hugo told her. “That’s what makes it so much fun.”

And then Eleanor’s attention was stolen away by the way Hugo settled himself against her once more.

And this time, she could feel everything.

That beautiful chest of his, chiseled and perfect and hot to the touch. But more than that, there was that heavy, foreign part of him that she could feel nudging up against the place where she was soft and melting. It made her shudder.

She reached down between them and wrapped her hand around him. His breath hissed out of him, hard. And there was that strange glitter in his eyes.

Eleanor pulled her hand away. Guiltily. “I’m sorry,” she said hesitantly. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“You didn’t hurt me.” Hugo’s voice was strangled. “I promise you, there’s no possible way you could hurt me. But hold off on that for now.”

Eleanor realized in the next instant what she’d done. She did read, after all. And she had certainly watched enough television in her time. But nothing had prepared her for how different it was in real life. Hugo was big and sculpted and stunning, and still he shuddered when she touched him. How could she have known? A thousand Hollywood movies were nothing next to the feel of his body above hers, and the way that silken length of his had burned itself into her palm.

Hugo shifted. She felt the tip of him nudge its way between the folds he’d licked, and then begin to move. Up and around. Nudging against the place that made her shiver the most, wilder and wilder each time.

“Will it hurt?” she asked.

Hugo’s dark gaze glittered. “Hideously.”

“Is that meant to be reassuring?” she asked him, and it was hard to catch her breath. But not because she was afraid of the potential pain.

“You strike me as a woman who appreciates the truth, Eleanor. Are you not?”

“Surely it can’t be that bad or people wouldn’t do it all the time.”

“If you already know,” Hugo drawled, “then why did you ask?”

Eleanor scowled at him. She opened up her mouth to snap something at him, and that was when he slid himself inside of her.

All the way inside of her.

Eleanor choked back whatever she might have been about to say. Pain lanced through her—

But it wasn’t pain. In the next instant, she realized that it was sensation, certainly, and almost too much of it. Still, it wasn’t pain.

It was somehow sharp and full at once. She felt exposed, even though Hugo covered the whole of her body with his. She felt shaky and taken, and still, somehow, fragile and precious at once.

“Did it hurt?” Hugo asked, his voice little more than a growl.

Eleanor tested it. She shifted her hips a little bit this way, then that. Then again.

And each time she moved, the sensation changed. The fullness remained, but the sharpness eased. Until she started to suspect that the fullness was warmth. She tried it again, and again, and sure enough the more she moved, the warmer it got.

And it spiraled out from that place inside her, and set the rest of her on fire.

“Hideously,” she whispered up at him.

Hugo grinned. And then he began to move.

And Eleanor understood that she’d only known sparks.

This was the fire.

Hugo was thorough. He set a slow, easy pace, and Eleanor met it as she wrapped herself around him. And then she mirrored him. She did what he did.

He put his mouth on her skin and she returned the favor. When he thrust deep into her, she lifted her hips to meet each stroke. And the more she did it, the less smooth and studied he became.

Until he seemed as out of breath and outside himself as she was.

Something cracked wide open inside of her. She felt it happen as he slammed into her, sending that impossible joy dancing all through her veins.

“What the hell you doing to me?” Hugo whispered fiercely, his face in the crook of her neck.

And that crack only widened further, and filled with light.

He’d chosen her. And here, beneath him, with him deep inside of her and everything fire and need and all that beautiful hunger, she couldn’t help but believe that maybe he needed her, too.

Not because she was a woman to scratch some itch. He was Hugo Grovesmoor. He could have any woman he liked for that kind of thing, she knew that. But because she was her, specifically.

Because together, they were them.

And that was more precious than anything, even all the priceless things cluttering up this rambling old house.

With every deep stroke, every life-altering thrust, she believed it more.

And when she found herself falling this time, cracked wide open and full of him, it felt like love.

Especially when Hugo followed her over, shouting out her name.