Page 24 of Felicity Cabot Sells Her Soul (Scandalous Sisters #3)

All right,”

he said through the pressure of the cravat half-strangling him as she wrapped her fist tighter.

“All right.”

It was a mistake, but she was entitled to make it. He’d tried to do the right thing, the honorable thing. Surely she’d remember that later.

At least, he hoped to God she would remember that later.

Another shiver swept over her. He felt it through her fingers, in the white-knuckled grip of them upon his cravat.

“You’re cold,”

he said.

“Let me warm you.”

With her free hand she batted his hand away.

“Don’t touch me,”

she snapped, and that fire in her eyes blazed hotter still; violent, virulent green.

“You don’t touch me,”

she stressed.

He let his hands fall to his sides, bent toward her just enough to put the tiniest bit of slack in fabric.

“Tell me what you want of me, then.”

“Get on the bed,”

she said, and at last her fingers released their hold on his cravat.

Ian cleared his throat.

“I thought I was meant to remove my clothes.”

“You had your chance.”

So she was going to use him, then.

For whatever pleasure she could wrest from his body.

A physical release, a relief from the pressure of the ruinous emotions that tormented her.

And he would let her do it, just to be close to her however she would permit. In whatever way she would permit.

The air crackled with tension as he sat once more at the edge of the bed, the same spot from which she had so recently dragged him.

“May I remove my cravat? I don’t fancy being strangled.”

Her eyes glowed with an unholy, avaricious light.

“Be quick about it,”

she said, and the slice of her words could have stripped the flesh from his bones. As he unwound the rumpled linen from about his throat, her gaze dropped to his lap, to his tented trousers. She scoffed, the sour twist of her lips suggesting she thought he’d protested a bit too strenuously.

“I always want you,”

he told her as he let the fabric of his cravat drift free of his fingers.

“Moreover, I want what is best for you.”

And it wasn’t this.

“You don’t know what’s best for me.”

At any given moment? Likely not. But at this particular moment? He was fairly certain he knew it better than she did. She was overwrought.

She didn’t need sex; she needed comfort.

A place to lay her head, arms to hold her tight enough give her the peace and protection she truly needed.

This might provide a few moments of temporary relief, perhaps even a few hours of restful sleep. But she was going to agonize over it later, when she recalled this frantic, emotionless coupling she had demanded of him.

He reached out to help her as she braced her knees on the bed, the linen skirt of her nightgown stretched taut over her thighs as she settled across his lap.

“Don’t touch me,”

she snarled again, and he swallowed back a groan as he let his hand fall once more to the bed where it fisted in the counterpane. Her fingers, still trembling, worked the buttons of his trousers, peeling back the placket.

Ten years since she’d touched him like this, her soft fingers wrapped around his shaft. Ten years since anyone had touched him like this other than himself. Ian’s breath whistled sharply through his teeth, his thighs tensing at the incongruently soft, exploratory strokes she gave, so at odds with the violence shimmering in every tense muscle. He didn’t know if he was the last man she’d lain with—once he’d lost her, it hadn’t been his business to know—but he didn’t want to hurt her. And he might, if she wasn’t truly ready.

Some wretched, agonized sound lodged in his throat as she made an awkward movement, bracing one hand upon his shoulder as she tried to position him between her thighs. The head of his cock slid through sparse curls, notched there at the hot, wet entrance of her body, and he—he wanted so badly to touch her that he clenched his teeth against the temptation.

“You’re not ready,”

he managed to grit out. Not ready enough, anyway. She’d managed to take just the head of his cock, her tight flesh resisting the invasion of his no matter how she tried to force herself down upon him.

“Felicity. For God’s sake, let me help you.”

Her fingernails dug into his shoulder even through the fabric of his shirt, a strained sound eking from her throat. For just a moment, her iron hold on her composure shattered, a terrible fragility sweeping across her face. The distress of failure, he thought. This one thing she had insisted upon, and she couldn’t do it herself.

His chest heaved like a bellows, stretched on the rack halfway between heaven and hell. He said.

“It’s a goddamned special occasion. And you owe me, if you’ll recall.”

Her fingers tightened further. He’d have gouges in his flesh when she was done with him. Balanced precariously upon her knees, she hiccoughed, wiped away a mist of sweat that had broken out upon her forehead.

“How many?”

“Including tonight? Eight.”

His blunt nails scraped across the counterpane.

“And I’ll sacrifice every kiss if you will just let me help you.”

She was so goddamned brittle just now, and he didn’t want to touch her without her consent, to risk crushing her battered spirit in his clumsy hands. But by God, he wanted to touch her so fucking badly. It was a gnawing ache in his chest, a hunger he’d lived with every day for a damned decade, a starvation of the soul.

She fairly vibrated with strain, with the restless, agitated twitch of muscles. A heightened anxiety she couldn’t control, one which desperately required an outlet—and this was what she had chosen. “Yes,”

she said at last, on a warbling, plaintive note as she braced her hands upon his shoulders once more.

“Yes. All right. Do it.”

Thank God. “Easy,”

he said, peeling his hands from the counterpane to grasp her hips, helping her to steady herself.

“Easy. Christ. You’re shaking like a leaf.”

One hand slid up her spine, rasping over the linen of her nightgown, landing upon the nape of her neck, massaging the tight muscles there.

She shuddered violently, the prickle of chill bumps breaking out along her skin, and he realized abruptly—she was every bit as starved for touch, for affection. Even if she didn’t trust it from him, still she longed for it, bending her head to grant him better access.

“There. Just relax a little.”

Firm, gentle pressure there at the back of her neck. Her arms, tight and tense to keep herself at a careful distance, buckled. Gasping breaths sawed in and out of her lungs as her forehead touched his shoulder, settled there.

He turned his head and touched his lips to her temple. The scent of lavender clung to her hair, her skin, warm and sweet. He nudged a few damp curls away, followed the curve of her jaw, the silky line of her throat to that spot that had always made her tremble. A breathy sigh, half-muffled against his neck. The minutest softening of her tense muscles, the gentlest rock of her hips as she tested the fit of their bodies. Too tight yet.

He clasped her thigh in one hand, holding her still.

“Not yet. You’re not ready.”

Felicity made a caustic sound in her throat, shoved at his shoulder as she tried to wriggle closer.

“I didn’t ask you to talk.”

“No. But you like it when I do.”

It had aroused her, that evening he’d caught her in the bath. What he’d said to her afterward. He let his stubble scrape across that unbearably sensitive spot on her shoulder, stroked the softness of her inner thigh with his thum.

“Will you touch yourself for me? Like you did in the bath? It would please me to watch you.”

She quivered, her thighs tensing just briefly. “No,”

she snapped.

“I am using you, you daft man. I don’t give a fig if I please you.”

“Then let me please you instead.”

His hand slipped between them, beneath the hem of her nightgown strung tight against her thighs. Found the heart of her, slick and tightly stretched around him. She buried a gasp against his throat as his fingers traced delicate flesh, stroked delicately. One arm slipped around his back, clutched at his shoulder to anchor herself.

“Ah, darling. You can use me like this whenever you please.”

“Don’t—ah!—call me that.”

Her breath had begun to come in harsh little pants, her hips jerked to the stroke of his fingers as he found the bead of her clitoris, rubbed in slow, lazy circles.

As a plaintive whine built in her throat, he gave her a few moments of respite, and as the building tension in her thighs dissolved, she sank down farther—perhaps halfway.

“Oh, God,”

she squeaked in surprise.

Ian clenched his teeth against the tight clasp of her delicate inner muscles around his cock, held his breath and prayed he wouldn’t spend so soon.

“Too much?”

he asked raggedly, when he trusted himself to speak again.

“Yes.”

She fisted her hand in his shirtfront when he would have withdrawn. Probably she would have strangled him with his own cravat if he hadn’t had the foresight to get rid of it.

“But God help you if you stop,”

she seethed into his face.

“Make me come. Now.”

Christ.

She’d not been half so authoritative ten years ago, but damned if it didn’t make his blood run hotter, his pulse pound.

He splayed his fingers across her hip to move with her as she rose up on her knees and sank down again.

She moved in vicious surges, tossed her head back as he stroked her. The same way he’d watched her stroke herself in the bath, with the same tight circles.

Her skin glowed with that same passion-flush.

The scent of lavender bloomed in the air, warmed by the heat of her skin.

She panted, writhed, strained for a release that hung just out of her reach.

And he—he was hanging on to his sanity by the skin of his teeth, and it was sorely tested with every snap of her hips, every downward plunge.

“Don’t fight for it,”

he urged.

“Relax. I’ll give it to you.”

She didn’t want to obey.

It was there in the hollows of her cheeks, the quiver of her tense limbs.

But she wanted the climax more than she wanted to thwart him.

She sank down once more, farther still, as his hand on her hip pulled her into the upward nudge of his.

And there—the strangled hitch of her breath, the luxuriant pulses as she clasped him from within, silky inner muscles rippling, contracting.

A wild gasp; her hands clutched at him as she threw her head back, her whole body caught in a trembling arch.

Somehow, through sheer dint of will, he let her have her moment.

This one thing, just for her.

And he suffered for it, suffered the delicate flutters of her release, the sweet sweep of bliss sliding across her face just before she finally went lax, limbs loose and boneless as she wilted.

Peace, for however long she could hold onto it—hard won, but well-deserved.

Torture, for him.

And he didn’t know how much longer he could hold out.

“Felicity, if you don’t want a baby—”

She wrenched herself away from him with an alacrity that ought to have been offensive, landing in a splay of limbs on the bed beside him, still trembling.

He didn’t make it a full stroke before he spent himself with a groan.

Not quite the finale he would have preferred—but he’d done what she’d asked of him.

What she’d thought she wanted.

Hell.

Ian gave himself a minute to recover himself, to ensure his legs would support him when he rose.

His heart still thundered in his chest, his pulse pounding in his ears.

She would want a few minutes to collect herself, to put herself to rights.

And so he rose at last, strode for the bathing room, undressed in silence, and took his time with his ablutions.

She’d left marks on his shoulders. Tiny crescents carved into his flesh from the prick of her nails.

She had retreated within the shelter of the bed curtains when he emerged at last, silent and almost invisible in the shadows as he paused by the hearth to scatter another layer of coal.

But he heard her turn as he slid beneath the covers at last and settled beside her.

Not too close.

For long moments there was only the crackle of the fire as the quiet of the room stretched between them.

And then she took a shuddering breath, tried to smother a tiny, soul-rending sound behind the cup of her hand.

As he’d thought, then.

A temporary reprieve at best, and it hadn’t brought her any peace.

Ian closed his eyes, swallowed back a sigh.

There was no pleasure in being proved correct; not when she ached with it.

“You don’t love,”

she accused in a shredded little voice.

“You leave.”

Never again. He’d been fighting his way back to her for ten years. His fingers twitched, daring to slide across the space that separated them. That neutral ground which she crossed every morning before sunrise to avail herself of his warmth, and which he had never once breached. “Please,”

he said, in a raspy whisper.

“Please let me hold you. Just for tonight.”

When she needed it most, but wouldn’t ask. When her way hadn’t worked out the way she had wished.

Her breath came in staggered little puffs, hitching in her chest. But she hadn’t refused outright, and he waited—and waited, quiet and undemanding—until at long last she crawled across the mattress. Slowly, so damned slowly, like she might spook if he reached for her. Eons later she settled beside him, turned away from him. Let him slip his arm beneath her head, arrange himself around her, his chest to her back.

She gave a vicious tremor as he settled his other arm over her waist.

“I still hate you,”

she whispered.

Ian breathed a sigh of relief into the tangle of her hair. “I know,”

he said.

Despite the scornful words, she’d relaxed as she’d said them, had managed to inject no heat into them.

They had sounded, just the tiniest bit, like a lie.

Or at the very least, not quite as much a truth as she might have wanted them to be.