Page 37 of Felicity Cabot Sells Her Soul (Scandalous Sisters #3)

Felicity.”

He groaned her name as if he’d been shot instead of kissed, and his fingers trembled as he sank them into the sleep-tangled dishevelment of her hair. “Again,”

he murmured, leaning in once more even as she withdrew for a moment to yank his cravat off and toss it aside.

Yes. Again, and again, and again. Her lips parted beneath the pressure of his, and she shivered as he sank his tongue into her mouth to stroke her own. Her hands landed upon the wall of his chest, fumbling for the buttons of his shirt. Somehow, despite the clumsiness of her fingers, she managed to shove several through their loops, baring warm flesh as the fabric parted.

He took pity on her as he struggled with the last button at his collar, and released her just long enough to pull his shirt over his head, crumple it into a ball, and lob it off the bed.

“We’ll have to marry again,”

he said as he reached for her once more, sighing as she explored the texture of his bared skin with the tips of her fingers, the light rake of her nails.

“Yes,”

she said as he touched his lips to the delicate skin beneath her ear, sighing for the pleasure of it. The abrasion of that new growth of beard against her tender skin, the heat of his lips, the delicate rasp of his teeth.

“Properly this time.”

“So long as properly means soon.”

A hum of approval slid up her throat as he nudged the neck of her nightgown out of the way, smoothed his lips over the curve of her shoulder.

“I want a real church wedding,”

he said.

“With your family in attendance, and you in a gown befitting a bride, and a finer ring—”

“I’ll agree to everything but the ring,”

she said.

“I have already got one.”

“It’s ugly. Even your sister thinks so.”

It wasn’t pretty. But it meant something to him, and now that she knew it, it meant something to her.

“I want my ugly ring or none at all. I want one that means something. You couldn’t buy better.”

“I really could.”

It was uttered with the sulky petulance of a man who knew when he’d been beaten, though the high color that touched his cheeks suggested he was secretly pleased. Felicity laughed, and it came out giddy and bright and ringing, like the peal of the little silver bells frequently hung up around Christmastide. Ian sighed, pressed a kiss against the side of her neck.

“I want you to do more of that,” he said.

“What, laugh?”

“Yes. I want you to be happy. I want to know you are happy.”

His hands clutched fistfuls of her nightgown and whisked it over her head. And for a moment, as he held the loose linen in his hands, he only stared at her in mute silence, his dark eyes sliding over her bared shoulders, the hollow of her throat, the curves of her breasts.

She had not felt she had had much to smile over just lately, and less still to laugh about—but now, as a hard swallow rolled down his throat, as that faintly stunned expression settled over his face, as he shifted minutely where he sat as though his trousers had gone suddenly too tight for comfort, she smiled.

That smile galvanized him; he reached for her like a starving man, his mouth landing over hers hungrily. He pressed her back upon the mattress, and her shoulders sank into the fluff of pillows piled behind her. There was the pressure of his chest against her breasts, the nudge of his wool-covered knee pressing between hers.

“Your trousers,”

she murmured between kisses, raking her nails through the fine hair at the nape of his neck.

“Your shoes.”

“In a moment,”

he whispered back.

“Your toes are still freezing.”

She blinked, momentarily startled as she realized she’d tucked her toes against his calves.

“What? You can feel them, even through your trousers?”

“You stood on the balcony with your bare feet against the cold stone for a solid ten minutes in the dead of winter,”

he said.

“Yes; I can feel them. Fortunately for you, I grew accustomed to you warming your toes upon me ages ago.”

Laughter bubbled up inside her chest; effervescent, airy, and delighted. With a feral-sounding growl, Ian tore himself away from her, bending to yank his shoes from his feet, tear off his stockings, and finally to fumble with the buttons of his trousers.

“I’ll bear it,”

he said as he shed the last of his clothing, sending his trousers flying with a vicious kick as he sought to free himself from the constriction of them.

And then he fell upon her once more, and valiantly suppressed a shudder as she toasted her toes upon his warm calves. “Christ,”

he said somewhere near her ear.

“You might truly be frostbitten.”

She hummed with the last glow of mirth, enjoyed the lightness it conveyed to her heart; a sense of warmth and satisfaction she’d been sorely lacking. How much lighter she felt, even pinned to the mattress beneath the weight of his body, once freed of that resentment which had bound her like iron chains. As if she might float free of the earth altogether, if not for his arms bracketing her, holding her close.

“I love you,”

she said on a sigh, brushing her lips to the underside of his chin and breathing in the salty scent of his skin. The smooth plane of his back invited the stroke of her hands, and her fingertips grazed bands of muscle and warm flesh, provoking a shiver from him.

The coarse hair dusting his legs teased the smooth skin of her thighs as he wedged his knee between them once more and settled above her, braced upon his elbows. His erection pressed against her belly, hot and hard, throbbing with the beat of his heart.

“I love you,”

he said against her temple, shifting his weight to brush the tangle of her hair away from her face. A kiss to her shoulder, her collar bone, the hollow of her throat.

Her fingers still recalled the way he liked to be touched, nails scratching across his skin in the way that made him shudder, made his breath come harder and faster. He muffled a groan against the curve of her breast, turned his lips to her nipple and stroked the point with the tip of his tongue.

That same remembered zing of pleasure slid up her spine, tingled in her nerves. Her knees drew up, capturing his hips in the lee of her thighs. There was something almost magical in this, in the giving and receiving of pleasure, in the way they came together. In the way he fit her as if he’d been fashioned for her. In the way she fit him just the same. As if a whisper could not have fit between them.

There was a reverence in the fingers that cupped her breast and slid down her belly, in the fingertips that ruffled the sparse hair at the juncture of her thighs and stroked sleek feminine skin. A worship in the sigh that feathered out over her breast, and the release of the tension he’d carried in his shoulders, as if the hot, dewy flesh that had greeted his fingers had been an unexpected boon.

Her hips canted, as far as they were able, against his gently-probing fingers, inviting him to linger, to explore. Her nails prickled at his shoulders, and she squirmed restlessly in a vain attempt to capture more of that elusive sensation he’d only hinted at. Briefly his fingers breached her body, a stroke too shallow, too fleeting to provide any relief. His thumb found the bead of flesh hidden at the apex of her sex, swirled over it with a pressure far too light.

“Ian.”

Her thighs nipped about his hips, holding him closer, and still he refused to be moved from his lazy, painstaking exploration.

And now he laughed, the cad, with a dark sort of amusement as he released her nipple from the gentle suction of his lips.

“I always regretted,”

he murmured, with the lightest brush of his lips to the top of her breast.

“that I could never take my time with you as I would have liked to.”

Another dip of his fingers, a swirl of his thumb. Her head dropped onto the pillow with a half-sob. It was true, she supposed. Their opportunities for such intimacy had been quite rare, and by nature had had to be rather furtive. There had never been much time for lingering, for petting, for stroking. Such intimacy had come only in stolen moments, in which the threat of being caught had been ever-present.

But it didn’t mean she wished to be tortured now. Her hand grasped fistfuls of his hair, yanked his head up to her. “Mercy,”

she said against the corner of his lips. A desperate plea for the release which dangled just out of her reach.

A tiny nibble to his lower lip yielded a tremble and a conciliatory thrust of his fingers. Deeper this time, slower to withdraw, and stroking some place of incredible sensitivity within her as they did. Her breath began to thin, coming in short little pants.

“I can feel you,”

he said against her lips.

“Trying to hold my fingers.”

The warmth in the words felt like praise, like kisses scattered across her skin. Another thrust, and another, and each time she tried to hold him, her thighs tensing with the effort to retain the exquisite sensation of fullness a moment longer than he allowed.

A mist of sweat beaded upon her brow, and her hands clutched at him in escalating desperation, nails carving divots into his flesh until at last he’d pushed her past the point of bearing and she bit his shoulder, pinching that muscle between her teeth.

His breath hissed through his teeth—not with pain, but with something far more primal and atavistic. His fingers withdrew, his hand curled around her thigh and lifted to grant himself more space there than the tight clench of them would have allowed.

A roll of his hips, and the blunt head of his cock prodded at her entrance, found the vulnerable opening of her body, and slid smoothly within. One perfect, even stroke, and he was embedded within her so deeply that what little breath he’d left to her escaped her lungs on a rush.

Yes. Perfect. Her head fell back onto the pillow in stark relief, that deep empty ache within her satiated. For the moment.

His thumb stroked her clitoris again, and pleasure sizzled through her veins as every inner muscle clenched around him. Within her, she could feel the throb of his cock, the breadth of him stretching tender tissues.

“God, you feel so damned good,”

he whispered hoarsely. And then he moved. In sinuous motions, he thrust, and thrust again, and each time she welcomed him back, embraced him, caressed him. Her hands slipped in the sweat that misted his back; her mouth grazed his cheek, his chin, leaving her lips tingling with the scrape of the stubble burnishing his jaw.

Ah. That familiar tension low in her belly, building steadily toward the culmination she sought. Every muscle tightened to hold him. Her toes curled, her thighs clenched, and her hands slid down the sweat-slicked length of his back to clutch his arse.

“Don’t leave me,”

she said, whispering the words against the hot flesh of his shoulder, arching her hips into the plunge of his.

“Don’t leave me.”

“God. Never.”

He bit back a groan as she clasped him, the tendons in his neck straining with the effort not to spend.

“I’ve dreamed of this,”

he gritted out between the determined clench of his teeth.

“Every night. For years.”

His hand gripped her thigh, tilted her hips to a slight angle—and the next plunge rasped across over-sensitized flesh and stroked her in exactly the right way to set every nerve ablaze.

Stars burst behind her closed lids, that tension that had drawn every muscle so unbearably tight dissolving at last into blissful waves of pleasure emanating from her core. A sharp cry warbled from her lungs, abbreviated by the kiss he pressed to her lips. One last thrust, and he held hard and deep, his body shuddering above hers as he reached his own climax, spending himself inside her.

He never had before. They had had to be quite careful about such things, when the consequences could have been ruinous to them both. But now they were married, and a baby would only be a baby. A new little person to bind them closer; someone else to belong to, and to whom to belong in turn. A symbol of a future she hadn’t let herself dream of in a decade.

He’d given that back to her, too—the ability to dream again. And for a few minutes, in the hazy aftermath, she let herself drift in the sweet lassitude that swept over her and dreamed just a little. Imagined a beautiful future that stretched out into eternity.

“I’m too heavy.”

It was a weary mumble somewhere near her ear, half-muffled against her neck.

“No,”

she murmured. It wasn’t quite true; he’d gone to dead weight, no doubt exhausted by the stress of the last day and the fact that he’d not gotten any sleep at all. But she liked the solid weight of him pressing her down into the mattress, and the race of his heart where his chest rested against her breasts.

“You liar.”

His lips touched her chin.

“I’m crushing you.”

“Only a little.”

With great effort he managed to heave himself off of her, falling to his back beside her, sucking in a great, deep breath.

“I’m going to sleep for a week,”

he said on a sigh.

He was entitled to, she thought. Bereft of the heat of his body over hers, her skin began to cool, and a shiver slipped down her spine.

Ian thrust himself up onto his elbows, snatched for the counterpane that had become wedged toward the foot of the bed, and cast it over the both of them. “Turn,”

he said, nudging her shoulder with his own, and she dutifully gave him her back. And there, the weight of his arm sliding about her waist, the heat of his chest at her back. The slight hiss of his breath as she tucked her feet back against his legs.

“Your feet are still freezing.”

They wouldn’t be for long. He’d replenished the coals on the fire. She swallowed a laugh, but it crept into her voice anyway.

“You didn’t seem to mind five minutes ago.”

“Darling, I don’t mind now.”

A satisfied sigh curled from his throat as he settled his head on the pillow beside hers. A moment later he lifted his arm from her waist and flailed behind him in search of something. She heard the slap of his palm against the solid surface of the nightstand.

And then as he settled again, his hand lifted before her face, dangling the ring before her eyes.

“I did everything wrong,”

he said softly.

“I want to get it right this time around. And so now I am asking—only asking. Will you marry me?”

“Yes.”

The word emerged a bit choked-sounding, since she had had to force it past the odd lump of emotion that had risen in her throat. “Yes,”

she said again, beating back the thick counterpane to slide her left hand free to offer to him.

Carefully he slid the ring onto her finger, and retained possession of her hand a few moments longer than necessary. A resigned sigh blew against her shoulder.

“Your sister was right,”

he said.

“It is ugly.”

Felicity laughed lightly, lacing her fingers through his and pulling his arm back over her waist and his hand to rest against her heart.

“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. It’s my ring, and I think it’s perfect.”

“Then I will bow to your greater wisdom.”

This was delivered with a kiss against her shoulder.

“We’ll sleep a little longer, hm? It’s been a hell of a day.”

Another little chuckle.

“It’s not even noon.”

“Good,”

he said, smothering a yawn against the nape of her neck as he settled in once more.

“Someone will wake us at some point, I’m certain. But until then…”

His voice faced into silence, and Felicity waited several moments for him to complete the thought, until at last the arm over her waist grew heavy.

A soft drone of a snore stirred her hair, and she realized that he had already fallen asleep.