Page 27 of Hastings (Brothers in Arms #15)
CHAPTER 27
H astings paused as he was tucking a stray hair behind her ear. “Do you?” he said in a casual tone, but she could tell from his stillness and his refusal to meet her gaze that the question was important.
“Yes,” she said simply. “I do.” He looked at her then, and his hand came to rest on her shoulder. “You and I are very much alike,” she told him a little sadly. “Our lives have been parallel, really. And we do not trust easily.” We do not love easily , she thought. “I did not want to care for a man like you.”
“Did not or do not?” he asked. He did that often, she noticed, responded with questions rather than sharing his own thoughts. But his questions could be quite revealing.
“Did not,” she whispered. “I have never wanted a hard man, a distrustful man, a man who has seen too much and bears the scars. A man very similar to me.”
“And now?”
“Now, to my utter dismay, I find I want you as much as I want Stephen, who is the very essence of the kind of man I want to care for.”
“Yes,” Hastings said softly. He reached down and took her hand in his, lightly tracing the lines on her palm, making her shiver. He wrapped his hand around hers then. “He is all that is kind and generous of spirit. And trusting, of course.”
“With very fine features and a strong well-muscled body,” she added with a sly little smile. Hastings looked up and met her gaze with a chuckle. He brought her hand to his lips and kissed the back of it.
“Yes, there is that,” he agreed. “You are a good match, I think, for you also have fine features,” he traced one of her brows, “and beautiful hair,” he caressed the side of her head, “and a very fine figure.” His hand came to rest on her hip, and he stepped closer. “I fear that both of you are exactly the kind of people that I want.”
“To care for?” she asked, her heart in her throat.
“Just want,” he said and the look in his eyes was hot, and she could see his want there.
Want is enough , she told herself. This is not the kind of man you need.
“Kiss me, then,” she whispered to him. “Show me.” There was a thought—in the back of her mind, and quickly dismissed—that she wanted what Stephen had found so irresistible last night. She wanted another taste for herself. She wanted to be held by him. Loved by him.
There was a slight hesitation and then he leaned down and kissed her. The kiss was sweet, soft, gentle. And not at all what she wanted from him.
“I’m not your maiden aunt,” she chastised him when he pulled away. “There was no want in that kiss.”
He raised a brow as if she’d challenged him, which she had. Then he wrapped his arm around her waist and tightened his grip on her hand and yanked her into his body. There it was, the want, not just in his embrace but she could feel his arousal against her stomach. It thrilled her, and she grew hot and heavy between her legs. When she met his gaze, he leaned down and kissed her. This kiss was need. This kiss was want.
She wrapped her free arm around his shoulders and buried her hand in his hair and kissed him back with all the pent-up desire that had been thwarted last evening. She was confused as her desire for Stephen and her desire for Hastings seemed to combine in a thundering tide of passion that swept her away. Their lips and tongues tangled as they tried to get impossibly closer, their hands clutched tightly at their sides, as if they were both trying to maintain control. She didn’t want that. She tugged her hand free and buried it, too, in his sinful hair and his other arm joined the first in wrapping tightly around her, so tight she was bowed backward by his embrace.
She moaned into his mouth at how good he felt, the heat and hardness of him pressed against her, her very balance at his mercy. He broke the kiss, his breathing heavy, and slid her into the room, softly closing the door. She’d forgotten they had been standing practically in the hallway. The small click of the door lock had her body on fire and her breathing ragged.
Hastings’s hands slid up her torso until he palmed both of her breasts through her clothing. “Oh,” she said with a broken sigh. “Yes.”
She placed her hands over his and squeezed tightly, wanting to feel the rough pressure, hoping it would ease the ache. Instead, the ache spread from her breasts to the juncture of her thighs, were her heartbeat now resided. She rose on tiptoes and kissed him again, biting his lip before she thrust her tongue in his mouth in time to the beat between her legs. He let go of her breasts and lifted her, spinning so that her back hit the wall by the door. Then he leaned over to the side and grabbed the hem of her dress and lifted it, putting both hands on her hips under her skirts, pressing his leg between hers. When his well-muscled thigh met the heat and heartbeat at the center of her, she gasped into his mouth. His kiss turned rough and hard, and she met it with a need equal to his.
“I want to make you come,” he said in between kisses. “Use my leg.”
“Yes,” she agreed because she wanted that, too, more than anything right now. She took one of his hands and dragged it back to her breast, and she squeezed tightly while she rode his gloriously hard thigh. They kissed as if their lips alone were keeping the other alive, and it wasn’t long before she felt the throbbing release rush through her. She made a high keening sound into his mouth, clutching his thigh between hers and rubbing against it, prolonging the ecstasy.
When it was over she felt weak but still wanting. As if he knew, he withdrew his leg from between hers and then his hand was there, his fingers gliding through the lips of her sex through the slit in her drawers. She shivered and then he plunged a finger inside her and she bit back a cry of pleasure. She was practically climbing him, one leg raised and wrapped around his hip as he thrust his finger in and out, spearing her deeply with pleasure, and then she came again.
“Hastings,” she said breathlessly against his mouth. He slid his lips across her cheek, kissing her softly.
“So perfect,” he whispered in her ear. “So soft and willing and wet. Christ, I want you.”
“Take me,” she said, her passion rising again at the thought of him inside her. “I want you, too. Please take me.”
Hastings knew he should stop. She wasn’t for him. She was Stephen’s. But just this once, he wanted her for himself. It was selfish, he knew it. He also knew that Stephen wouldn’t mind. He knew that because he didn’t mind that Stephen wanted her, that Stephen would have her, too. That she wanted Stephen. It was a muddle inside him, but something about it made his desire for her even more powerful. He wanted to fuck her and then he wanted Stephen to fuck her knowing Hastings had been inside her. She would be theirs in a way no one else ever could or ever would. And she wanted him. Despite everything and every reason she shouldn’t, she did.
Her hands were working the buttons on his breeches, and he didn’t stop her. When she had them open, he pushed them down just enough to get his prick out. He rested his forehead on hers. “Are you sure?” he asked, giving her one more chance to reject him and how messy and complicated everything was going to become.
In response she wrapped her arms around his neck and tried to crawl up the front of him, wrapping her legs around him and scooting up to try to line things up the way they needed to be. He grabbed ahold of her bottom and helped. Her skirts brushing against his prick were almost too much to bear, but then there she was, all damp, wet heat, sliding against him. He was breathing so heavily you’d have thought he’d just run a race.
“Now,” she said, desperation in her voice. “Now, now, now.”
He guided her onto him and slid inside and they both gasped. He could feel her trembling in his arms. She buried her face in his neck and bit him gently as she whimpered against his skin.
“Is this all right?” he asked, freezing where he was, afraid to move, afraid he was hurting her.
“Yes,” she said, her breath against his neck giving him gooseflesh. “It’s fine. It’s perfect. It’s…” He began to move, pressing her against the wall, holding her bottom tight as he thrust inside her. “Oh, yes,” she murmured. “Yes.”
He began to move faster, harder, because he couldn’t help himself. She gripped his shoulders tightly and moaned and in moments she was making that erotic little cry he’d heard when she’d come the last time. He’d never known a woman as responsive as she was. Of course she’d be perfect. Of course.
Her cunny squeezed his prick and he felt it along his length as he continued to move within her. On one hard thrust she gave a cutoff little shriek and bit his shoulder to silence it as she trembled in his arms and kept coming on his prick. He couldn’t last, couldn’t deny his release, and so he came inside her, letting himself feel every moment of it, of her, of their joining. He ground against her and she wrapped her arms tighter around him and sucked on his neck as she moaned.
When it was over they stayed like that for a few moments while they both caught their breath. Her head thunked back against the wall, and when he looked, her eyes were closed, her lashes resting on her flushed cheeks. He looked closer and saw that she had tears on her lashes and smeared on those pink cheeks.
“Oh God,” he said, panicked. “Did I hurt you? Are you all right?”
She shook her head and then said, “Yes.” He wasn’t sure which to believe.
“You’re crying,” he said, and it sounded like an accusation. He inwardly cursed himself. “Why? Why are you crying? Are you absolutely sure I didn’t hurt you?”
She smiled and it was a little lax, almost dreamy. “I’m perfectly fine, Hastings.” She opened her eyes. “Better than that, even. I’m perfectly wonderful. You’re perfectly wonderful.” She leaned forward and gave him a soft kiss. “I never knew it could be like that.”
“It should always be like that,” he told her, although it hadn’t been for him, either. He’d never had it like that. He’d never had anyone as perfect as her.
She laughed and there was a sharp edge to it. “If only all men felt that way.” She squirmed in his arms and he reluctantly pulled out of her with a wince. He was sensitive in the best way, making him shiver and grit his teeth. She shivered, too.
“I was too rough,” he said, setting her feet on the floor. She wobbled a little, so he held on.
“I don’t know another way to say perfect,” she said, exasperation in her voice. “What words would make you believe me when I tell you it was perfect?”
I love you . He immediately shied away from the words. He didn’t want her to say that to him. He didn’t want her to get hurt when he went back to London, which he inevitably would. “I believe you,” he said gruffly.
“That was everything I wanted it to be,” she told him gently, leaning down so she could look into his eyes, which were downcast. He thought he’d outgrown that tendency, to cast his eyes downward when he was facing a situation he didn’t want to be in. But he wanted to be here, with her, didn’t he? His feelings were all confused.
“I grew up on the streets, Hastings,” she told him. “I let men have me if they had something I wanted. None of them, not a one, ever treated me like you just did and made me feel that way.”
“They were fools,” he told her earnestly.
“I’m glad you’re not,” she said, and they shared a smile that settled inside him, where he hoped it would stay so he could take it out on occasion and remember this perfect moment.