Rogue for a Night (7 page)

She gasped as the tension built in her, rising to a level of heat that was close to painful. She needed… well, she wasn’t quite sure how to articulate it in language that would convey the intensity of her desire. Words a man of his dangerous past would take seriously. But she wanted him. In every way.

Now.

Her dress gaped in the back and she stepped away from his teasing fingers and turned to face him. Slowly, she pulled the gown down her arms, pulling her flimsy chemise away in the same action. Inch by inch, she revealed herself until the gown dangled uselessly around her waist and her breasts naked in the moonlight.

The cool air brushed her bare flesh and it was a sobering reminder of their precarious position. If she listened closely enough, she could actually hear the light sounds of the orchestra inside the ballroom. Anyone could find them. Anyone could see.

And yet that idea of being caught didn’t discourage Lucinda from this course. If anything, it thrilled her all the more.

“My God, you are more beautiful than in any of my dreams,” Ronan murmured.

Lucinda stared. “Your dreams?”

“Oh yes. I have dreamed of you since we kissed, sweet,” he purred as he inched closer. He reached out and tugged at the dress still tangled at her hips. “Like this.”

The gown fell away and she was suddenly utterly naked beyond a silken pair of stockings and a pair of high heeled slippers.

She lifted her hand to cover herself out of instinct, but Ronan caught her fingers and kept her from her modest impulse. Instead, he lifted her hand and slid it into the opening in his shirt that she had created. To her surprise, she felt the pounding throb of his heart against her fingertips, and it beat as wildly as her own.

He smiled, then his head dipped and he pressed his mouth to her throat. His tongue burned her sensitive flesh, branding her in a way she feared she would never recover from, even after this… affair, she supposed one would call it, had ended. In some way, though, she welcomed the branding touch. So she wouldn’t forget it.

His mouth moved lower and all thoughts emptied from her mind.

Rage was having a hard time controlling himself. Everything in him screamed that doing this outside, in a gazebo, was not how he had pictured making love to Lucinda the first time. Though they were away from the house, they weren’t so far that someone couldn’t stumble upon them if they came deep into the garden. They should have been in a soft bed, with a locked door.

He
should
have been protecting her more.

But once she groaned, once she told him to make her feel alive, all semblance of the gentleman he had been trying to be fled. He was pure animal instinct now, and that instinct drove him to take, claim, brand, taste… to do it all before Lucinda returned to her senses and told him to stop.

He sucked her nipple between his lips and stroked his tongue over the turgid tip. Lucinda’s cry echoed in the night and she arched toward him, her nails combing over his scalp as she held him closer to her. He obliged her silent request… or was it an order? Either way, he sucked harder, tasting her, responding to her responsiveness and knowing that with every stroke of his tongue, he was driving her past a point of no return. And closer to the moment when he would drive his body into hers and claim her for once and for all.

But that moment was still some time away. It had been a long time for Lucinda and he wanted her to be completely ready, on the edge, trembling with anticipation.

He dragged his mouth lower, pressing hot kissing to the side of her breast and then to her belly. As he did so, he moved her once again. There was a low bench in the gazebo and that would be the perfect place for what he had in mind.

He urged her to sit, and she did so without argument. She even left him room to sit beside her, but that wasn’t what he had in mind. He stripped his shirt off, reveling in the way she caught her breath. The way she stared up at him like she had never seen a man before.

“Great God,” she whispered, more to herself than for his ears. “You are unlike anyone I’ve ever seen before.”

Rage knew she meant that reverent whisper as a compliment, but there was some part of him that was still self-conscious. Of course she hadn’t seen anyone like him. He had scars from fights, both fair and decidedly unfair. He had a tattoo on the bicep of his right arm, which only the lowest of men possessed. It meant something to him, but it had to be quite shocking to a lady like her. He was rough in every way that she was refined. He didn’t belong with her, but he was here.

And he was going to take full advantage.

He dropped the shirt in front of her and dropped to his knees on the soft fabric. With her seated and him on his knees they were eye to eye and as he slipped his arms around her and dragged her forward on the bench, the intensity of their gaze was almost unbearably intimate.

“Ronan,” she whispered, and her voice trembled.

“Are you afraid?” he murmured.

She blinked. “I-I suppose I am. I almost feel like I’ve never done this before. Like I might fall if I’m not careful.”

“I won’t let you,” he whispered and in that moment he meant that promise like none he had ever uttered. “I’ll catch you. Just trust in me.”

She swallowed and both of them knew what he was asking. Trust him, a man unlike any she’d ever known. A man who until a few days before had been little more than a vague acquaintance with a scandalous past. And yet she nodded regardless of those facts.

“I trust you.”

Rage’s heart swelled, but he tamped emotion aside. Emotion only complicated these things, it was best to go by desire and touch… those things were more reliable.

He broke the far-too-intense gaze and returned his lips to her breast. Immediately she relaxed back on the bench with a broken sigh. Her body went limp and he actually felt her surrender.

Lucinda was weightless, boneless, as Ronan dragged his mouth down her body. He seemed intent on tasting every inch of her flesh and the very thought of that made her weak with anticipation. She wanted to open herself to him, to drag him inside her waiting flesh, but there was too much propriety ingrained in her to do something so wild and uncharacteristic. She could only hope that he would feel her unspoken needs and tend to them.

And he did. Lower and lower, he tasted her until his lips brushed her thigh. Lucinda caught her breath. He wouldn’t…. not here in the night? Not the first time they were together? Would he?

He answered her unspoken question by parting her legs further and gliding his fingers up the inside f her thigh. He looked up at her, holding her gaze as he stroked the entrance to her sex gently.

“I want to taste you,” he whispered.

Lucinda felt the hot blood flood her cheeks, both from embarrassment at his bluntness and pure arousal at the same. “Yes,” she said, opening herself without hesitation.

He smiled and then his attention returned to her slick entrance. He parted her outer folds with his thumbs and swept a finger across the wetness there. Lucinda jolted with the pure, focused pleasure at that act. But that was nothing compared to when he adjusted himself on the shirt he was using as a cushion and pressed his hot mouth to her sex.

Almost immediately, her body pulsed with long-denied sensations, pleasure so pure and focused that it bordered on pain, relief that she would have this experience. With this man. On this night.

And Ronan gave her no quarter to think about what was happening. His skilled mouth and tongue went to work, tasting her every fold, sucking and licking until she trembled. And finally, slowly, he swirled his mouth around the hidden pearl of her pleasure.

She exploded without warning, trembling, crying out, fisting her fingers against the edge of the bench she sat on as the pleasure rolled over her in wave after wave after wave, until she felt she was to be swept away by it and lost forever in this sea of sensation.

Rage looked up. In the moonlight, Lucinda’s expression was one of shattered pleasure. Her chest heaved, her eyes were glazed, her cheeks pink. She looked ravished and he wanted to take that ravishment even further.

He stood and she whimpered as his body stopped touching hers.

“Don’t worry,” he said as he shed his trousers at some kind of record speed. “We’re not finished.”

He moved toward her, but she held up a hand.

“Stop,” she said, her voice tense.

He froze.
Stop
. He hadn’t even considered she would say such a thing, not when she was dewy with sweat and flushed with release. But she had said it, and he had enough of a gentleman in him to obey that command.

“I-I’m sorry-” he began.

Her dark blue gaze came up to his face and she shook her head. “Don’t be sorry. I’m-”

She dropped her stare and Rage realized she was staring at his erection, jutted proudly against his abdomen, waiting to claim her as she had been born to be claimed.

“You are… amazing,” she breathed and reached out to him.

He stared as her fingers closed around him and let out a long, low groan at the feel of her soft fist clenching around his hard cock. She looked up as she stroked him once, twice.

“Much more of that and I’ll be unmanned,” he growled, reaching down to catch her wrist and slow the movement of her wicked hand. “And I want to feel you around me before that happens.”

He pulled and brought her to her feet. He kissed her, letting her taste the remnants of her own pleasure on his lips. She murmured incoherent sound of pleasure and need against his tongue between the hard, heavy kisses she met him with.

It was too much. Control shattered and he lifted her, wrapping her legs around his waist as he pressed her back against one of the thick, wooden support beams that held the gazebo roof above them. She hissed out pleasure as he readjusted himself against her slick and welcoming entrance and then pushed.

She opened to him, welcoming him into her heat as he took her in one long stroke. And then he held perfectly still, enjoying the clenching sweetness of her channel around his hard cock, breathing in long, hard breaths that matched her own pants of anticipation and pleasure.

“Please,” she whispered as she pressed her lips to his bare throat. “Please.”

He thrust again, again, harder, faster, driving himself into her, taking her in every sense of the word. But she was no shrinking flower. She rode at the same pace that he set, meeting his strokes with her own. Their mouths merged, warring and surrendering in equal measure. Her breasts rubbed his bare chest, her thighs clenched around his hips. Finally, she dipped her head back, her body tensing and quivering around his and let out a keening cry that cut through his body, through his soul. With great reluctance, he pulled free of her and his seed splashed between them as he gave an animal grunt of release.

Chapter Seven

For a long moment, the only sounds around them were the soft chirps of crickets and the even fainter remnants of the music at the main house. Then Lucinda looked at him and Rage realized he still had her pinned against the support beam of the gazebo. She blushed, turning her face as he set her on her feet and steadied her before he released her and took a reluctant step away.

She was even more beautiful in this moment than she had been before. Her blonde hair was disheveled and fell around her face in loose bouncing curls, her skin was flushed with self-awareness and the remnants of release and she remained naked. Perfect. And she had just been his, if only for a brief moment.
His
.

“Here.” He dug a handkerchief from his discarded jacket pocket and handed it to her.

“Thank you,” she said as she took the item and wiped away the evidence of his release from her bare skin.

With another blush, she bent and picked up her discarded gown, freeing the chemise and shaking away the dust and twigs the fabric had gathered from the gazebo floor before she held it up to herself as some kind of shield.

He picked up his own pants and pulled them on. When he was covered, she seemed more relaxed and set her gown aside to pull her chemise over her head. The dress was next, a wrinkled bit of proof of what they had just done.

“Let me,” he said as she struggled to button herself. He turned her and refastened her gown as deftly as he had unbuttoned it just a short time before. When he was finished, she turned back toward him with another blush.

“Thank you,” she said softly. “Y-You are very good at that. Certainly more experienced than I am.”

Rage tilted his head. Was
that
her fear?

“My life has been markedly different than yours, Lucinda.” He shrugged. “But trust that what we just shared is nothing like anything else I’ve ever experienced.”

She smiled but then the expression faded. Rage wrinkled his brow with worry.

“Do you have regrets?” he asked, almost fearing the answer. “About what happened between us?”

She was quiet for a moment, long enough that Rage’s chest tightened. Then she shook her head. “Not regret,” she said softly. “There was too much passion and pleasure for regret, and you certainly gave me enough time to consider this by leaving, so it wasn’t as if I was completely swept away from my senses.”

“Thank you,” he teased.

She laughed. “You know what I meant. Only that I made the decision to be with you with a fully functioning mind. Knowing the consequences. I just hadn’t thought…”

She trailed off and Rage moved forward. “Thought?”

One delicate shoulder lifted slightly. “I have never been with another man beyond my husband.”

Rage flinched and hoped she hadn’t seen the reaction.

“I see.”

She looked at him. “No, I do not think that you do. It isn’t that I compared you. That would be dreadfully unfair to both you and to his memory. But it is a very odd thing, to have thought for so long that I would share my body with only one man and then to… find another.”

Rage tilted his head. “Odd, but not bad?”

“Not bad,” she reassured him in that gentle tone he’d heard her gift to so many others. “And I believe the next time I will not even have these tangled thoughts.”