Beyond A Wicked Kiss (39 page)

One of his brows kicked up. "Are you quite certain you didn't say it?"

Ria wasn't, but she knew she could ill afford to waver here. "I am not some great, gaping trout to be reeled in with that sort of bait," she said tartly. "Though it was a good effort and very well timed."

"Thank you."

Sitting up, Ria tugged on the fallen shoulder of her nightdress so that it covered her properly again. "What did I strike when I fainted?"

"Ah, yes. That's going to be a nasty bruise, I'm afraid. You tipped the chair on yourself when you went down."

"Then I didn't really manage it gracefully." She lightly massaged the site of her injury. "That is unfortunate."

West chuckled. "Perhaps you will improve with practice. It is the sort of thing better done in my arms."

"I fainted," Ria said. "I did not swoon." She gave him a meaningful look. "What
are
you doing here, and
how
did you get in this time?"

"I hope you will appreciate my efforts to be discreet. I deliberately made a public farewell when I left some five hours ago so I could return without notice."

"Oh." She wondered if he knew she was suddenly a little breathless. "That was very clever. Then you never meant to go to the manor."

"So you did find my note. I left it in the event someone came looking for you. It was simply meant to support the story you gave that I had taken ill."

"You manage details very well."

He nodded. The colonel had always depended on him for that. "It is part and parcel of being a good clerk."

Ria did not take issue with that assertion. It was true enough on the face of it, she supposed, but if West had ever been a clerk in the foreign office, then she was a bolt of Brussels lace. "And the other?" she asked. "How did you make your entry?"

"That couldn't have been simpler. I left a window in your sitting room unlatched."

"Of course." Affecting what she hoped was credible sangfroid, she said, "You have not yet come to the purpose of your visit."

"No, I have not." West rose and began unbuttoning his frock coat. "I am coming to that directly."

What small amount of imperturbability she had remaining vanished when confronted with the vaguely wicked glint in his eyes.

"You have no objection?" he asked, pausing as he was shrugging out of his coat.

"I... no... that is, no, I have no objection."

"Good."

He seemed perfectly at his ease, she thought, while she was nowhere near so. The only reason she could find for this turn in the road was that he was plainly initiating this encounter, and although she was more experienced now, she was less certain of what he might expect. "Will we be engaging in illustration number one?" she asked. "Or the other?"

West's head broke clear of his shirt, but his arms were still overhead as he peeled it off. She was a complete original, and if he should forget it for even a moment, she was likely to remind him—saucy little baggage. He served up the answer that was certain to give her pause. "Neither."

Ria swallowed. "Neither?"

"I find myself in need of a good night's sleep. It seems I do that considerably better when you're near." He hung his neckcloth, shirt, and coat inside her armoire and allowed her a few minutes to decide if she was complimented or insulted. By the time he sat to remove his boots, it seemed to him that she had made up her mind. She was lying down again, stretched out on her side with her head supported by only one pillow. The other was plumped invitingly beside hers. Her outer arm extended at an angle along the edge of the blankets that were folded down, and her hand was curled in readiness to lift them and welcome him inside.

It proved, he supposed, that he was a more accomplished liar than she.

Wearing only his drawers, he slipped under the covers she raised for him. He turned on his side and faced her. Her hand brushed his arm as she drew the blankets up. She let them go, but her hand continued its climb, sliding along the slope of his shoulder, his neck, then stopped when it cupped his jaw. Her thumb brushed the corner of his mouth.

"Good night," she said. She leaned forward and kissed him on the lips. It was not a gesture of passion but of sweetness.

"Ria." Saying no more than her name, West changed the nature of her intentions to make them fit his.

Her mouth moved over his, softly at first, dreamily, nudging his lips apart with her own, tasting him on the tip of her tongue. She edged closer, bumping his knees. He made room for one of her legs between his. The intimate tangle brought the hem of her nightdress to her thighs. His hand slid under the fabric and palmed her naked hip. She pressed forward and felt the hard and hot outline of his arousal against her.

Ria's fingers threaded in his thick, coppery hair and toyed with the curls at the nape of his neck. She felt him shiver at the lightness of her touch and left the stamp of her satisfied smile on his shoulder.

He cupped her bottom and brought her hard against him where she had only teased him before. Her hips moved without the press of his fingers, rocking and sliding so that the barrier of material separating them became something better than insignificant; it became part of the abrading tension, resistance meant to be overcome—slowly.

She caught his face in her hands again, planting kisses at the corners of his mouth, along his jaw, at the hollow behind his ear. She remembered how he had caught her lobe between his teeth, and she nipped him in just the same way, then flicked the spot with the damp edge of her tongue. The dimple that was always in evidence when he smiled held her attention for a time. Just as intriguing, though, was its less showy twin. She traced it with her nail tip and watched the curve become more pronounced as the corners of his mouth lifted.

"It is a good thing they are not identical," she whispered. "It is all that stands between you and perfection."

West gave a shout of laughter that was cut short by Ria clamping her hand over his mouth.

"Have a care," she said earnestly. "Else the entire school will know you have returned. Your earlier ruse will have been in vain."

He nodded and felt the pressure of her hand lifting. Catching her wrist, he held her close a moment longer and placed a kiss on her fingertips. "You're beautiful, you know."

"It is a pretty compliment, but unnecessary."

"Compliments are never necessary. They are simply... compliments." West folded her fingers so that his hand enclosed hers. "Did you think I meant to flatter you? To what purpose? I am already in your bed, and you know now that my purpose was never to sleep here, so if I say something to you, it is because I mean it." He squeezed her hand. "You are beautiful, and I should have said I thought so from the first."

Ria was properly skeptical. "You did
not
think so from the first, so it would have been a lie—and highly improper to say so, even if it weren't."

That made him pull her close; his arms wrapped tightly around her. He nuzzled her neck and growled low against her ear, "And you know all about what is proper."

He kissed her then. Deeply. Hard. Wonderfully hard. Ria felt herself respond in kind, offering herself up to his greedy mouth, because in giving, she was also given.

He turned onto his back, and she came with him, lying full length along his solid frame. Working in tandem, they raised the hem of her nightgown to her hips, then her waist, past the level of her breasts, and finally pulled it over her head. It twisted and tangled in their hands before they were free of it, making them both laugh softly at the clumsiness born of haste.

West stroked her back, the heels of his hands running along the outside of her ribs. He tickled her nape with his fingertips, pushing aside the heavy curtain of hair. "What's this?" he asked. His fingers traced a thin ridge of flesh that rose from her shoulder, across the back of her neck, and disappeared into her hair. "Did this happen when you fell?"

"No." Ria drew his hand away from it. "It's nothing," she whispered. "A very old scar." She kissed him. "Nothing."

Sitting up, she straddled him and urged him to help remove his drawers. They managed it with considerably less difficulty than her nightshirt, then West lifted her and helped her find a new seat, this one joining them ballocks to buttocks. He watched her face as she eased herself onto him, the way she looked at him with something akin to wonder, her eyes darkening with pleasure, her lower lip caught in her teeth to make her cry a whimper. Her nostrils were drawn in as she took a measured draught of air. Her head fell back and exposed the slim length of her neck to his hands. He raised them there, brushing the hollow of her throat with his thumbs, then letting his hands drift lower.

Her slender form gave way to the fullness of her breasts. He stroked them lightly. The nipples puckered and became erect. His thumbnail grazed one, and Ria's entire body shuddered. She found his wrists and held him there so his hands were open across her breasts, then she moved against them, thrusting herself into his palms as part of the same slow, undulating movement of her hips.

She held him that way even as he urged her forward. He used his strength to move his hands at the last moment and take the tip of one breast lightly between his lips. It didn't seem to matter that she held him captive when she was the one surrendering to the hot suck of his mouth.

Ria heard a soft, mewling sound and realized it was coming from the back of her throat. Her skin was hot and too tight for her now. She felt stretched taut by the rising curve of pleasure she was riding. Her hands uncurled around his wrists and slipped into his open palms, the fingers splayed wide so they could thread with his. Their clasped hands tightened into fists. Her breath caught as he bucked hard under her. She rolled with him when he drove her onto her back. Urgency stripped away any pretense of gentleness as they were enjoined in a battle.

She wrapped her legs around him tightly as her hips rose and fell. The tip of her tongue wet her parted lips. She saw his eyes drop to her mouth and darken. He strained against her, grinding between her open thighs. She tried to lift her head and catch his mouth with hers, but he avoided that touch and placed his lips against the curve of her shoulder instead, nuzzling her hair aside, kissing her just where the faint ridge of scar tissue followed the line of her neck.

She wanted to wrestle him onto his back, but he was too strong. He only gave up to her what he wanted to, but what he wanted to do was please her. Ria felt herself being lifted just as she began to contract around him, and then they were both sitting up, her legs across his thighs and curved around his back, his folded under him to make a throne of his lap. She stared at him, startled by this new position, face-to-face with him and as secure in the nest as a fledgling bird.

"Do it again," he whispered against her ear.

She did not know what he meant; then the muscles of her vagina contracted involuntarily, and she heard him give her throaty encouragement. Her brows lifted slightly as she realized that she was like a fist around him. When her muscles contracted again, it was done of a purpose. She laughed in delight, heady with this new power, fully aware that he had given it to her.

"You are a good man," she said. Lifting her pelvis the narrowest fraction, she tightened herself around him as she rose. Her hands slid to his shoulders and her breasts scraped his chest. "A very good man."

West did let her catch his mouth this time. He supported her hips as she continued to squeeze him rhythmically, her outward movements so slight as to be as invisible as her inner ones. He slipped his hand between their bodies and made a trail to her open thighs. She shivered lightly as he began to stroke her. Touching her here was like dipping his fingers into honey. Warm. Viscous. Sweetly scented. He caressed her more intimately than before, sliding back the slick hood of her clitoris just once and letting her experience a pleasure so intense that it was like sparks being struck when a steel blade was forged.

Ria came in a violent shudder, sparks spinning like pinwheels trapped under her skin, brilliant white heat and light rising from the center of her. She was lifted, arching away from West's body, crying out softly at the loss of him. Even then, in the moment of her sharpest pleasure, she knew what he was about. For the span of a heartbeat, she thought of denying him the right to let her go. Caution, good sense, fear—these things asserted themselves, and she knew she would not betray him or herself with such a selfish act.

He came as she fell back on the bed. He followed her down, taking his weight on his forearms as he leaned over her. Their breath mingled—hot, ragged, no longer synchronous. They stared at each other for a long time, candlelight chasing shadows across their faces. Fine beads of perspiration made their skin glisten. In the cold room, heat rose from their bodies.

West lowered his head slowly and kissed her once. Then again. Infinitely gentle now. He rolled to the edge of the bed. Ria reached for him, but he was already standing, light and lithe on his feet, and her hand merely hovered in the air before she withdrew it. He disappeared into her dressing room and reappeared a few minutes later with a basin in his hands and towels folded over his arm. He washed the evidence of their lovemaking from her body, just as he had from his own; then he set the basin on the floor and the towels beside it.

"Do you want your shift?" he asked.