Claimed by the Rogue (28 page)

His eyes glinted. “You shall discover those too…in time. For now, we’ll focus on the rewards. What do you want?”
 

She hesitated.

“Tell me. Say the words.”

“I want you to…to kiss me again.”

Robert smiled. “With pleasure.” He bent and brushed his lips over hers, very slowly and very softly, back and forth. His tongue’s tip slid across the seam, and she opened on a moan. He entered, his tongue flicking against hers, filling her mouth with the taste of anise—and her heart with heightened desire.

Pulling back, he reached down and traced her bottom lip with a clipped nail, the slight scratching sensation drawing her shiver. “You’ve the most beautifully shaped mouth, a perfect Cupid’s Bow. I could go on kissing you all night, but I’ve a suspicion you might have something else in mind. Yes?”

“I’d like for you to…” She released her hold on the bedpost and reached for his wrist. A smart slap upon her palm had her drawing back. “Ouch.”

“That would be a punishment, a mild one as you’re just learning the rules.”

Hand stinging, she wrapped it back about the bedpost.

“Good girl,” Robert said with obvious approval. “Now was it you’d like to happen next?”

Good Lord, he really did mean to make her spell out her desires—to the letter. Reaching for her courage, she looked up into his darkening gaze and admitted, “I’d like you to touch my…my breast.”

“I’d like that too, but first let’s drop these absurd buttons.”
 

Phoebe lay still as his nimble fingers made short work of the queue of cloth-covered buttons. When he’d finished, her night rail lay open to her waist. Not since their night in the garden six years ago had a man seen so much of her. As it had that long ago night, cool air brushed her belly and breasts, Robert’s regard as much as the breeze bringing her nipples pebbling.
 

“You wear it again.” His gaze grazed her throat and clavicle, and she felt its heat as she would a caress. “The lockets we exchanged before my leaving, you’re back to wearing yours.” His eyes blazed with male satisfaction.
 

Flustered, she followed his downward gaze. The padlock-shaped locket had become almost a part of her, scarcely more foreign than her God-given flesh and bone. As much as she’d tried casting it aside, in the end she’d weakened and snuck back to her father’s study to retrieve it.
 

Caught out, she lifted her gaze back to him. “Why wouldn’t I? It’s a pretty thing and so light that oftentimes I forget to take it off.”

Tracing the outline of the chain, he shook his head. “You love me. You may not own it yet but you shall soon enough.”
 

She opened her mouth to demur, but before she could, he scratched his nail about her areola, very lightly and very slowly. “Only think if we were wed, you could have this every night.”

Phoebe didn’t answer.

“You’d like me not just to touch you but to kiss you here too, wouldn’t you?”
 

Cinching her hands more tightly about the rails, she managed a “Y-yes.”
 

He bent his head to her breast, lapping at the slight scratch he’d made and then teasing the taut nubbin of nipple into his mouth.

Phoebe thought she might split in twain, so stunning was the pleasure his “kiss” there gave. Arching to meet him, she fought the temptation to tear her hands away from their tether—and rake her nails down his back.

Lifting his head, he asked, “More kisses?” his hot breath bathing her breast.

Pleasure poured through her. In the midst of it, she nodded.

He obliged, trailing kisses down her abdomen and teasing his tongue into her belly button. Pulling back, he blew a soft breath onto the dampness. “Amazing things, navels, and yours is the most adorable indentation. But as delectable as you are there, I suspect the true succulent forbidden fruit is to be found lower. Does that embarrass you?”

“Yes, but…”

“But?”

Squeezing her eyes closed, she admitted, “But it excites me, too.”

“I can tell. Your pupils just before you shut your eyes were huge even in this low light, and your cheeks, sweet Phoebe, are limned in blushes the very hue of those roses outside your window.”

Phoebe opened her eyes. “I think you won’t be satisfied until you’ve turned me into a wanton.”

“Not a wanton but a woman,” he corrected, palming her mons through the fabric. “I told you the other night that I meant to make you feel again, and I do. Trust me?”
 

Not with her heart, but with her body most definitely.

He snared the hem of her night rail and slid it slowly upward, his hand gliding from ankle to thigh. “So pretty.” Combing his fingers through the thatch of coarse curls, he smiled at her sudden, sharp inhalation.
 

Light, circular strokes coaxed her thighs open. Fingers, firm yet gentle, teased apart the sensitized folds. Having once viewed herself there with a hand mirror, Phoebe knew what he was seeing. Petal-like lips damp with dew. An inner wine-colored ring crowned by a pearl of firmed flesh. Over the past six years, she’d learned that were that pearl to be stroked and massaged and manipulated with a single moistened finger, great gratification could be brought about. A man’s mouth there, Robert’s mouth, was a pleasure she’d never expected to experience outside the realm of her fantasies. Now, it seemed, he was poised to prove her wrong.

He lifted her legs and instinctively she locked her ankles over his shoulders. “You can’t know how many nights I’ve lain awake imagining you like this, your texture, your taste.”

Phoebe felt as though someone touched a torch to her face. “Are you quite certain you wish to kiss me…
there?
” As exquisite as she knew his doing so would feel, she couldn’t fathom what benefit it could possibly bring him.

In response, he slid a callus-coarsened finger inside her, testing her channel. “There are many ways to make love, my sweet. Aren’t you the slightest bit curious?”
 

Phoebe was more than curious. After six years of waiting, she burned to know his every sensual secret. Not just know but experience,
feel
, all that she’d missed.
 

A low laugh rumbled up his throat. “I’ll take your silence as a yes.”

His head disappeared between her thighs. He brushed his cheek against her there, letting her feel his beard’s roughness. Holding her open between his fingers, he tongued her channel. Impatient, she lifted to meet him, but Robert refused to be rushed.
 

Anchoring a hand to her hips, he pinned her to the mattress. Drawing back, he lifted a hand to his mouth and moistened his third finger. Phoebe watched, mesmerized, her heart skipping beats and her clitoris pulsing. Bending to her once more, he drew that warm, wet finger through her nether lips and backward—to her ass.
 

Phoebe’s breath seemed to stall and with it her heart. In all the times she’d touched herself, it had never once occurred to her to touch herself
there
.

She lifted her head from the bank of pillows. “Robert, I—”

“Yes?”
 

His stroking digit roused a delicious tingling. She collapsed back against the bedding, the protest she’d meant to make staying unspoken. The small, wet circles he drew sent her senses soaring, the puckered flesh pulsing beneath his tracing finger. The slight, deliberate scratch of a nail sent her gasping, not because it hurt but because it made her want something she couldn’t yet name. Smiling, he pushed a gentle path inside her. Remembering the “rule”, she tightened her hold upon the metal bars, her arms straining to break invisible bonds. Perspiration filmed the backs of her knees. The quivering at her core once more began to climb. Responding to primal instinct, she squeezed against the finger working inside her and impossibly, the pleasure spiked.

Still fingering her, he bent his head and covered her quim once more with his mouth. His tongue’s velvet sweep sent her world spinning. The pearl that in the past had been the portal to her solitary satisfaction was suckled and sipped. Circles, slow and rhythmic, carried her close to keening. The contrast between the soft fluttering of his tongue and the firm insistence of his finger was an exquisite mystery she could no longer wait to solve. Reaching for release, she bucked her hips and lifted up from the bed, gasping when he slid out—and then drove deeper.
 

The orgasm struck like a summer storm—swift, violent and darkly beautiful. Pleasure bolted through her, both her quivering woman’s flesh and her twitching tail. Spasms convulsed her, releasing a rush of wet warmth. Hard as it was to keep hold of the bars, it was even harder not to scream.

Robert lowered her legs from his shoulders and slid up the length of her. He covered her mouth with his, absorbing her moaning, his lips tasting of anise and her own pungent juices. Drawing away, he unfurled her hands and pressed a kiss into each palm. Weak and boneless, she lay beneath him as he brought the night rail once more about her ankles
 

“Forbidden fruit tastes even sweeter than I’d imagined,” he said with a smile.

A soft knock outside the chamber door set Pippin barking. Robert and Phoebe exchanged fraught looks. Sitting up and closing her gown front, Phoebe called out, “Y-yes?”

From the hallway, her maid, Betty asked, “I heard a noise. Is all well, milady?”

Phoebe scraped a hand through her hair, her fingers catching on tangles. “Yes, perfectly fine. I dropped my…book.”

“Shall I bring you something? Some warm milk to help you sleep?”

“No! I mean, no, thank you.”

“Goodnight, then.”

“Goodnight.”
 

The interchange returned Phoebe to sanity—and remorse. She looked back to Robert. “You should go now.”

Rather than fight her, he rolled off the bed and stood. “I’ve waited six years to have you. If need be, I can wait another few weeks.”

Phoebe followed him to her feet. Now that the pleasure had ebbed, she felt physically sated but emotionally battered. The pleasure he’d brought her had exacted too great a toll. In opening herself to receive it, she had reopened six years’ worth of wounds. Morality, hurt, outrage—all her defenses failed her. There was but one way to protect herself and her future, to ensure he walked away once and for all.

A direct blow to his peacock’s pride.

“Claim my maidenhead, you mean? You sound awfully certain. What makes you so convinced I’ve kept it all these years?”

Predictably his face fell. “You waited for me, didn’t you? Aristide, you haven’t let him…” His voice trailed off.

“What of you, Robert? Did you wait for me? Given that skillful…performance, I cannot think that you did.”

His gaze shuttered and his color heightened. “Six years is a long time for a man.”

She lifted her chin. “Six years is a long time for a woman too.”

“Shall I take that to mean you’ve given yourself to the Frenchman?”

Looking away lest he read her lying, she said, “And if I have? He is my fiancé, is he not? If any man can claim the privilege of lying with me, it is he.”
 

His gaze narrowed. “I was your fiancé once. I recall you begging me not to press you and promising that our wedding night would be all the more special for our having waited.”

Now that she was on her feet, her body was tellingly tender but that was nothing compared to her heart, which felt as though it were being wrenched wishbone style in two polar directions.
 

She spun about to face him. “And so it would have been, only you left me. I never would have left you, but you left me—and then stayed away for six
years.
”

He threw her an exasperated look. “How many times must I say it? I was a bloody idiot, far too simple and arrogant to come close to deserving you. If I could rewind the clock six years and choose again, I’d never leave your side, I swear it. But what is done is done and, trust me when I say this, I’ve more than answered for the consequences. Now all I can do is ask—
beg
—you, to forgive me. Forgive me, Phoebe, for both our sakes.”

She shook her head. “I forgave you weeks ago. But how can I begin to trust you again? What assurance do I have that you won’t hare off when the fancy takes you?”
 

His brows snapped together. The corners of his mouth dipped. “Because I tell you that I won’t, that I’m here to stay if you’ll have me. We can be happy together, I know it. If only you’ll stop pushing me away, stop fighting your own heart, it can be right again between us, a hundred times better than before. If only you’ll ask me to stay, the promise of a hundred fortunes could not lure me from your side.”

Near panic, she gave a fierce shake of her head. “I begged you once before to stay with me, and yet you left. I won’t ask you again. I won’t risk your hurting me.”

“You’re desperate. That’s why you’re giving yourself to this Frenchman, isn’t it? Your mother has convinced you he’s your last chance, only he’s not.”

“Don’t be insulting,” she answered much too quickly. “You of all people have no right to censor me.”

“Who says I’m censoring you? It was simply a question.”