Heaven Bound (A Blakemore Family Book: Madame Lou Series Book 2) (20 page)

“Jack?” she asked, her eyes half-closed in her unfulfilled passion. Licking her lips as if missing the warmth of his, she tried to draw closer, but he held her there. “Please, Jack, don’t stop now.”

“Addie, this is too important for you to heedlessly rush into,” he said, his breathing harsh in his own ears. “You have no idea what you are asking of me. Do you really understand what the repercussions of us doing this could possibly be? Have you thought through all of the consequences?”

“There are no consequences that I cannot live with, Jack.” Adeline said, sounding perfectly calm and composed. “I want this, for myself and for you. This is the last time I get to choose something just for me. Starting tomorrow, when I give my father the name of the titled lord who I will agree to marry and bear children for, I will no longer be the master of my own body and how it is to be used. Don’t you understand, Jack? I want you—the way a woman wants a man—and I don’t know if I’ll ever feel that for any other man again. Certainly not for any of the men courting me; believe me, I tried! So if you deny me this last opportunity to experience real passionate desire in the arms of the one man who actually makes me feel something when you just look at me, I will spend the rest of my life wondering—no, yearning for your touch. Is that what you want, Jack? To leave me trying to imagine what it might have been like to lie in your arms and make love with you? Can you honestly say you won’t regret abandoning me here tonight and never knowing what might have been?”

Jackson had to turn away from Adeline and her extremely persuasive arguments. He couldn’t look at her lips, swollen from his kisses, or the expanse of her creamy skin that had been exposed when her dress had dropped in a pool around her feet. He paced to the other side of the room and looked through the open connecting door that led to the bedchamber. It looked very inviting, with a single candle casting a seductive light over the four-poster bed. Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted a crystal decanter of brandy and two cut crystal glasses. Walking over to where they sat on a silver tray, he poured them both a glass and handed Addie one. She took it and sipped the strong liquor, watching him like a predator.

Jack took a long swallow of his drink before looking back at her. He wanted this—badly. And he no longer felt the overwhelming guilt that had plagued him all those months ago. But he still felt some hesitation about seducing his deceased wife’s friend, not to mention a woman who was as good as affianced to another man. But she was right, this was her choice and she had the right to make it, especially with what she would be giving the baron in exchange for not being a virgin on their wedding night. He would have her fortune and the rest of her life, as well as claim to any children she had.

“What if you become—with child—after tonight?” he asked her, taking another drink.

“I suppose the wedding will have to happen sooner then,” she responded, slowly walking toward him. “And I should hope it’s a girl so that Lord Craven will let me keep her. I would enjoy raising your child, Jack.”

Adeline had no idea how erotic her simple statement was. “What if it’s a boy?” Jack whispered, suddenly wanting a son. He had never even considered the possibility before, since Clara and he had been together ten years but she had never been able to go full term after conception.

“I don’t think the baron would allow me to keep him in the same house as his own heir.” She said, hesitating in her advance.

“If you do conceive, and it is a boy, would you let me raise him?” Jack had to know.

“Nothing would make me happier.” Adeline said, as a tear fell from one of her blue eyes. “Jack, will you make love to me tonight? Will you do this for me? And I promise, I will never ask anything else from you again. And you may ask me for anything in return.”

Throwing back the rest of his brandy, Jackson set down the empty glass and stared intently at Addie. He did want this, possibly even more than she did. All his life there had only ever been one woman who he cared about or wanted—Clara. And now that his wife was gone from this world and he’d had time to imagine a life without her, he found that it loomed long and empty ahead of him if he continued without someone to comfort and love him. Maybe that someone wasn’t Adeline, but maybe, God willing, a child could fill that void in his life. Of course, there were no guarantees that a union tonight would in fact produce a son, but he could hope. If he could only have Addie this one time, this one night, he would at least make it as memorable as possible for both of them.

Instead of answering her, Jackson came to Addie and took the glass from her hand. He set it next to his discarded one while lacing his fingers through hers, gently pulling her towards the big inviting bed. Lying back on the mattress, he pulled Adeline with him so she lay on top of him, with her satin-covered thigh straddling one of his.

“Anything?” he asked, grinning slowly while placing gentle kisses on her long neck that stretched out above him. She arched her body against his and moaned erotically as one of his hands cupped her bottom, pressing her more firmly against his groin.

He knew she was past responding to him verbally, as well as beyond any sort of reasonable thinking. She was only feeling now, experiencing myriad new and most likely previously- unknown sensations as his hands skimmed her part-silk-clad and part-exposed body.

Jack hadn’t been with a virgin since the first time he and Clara had made love so many years ago. He had been so young and his only experience with a woman had been a friend of his parents visiting the family one summer. She’d been older and experienced and had enjoyed teaching young Jackson the ways of lovemaking. But the moment he’d seen Clara at her father’s tavern that next fall, he had never even looked at another woman. And now, he was here with Adeline. After having Lady Eleanor try to take him to her bed in the months following his wife’s passing, Jack had wondered if he would ever enjoy the sexual act again. He was pleasantly surprised to be proven wrong on that account; because right now, he couldn’t imagine wanting anything more than having Miss Adeline James exactly where she was—in bed, half undressed and ready to be ravished.

Rolling over and taking Addie with him, Jackson moved so he was leaning on his elbow with one arm and had his thigh nestled between her legs. With his free had, Jack began to explore Adeline’s softness. He skimmed his fingertips over the gentle slopes of pale flesh above her still-fastened corset, and when she tried to undo the constricting garment on her own, he pushed her hands away. There was much work to be done before he laid her naked before him. He started with kissing her exposed skin, then teasing her with his tongue. She tasted slightly salty from dancing in the stuffy music room. Then he moved to her covered breasts, caressing them over her underwear. She tried again to remove the offending garments, but Jack kept pushing her hands away. He was enjoying this too much to hurry it along, even though he could feel his own urgent reaction to Adeline’s eagerness.

“Turn over,” he purred in her ear, nipping at her soft lobe. Addie gasped at the new sensation, and obeyed him, obviously completely trusting Jack in this matter.

Giving her back and shoulders the same attention he’d focused on her chest a moment ago, Jack then began the pleasurable task of finishing undressing Miss James, starting with the stays on her corset. Enjoying himself more than he’d imagined, Jackson took his time, teasing little sounds out of Addie as he touched her in ways he knew she’d never before known. After he had the laces undone and pulled the ridiculous torture device from her body, Jack turned her over again and began to slowly expose the rest of Adeline’s skin, one inch at a time. His own need was growing in direct proportion to the sounds and movements Addie was making, and it took an extreme act of willpower on his part to get his own responses under control. He couldn’t rush this, not if he was going to give Adeline the night she wanted—a night to remember forever.

* * *

What Jack was doing to her was exquisite and unbearable. Adeline had never known these sensations could even exist, let alone that she could experience them. It was a combination of heat and blood rushing, and a tingling, shivering deliciousness that thrummed through her body over and over again, building into something that was so far beyond her realm of experience, she could only wait expectantly for its culmination.

“Jack, Jack.” Addie chanted, tossing her head back and forth on the pillows. His hands were stroking her breasts and her stomach, and then his mouth was on her nipples, causing them to stiffen into hard pebbles and making them even more sensitive to his ministrations.

“Do you like that?” he asked hopefully, not expecting an answer. But she was afraid he would stop if she didn’t respond.

“Oh, yes!” Addie cried, arching her back, trying to get closer.

Adeline’s eyes flew open as she felt Jack suddenly stop what he was doing and move away from her. She tried to reach for him but he was standing next to her, removing his own clothing now. His eyes roamed over her naked flesh which had nearly the same effect as when he’d been physically touching her, making her writhe with pleasure under his blatantly carnal regard. But as his clothing started to leave his beautiful body, Addie found herself fascinated by what he revealed. First his firm, rippled chest with a smattering of dark hair scattered over the surface and forming a line that disappeared below his waistband. Then his muscled shoulders and biceps that didn’t appear to have an ounce of extra flesh on them. The muscles in his arms flexed with the simplest of movements. And then his hands moved to his belt and the fastenings of his trousers. Adeline had never seen a man’s naked chest, let alone anything lower. It had been Jack’s naked backside she’d witnessed all those years ago. A few times when she’d been attending to the labor protests, some men had removed their jackets and rolled up their sleeves, so biceps were nothing new, but this—this was uncharted territory. Sitting up on her elbows so that she wouldn’t miss anything, Addie licked her lips, waiting for Jackson to remove the last layer separating them from what she had brought him here for.

“God, Adeline.” Jack moaned, pausing for a moment. “When you look at me like that, I’m not sure I can control myself. Do you have any idea what you are doing to me?”

Addie shook her head in the negative. She really didn’t know. But she was certainly enjoying herself, nonetheless.

Watching her with those sensual hazel eyes, Jackson slowly peeled off his slacks and stepped out of his boots and stockings. Adeline had felt his hardness pressing against her before, on the ship, in the library, and here on her bed, but she hadn’t even begun to imagine it would look like that. She wanted to touch it and see if it was smooth or rough, warm or cool, hard or soft. She couldn’t seem to tear her eyes away.

“Addie, you have to stop that.” Jack begged. “I want this to last for you, and not be over before you’ve had what you brought me here for.”

Reluctantly, Adeline raised her gaze to look into Jackson’s eyes. Holding out her hand, she beckoned him to rejoin her on the bed. Jack reached out his hand and grasped Addie’s fingertips, kissing each one as he moved back to join her, kneeling between her thighs then rolling and leaning back to pull her on top of him. She gasped in shock as their naked bodies came together, melting with heat and sparking with sensual electricity.

Jack grasped her bottom and moved Adeline’s legs so she straddled his thigh, urging her to open herself up to his touch. Her long golden hair fell in curling waves around them, creating a curtain that Jackson took a handful of as his fingers massaged Addie’s scalp in an attempt to distract her so he could maneuver her again onto her back. When Jack had changed their positions so that she was prone, with her thighs parted by his knee and breasts exposed for his perusal, Adeline felt herself enjoying being at his mercy. She trusted Jack implicitly and was eagerly anticipating his next move. He didn’t disappoint as he lowered his mouth to her breasts and alternately suckled at each nipple, making them harden and pebble again, and causing Addie to arch her back upwards, seeking more contact with him. But his next touch was completely unexpected, causing Adeline’s hips to buck wildly as Jackson’s fingers found their way to her most private of womanly places.

She lost all sense of place and time as Jack’s fingers stroked the wetness that had formed between her thighs. Adeline tried to press her knees together as an unknown pressure built in her pelvis, but his thigh held hers firmly apart as he continued to stroke her in a way that she’d never imagined she would want or enjoy. But it was so unbelievably exquisite and rapturous that Addie was thrashing, reaching out with her hands, not knowing for what, but trying to grasp something just out of her reach.

“Jack, Jack!” she cried out, running her hands over his heated flesh. Then she remembered his staff, jutting out toward her and she felt his hardness and length pressing against her belly. She reached for it and wrapped her hand around him, stroking its softness. But before she could explore much further, Jackson had grabbed her wrist and pinned it above to her head.

“Not so fast, Miss James,” he murmured in her ear. “You don’t want to spoil your first time so quickly. We still have a few things to finish with your pleasure before we move on to mine.” Still holding her wrist, Jack lowered his mouth to hers and proceeded to kiss her senseless, until she forgot what she had been doing and allowed Jackson to continue his previous assault on her sensitive female nether parts. He wouldn’t let up, and Adeline could feel something building; something just out of her reach that promised to be wonderful. And then it happened, the exquisite sensation rippling through her in waves, making her clench in a place she hadn’t even realized that she had muscles in; the waves of desire mixed with completion and then even more wanting washed over Addie until she thought that she couldn’t take another moment of it.