Only Mine (23 page)

The intensity of Wolfe’s voice and his indigo eyes devouring her made Jessica feel both nervous and beautiful. It was a moment before the meaning of his words sank in.

“When I was fifteen?” she asked in a low voice.

“Lady Victoria was right. I wanted you so much I didn’t let myself think of you as a woman. But I couldn’t control my dreams.” Wolfe’s voice deepened. “In my dreams I came to you, undressed you, tasted you. My dreams drove me from England.”

“Not the duchess and the scandal?”

Without answering, Wolfe ran his fingertips from the pulse beating in Jessica’s throat to the lush mahogany cloud at the apex of her thighs and back up again. The sound of his name shivering from
her lips made him smile despite the need raking him with claws of fire.

Once Wolfe would have been afraid to continue touching Jessica, afraid to trust his own control. Once, but no longer. He had only to think of what her childhood had been like and ice condensed within him, taking the pain of unrelieved hunger from his body, giving him the strength to enjoy her without claiming her.

Yet the hunger remained, growing with each breath.

“The duchess was a convenience,” Wolfe said simply, tracing a line of fire down Jessica’s body again. “I thought if I took a lover, my dreams would be my own.”

“Were they?”

The words were breathless, squeezed past the tension in Jessica’s throat. She wanted to cover herself and hide…and she wanted to stretch like a cat beneath Wolfe’s hand. The conflicting impulses rippled through her, tightening her nerves until she shivered.

“My dreams haven’t been my own since we took shelter from a rainstorm beneath an oak. You were drenched. Your dress clung to your breasts and your nipples stood hard against the cloth.”

Wolfe’s dark head bent until he could kiss the wild pulse in Jessica’s throat.

“I wondered if your nipples would tighten like that for me,” he whispered.

The tiny sound Jessica made licked over Wolfe’s senses. He set his teeth delicately where her neck curved into her shoulder.

“You haunted me,” Wolfe said. “I told myself it was my age, the cold rutting with aristocratic women, my unruly body. I told myself everything
but the truth. I wanted you until I couldn’t look at you without being aroused.”

His mouth glided lower, exploring the warm valley between Jessica’s breasts. Her heartbeat shook her, but it was Wolfe’s words as much as the warmth of his breath on her bare skin that made her tremble. The tip of his tongue drew a line of molten heat over her.

“You taste like a rose,” he whispered.

Wolfe turned his head from side to side, savoring Jessica’s warmth and her scent, enjoying her with a frank sensuality that made breath fill her throat until she ached. With a shivering sound she moved beneath him, turning slowly against his caressing mouth without understanding why.

“You’re burning me,” he whispered.

“’Tis you who burn me. Your mouth is fire.”

Hunger ran through Wolfe, tightening his body until he let out his pent-up breath in a long, soundless sigh.

“You’ve burned me for so many years,” he said. “I was trying to find an excuse for leaving England when the duchess threw her very public tantrum over my absence from her bed. Finally Lord Robert agreed that he could live without the company of his bastard for a time.”

Wolfe’s dark cheek smoothed over the swell of Jessica’s breast. Her hands lifted, but not to push him away. His words disarmed her, seducing her even as his caresses set her afire. She threaded her fingers into the midnight thickness of Wolfe’s hair until she could feel the living warmth of his scalp. Sensing the response that went through him, she drew her nails lightly over his scalp once more.

“I wept when I heard you were leaving,” she whispered.

“Did you? I saw only your smile and heard only the sharp edge of your tongue over my taste in duchesses.”

“I was angry with you.”

“You were jealous of me, Jessi. The way a woman is jealous of her man. Lady Victoria saw that. Just as she saw what I concealed even from myself.”

“What was that?”

“I couldn’t hear your voice, I couldn’t smell a rose, I couldn’t pass a room where you had recently been without becoming aroused. I was being drawn upon a rack. There was no end to it, no relief in other women, nothing I could do but leave.”

Wolfe looked up at Jessica, making no effort to conceal the desire for her that had sunk so deeply into him through the years that he no more noticed it than he noticed the marrow of his bones.

“I didn’t know,” she whispered.

Trembling, Jessica met Wolfe’s eyes. The elemental need in him rushed through her body in a glittering tide.

“I kept my need from you even more carefully than I kept it from myself,” he said.

Slowly Wolfe turned his head away. His dark glance went back down her body. The contrast between pale, luminous skin and mahogany fire was new each time he saw it. So was the fullness of her breasts and hips, a lush feminine promise that was repeated in the graceful curves of her legs.

“You took the color from the sky when you left,” Jessica whispered. “Oh, Wolfe, I missed you until I thought I would die. I loved you so much. I’ve always loved you.”

His heartbeat hesitated, then resumed with a heavy pulse.

“Don’t love me, Jessi. It will only hurt us both. I should have kept my need from you even now. But I can’t. You are too beautiful and I have dreamed of you too long.”

Wolfe bent to her breasts. His tongue traced the circle where pale satin skin became a pink temptation that he was trying to resist for a few moments longer. The edge of his teeth lightly tested her, drawing a startled sound from Jessica. Her fingers tightened in his hair.

“Don’t be frightened,” Wolfe breathed against her skin. “I’m not a drunken lord who will maul you until you bleed. I’m a titleless bastard who has waited a lifetime to caress you.”

Before Jessica could speak, she saw Wolfe’s lips part, knew the unexpected fire of his tongue licking over her nipple, felt the intimate heat of his mouth as he drew her inside. Her back arched reflexively as a thrill of pleasure and surprise shot through her. She called his name and was answered by an increase in the shifting pressure of his mouth. Heedlessly her fingers clenched his hair as sweet sensation twisted through her once more.

Wolfe stabbed sensually with his tongue at the rigid peak he had summoned from Jessica’s breast. She moaned and arched against him. He sheathed the edges of his teeth in his lips and tested the hardness of her nipple. Fire splintered, drawing a ragged, passionate cry from her. Wolfe didn’t lift his head until her breathing was broken and she was twisting slowly beneath his mouth. Very slowly he released her captive breast and admired the high ruby crown his mouth had created.

“You draw even tighter for my mouth than you did for the rain.”

“What?” she asked, dazed.

“This.” Wolfe took one of Jessica’s hands and drew it lightly over her breast. “Feel your passion. Such a velvet hardness.”

Her eyes opened in shock.

Laughing softly, Wolfe kissed her palm, bit the flesh at the base of her hand, and felt her body jerk with pleasure. Her caught her nipples between his fingers and plucked until she forgot everything but the sensations radiating through her like sunlight through a garden.

When one of Wolfe’s hands slid down the length of her body, Jessica didn’t protest. The warmth of his hand stroking over her legs was simply part of the net of fire that was drawing more tightly around her with each tug of his mouth at her breasts. She didn’t notice that with each sweet pressure of his palm her legs shifted and then shifted again until nothing of her softness was shielded from him.

“Remember how sunlight touches the bud?” Wolfe asked.

His voice was deep, husky, as warm and heavy as his hand resting just above the tangle of mahogany curls.

“Gently,” Jessica whispered. “Completely.”

“Everywhere.”

Understanding came. “Dear God, Wolfe. Even there?”

“Especially there. You’re going to come as sweetly unwrapped as a rosebud baring its petals to the sun for the first time.”

Motionless, Jessica stared at Wolfe’s dark, intensely masculine face.

“There’s no need to be frightened,” he said. “You want this. I can see it, even if you can’t. You’re already unfolding for me.”

She made a sound that could have been Wolfe’s name when she felt his hand ease lower.

“Don’t tighten your legs,” he said softly. “This is as close as I’ll ever come to taking you. I want to see it.”

Wolfe’s hand didn’t move as he lay motionless beside Jessica, waiting for her decision.

“Wolfe,” she whispered, but could say no more.

“Shy little rose.”

He kissed her shoulder, then drew his teeth over the place where nerves gathered. She made a soft sound of surprise and pleasure.

“I know you’re aching for the sun,” Wolfe said. “Let me give it to you.”

The delicacy of his teeth caressing her shoulder was both sensual reassurance and sensuous promise. Slowly Jessica let out her breath and relaxed the tension in her legs. She was rewarded by the slow stroking of Wolfe’s palm over her belly and hips and thighs. His mouth teased her breasts, sending pleasure licking through her once more, wrapping her in a net of loving fire.

When Wolfe’s nails scored lightly inside Jessica’s thighs, the fiery net tightened around her in a rush that made her moan. His hand flattened as his fingers spread wide, then curled around the curve of her inner thigh. He caressed her slowly with his palm, easing between her legs. This time she didn’t resist the inevitable parting of her thighs beneath his touch.

“Jessi,” Wolfe breathed, shaken by her unspoken trust.

His palm skimmed over the dark curls he longed
to comb with his fingertips, seeking the scented softness he knew ached for his caresses. Gently he pressed his hand between her legs. His fingers cupped around her softest flesh as his palm rubbed languidly over the mahogany curls that no longer concealed Jessica’s sultry core.

When she felt his touch, her breath came in with a sound like silk tearing. With great care he traced her layered softness, coaxing each petal into quivering life.

“Such a beautiful flower,” he said huskily. “Is there nectar within?”

Jessica didn’t know what Wolfe meant until she felt herself being softly parted. The gliding penetration of his finger should have shocked her, but shock had no chance against the bubble of sensation expanding through her, bursting softly, drenching her in pleasure.

“
Wolfe.
”

“I know,” he said hoarsely. “I can feel it, hotter than my dreams.”

His hand moved again, slowly, and her response spilled over, burning both of them with the softest kind of fire. She made a sound deep in her throat and lifted against his hand, needing to feel the sweet movement within her once more. He felt the frailty of her maidenhead, cursed, and began to withdraw from the satin sheath he wanted more than he wanted breath.

“Please,” Jessica whispered, trying to keep him within her body. “Touch me.”

“Not like that.”

“Does it…don’t you…do you…dislike it?”

Wolfe laughed deep in his throat and returned to probe lightly, hungry for the moist, clinging heat. The sound Jessica made told him that her
eyes were open and what she was seeing both shocked and set fire to her.

“Yes, Jessi. Watch and think what it would be like to feel my kisses like a warm rain over every bit of you,” he shuddered and whispered, “and you a warm rain over me.”

Something both beautiful and faintly frightening swept through Jessica. She tried to quell the feeling, but might as well have tried to turn back the sun with a sigh.

“What is happening to me?” Jessica asked. “What are you—I can’t—
Wolfe.
”

Jessica moaned his name as her body convulsed softly around him, caressing him secretly, drawing him more deeply into her while passion’s sultry rain licked over his hand.

Need clenched savagely in Wolfe, making him groan as he withdrew from Jessica’s body. With leashed urgency he smoothed the heat of her response over her most sensitive skin. When he caressed the nub of passion he had called from her, she cried out with surprise and violent pleasure. His fingertips circled her aroused, sensitive flesh, tugging at her, holding her captive for the hungry testing of his thumb.

Jessica arched in elemental abandon as Wolfe taught her that pleasure could be so intense it was more vivid than pain, more elemental, a sensual lightning burning her to her soul.

Wolfe’s dark glance swept over Jessica, memorizing her body as it was transformed by the ecstasy he had given to her. He wanted to be within her again, to feel her release shivering around him, caressing him with sultry velvet wings. He knew he shouldn’t risk tearing the fragile veil of her chastity, yet he was unable to resist.

His hand shifted as he glided very carefully into her body once more. The slow penetration drew a shivering cry of completion from her.

“Your maidenhead is so frail.” Wolfe whispered. “It tells me I could take you in every way I’ve ever imagined and you would know only pleasure.”

Wolfe’s thumb moved slowly and Jessica moaned as sensuous lightning searched through her once more.

“I won’t take your virginity,” Wolfe said hoarsely as he bent down to her, “but I will know you in a way I’ve never known any woman.” He shuddered and caressed her intimately, dragging his mouth over her. “Give yourself to me, Jessi. Let me taste ecstasy.”

Pleasure seared through Jessica. With a rippling cry she gave herself to Wolfe, sharing ecstasy with him as his mouth moved over her with a hungry intensity, knowing her in a silence that burned, not stopping until she lay spent and shivering between his hands, her every breath his name whispered in wonder.

Then Wolfe held Jessica very hard and told himself how many kinds of fools he was. He had discovered the intense passion of an aristocratic girl who could never be his true mate. He wanted her more than ever, not less; yet he could not have her. He must not.

They were still all wrong for each other. Nothing had changed.