Sycamore kissed her brow. “Right, I dragged you up the steps to have my wicked way with you, but I’ve changed my mind.”
A bolt of real disappointment went through her. “Truly?”
“Yes, truly. I think instead that you should have your wicked way with me. I am eager to be plundered, and you must lead the raiding party.”
“I wouldn’t know—”
He hoisted her over him, his strength as implacable as it was careful. “The Matterhorn awaits, Jeanette. I promise you the view is worth the climb.”
Dear… gracious… glorious… She’d ended up straddling him as he lay beneath her on his back, his arousal only inches from its intended destination.
“I could, for example,” he said, brushing aside her chemise to stroke her thighs, “caress your breasts, if you like. I could revel in your kisses. I could join my body to yours while you controlled the depth, speed, and—”
She kissed him to silence him, also because he was filling her body with longing and her head with something other than memories.
“Better,” he murmured, his hands trailing up her sides. His kisses were lazy and teasing, also powerfully distracting. Jeanette’s braid came loose from its chignon—how had that happened?—and her chemise was soon rucked up about her waist.
While she was marveling over those developments, Sycamore glossed his palms over her breasts.
“Do that again.”
He obliged, slowly, then added gentle tugs on her nipples. “Like that?” He curled up and used his lips and teeth through the fabric of her chemise. “Or like that? Say what pleases you, Jeanette.”
She liked hearing him use her name, she liked that he knew how to go on. She could barely think for awareness of his arousal, seated along the crease of her sex.
“I like when you use my name.”
“I like to use your name,” he said, returning to the first breast. “Perhaps the time has arrived to take off this chemise?”
He’d made her ache, and he asked her rather than simply dragged her clothing over her head. But to be naked, utterly naked, intimately exposed… Every instinct Jeanette had shrieked at her to keep the garment, to keep a symbolic barrier if nothing else, a cloak for her dignity should she abruptly leave the bed over some offense or slight.
Sycamore lay beneath her, saying nothing. In his patience, she sensed safety and, more than that, a haven. Keeping her chemise on would protect nothing—he could rip it from her should the whim strike him—but taking it off would be a step in the direction of a trust he deserved and she hoped to give him.
Trust, and something even more complicated. Hope perhaps?
Jeanette untied the bow at her décolletage. “If you would assist me?”
Sycamore drew her chemise over her head and tossed it in the direction of the chair. He frankly stared at her breasts, which were a trifle larger than fashion preferred.
“How you honor me,” he said, gathering her in an embrace. “How you delight and honor me.”
He delighted her too, with exquisite caresses and an even more inventive use of his mouth on her breasts. Jeanette began to move on him, to glide her sex over the rigid length of his cock, seeking relief of an intimate ache and succeeding only in stirring herself to more frustrated desire.
“Time to climb, Jeanette?” Sycamore asked, smiling crookedly, and pushing her braid back over her shoulder. “Eager doesn’t begin to describe my willingness to be climbed.”
Jeanette’s body clamored for her to accept Sycamore’s invitation, and yet, she hesitated, though not out of uncertainty. She paused to marvel at the tenderness assailing her, the gratitude to this man who’d turned rutting into lovemaking.
The view was already breathtaking.
“I will withdraw,” he said. “I promise.”
And Sycamore Dorning’s word was trustworthy. That was what made this encounter possible. Not the liking, the desire, the old ghosts, or even the promise of pleasure, but the trust.
She braced herself on one hand and used the other to seat his cock against her body. “Slowly please,” she said. “Some pleasures should be savored.”
He turned slowly into excruciating self-control, allowing Jeanette to remain poised above him while he thrust, feinted, paused, and generally drove her mad.
“Yield, Jeanette,” he whispered, gathering her close. “Please, yield.”
She was yielding as far as she knew how, riding him with increasing abandon, taking his hand and placing it over her breast.
“I don’t… I can’t…”
The wanting and heat inside her built, then built some more, then flared yet higher. The frustration was unbearable, enraging, and fascinating all at once.
Sycamore did something, shifted the angle, drove deeper—she hardly knew what—but then she could and she did.
Cataclysms of pleasure shook her from within. Her passion became an avalanche of tumbling sensation, reverberating shock, and breathless satisfaction. All the while, Sycamore plied her with slow, hard thrusts that became too much and then more than too much, but still she clung to him and endured.
When he at last went still, she collapsed on his chest, and his arms came around her. She was joy and satisfaction and a few unshed tears, while his hand on her hair was gentleness itself.
“You are a revelation,” Jeanette said, a thought that had decided on its own to be spoken aloud. She rode the rise and fall of his chest like eiderdown on a summer breeze, her mind a place of peace, warmth, and light.
So that was passion.
That was lovemaking. Finally. At last. That was the uninhibited sharing of pleasure about which so many had rhapsodized so eloquently, and Jeanette could rhapsodize now too, if only in the privacy of her thoughts.
“And you are a treasure,” Sycamore replied, stroking her shoulders and back through the
