Sinful

She swallowed and allowed him to talk as she cooled the cloth once more in the water. “Did you dream of me, Jane?”

“No,” she lied as she watched her hand smooth the cool material down his chest, toward his navel.

“Then why did you scent your breasts?”

She paused, glanced up at his face and saw the devilish grin on his lips. How could he have known?

“Last night you smelled of soap, tonight you smell of perfume.”

“Is it not a woman’s prerogative to use perfume?”

“Yes, but why waste something so expensive if not for a certain purpose? Especially here, in a hospital full of the ill and dying?”

“Perhaps it has nothing to do with you, or any other man.”

He laughed, and Jane felt herself flush. He knew. Knew she had thought of him, desired him.

“Lower, Jane,” he rasped as she washed his abdomen. “I’m burning all over.”

She absolutely refused to dip her hand beneath the edge of the sheet, but he reached for her wrist and stilled her. With the merest pressure, he pulled her down so that her ear was to his lips.

“I want to touch you, Jane. To learn you with my hands and mouth. I want to paint you in my mind.”

Her breathing became much too heavy as her corset pressed and squeezed her chest even tighter. “My lord, you rage with fever.”

“Yes,” he replied, the sound husky and deeply male. The maleness was what made her body answer with feminine response.

“You do not know what you are saying, sir,” she whispered, her voice trembling.

His hand left her wrist to touch her throat. With a gentle glide, his hot fingers swept up and down the column of her neck. “Swallow, Jane,” he whispered. When she did, he kept his fingertips pressed against her, feeling the action of her throat moving sensuously up and down. He made a sound, a strange, guttural noise, and she tried to break free, but his arm came around her waist, holding her.

“I can see you, taking me in your mouth, swallowing me down. My cock has ached for it all day.”

Shocked, aroused by his honesty, Jane pulled away, offcentered by the fleeting visual of her, bending over his body and taking him between her lips.

“Stay,” he commanded. The fingers that were pressed against her throat were now skating down to gently caress the quivering flesh of her breasts. The arm that was wrapped around her rose up, his hand perilously close to the underside of her breast.

“My lord,” she gasped.

“Let me touch you, Jane. You’re such a novelty. I can’t understand it, this need I have to feel you, to share myself with you. I never share, Jane—never.”

He cupped her, his hot palm holding her breast, squeezing and molding until she squirmed in his hold. Despite his wounds and the fever that ravaged his body, he was strong, too strong for Jane to fight off, if she had wanted to defend against him. A small voice whispered that she should, that she must, but a larger voice, a dominant one, told her to accept his touch, encouraged her to enjoy it, explore it, return it.

While she warred with herself, Matthew had somehow loosened the top three buttons on the front of her gown. Cool air kissed her bosom as his burning hand reached into her corset and pulled her breast free of the whalebone and linen.

She gasped as he moaned when her breast fell into his palm. She was startled by the sight of her pale breast being held in his tanned hand. The pink nipple, hardening, was stroked by the tip of his thumb.

Jane could hardly breathe for the pleasure that flooded her. As he fondled her, she grew languid. Her core seeping with wetness seemed to open—open to him.

“How wonderfully proportioned you are. I can see you in my mind, and what a treat it is. I can see myself doing all kinds of very wicked things to these breasts, Jane.”

He freed her other breast, and now both were hanging out over her corset, the nipples hard and pointing. He pulled her forward, his hands spanning the expanse of her ribs, her waist, then down to her hips.

“I can see you, naked, lips parted in anticipation. Do you know in anticipation of what, Jane?”

“I can’t imagine,” she said breathlessly.

He held her waist tightly, his fingers pressing into her skin through the layers of her gown and chemise and corset. Her breasts bobbed as she leaned over him.

“Please,” she whimpered. But was it a plea for him to stop, or to ignore her protest? She didn’t know. She only knew her body was trembling everywhere.

His hot palm pressed into the soft flesh of her breast as he rubbed the flat of his hand along her nipple, sending it straining against his smooth skin.

“So beautiful,” he whispered. “Ripe, succulent, waiting for my mouth and tongue.” It unnerved her, all that passion she heard. Yet it made her soul soar to hear his praise.

Unable to stand the torture, she looked down and saw how he used his fingertip to trace the circle of her nipple; her areola puckered in response to the featherlight caress. Sharp stabs shot through her, straight to her belly, as he rolled both nipples between his thumbs and forefingers, lengthening them as he gently tugged and plucked. Suddenly she was wet between her thighs, restless with the need to curl her fingers in his hair and guide his mouth to her breast.

When he brought her close enough so that he could brush his chin and lips over them, she cried out and reached for his shoulders, anchoring herself onto him.

He nuzzled her, burying his face between the valley of her breasts. He brushed his chin and cheeks and damp lips over the mounds, before holding her up by the waist, her pointed nipples hovering over his mouth.

Jane watched his tongue snake out between his lips, flicking one engorged tip now a dark shade of pink. She moaned and shifted so that he could take it deep into his mouth, but he refused, and instead amused himself by flicking and licking her nipples with the tip, and sometimes the flat of his tongue.

“Are you watching, Jane?”

“Yes,” she rasped as he circled her nipple then flicked his tongue in a series of feathering flutters.

“Do you like it?”

Her core damped, and she drove her short nails into his shoulders.

“I can feel that you do,” he answered for her. Then he took her into his mouth and suckled. Slowly at first, then fiercely, as though he was starved for her.

His mouth broke away from her, and he gasped. “Jane, touch me. Learn me, too.”

Jane gazed down at him. Her breasts, wet from his mouth, glistened at her. The sheet that covered his lower half slipped, and Jane reached for the edge.

“How?” she asked. “How should I touch you?”

Chapter Five

He was delirious, not from fever, but Jane. The scent of her, the incredibly arousing feel of her petal-soft skin against his face made his flesh and blood blaze until he thought he would be consumed by the heat of longing.

He was amazed by her presence, the calm she washed over him. He had never been able to bear the feel of another atop him, yet he craved Jane like this, her breasts against him, the beat of her heart in his ears. He was starved for this, for the touch, the contact of another human being.

If he had been in his right mind, he would have refuted that wayward thought with a snort and a callous remark. But he was not in his right mind. Desire like nothing he had ever experienced before ruled him now. It was the same driving, relentless need that had fueled him with his first lover. But that had been lust, and animal need. The fucking had been hard, angry, soul stealing, yet the danger of it, the threat of being caught and punished, had made it arousing, made it just as good as the actual fucking.

But this moment with Jane was soft and tender, soul stealing, as well, as he felt something that had long lain dormant begin to awaken. There was need here, too. It was not animal lust, but something else. Something he could not name, something he had never felt before.