Charming Sir Charles (Dashing Widows Book 5) Read online

  “Oh, my darling,” he breathed, flinging off his coat and seizing her hand. He brought it to his lips and covered it with kisses, all the time watching desire turned her green eyes to dark jade. Even through the dim light, he read the naked demand in her expression.

  Setting one knee on the chaise longue, he straddled her. He slid his arms around her back and brought her up for another kiss. He couldn’t get enough of that luscious mouth, of her tangy flavor. She curled her arms around his neck and responded with the readiness that had shocked him at first and still filled him with surprised gratitude.

  The hint of inexperience in her kisses touched his heart, reminded him to cherish her. One day, she’d tell him about her marriage, but now he knew enough to understand that she needed his care as well as his ardor.

  “I want you so much,” she murmured, trailing her lips along the side of his face. “Don’t make me wait.”

  “Sally…”

  “Please.”

  He kissed her neck, delighting in how she trembled. Nor was he much steadier. His shaking hands took forever to loosen the lacing at the back of her green dress.

  Gently he slid her bodice down to reveal her beautiful breasts. At the sight of her pearled pink nipples, need jolted him like a sharp blow to the belly.

  “Oh,” she squeaked and raised her hands to cover herself.

  “Let me see,” he said in a choked voice.

  For a moment, she hesitated, then slowly she lay back and lowered her hands. With a pride that made his heart crack, she raised her chin.

  “Perfect,” he whispered, and stroked and squeezed until she squirmed with longing.

  When he took one pebbled nipple between his lips and flicked his tongue across it, she cried out and buried her hand in his hair. The rhythm her fingertips set up against his scalp matched the ravenous beat of his blood.

  Dear God above, he had to have her.

  He slid his hand under her skirts and found her skin. Warm. Smooth. He pushed the loose drawers up until he could slip his hand between her legs, stroking her through the frail lawn. She was wet and aroused. After doubting that she wanted him at all, he loved that she couldn’t hide her swift response. The heady scent of her arousal threatened to send him mad.

  With sudden ruthlessness, he rose and knelt between her legs. He shoved up her skirts and reached down to rip her drawers, revealing her to his avid eyes. Light brown curls, glistening with proof of her need. The pale plain of her stomach with its sweet little navel.

  She was slender and graceful with long dancer’s legs. His imagination hadn’t come close to picturing how beautiful she was under her clothes.

  Unable to resist temptation, he bowed his head and tilted her hips. He buried his mouth in that satiny cleft, tasting her intimately and finding her sweeter than honey.

  She stiffened and gasped in shock, but he soon had her sighing and undulating against him. When he worked his tongue against her center, she gave a cracked cry and grasped his shoulders. She quivered against his seeking mouth before on another cry, she reached her climax. He lapped at her as she floated down from the heights, then raised his head to stare into her face.

  Sally was flushed, and her features were soft with the aftermath of pleasure. But he couldn’t mistake the surprise in her eyes.

  “What…what was that?”

  Hell, what a damned clumsy brute her husband must have been.

  As he smiled, her salty taste was rich on his tongue. “You liked it?”

  “It made me feel wicked.” Her voice was husky.

  “But you liked it?”

  Her blush intensified. “You know I did.”

  “Good.” He placed a kiss on one satiny white thigh. Then he sat up to unbutton his breeches. As his heart raced with rapacious anticipation, he fumbled with the uncooperative fastenings.

  The moment he saw her, he’d wanted her, come to love her not long after that. She’d put him through hell since. Having her sprawled before him, panting as she quivered after her first climax, beggared his wildest dreams.

  Her passion-darkened gaze settled where his cock stood out from his breeches. “Dear Lord above,” she whispered and lifted her hand.

  He braced for her caress, but shyness caught her at the last moment.

  “Touch me,” Charles grated out, catching her hand and placing it on him.

  Heat from the contact blasted through him and threatened his precarious control. He clenched his teeth and fought the urge to lose himself in her hand.

  Her fingers trembled under his, but he saw fascination in her face, as she instinctively curled into a fist around him.

  Another thundering shudder of heat. He closed his eyes as she tentatively shifted up toward the sensitive tip.

  “Am I…am I hurting you?” she asked unsteadily, stroking down again. Thank God, without releasing him.

  “No.” Speaking was damned difficult when the fireworks shooting through his head were fit to rival the damned Battle of Waterloo. “Harder.”

  She firmed her grip and moved her hand, finding her own rhythm after a few false starts that nearly took the top of his head off. Her unskilled caresses threatened to incinerate him to smoking shards.

  He caught her spread thighs as if clinging to a precipice, and let her have her way. The pleasure verged on unbearable torment. It would be so easy—safer—to spill into her fist. But this first time, there was no way in Hades he’d miss being inside her.

  When she brushed her thumb across the damp head, he reached the limit of his restraint. Roughly he snatched at her hand, but the kiss he placed on her knuckles was gentle. Her skin had caught his musk. “I can’t wait a second longer.”

  Sally’s eyes deepened, and her lips parted. “Charles…”

  “I love to hear you say my name.” He leaned in and kissed her with open-mouthed hunger. She hooked her hands over his shoulders and fitted her body to his.

  He ripped at his neck cloth, flinging it to the floor. A low sound of feminine approval emerged from her throat. With greedy hands, she pushed aside his shirt, and he groaned as her palms flattened over the bare skin of his chest.

  When she placed a kiss between his nipples, the sweetness squeezed his heart. He twined his hand in her tumble of hair and held her still for another voracious kiss.

  With his other hand, he stroked her, reveling in her liquid response. The scent of arousal thickening the air teased him with the promise of looming fulfillment.

  “Oh, that’s good,” Sally sighed, angling toward his caresses.

  When she curled her arms across his back, pulling him down to her, he could delay no longer. Rising on one arm so he could watch every second of this transcendent consummation, he pressed into her.

  He met slippery heat and glorious resistance. Then with a deep groan of triumph, he slid into her as if they were born to join together.

  She released a surprised gasp and tightened around him. The sensation threatened his threadbare control, but he tensed every muscle against release.

  He meant above all to pleasure her. Magnificent as this union was for him, he burned to show Sally what heights a woman could reach with a skilled and considerate lover.

  He met her eyes, glassy like the ocean on a sultry summer day. Then on a hard kiss, he shifted deeper. She gave a faint, broken cry and arched into him. Her fingers dug into the muscles of his back, as if the world reeled for her, too.

  Blindness descended on Charles, and he hurtled into an inferno of unfettered passion. Gripped by purely animal instinct, he withdrew. Then he pushed forward, claiming her again and luxuriating in the grip of her body.

  On a husky moan, she raised her knees higher, changing the angle. He shifted to meet her and felt her open in marvelous welcome. She shoved up his shirt, so her fingernails scored his back. The sting added to the riot of sensations assaulting him. He grunted and rose on his arms, taking her with a ruthless ardor that she greeted with avid delight.

  But even while his primitive self co
mmanded his actions, he never forgot what this incandescent joining meant.

  Sally was his. She was his at last. And the knowledge lit his world with golden fire.

  * * *

  Chapter Eleven

  * * *

  Sally felt swept up into the whirlwind, hurled high into a brilliant sky. The years of dutiful and awkward congress with Norwood—and not particularly frequent congress at that—hadn’t prepared her for this passionate storm. All she could do was cling to Charles and hope to heaven she survived the onslaught of hectic pleasure.

  Charles thrust again, and she clenched around him. She loved the feeling of transcendent closeness every time his body joined with hers. She curled her hands over his shoulders and tilted toward him. The change in position sparked a sizzling surge of heat.

  “Come for me,” he crooned in her ear, the words escaping in unsteady gasps.

  “Come?” she asked, although after the unprecedented explosion of delight when he’d kissed her between the legs, she had an idea what that might mean. His actions had seemed outlandish, until the first wave crashed through her.

  Now her body tightened toward something very like that spiraling release, but what built in her was even more powerful. Perhaps because this time, Charles was with her.

  The ripples melted together into a tightening coil. Through her gathering crisis, she became aware that his movements became less controlled with every thrust. The fiery, inescapable intimacy of this connection was unlike anything she’d ever known.

  “Yes, for God’s sake,” he rasped, and bent to kiss her with a clumsiness that made her heart cramp. She loved knowing that this union left him shaken and vulnerable, too. She lifted her hips to meet him, as lips, teeth and tongues clashed in a passionate battle.

  Charles plunged deep, and Sally’s world flared into searing white lightning.

  She cried out over his guttural groan of satisfaction, and she dissolved into a cataclysm of dazzling pleasure. A gush of warmth inside her told her that he had found release. Her grip on his back tightened, as she tumbled through the fiery stars.

  Through her shuddering reaction, she felt him jerk again. Then he withdrew and collapsed at her side, one powerful arm lashed around her to save her toppling to the floor.

  “This chair isn’t designed for two,” she said, once she caught her breath, unsure whether her voice would work at all. Her throat was scratchy as if she’d screamed through every second of her headlong pleasure.

  Who knew? Perhaps she had screamed. She’d been lost to everything but Charles’s thundering possession.

  An unsteady laugh escaped him.

  Curious, she turned her head to survey him. By now, her eyes had adjusted to the lack of light. He looked happy—and at peace in a way she’d never seen before. He was so handsome that her exhausted heart skipped a beat. His eyes were heavy with satisfaction. His hair was rumpled and fell tangled over his forehead. His white shirt gaped open, giving her a glimpse of his hair-roughened chest.

  What a magnificent lover this secret interlude had delivered to her.

  She smoothed a rich brown lock back from his forehead. “What is it?”

  Amusement lit his eyes to burnt toffee. “After what we just did, I hoped I might hear something a little more sentimental.”

  She frowned, even as a flood of foolish endearments and praise rose to her lips. Despite what they’d done together, she bit the words back.

  Why? Shyness. Uncertainty. And the reluctant awareness that the events of their enchanted afternoon belonged only to this time and place. “But it’s not made for two.”

  “No.” Something in his eyes told her that he guessed how she struggled against saying too much. “If you turn around and fit yourself against me, we’ll manage very well indeed. But first…”

  He leaned forward and kissed her. A tender kiss with none of the tumultuous passion that had just transported her to paradise.

  So why should this almost chaste kiss have the power to slice her heart in two?

  She blinked away foolish tears and hoped the gloom hid them from Charles.

  Small hope. He cupped her face and kissed her again with more of the poignant tenderness that vanquished all her defenses. “Lie with me, my darling, just for a few moments.”

  Sally struggled to remember that this was a mere interlude, and once they left this house, the rest of her life waited to claim her. The rest of her life held no place for this breathtaking lover, years younger than her.

  She braced herself to speak the fatal name. “But if Meg…”

  “She said she’d be a couple of hours.”

  “We need to talk.” But the shameful truth was that Sally didn’t want to talk. Not yet. Not ever, although she knew that was an impossible wish.

  “Yes, we do.” His expression turned somber, and she shivered as if a ghost passed through the air above her. “But not this very minute.”

  For a long interval, she stared into his face, tracing every inch with her eyes so that she could carve him on her heart just as he looked now. How could she deny him? He offered her an irresistible chance to linger in this golden heaven, even if just for a little while.

  Trouble lay ahead, but trouble could wait.

  She gave him a tentative smile, then squirmed around until her back pressed into his chest. His musky male scent surrounded her, as he drew her into the shelter of his body and shaped one possessive hand around her breast.

  “I won’t let you fall,” he murmured in her ear, making her shiver as his breath brushed across her skin.

  Silly girl she was, she so wanted to believe him. Which was absurd when she’d just fallen most convincingly.

  But that unwelcome thought couldn’t pierce her contentment as she cuddled up against Charles. She rested in the arms of the man she loved. For now, that was enough.

  * * *

  Charles stirred and opened his eyes to impenetrable blackness. There was no interval of confusion or disorientation. His beloved, warm and soft and messy after their wild, astonishing, unforgettable encounter, slept with him.

  He buried his nose in the soft tumble of her hair, breathing deeply of her intoxicating female scent. He felt drunk on Sally Cowan. Even in his most extravagant dreams, he’d never imagined that she’d give herself to him with such sweetness and generosity.

  He had no idea what time it was, and nothing on God’s green earth could lure him away from Sally to find his coat and dig his watch out of the pocket. He felt pleasantly weary, every muscle weighted with sleep and lingering satisfaction.

  After that astounding climax, they both must have tumbled into a deep sleep. The chaise, which had earlier seemed cramped, now seemed just right. Sally’s long slender body fit against his as if she’d been created to lie in his arms.

  They were still dressed, at least in theory. Her skirts bunched against his thighs, and her bodice drooped to give him access to her pretty bosom. He’d managed to button his breeches before he dozed off, and his crumpled shirt lay loose around his hips.

  With a stab of surprise, he realized he hadn’t even delayed to take off his boots. He’d wanted her too much to think of anything else.

  He tightened his grip on her waist, and his hand curled more firmly around her breast. He loved her neat little breasts with their tight, pink nipples. Nipples that tasted like strawberries.

  A reminiscent smile curved his lips, as his mind turned to coaxing Sally into another bout. Idly his thumb toyed with the pointed peak, and he bumped his hips against her bottom. His cock rose hard and heavy, eager to be inside her once more.

  He still couldn’t quite believe what had happened. Amazing how a man’s fate could turn upon a sixpence. He’d started the day wanting to cut his throat because he was convinced he’d lost her forever. Now he lay crammed up against his darling, basking in a happiness he’d never known before.

  What a rare, extraordinary gift that happiness was. Although the real gift was the woman in his arms.

  Sa
lly shifted subtly so her tangled hair drifted across his shoulder. Her hand rose to cup his hand where it held her breast. His smile widened, as he tilted his head to kiss the lushly scented curve where her neck met her shoulder. She smelled of crushed flowers and female satisfaction—and a trace of sweat.

  She made a drowsy sound of appreciation and shifted back against him. Then startling him, she suddenly went rigid and wriggled until she broke out of his hold.

  With a cry, she tumbled off the narrow chaise and ended up crouching on the floor beside him.

  “Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no. What have we done? Charles, what have we done?”

  He couldn’t see her face through the darkness, but her distraught voice chilled his skin with foreboding. He sat up and fumbled to touch her, but his hand met only air.

  “Sally—”

  “I can’t believe this has happened. It’s a complete disaster.”

  Damn it. “What the devil?”

  “Of course it’s not a disaster,” he snapped. The shift from somnolent contentment was too abrupt. He struggled to see her through the shadows.

  “But you’re going to marry Meg,” she said, her voice cracking.

  His rare temper flared, although he supposed he should have expected something like this. He surged to his feet and crossed to the window. His shaking hands took too long to find the catch for the shutters. When at last he did, he flung them wide, letting bright moonlight flood the room.

  “Credit me with some scrap of honor, Sally,” he said coldly, turning back to face her. “As if I’d touch you if I harbored any intentions toward your niece.”

  Sally stumbled to her feet. Despite his current impulse to give her a good shake until she saw sense, his heart crashed against his ribs at the delectable picture she presented. She might have tugged her bodice up to restore her modesty, but she still looked deliciously rumpled. Her thick mane of dark gold hair cascaded over her shoulders, and the moonlight was bright enough to reveal her full, kiss-swollen lips. “You’ve courted her for weeks.”