Stephanie Laurens - Beyond Seduction

Let her caress him, let her fill her senses, her mind, her soul with him.

Let her hands roam his chest, his ridged abdomen, his hips, spreading fire beneath skin already scorching.

Let her move upon and around and over him, hands, fingers, mouth, tongue, silken limbs, her silky hair, all part of her symphony of sensation.

All part of her devotion, her claiming.

In this, she had no measure-no yardstick, no plan. She moved to the beat of that different drum, her heart, her senses, her soul in tune. She gave herself over to it, gave herself up to him, and stinted nothing in the giving.

She gave him all, surrendered all, until she held them, his awareness and hers, in the palm of her hand.

They caught their breath. Held it.

Then together forged on, let her stretch the moments out until they were both frantic, until desperation gripped him as powerfully as it seized her. Until passion was a sharp-clawed beast howling through them both-until she rose up and took him in.

Until she straddled him and sheathed his hard length in her scalding softness, sinking down slowly, lids falling, breath bated, taking him inside her deep, then deeper, until she had him all.

Until she possessed him all.

Then she rode him.

Through the night slowly, through the moonlit shadows, clinging, both of them, to the very edge of control.

Walking a knife edge.

Riding a path at the very edge of their cliff, so close to oblivion each moment was dizzying, lungs locked so tight they could barely breathe. Pausing, when it all became too fraught, too intense, too much, to kiss, to, fingers linked, tightly clasping, catch their breath…until they could ride on.

Higher.

And higher.

Thought had been eradicated long ago; for both there was only sensation. That, and a oneness, a sharing, bone-deep.

A connection that flowered, fully and completely, as their breathing grew more labored, as at the last their lids fell as they took the final teetering steps up to the peak…

Glory burst upon them, taking her, then him. A bright sun of sensation imploding within, sending shards of delight lancing through their veins, sending pleasure beyond reckoning coursing through them, swamping and sweeping all consciousness away.

Sundering them from the world, whirling them beyond the stars, a single brilliant moment of unutterable bliss, stretching, holding…until the void, that place beyond feeling, gently closed around them, hiding them away, enfolding them in peace.

They drifted back to earth.

Slowly.

Like water dripping into a bowl, consciousness returned, the ability to think only gradually restored.

Gervase lay on his back, eyes closed. Nothing-no previous encounter-in his life had prepared him for this.

For complete and utter satiation.

It lay heavy in his veins, had sunk deep into his muscles.

Had touched something within him, some element inside him, that had never before been involved.

Frightening, exciting, thrilling…addictive. All that, and more.

Madeline lay slumped, beyond boneless, over him. His arms lay protectively across her back; he didn’t intend to ever let her go.

But she’d surprised him.

The strength she possessed, the determination, too, but it was her Valkyrie will-a feminine strength-that had held and fascinated and conquered him.

He smiled ironically, inside; his facial muscles were still too relaxed to manage any expression.

The strength she’d wielded to conquer him hadn’t been hers alone. At least half had come from him, from his willingness to cede to her, to surrender…not to her, herself, but to the power that between them, together naked in the night, rose up and bound them. Controlled them. Drove them.

Ruled them.

The power that, through her, commanded him.

A scarifying notion in some ways.

Before he could think further, she stirred. She lifted from him, then sank back into his arms, leaving their legs entwined. Her hair was a gilded mass hiding her face, but he felt her press her cheek to his chest, then touch her lips to his skin.

“Thank you.” Madeline let the words whisper past her lips, an intimate confession in the dark. “That, more than anything else, was what I wanted for my birthday. I wanted you. Just you.”

For me. For my own. For one night out of time.

“I cannot tell you, my lord, how pleased I am to see you back in the district, in your rightful place.” Lady Felgate fixed her protuberant eyes on Gervase as he made his bow to her. “Absentee earls-indeed, gallivanting senior noblemen of any sort-are to be deplored. It is not what the country needs.”

Straightening, Gervase knew better than to argue. “Indeed. I plan to remain at the castle for the foreseeable future.”

Lady Felgate brightened. “Excellent! We must see what we can do about finding you a local gel to take to wife.” Her ladyship waved at her ballroom. “Plenty here-go and look.”

Gervase promptly complied, at least as far as following Sybil into her ladyship’s ballroom. His looking, however, consisted of scanning the heads, searching for a bright one taller than most. Not finding her, he inwardly sighed and consigned himself to escorting Sybil to a nearby chaise, then attempting to cling to his own company until Madeline arrived.

Lady Felgate was a character, one of those ancient beldames whose eccentricities everyone put up with simply because doing so was easier than resisting. The ball she held every summer at Felgate Priory was a local institution, one everyone attended-again because it was easier than attempting to avoid it.

That did, however, mean that everyone-literally every lady and gentleman in the district older than eighteen-would appear in her ladyship’s ballroom that night.

“Thank you, dear.” Sybil drew her hand from his arm and sank onto a chaise by one wall. She glanced around. “I can’t see Muriel or Madeline, can you?”

“No, but they’ll be here soon, no doubt.”

“If you see them, do direct Muriel this way.”

With a nod, Gervase moved away, inclining his head to Mrs. Entwhistle as she bustled up to speak with Sybil.

In some respects, the crowd was a boon; there were sufficient tall gentlemen present to give him cover. Gervase kept moving, slowly tacking through the crowd, acknowledging greetings, exchanging the usual pleasantries, yet maintaining the fiction that he was on his way to join someone. That, he’d long ago learned, was the best way to wait for someone in an arena such as this; he always had a reason to move on.

Smiling, nodding, even chatting, required little mental effort to sustain, leaving the better part of his mind wrestling with a subject he rarely addressed-his feelings. On the one hand he felt buoyed and encouraged by Madeline’s bold actions of the previous night, even more by her admission that she’d wanted to make love with him as her most special birthday treat. Contrarily, an odd uneasiness rippled beneath his usual confidence, undermining it in a way he neither liked nor understood.

The source of that uneasiness was that unsettling power that had grown between them, that he’d sensed and known was there from the first, but that he’d tolerated, allowed to be, accepted on the grounds that anything that drew her to him, that held the promise of tying her to him, was in his best interests.

He still felt it was-knew it was-that it wasn’t something he wished to lose, at least in the sense of it linking them, and tying her to him.

What he wasn’t so sure about-what was making him increasingly edgy-was the way it now tied him to her.

“My lord!” Just ahead, Mrs. Juliard waved to him.

He paused by her side, greeting her-and a young lady he learned was her niece.

“Harriet’s come to spend some time with us. I was just telling her what a pity it was that she missed the festival at the castle. She was quite intrigued to hear about the cannons.”

Gervase smiled into Miss Juliard’s youthful countenance-and wondered how on earth any sane person could imagine, as Mrs. Juliard clearly hoped, that his interest might fix on such a young, naïve lady.

But he liked the Juliards, so he made the appropriate noises; he was preparing to part from them, to utter a polite lie, when he suddenly knew-simply knew-that Madeline had arrived. Lifting his head, he looked across the room-straight at her where she’d paused just inside the main doors.

She looked delicious in apple-green silk, with both her brothers’ gifts on display-and his gifts, too, in her hair, and dangling from her wrist.

Turning back to the Juliards, he smiled; he had no more need for lies. “If you’ll excuse me, ladies, there’s someone I must speak with.”

They parted with smiles and nods; Mrs. Juliard hadn’t truly harbored any high hopes.

He had to cross the better part of the ballroom to reach Madeline; within a few feet he was reining in his impatience-he couldn’t actually push through the crowd. It took a good ten minutes to cover the distance without drawing attention to his fell intent…and when he neared her, he discovered someone else-several someone elses-had reached her before him.

Slowing, then halting, he inwardly swore.

She was surrounded by a coterie of Lady Hardesty’s guests. The sight made him pause-to reconnoiter before he rushed in. Courtland was there, by Madeline’s elbow, the cad, along with four other tonnish gentlemen. He wouldn’t have trusted any of them with his sisters.

He certainly didn’t trust them with Madeline but…even from ten feet away he sensed she was holding her own. Her Valkyrie shield was fully deployed. However, the fact that, despite there being five outwardly attractive ladies, friends of Lady Hardesty, in the party, all five gentlemen, including the handsome man on whose arm Lady Hardesty herself leaned, had their predatory gazes firmly fixed on Madeline told Gervase all he needed to know.

Lady Hardesty and her friends were no longer especially desirable prey, at least not to those five gentlemen. That was why all five were looking at Madeline as if she were a lamb. A frolicking, innocent, delectable lamb.

Resuming his stroll forward, he made for her side. He kept his gaze on her face. As he’d hoped, she sensed his presence before the others did, glanced his way, then stepped back, creating space for him by her side.

Space he smoothly filled. “Madeline, my dear.” With a confident smile, he took the hand she offered and bowed, inwardly gloating at the smile she’d turned on him; it still held a vestige of social veneer, but no one with the slightest experience could, on seeing it, doubt that he and she were lovers.

“Gervase.” She, too, used his given name, made it soft and private. “I wondered where you were.”

Straightening, he met her eyes, read in them that she’d reached much the same conclusion he had and was eager to make clear to the five other gentlemen that she had no interest whatever in them.

He squeezed her fingers, then laid her hand on his sleeve, covering it with his-and only then looked at the others, letting his gaze travel the circle of faces to come to rest on Lady Hardesty.

“Lord Crowhurst. How delightful!”

He very nearly blinked. Lady Hardesty had clearly missed his and Madeline’s blatant message.

With a smile that promised lascivious delight, Lady Hardesty offered her hand. “Well met, my lord.”

Reluctantly lifting his hand from Madeline’s, he grasped her ladyship’s fingers, half bowed, and released her. “Lady Hardesty. Ladies.” He nodded, distantly aloof, to the other females.

Smiling, Lady Hardesty introduced him to the two he hadn’t previously met.

One, a Mrs. Hardingale, a patently dashing matron, fixed him with an arch look. “Tell me, my lord-is this truly the most major ball in the area?” She glanced around, then brought her gaze, eyes laughing, back to his face, clearly inviting him to denigrate the company of his neighbors.

He regarded her impassively. “I believe it is one of the more major events, certainly a long-established one.” He paused, then added, “It’s usually a very pleasant affair.”

Madeline lightly gripped Gervase’s arm, whether in support or warning she wasn’t sure, but she needn’t have bothered; Mrs. Hardingale simply looked nonplussed, unsure whether the comment had been a jibe and if so, whether she should take umbrage.

Two of the other ladies tittered-actually tittered. Madeline managed not to stare.

Lady Hardesty moved forward; releasing the arm of the gentleman beside her, she crossed the circle to place a hand on Gervase’s other arm. “My lord.” She looked up into his face, ignoring Madeline entirely. “I’m especially glad to see you. I’ve been wanting to have a word with you.” Her voice was low, sultry; her brows arched lightly. “If I may?”