He tasted of coffee and cinnamon and aroused male. As she recovered from that first heady contact his lips softened, his tongue curled, playful in its exploration, and she yielded to it even as her busy hands yanked the shirt from the waistband and finally, finally, she could touch his body. So hard, so smooth except where ridges and knots betrayed old wounds. She feasted with her fingertips, thrilled when he arched against her hands like a big cat seeking caresses.
Guin felt her legs losing strength, knew she was sinking towards the floor, realised she did not care and gave a moan of protest as Jared broke the kiss.
‘I am damned if I am going to make love with you for the first time on the floor or a desk top.’ He unbuckled his sword belt, let it drop.
‘We made love in a barn – ’
‘We had sex in a barn. My bedchamber’s nearest.’
Chapter Eighteen
‘No, my room. There’s a not-so-secret door and stair in the corner here.’ Guin tugged at his hand, impatient when he stooped to retrieve his coat. Trust Jared Hunt to leave no incriminating evidence behind him. He dropped it and pressed a kiss into the angle of her neck. Her fingers fumbled on the old oak panelling until she found the right angle to press, then the door opened and they climbed, cramped, bumping on the twisting stair, so narrow that Jared’s broad shoulders brushed the walls.
It opened into her bedchamber and Guin turned to see Jared at the stair door, framed by the old oak panelling as he pulled off his shirt.
‘You look like a returning knight storming his lady’s chamber after years away at the Crusades,’ she said, half laughing at her own fantasy, half deadly serious.
Jared tossed aside the shirt, heeled off his boots, his gaze steady on her as his hands went to his waistband. He was stripping himself naked for her, making himself as vulnerable as such a controlled, dangerous man surely never could.
Guin caught her breath at the sight of him revealed, aroused for her. For me. If he can trust, so can I. Her gown fell in silent folds at her feet, her slippers kicked off easily. Her corset defeated her but from the look in his eyes, it would not defeat him. Guin walked the six steps that brought her to the man who was to be her lover and reached up, pulling free the leather tie that held his queue of hair tight. It came loose under her raking fingers, shook out around his shoulders, the mane of a lion, kinked by the braid and silkily alive in her hands.
Jared smiled, slow and sensuous, and reached around her for the strings of her stays, deft even though he could not see what he was doing. ‘Sure?’ he murmured.
The question in that husky voice was reassuring, but he did not have to ask: she was quite certain about this. It had been a long time since Francis, and he had been an unsatisfactory lover – even with her complete inexperience she had known that – so this might be far from comfortable in the beginning, but she trusted Jared to care for her.
‘Quite sure.’ The words were muffled as her corset fell away and he whipped her chemise off over her head.
She was not certain what to expect next, but it was not to be held away from him, his palms cupping her shoulders, while he studied her face. ‘This can only be a temporary affaire, Guinevere. Of course, you already know that – you are a titled lady, I am a swordmaster. That is all it can ever be.’
‘I am not looking for a third husband, that is certain,’ Guin said, perhaps more crisply than she had intended. ‘But if I were, I am not sure that a foolish young woman of moderately respectable breeding who ruined herself with a rake, and was then fortunate enough to be rescued by an elderly viscount, is in any position to give herself airs. Especially about a man who, however mysterious he chooses to be about his upbringing, is clearly a gentleman by both breeding and nature.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Now, please can you forget all those very honourable scruples and just kiss me?’
‘I live to serve,’ Jared murmured, provoking her into parting her lips so that his mouth on hers caught her mid-retort. Then his tongue teased inside and she lost all track of what she had been about to say.
They were naked, skin to skin, feminine softness against hard male demand and she rubbed herself sinuously against the lean body, honed by disciplined exercise. Jared bent her back over his arm to kiss her breasts, his hair falling over her shoulders, another caress. He stooped, caught her up and carried her to the bed, followed her down, continued his open-mouthed exploration of her breasts until she arched up, clutching at his head, wanting him not to stop and yet wanting more. Wanting him.
Jared gave a parting tug at her right nipple with his lips and looked into her half-closed eyes. ‘It has been a long time.’ It was more a statement than a question.
‘Yes,’ Guin agreed, even as those long, clever fingers slid between her thighs, slipped between folds already wet for him. Her body already knew what pleasure he could give it and she pushed against his palm as one, then two fingers eased inside and she writhed against him, wanting it all.
Jared’s weight shifted over her, his lean hips between her thighs, his hair brushing her shoulders, the different texture of the dark curls on his chest setting up another exquisite friction against her sensitised nipples. They moved together instinctively, finding that perfect angle for penetration, his long, strong thrust matching the lift of her hips to take him, all of him.
Guin gasped, burying the sound against his shoulder. It was a long time and, although he was gentler, he was also larger than Francis had been. Jared held still as though he had felt that moment of shock, of resistance, then as she arched up against him, he withdrew slowly, almost completely, then drove in again. Slow and fast, slow and fast, until Guin was panting with need, shaking as the tension built and built, gasping out words that were more sounds than sense until Jared shifted the angle of his thrusts, his breathing suddenly irregular as he seemed to swell and grow inside her.
‘Now, Guinevere.’
An order, a plea… perhaps both, as she abruptly lost the ability to think at all and clung to him, sobbing as he moved sharply, pulling away, gasping out his own ecstasy against her mouth as he convulsed, spilling hot against her belly.
I ought to move. Under him was soft, hot woman, a tangle of hair in his mouth – both his and hers – the sensation of stickiness between their bodies, the scent of their coupling and sweat mingling with the drift of mown grass and roses through the window. Nothing dainty about good sex, Jared thought, utterly relaxed and contented.
He really should move. He could not recall the last time he had simply abandoned himself to the moment after lovemaking. It was far too dangerous an indulgence: a man was never more vulnerable than when he was naked, happy, boneless with pleasure.
Guinevere was awake, he could tell by her breathing, by the almost imperceptible drift of her fingers in his hair. She seemed to like the length of it. In fact she had seemed to enjoy the entire experience. Jared allowed himself a moment of masculine satisfaction about that, then turned his head so he could look at her. ‘Am I squashing you?’
‘I like it.’
Which meant he was. Reluctantly, provoking a grumble from Guinevere, Jared rolled onto his back, then summoned up the tatters of his self-control and got off the bed to investigate the dressing room.