Regency Pleasures and Sins Part 1. Louise Allen

his arms, nuzzling softly at her nape while his fingers tangled with the laces of her stays. ‘These are tight. How do you breathe?’ Then the stays fell away and she took a deep breath, cut short as Nick’s hands came up to cup her breasts.

       ‘Nicholas.’

      ‘Mmm?’

      ‘You … oh!’ His thumbs were flicking lightly at her nipples through the thin fabric of her chemise. She wriggled against him and found herself turned again.

      ‘Do … not … wriggle like that.’ He seemed breathless and Katherine suddenly experienced a soaring, liberating sense of power. She had thought her body and will were reacting blindly to his knowing hands and mouth, but now she knew she could have as powerful an effect on him. And it was a power she would do well not to exercise, she realised. Which was easier thought than done, given her complete lack of experience with men. She slid her feet out of her kid slippers, then stood quite still, her heart hammering, wondering what he was going to do next.

      With an expression of great concentration Nick was undoing the ribbons that secured the shoulders of her chemise, and with a little shiver she realised his fingers were shaking, just very, very slightly. And this was a man whose hands had been steady in the condemned cell, on the gallows, facing an armed highwayman.

      She was so rapt in the thought that it was a second before she realised that she was naked except for her silk stockings and her long evening gloves. Instinctively her hands flew to cover herself. Nick was looking at her with an expression that took her breath away. There was desire there—however inexperienced she was, she could recognise that—but there was something else, something almost reverent.

      ‘Are you not going to take anything off?’ she ventured, anxious to break the silence that was racking her nerves.

      Nick kicked off his shoes, tossed aside his jacket and waistcoat and tugged loose his neckcloth and the top three buttons of his shirt.

      ‘Is that all?’ Katherine was uncertain whether to be relieved or disappointed.

      ‘I told you I would never break a promise to you, Kat, but I have no intention of making it any harder than it need be.’ He took a step towards her, then another. With a squeak Katherine backed away until the edge of the bed caught the back of her knees and she sat down. ‘Am I frightening you?’ He stopped.

      ‘No. Yes. I do not know.’ She was wittering, she realised, and pulled herself together. How am I feeling? ‘Yes, I am scared,’ she admitted. He took a step back. ‘And I think I rather like it,’ she finished in a rush of honesty.

      Before she knew quite what had happened she was flat on her back on the bed, her hands caught above her head in the grasp of one large, gentle fist, her legs, which she tried instinctively to curl up protectively, were trapped under the weight of his leg and Nick was looking down at her with a gleam in his eyes that made her swallow hard.

      ‘Brave, honest Kat. May I take off your stockings?’

      He was asking permission to take off stockings when everything else had been so ruthlessly disposed of? She nodded. As soon as her hands were free, one arm flew to cover her breasts, the other hand spread palm open, protectively across the dark tangle of curls.

      She had a lot to learn, she realised as his fingers began to play with her garters. Apparently it was possibly to make removing a pair of stockings last not seconds but long, long minutes, and to make the act one of exquisite, pleasurable torture.

      Stunned, she wriggled up against the pillows so she could watch his dark head, bent attentively over the task of removing two ribbons and two scraps of knitted silk. How could the straying fingers following the slow descent of the stockings as he rolled them down create such shivers of sensitivity? Why, when he bent to kiss her knee, did she have to bite her lip to stop crying out? Why, when his long fingers reached her ankle and then her instep and stopped to trail slowly up and down, up and down, did she have not the slightest urge to giggle, to protest that she was ticklish? Why was she lying back against the pillows, her eyes closed, her breath short?

      His mouth replaced his fingers; kissing, nibbling, licking its way up to her knees, which she instinctively drew together. His hands pressed them apart, open, and his mouth began to torment the soft flesh of the back of her right knee. She gasped, felt her body arch with some instinct she did not understand and he murmured, ‘Too soon.’

      The mattress shifted and Katherine blinked and found he was lying beside her again, propped on one elbow. Everything inside her ached, yearned, needed … what? She had no idea. Nick had promised she would remain a virgin, so what could her untutored body be expecting?

      He took her hand in his and bent over the tiny pearl buttons that fastened her glove from wrist almost to shoulder.

      Removing her evening gloves with a button hook and great care took Jenny five minutes. Hazily trying to keep track of the passing of time Katherine thought it had taken Nick that long to undo five buttons, exposing enough of her wrist for him to kiss it with soft, nipping kisses. Slowly he worked his way up one arm, then the other, then peeled off the soft kid and threw the gloves aside.

      Silence. Her eyes closed, arms thrown back on the pillow, Katherine waited, all thoughts of modesty utterly vanquished. Her body felt heavy, languid, yet her heart was beating like a mill wheel in the race and her breathing was short.

      ‘Look at me, Kat.’ She dragged her eyes open and found Nick was looking down into her face while the palm of his hand moved slowly down the swell of her breast until it was over the nipple. Her eyes fluttered closed.

      ‘Look at me, Kat.’ With an effort she opened her eyes again and his hand skimmed lower until it caressed the soft swell of her stomach, then down again until his fingers tangled with the curls beneath.

      ‘Shh,’ he whispered even as her lips parted in protest, then stayed parted in a gasp of shocked pleasure as one finger slipped through the curls into the secrets they hid.

      It slipped, moved, teased until her body was tossing restlessly, her eyes wide and unseeing and her breath coming in short desperate gasps as she struggled to find whatever this aching frenzy was promising her. Then he closed her desperate mouth with his just as the tormenting pleasure burst in a shower of lights and spiralled her into darkness.

      ‘Kat.’

      ‘Mmm?’ It seemed that she was not drifting through space, but was being held, very gently, against a long hard body that smelt familiarly of limes and sandalwood.

      Her cheek was resting on warm linen, her legs curled up against satin. ‘Come back, Kat.’ Nick was gently kissing his way along the sensitive line where hair met forehead.

      Seized with shyness, she buried her face against his chest, curling her naked body against his clothed one. ‘I had no idea,’ she said shakily when she thought she could command her voice.

      ‘I am glad to hear it,’ Nick said so drily that she laughed and looked up at him.

      ‘You told Robert to give me champagne,’ she accused, suddenly seeing his tactics clearly. ‘You did not …’

      ‘Tell him why? Of course not.’

      ‘Then why should he do as you ask?’

      ‘Because I am his elder brother,’ Nick said with unconscious arrogance. ‘Forget Robert,’ he added callously. ‘Are you cold? Sleepy?’

      ‘No.’ Katherine shook her head. Did he want to send her back to bed? Her entire body was soft, glowing, alive with a new vibrant awareness. She wanted to touch him, explore his body as he had explored hers, and she knew that was impossible, forbidden.

      ‘Good.’ He bent over her, his lips and then his tongue fretting at her nipple.

      ‘Nick!’ The sensations her body had only just learned surged back, differently nuanced now with her newfound knowledge, every bit as overwhelming. He moved down her body, slowly tasting and savouring while Katherine, shocked, shy and in thrall all over again, surrendered to him.