A Portrait of Love (The Academy of Love #3) - Minerva Spencer Page 0,80
has left me without the essentials that keep skin pliable and oiled. I will have to apply it for the rest of my life.” Simon felt his resolve not to touch her slipping, like shards of rock shearing off the face of a cliff. He took a step toward her and she tensed. “It is difficult for me to reach some of the scar tissue, so Peel applies it for me.” Not to mention the fact that Simon was lazy and too impatient to massage his battered body.
Her eyes flickered over him as she digested this information.
“How is the other injury?” her lips twisted mockingly. “The one you just called a scratch.”
“It is a scratch,” he said, shrugging. “The bullet did little damage. Poor Raymond came out of that far worse.” With barely a pause, he asked, “Do you find my scars repellent.”
Her eyes flickered over him again lingering on his hips. “No.” The word was barely a croak.
He took the letter from her unresisting fingers and tossed it onto a nearby table.
“Don’t you want to read it?”
“No.” He had absolutely no interest in anything Wyndham had to say. No doubt it contained orders cloaked as suggestions. “I want to talk about you.”
“M-Me?”
He nodded slowly. “Last night I bit you and handled you quite roughly.” He reached out and pushed back the neck of her gown, exposing one of the marks he’d likely left.
She trembled under his hand and her jaw dropped in a comical expression of shock.
“Did I hurt you?”
She hesitated, and then said, “No.”
The soft word sent blood thundering through his veins. “Did you like it?” he asked, his eyes raking over her like red hot nails pulled from a forge. “Did you?” he repeated when she only gaped up at him.
She gave a jerky nod.
More telling than her nod was the way her pupils flared.
“You know that I’ve been away from polite society for a decade and a half. I lived among my men, many of whom were from the lower orders. What that means is that I am blunt and vulgar and less than gentlemanly in some ways.” He snorted. “Likely in many ways.” He flexed his jaws as he took in her flushed cheeks. “I daresay I’m especially raw when it comes to sexual matters.” She jolted at the word sexual. “You must tell me to stop if I ever do something you do not like. Do you understand?”
The pulse at the base of her throat was fluttering madly by the end of his ungentlemanly speech. She gave an infinitesimal nod.
“No, this is too important, Honoria. Please answer me.”
She cleared her throat. “I understand.”
“Good.” He took her hand and placed it over the obscene bulge beneath his towel. “Do you find this repellent?” he asked, his second question an echo of the first.
Her eyelids lowered and she swayed slightly. But she did not pull away. “No.”
“I am pleased and relieved to hear that.” Simon leaned forward and kissed the fine down of her jaw. “I want to put it inside your body.” She shuddered, but still did not move away. “I want to make love to you, Honoria,” he said, using a French phrase he’d heard for coitus—one he’d thought pretty for such an earthy act.
“Ma-make love?”
“Mmm-hmm.” He kissed her neck beneath her ear, grazing the madly pounding vein in her throat, his hands moving to the back of her dress where he encountered—thank God—only a short row of buttons.
Her palm rested limply over his cock.
“Stroke me,” he ordered.
Finesse, you dog. Show some damned finesse. This woman is an innocent—or near enough.
I won’t hide my true self from her.
Even if he could pretend to be somebody different—a cool, bloodless, elegant dandy, for instance—he wouldn’t do it, especially not with somebody important to him.
Simon wanted to know this fascinating woman—the real Honoria Keyes—and he wanted her to know the real him, warts and all.
The sexual part of marriage was important to him and he refused to go to her under the cloak of darkness and hide their actions beneath blankets.
Just when he started to believe that his raw command might have repulsed or frightened her, her fingers traced jerkily up his shaft.
Simon grunted with pleased surprise. “That feels good,” he said roughly, his clumsy fingers coming to the last button of her gown. He leaned back so he could see her. “Open your eyes, Honoria.” He wanted her to know who it was she was giving herself to—every step of the way.