He did, with her help, but a moment later he won the battle of her underwear and she felt the waist sag and begin to slip. With a grin, he edged his body downward.
“Valentine?” she cried, breathlessly.
But he had disappeared under her voluminous skirts and petticoats. His hands clasped her thighs, pressing them inexorably apart, and his warm breath teased her sensitive skin. A tremor ran through her, all sensation centering on the building ache at her core. His fingertip brushed against her and she whimpered, wriggling, but he held her still, blowing against her. He touched her again, more pressure this time, and she squirmed and moaned.
“Oh!”
“Be patient, Marissa,” he said, his voice far away.
Above her the hot blue sky was vast and beneath her the earth was warm and alive. She tried to do as he said and be patient, but her legs were trembling and she arched against his hand as he continued to tease her without giving her the release she urgently craved.
“Valentine…” she wailed, and then to her shocked amazement she felt the brush of his tongue. A wave of pleasure quickly followed and she cried out, hands clutching at the grass either side of her, her heels digging into the earth.
After a long moment she lifted her head. He was resting against her, smiling up at her with a particularly male expression. “That wasn’t something we learned about at Miss Debenham’s,” she said huskily.
“I haven’t finished yet,” he retorted.
“But—”
For the next several minutes Marissa was put through an agony of passion and impatience, as Valentine lathed her swollen flesh with his tongue, licking and sucking, bringing her closer and closer to a new peak of pleasure only to deny it to her. She begged him. She tried to grasp hold of him and force him to concentrate on where she wanted him. But he eluded her, forcing her to his slower pace.
And then, when he finally gave her what she wanted, Marissa reached a degree of ecstasy she’d never dreamed of. She lay limp and replete, unable to utter a single word, as he flung himself down beside her, chest heaving.
Dazedly, Marissa wondered if this was what her grandmother had meant by trying on a “hat” before buying it, and whether there could be any doubt that this “hat” was exactly the one she wanted.
But that couldn’t be. George was the hat she’d set her heart on. Surely he would be just as good or—or better? The odd thing was, Marissa didn’t want to kiss George or allow him the liberties Valentine had just taken. The very thought of lying here with George was somehow…wrong.
She wished she could talk to Valentine about it, but that was impossible. Everything felt so complicated. She preferred to lie here, limp and contented, beneath the summer blue sky, and wait for the future to sort out itself.
She was smiling, that irrepressible dimple playing in her cheek. Valentine had never seen anything more beautiful than her lying like a wanton in the meadow grass, her hair falling in curls about her, her eyes half-closed and her pink mouth smiling. But his body was hard and throbbing and the knowledge that she’d offered herself to him and yet he had to resist her was driving him to the edge of insanity.
“You really are a most unusual girl,” he said, unable to disguise his irritability. “I don’t know anyone else like you. Don’t you feel the slightest bit concerned for what we’ve just done?”
Marissa brushed aside a blade of grass that was tickling her cheek, and turned her face toward his. “No, I don’t. Does that mean I’m a Bohemian, like my grandmother? I rather think I must be. Thank you, Valentine, for showing me how pleasurable such a life can be. You are a wonderful teacher.”
She always had an answer for everything. He was frustrated, not just physically but emotionally, intellectually…He was beginning to understand that he didn’t want to lose her to George, or anyone else for that matter. But at the same time he didn’t want to become entangled in another marriage.
“Is that all you care about, Marissa? A pleasurable life?”
“It is certainly better than kneeling on the damp ground searching for lichens. Don’t you agree?” She reached forward to brush his hair out of his eyes and he let her, the intimacy of the action filling him with joy.
“If I am your teacher,” he said, and paused, his thoughts becoming muddled and rather dark. “When you’ve learned all you can from me, will you find other men?”
What he asked was truly shocking to his own ears, but Marissa didn’t appear to be shocked. She stretched and yawned, like a cat after it has had its fill, and smiled at him, that dimple peeping out again.
“Are you tired of me already?” she asked.
He felt his stomach clench with some violent emotion that he didn’t fully understand, nor did he want to. His voice was harsh and tight, the words hard to get past the constriction in his throat. ?
?Don’t you think you may be hurt by other men, Marissa? Taken advantage of? Not everyone is as scrupulous as I am. Not everyone who calls himself a ‘gentleman’ is deserving of the title.”
She sighed as if his questions were beginning to annoy her, and sat up, straightening her clothing with irritable little tugs. “You did not answer me. Are you tired of me already? Do you want me to find another man, Valentine?”
“No,” he growled. “You know I don’t, minx.”
“Then I won’t.” He couldn’t see her expression. She’d bent forward to draw on her stockings and shoes, and her hair had fallen forward to hide her face. Valentine wondered what it was he wanted her say. He’d already made it clear he had no wish to remarry. What could he possibly have to offer her to keep her by his side while he continued his search for the Crusader’s Rose?
Pleasure.