The Courtship - Catherine Coulter [38]
“Helen,” he said again, jerked down his breeches, lifted her hips, and came into her, deep and hard.
She screamed at the pain of it, then screamed again at the pleasure of it. He was on top of her now, his mouth on hers again, and his tongue was touching her lower lip, then easing into her mouth, and she accepted him and kissed him until she thought she would die with the power of the feelings that were so deep inside her. He was moving now inside her, so deep, so much pressure, filling her, and it was delicious and she wanted him there forever.
But it wasn’t to be. He knew he was almost gone. He hadn’t given her a woman’s pleasure. He tried, he truly did, to draw out of her, to put his mouth and his fingers on her, but for the first time in as long as he could remember, he simply lost every shred of control. He threw back his head and yelled to the pounding rain.
He was flat on top of her, his face in her wet hair beside her head. He had been stomped into oblivion by the greatest pleasure he had ever experienced in his adult life. He had been stripped of all control. He had soared to the heavens by himself—in short, he had been a bore.
“I’m sorry,” he said, coming up on his elbows. “I’m very sorry, Helen. You are so bloody beautiful.” He couldn’t help himself and leaned down to kiss her again and found that he was again hard inside her.
“I am thirty-three years old,” he said between kisses. “I want you again immediately. You’re a witch. You’re incredible.” And he pulled out of her, throbbing and hard but not as hard as his heart was pounding. He was panting as he kissed her, his fingers finding her to begin a rhythm he did so very well, but the simple touch of her flesh beneath his fingers, the softness, the heat of her, but no, it was something more than that, and it flooded through him and he wanted desperately to see her pleasure. He kissed her and loved her until he felt the tension near to overflowing in her, and he lifted his head to look at her face when she arched against his fingers, her eyes frantic and vague, and she screamed as her own pleasure flooded through her, his fingers the focus of everything that was swamping her. She screamed again, this time into his mouth.
He kissed her more deeply, not at first aware that she was struggling to get away from him. When it finally got through to him, he blinked in confusion, his mouth open, but she screamed again. “Oh, my God!”
She wrapped her arms tightly around his back and pressed him hard against her. She rolled with him on the rotted floor. He heard the crashing of beams and ceiling not six inches behind him, exactly where they had been lying. It was a horrendously loud noise, so close it chilled him to the bone.
Then the silence of the thick rain enclosed them once again.
They were lying facing each other, still pressed very close. “The ceiling,” he said. “My God, the ceiling crashed in.”
Her eyes were closed. He leaned forward to kiss her. Her mouth didn’t move beneath his. “Helen?”
He pulled back just a bit.
She was unconscious. And damn him for a beast, he was still hard, deep inside her.
10
LORD BEECHAM CAME UP beside her and carefully rolled her onto her back. He saw the blood now, seeping through her wet hair just behind her left ear.
Something had struck her. He looked up. The sleeting rain was so close, the rubble flattening beneath its force. He pulled down her clothes, fastened his breeches, and sat back on his heels.
He shrugged out of his riding jacket and covered her with it. There was nothing else he could think to do. He was afraid to move her. But just lying there like that she would surely get chilled, and that could be dangerous. He eased her as far away from the rain as he could. His back was pressed to the wall. He stretched out beside her and pulled her tightly against him. “I’m sorry, Helen. You saved my lustful hide and you’re the one who got hurt. It will be all right now. We will just stay here until you come