The Lost - J. D. Robb [101]
She unbuttoned his shirt. The placket ended in the middle, so she pulled it up over his head. When they were face-to-f ace again, she pressed her lips to his.
That kiss was more than Sebastian could stand. He pushed her back on the bed and she let him, laughing and tugging at the fly on the cotton pants he wore. They wrestled like puppies as they undressed, helping, hindering and teasing. They came together as though the other was all the covering they would ever need.
He should go slow, Sebastian reminded himself. She was unschooled, untouched.
When he moved from her lips to kiss her neck and caress her breast, she sighed with such anticipation that he knew slow was not what she wanted. In a wordless communication he had never experienced before, Sebastian knew what she wanted, when, where, how. Her first orgasm came when he touched her between the legs, using his hand to cup and caress her silkiness.
She threw her arms out and then around him, pulling him closer so that his manhood could feel her warmth. “Don’t stop.”
Obeying her, Sebastian pushed himself into her, not as gently as he might have, and she arched up under him. They moved together and when his seed spilled into her, she held herself tight against him as if she needed every bit he had to give.
They played and slept and made love as the moon passed their window and the night waned. When the sun began to lighten the sky, the bed was a tangle of linen, the pillows long gone. Sebastian pulled the curtains around the bed while Isabelle slept, to give them some privacy when the servants brought hot water.
Sebastian watched the dawn and wondered what love meant.
He felt her hand on his back and then her lips where her fingers had touched. “I feel like we are in our own Eden. Come, my Adam”—she held up her arms offering herself to him—“ help your Eve greet the day.”
Lovemaking gave her a glow that made her more womanly than she had been twelve hours before, but Isabelle Reynaud was as fresh and sweet as ever.
His world had not changed either. The battery-operated clock on his nightstand still pointed to midnight as it had for fifty years. If he had harbored the tiniest hope that truly making love with someone so generous and untouched would change his life, then he was disappointed. He did not dare hope that Isabelle would spend her life with him. There were too many forces who would not allow him that kind of happiness, that “living life to the fullest,” as she said.
As he leaned down to kiss her, Sebastian wondered if he was Adam to her Eve, who was going to play the serpent?
When Sebastian invited her to share breakfast with him, Isabelle accepted, hoping, praying that this was the beginning of a lifetime of days and nights together, but first she had to tell him the truth.
“Sebastian, I know about the curse. Esmé gave me the details weeks ago.”
He answered with no more than a slow, considering nod as he poured her coffee. Isabelle could not tell how he felt about her announcement.
She tasted her coffee and found the brew too strong for her taste. After adding enough milk to temper the flavor, the coffee was more white than brown.
“Angelique drank hers the same way.” Sebastian’s eyes burned into her as he spoke. “But that is the only way the two of you are alike.”
“Good,” Isabelle said, “because I do not believe in reincarnation.”
“Angelique was tall and I guess you would say buxom, but in 1810, her size meant she was healthy and well-to-do. Her skin was a creamy brown and she was beautiful in that way that mixed-race children can be. Her blue eyes were startling and her teeth so white and healthy they did not look real. She was perfect.”
“You have no portrait of her?” Isabelle reminded herself that Angelique was a memory two hundred years old and did her best to ignore the sting of jealousy.
“No, I have no painting.” His voice was filled with regret. “The artists here were not very skilled.