Season for Temptation

Chapter 26. In Which Julia Realizes She Hadn’t Known What to Expect, After All

“Now this room I like,” Julia said wonderingly as James, still carrying her, booted open the door of his bedchamber and afforded her a first glance at the room.

It at once impressed her as warm, comfortable, and masculine, with red and gold pin-striped paper on the walls and a cozy chair in the corner. The room was dominated by a rather large mahogany-framed bed, its counterpane and hangings also in muted red tones. Rather. . passionate colors.

She gulped despite herself. Her nervousness had returned, though now it was a pleasurable tingling of anticipation. She didn’t quite know what she had gotten herself into, but she was ready to find out.

James set her down gently on the bed and sat on its edge next to her. “I’m very glad you like it,” he finally replied. “I tried to make this room comfortable and warm. I. . I hope you’ll spend quite awhile here.”

“I would like that,” she answered shyly.

He looked sharply at her. “Julia, do you know what you’re saying? No, you can’t possibly know.”

He stood up at once. “I need to be very clear about this,” he went on, his teeth slightly gritted. “It’s very hard to bring myself to say this considering the way I am feeling right now, but I owe it to you. If we go ahead and. . you know. .”

“Couple?” Julia suggested, now enjoying his discomfort. Oddly, it seemed to be more physical than emotional discomfort, judging from the look on his face.

He groaned at her reply. “If we make love, it will be irrevocable. You will give me a precious gift that you can never then give to any other man.”

“I wouldn’t want to,” she assured him. “You are the only one I could ever want.”

He groaned again. What was the man’s problem? Now she noticed, the front of his pants was bulging suspiciously.

Her eyes widened. Of course; it made sense now. She knew how the act worked from seeing the livestock mating, but she hadn’t quite realized that people had the same type of… equipment.

Or that the pleasure of anticipation could be so great.

She leaned back onto the bed and arched her back slightly, instinctively. “I told you I know what I want, and it’s you. Don’t you trust me to know my own mind?” she teased.

He yanked off his top boots, heedless of their fine craftsmanship, and tossed them into the corner of the room.

“Throwing your boots around? Your valet will be distressed,” Julia observed, smiling.

“Curse the man,” James replied just as cheerfully, climbing onto the bed and covering her small form with his long one. He propped himself up on his forearms and looked down into her eyes.

“I want this more than anything,” he began. “But I have to ask again if you’re sure about this. About me.”

“Of course,” Julia replied at once, stroking his cheek, the face she loved. “I trust you. And I want it, too.” Then she added conscientiously, “Although to be honest, I don’t really know what I’m talking about. I mean, I know the basics, since I grew up on a farm. I’ve seen animals coupling many times. And I can tell you have the same male parts, because of the way your pants are bulging.”

He snorted with laughter and silenced her momentarily with a kiss.

“But,” she finally managed, her lips still just a breath away from his own, “it never seemed to hold much pleasure for the females. And I feel such pleasure already.”

James laughed again and buried his face in her hair. He kissed her ear, and said, “My ridiculous darling. This is only the beginning.”

“It is?” she breathed wonderingly, as he continued to press kisses onto her face. She felt his hands beginning to roam her body, caressing and shaping her breasts, and she inhaled raggedly at the sudden wonder of it.

“Yes,” he confirmed, “and I’ll thank you not to make any more comparisons between us and animals. What you’ve seen is nothing, nothing, like what happens between people who love each other. Especially not between you and me.”

“Why especially us?” she couldn’t help asking, though her desire to speak was, admittedly, dimmed quite a bit by his long fingers, which had slid beneath the fabric of her bodice and were now stroking and toying with her nipple, driving her to distraction.

“Because,” he answered, “of what I’m going to do to you with my tongue.”

“Oh,” she answered, her thoughts reeling confusedly. What was he going to do? Was he going to. .

And then. . “Oh.” She understood, as he tugged down the bodice of her dress to reveal her breasts and, as he had the night before, began to lick and lightly suck at her nipples. “Oh, that’s lovely.”

“If you’re able to talk, it’s not lovely enough,” he growled against her pale skin.

She hated to feel him draw his mouth away, although it was only to raise himself off her and begin searching for the fastenings of her clothes. Obligingly, she turned onto her side so he could reach the buttons at the back of her dress. She had to laugh at his fumbling inability to slide the small beads from their openings.

“I’m not usually clumsy,” James said in his defense, a look of intense concentration on his face. “I just really want this dress off you this second. I can’t keep my hands steady.”

Julia was, she had to admit, a bit proud of this proof of her appeal. She had made a grown man forget how to work buttons! But she savored the feeling for only a moment. She had no idea what he was going to do next, but she was as impatient for it as James seemed to be.

Her gown loosened and lifted over her head, her slippers tossed after his boots, her stays unlaced, she soon lay before him in only her shift and silk stockings. He divested himself of his coat but remained dressed in his pantaloons and now-rumpled shirt.

“Why are you still wearing so many clothes?” Julia asked, her voice innocent but her eyes winking at him.

James seemed to choke, and he stared at her in what seemed like awe. Again he seemed in physical discomfort — yet he seemed almost happy about it?

“I wasn’t sure if you were ready to see me,” he admitted. “And I felt I needed to give you one more chance to tell me to stop, if you want to.”

“You keep asking me that,” she pondered. “Don’t you want to make love to me?”

His only reply was a low growl of laughter as James pounced back on the bed and again covered her nowthinly-clad form with his own. He kissed her deeply and she savored the feel of his lips against hers, the tender warmth of his tongue lightly touching her own. One of his hands began to stroke her thighs, raising shivers that ran up and down her body. Yet if she shivered, why should she feel so warm?

She didn’t realize she had spoken the words aloud until James replied teasingly, “You’re warm, you say? Then we need to take off more of your clothes.”

He smiled and began tugging at her shift, trying to work it up over her head.

“Let me.” Julia stopped him. She stared him straight in the eye, daring him to touch her, to worship her with his gaze as she sat up and slowly rolled the light garment up over her head. With a smile of instinctive mischief, she tossed it after her slippers into the beleaguered corner of the bedchamber. She sat before him on the bed, calmly nude except for her stockings and garters, as he gaped at her in wonder.

“Interesting,” she said. “I thought I might feel self-conscious, but I don’t. Is that strange?”

He shook his head dumbly. “You’re so beautiful,” he told her, his voice almost cracked with strain. “You have nothing to be self-conscious about.”

She smiled and began to toy with the collar of his shirt, relishing his groans of protest as she swatted his eager hands away from her breasts. “It’s my turn to fumble around and be completely unable to unfasten your clothes,” she teased.

She reached for the front placket of his trousers, enjoying the moans he was unable to hold back as she searched out the shape of his body with her fingers. “This is interesting, too,” she said, feeling gently up the length of his hardness. “It’s very big. How does it all fit in your clothing?”

“It doesn’t, right now,” he choked. He tried to seize her hand. “Julia, please, you don’t know what you’re doing to me.”

“True,” she admitted. “But I want to learn.”

Her hands lightly explored his body, roaming not just over the bulge in his trousers, but also up under the fine linen of his shirt, across the smooth, strong planes of his chest. She found his nipples, and remembering how much pleasure he had granted her, she lightly stroked them.

His muscles twitched under her fingers. Quickly, he lifted his shirt over his head and faced her again, his breathing unsteady.

She squealed with delight. “I made you jump! I made you strip!” She touched his nipples again with the softest graze possible.

This was too much for James, who seized both of her small wrists in one of his larger hands and again pressed her back onto the bed. Leaning over her, he said with voice husky and warm, “It’s my turn again.”

“But I want to keep touching you,” she said.

“I want to touch you, too,” he replied, tugging off her garters one by one and, with infinite slowness, rolling her stockings down her legs. His touch was a whisper against her skin, promising gratification of a kind she had never known.

“How do you do that?” she wondered. “How can you make me feel so good with your hands?”

“This is nothing,” James said, parting her knees and settling between them. “I still haven’t shown you what I can do with my tongue.” His smile was positively wicked.

“Yes, you di — oh!” The words were surprised right out of her as James’s hot tongue licked her there. She was shocked, as if she had been shaken awake by the sheer force of the pleasure of it. “James, are you allowed to do that?”

“If you allow it, I’ll do it,” he murmured, and his delicious, devilish tongue dipped into her core to taste the very heat and heart of her womanhood.

No one else had ever, ever touched her there. But somehow it seemed right and fitting that James should be her first. Her only. She could never imagine being so vulnerable for anyone else, or permitting anyone else to see her so exposed or touch her so intimately.

And then she stopped thinking, and just let the pleasure wash over her.

His tongue lapped and tasted her, his lips kissed her, his warm breath heated her through. Those clever, strong hands found her breasts, her nipples, and stroked them even as he continued to lick at her delicate folds. She clutched for his shoulders, seeking to release the pleasurable pressure building in her, but as he continued the play of his fingers and tongue, she gave up and let her arms fall to her sides, boneless.

She moaned and shivered under his touch, feeling as if she were being drawn inevitably toward something, but she had no idea what it was. And then he moved his tongue just a bit, there. The intimate stroke was all she needed to push her over the brink, and she simply shattered, shuddering and crying out from the intense, unaccustomed joy of it.

As the shivers of pleasure subsided, she felt herself drawn back to the present as if from a long distance. Tingling, vibrant life came back into her limbs, and the space between her legs was warm, sensitive, and eager.

“Oh, James,” she breathed. “That was the loveliest thing I’ve ever felt.”

He smiled, this time with tenderness and none of the mischief of before. “I’m so glad, my love,” he said simply.

His love; that was much, much better than having him call her “my dear.” She felt the difference in her heart; she knew the truth of it.

He kissed his way up her stomach, her collarbone, her neck before again kissing her lips. “My love,” he said again. “We can stop now, or we can go on.”

“There’s more?” she asked, amazed.

“Yes, so much,” he said, and now there was a bit of a laugh in his eyes. “My darling, we haven’t even. .”

“Ah. Coupled?” she again suggested helpfully, laughing at his growl of mock annoyance that she quickly stifled with a kiss. As she lifted his head from hers to look into his eyes, a smile spread across her face, a smile that was more knowing than that of only a few minutes before. Now she understood the pleasure that could happen between men and women, and she wanted more of it. She wanted to feel it, with him.

“I’m ready,” she told him, gazing deeply into those green eyes. She felt as if she could fall into them, as if she was falling now.

Eagerly, James stripped off his remaining clothes. As he stood before her, naked, Julia’s eyes widened; she thought she had known what to expect, but this was simply unbelievable. His male parts were just so. . large.

“Um, actually, maybe I’m not ready,” she admitted.

James looked so disappointed, she at once regretted her words. “I take it back. I might be ready.”

“No, no, tell me the truth,” he said, through teeth gritted with physical tension. “I don’t want to do anything you aren’t completely comfortable with.”

“Well, I thought I was ready for. . the rest. But you look so big, I just don’t believe it’ll fit. I don’t even know if it will fit in my hand.”

To prove her point, she gently wrapped her hand around his shaft. “Oh, I guess it can fit.” She gently stroked him, intrigued at his responsive shudder.

“Let’s wait a while on that,” James said through an increasingly tight voice. “I’m not made of stone, you know.”

“I know exactly what you’re made of,” Julia teased, eyeing his nude body up and down. Her voice softened, and she added, “Inside and out, I know.”

She relaxed back, and reached for his shoulders. Blue eyes to green, their gazes met and held. His eyes searched hers intently, and she felt as if he saw all of her, her eagerness and her love. “I really am ready, for everything.”

Finally, James needed no more encouragement. He climbed onto the bed and covered her body with his own, clasping his arms around her. He gently nudged her knees apart, and with one swift thrust, he pressed into her slickness, drawing a shocked breath from her.

“Are you all right?” he asked at once, raising himself onto his forearms to look at her face.

She nodded, an undecided look on her face, and wriggled. “I feel very full, but it doesn’t hurt.”

“That’s because you were so ready for me,” James said thickly, holding himself very still.

“I like it,” Julia decided. “How long do we stay like this?”

“We don’t,” James said. His words were a promise immediately fulfilled, as he began to thrust with slow, gentle strokes that raised the heat between Julia’s legs again.

It felt different this time; more intimate, less fervid, as hands clasped, lips pressed, and bodies met in the deepest of embraces. With each thrust, Julia felt James enter farther into her passage. The gentle friction was unaccustomed and fascinating to her. She savored every sensation, parting her legs wider to welcome him deeper and deeper.

He was part of her now. They were one.

Just as she was beginning to settle into a warm, loving glow, James’s thrusts began to grow faster and even deeper. Julia’s body knew intuitively how to respond, her hips rocking to match his increasing urgency. This was a whole new sensation, still deeply intimate but now with a flickering heat of. . was this what passion was? She felt such longing, it was almost unbearable, and she grasped at James’s hips to hold and pull him more closely into her.

He responded electrically to her touch, stroking with deep, quick measured movements, playing his hands over her face and breasts.

“I can’t touch you enough,” he gasped.

“I’m all yours,” she replied, smiling for a second before a faster stroke, a gentle kiss on the sensitive skin of her nipples stole all thought from her. The feeling of longing and need was building to such a pitch, she wrapped her arms tightly around James and let him carry her away with the force of his body.

And when they both reached the wild joy of a shuddering, moaning climax, she held on to him afterward just as tightly, and she knew that she never wanted to let him go.