Just Another Lady (Xcite Romance) Read Online Free Page A

the words aloud, but they came out without volition.
    ‘Sit up, Elinor of mine,’ Lucius murmured. ‘Let me help you off with that shift. Let me see you.’
    Elinor’s tongue circled her lips nervously. ‘I – I’m not like you.’
    Lucius laughed aloud. ‘I hope not! Come.’ He took his hand from her breast and hers from his erection, and Elinor almost moaned with disappointment. But he took her hands in his and pulled her to a sitting position. ‘Now,’ he instructed, ‘wriggle out of that shift.’
    Elinor could feel her cheeks burning hotly as she obeyed her husband. She knew she must disappoint. If even half of the rumours were true, Lucius had slept with much more beautiful ladies – and many of them. How could Elinor Everton ... Elinor Crozier, she reminded herself ... compete? Nevertheless, she pulled her shift over her head, her breasts exposed, and the cotton sheet now the only thing protecting her modesty below the waist. Lucius sat on the bed next to her, and she was aware of his eyes raking over her, but she could not look up to meet his eyes. He leaned down and kissed her gently on the lips, deepening the kiss as she responded to it. She felt his tongue touch hers, then plunge into the depths of her mouth. Her self-consciousness forgotten, she reached up to wrap her arms around him, kissing him back as fervently as she knew how.
    Time stood still. The kiss might have taken seconds – minutes – longer still. Elinor did not know and she certainly did not care, so long as Lucius was with her, touching her, caressing her, kissing her. He pulled her over on the bed so that they were lying together on it. Her hand tangled in his hair; his hand reached once more for her breast, whilst he laid one possessive leg across her two. It felt amazing. It felt – right. Elinor wasn’t scared any more, wasn’t embarrassed. All she cared about was that this warmth, this fire burning through her, should continue.
    ‘Please,’ she said, burying her head into his neck and breathing in the unadulterated musky smell of Lucius Crozier. ‘Please don’t stop.’
    ‘I don’t intend to,’ he assured her. ‘Indeed, I thought I might...’ He trailed one of his hands down her body, over her ribcage and down onto her belly. His fingers touched lightly, but to Elinor it felt as if they burned everywhere they touched. Then the fingers strayed lower, into the bush of curls between Elinor’s legs. A place no one had touched her before; a secret, magical place. Then lower still; and Elinor’s back arched involuntarily as Lucius touched a small nub of flesh beneath her curls. The feeling was intense, too intense to allow her to lie quietly, but at the same time it was incredible.
    ‘There,’ she said breathlessly. ‘Touch there again.’
    Instead of touching it with the tip of a finger, as he had done the time before, Lucius slid his whole hand between her thighs, so that his palm rested firmly against that remarkable place. He moved his hand in tiny circles and the feeling, though less consuming, was building up inside her until Elinor thought she might expire from the flames inside her. And then his fingers dipped inside her, and she gasped, shivers and ecstasy taking her over as she rode on waves of fire to some distant, wonderful, horizon.
    ‘More,’ she whispered, her voice husky.
    Lucius looked down on her, and stroked a tendril of hair away from her face with surprising tenderness. ‘This next will hurt, just a little,’ he said warningly.
    ‘I don’t care.’
    He laughed. ‘No, my little vixen?’
    He pushed inside her with a slow motion. Elinor gave a little gasp as she felt, quite intensely, something tear inside her. But the pain that Lucius had warned her of was less overwhelming than the pleasure which followed in its wake as he began to move. It was both too much and not enough, at the same time; Elinor wasn’t sure whether she wanted to beg him for more or to plead with him to stop, now, before