Afternoon Tea Ch. 05

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Sophie planted two soft palms on his chest and shoved. Cole careened backwards, barely able to keep from crashing onto his arse, and swore.

"Damn me, that's not what I-" he stopped short, unable to keep from quailing a little beneath the naked murder in her face.

"I see. What exactly is so repulsive about me? Is it my face? Because I've been compared to a goddess you know! By three different men, " she hissed. "Four if you count Reverend Quincey!"

"You are a goddess; wait, Reverend Quincey? -"

"Or perhaps my legs are not long enough, heaven knows you called me a dwarf often enough when we were children."

All but howling with rage, Sophie madly rucked up her skirt to reveal two slender, perfectly curved legs. The creamy skin of her gently rounded thighs was circled by garters woven with scarlet ribbons. In that moment, Cole would have given half his estate to have one of those garters between his teeth.

"So? Are they not good enough to be wrapped around your back?"

Gaping, Cole dragged his eyes back up to Sophie's flushed face, his blood pulsing harder with every breath. He was scared to speak, in case she became even angrier or worse, dropped her skirts. But Sophie wasn't done.

"Maybe it's my hair!" she shouted, reaching up and frenziedly yanking out pins to let a waist length river of fire tumble down her back and over her shoulders. "You don't like red hair, Cole? You wouldn't like to see it wrapped around your fist as you guide my mouth to your cock?"

"Sophie," he said, his eyes threatening to cross as visions of her wet tongue smoothing its way up his shaft danced before them. "You must stop this -"

"No?! It must be my breasts then!" she yelled.

Cole shut his mouth with a snap.

Sophie yanked out the modest fichu pinned into the bodice of her dress and hurled it to his feet with a strangled sound of incoherent fury. Jerking the dress's sleeves off her shoulders, she wrestled the bodice down to bare the most magnificent pair of breasts Cole had ever seen. Full and firm, with tip tilted pale pink nipples that budded under his stunned gaze.

"My God," he muttered, not daring to blink in case they'd disappeared when he opened his eyes again. He swallowed hard, and again, as his cock screamed for him to get his mouth on that creamy expanse.

Silently praying to whatever gods were listening, Cole stepped towards her. Dainty nostrils flared with every wild breath as she watched his approach. Her narrowed eyes widened when he slid his hands around her waist, only to glide shut as, unable to resist, he flexed his fingers. She murmured something and swayed, her nipples coming within a hairsbreadth of his chest. Desire was pounding at the small of his back.

"Sophie, I…" he started before trailing off. What could he say?

Cole groaned as his rational mind began to fragment, its pieces tugged apart by the scent of sweetpeas rising from her hair, the suppleness of her waist beneath his hands, her soft, quick breaths. God, how he wanted nothing more than to finish what she had started, just keeping pulling her dress down and worship every bared inch of her with lips and tongue and hands. He shuddered at the thought of taking those pink rosebuds gently between his teeth and listening to her beg. Of spreading her silky thighs to press his mouth to fiery curls, slipping a ravenous tongue over and between glistening feminine folds and sending it deep into a spasming sex.

As if she could see the licentious visions too, Sophie shivered and gave a little moan. Just one kiss, he pleaded with himself, one kiss will be forgivable. A man dying of thirst could lift his face to a cool breeze. And he could stop at one kiss.

Bliss. Her lips were so sweet, luscious like just-picked raspberries, warm from the sun. Groaning with pleasure, he raised his head to nuzzle her cheek. Sophie mewed and lifted her face, her body pressing against his constraining hands. Helpless to disobey her silent command, he kissed her again, dipping and stroking her lips apart. She moaned when his tongue slipped between them to meet hers, a secret meeting of private flesh that sent the breath juddering from his lungs.

Cole could feel himself drowning in the outrageous sweetness of Sophie's mouth. He threaded a hand into the cool silk of her hair and, with a grunt of apology, tipped her head so he could angle his and slide his seeking tongue more firmly against her own. She responded with a throaty feminine growl that had his balls tightening and his hips lunging involuntarily towards her.

In his fantasies Sophie had never merely lain back and passively accepted his lovemaking. No, in his fantasies she was passionate and uninhibited, vocal and abandoned. And sometimes, in the dark, late hours of the night, as he lay in his sweat rumpled bed, a fist working furiously on his stiff cock, sex with his childhood friend was just a touch depraved. But as wicked as dream-Sophie had been, she was nothing compared to the woman now setting him on fire.

The kiss grew wild as he fought to get closer, to give her back a fraction of the ecstasy that speared through him with every press of her open mouth, every thrust of her tongue. Finally, they broke apart, chests heaving as they gasped for air. Staring down into her eyes, Cole saw shocked desire. But shining though the sweep of her lashes there was another emotion he couldn't name.

Its love! his fevered heart shouted. It couldn't be love. Could it? He searched her face, drinking in her flushed cheeks and passion-bright eyes. She was the very picture of Cole's most secret need, his Sophie, wakened to lust by his kiss.

But it couldn't be, not really, he thought in anguish as reality slithered in, to take back control of his mind. To Sophie, he was a treasured friend, no more. Her pride had goaded her past control and black as his soul was, he was not so low as to take her up on an invitation that she hadn't meant to make.

Hurriedly, he untangled his hand from its sweet prison of flaming curls and began tugging her dress back up. Her breasts pressed against the backs of his fingers as his increasingly desperate jerks caused the lush flesh to jiggle gently. Cole ground his teeth so hard his vision wavered.

Sophie's half-lidded eyes popped wide, her mouth falling open as she stared down at his hands. He could see her shifting between disbelief and bewilderment. She shook her head.

"What - what are you doing?"

"I cannot do this," he told her, the pulsing weight of his engorged cock making him blunt. He yanked wildly on the bodice.

"But… you kissed me," she said quietly.

"I know! I was wrong to do so and I - why won't they go back in?" he burst out, only to stumble back when she exploded, slapping at his hands until he released her.

Stuffing herself back into her dress, she choked out, "So you did mean what you said - that you could never want me."

With a trembling hand cupped her nape, Cole pressed his hot forehead tight against hers, willing, praying that she would see the truth in his eyes.

"No, Sophie, no, I meant that I would never want you coerced in the way that Bella wanted. For you to be forced, in fear and shame, to let a man gorge himself on your body."

"But she wouldn't have been forcing me." The aching treble of despair in her voice stopped Cole's heart. His mind reeled.

"No. No, you don't mean that." He drew back and gripped her shoulders. She said nothing, her face wearing the blasted expression of a solder fresh from the battlefield.

"Sophie, I don't understand. Tell me what you mean."

Cole barely resisted the urge to shake it out of her when Sophie just stared at him. All the strength seemed to have drained out of her as she rested limp in his hold.

"Sophie!"

After a frozen eternity, her eyebrows drew down in the same expression of reckless determination that had covered her ten year old face before she took the old stone wall on her new gelding. Cole's breath was ice in his chest.

"I want you. No, I love you. I've loved you since before I knew there was any other way to be. Even if you do listen to old maids gossip. So if you don't take that cock you're pressing against me and fuck me with it right now, I will never forgive you."

Sophie's voice was steady; only her hands betrayed her, fluttering where they lay on his chest. Now it was Cole's turn to go numb.

"You love me, " he echoed.

"Yes."

"Me."

Her hands clutched at him. "You."

"And you want my cock."

"Oh yes," she vowed.

Now he kissed her again, vulnerable, hungry, revelling in the sweet lushness of her mouth, groaning when her tongue eased past his lips to lap hotly at his own. When he lifted his head, Sophie tugged at the damp curls of hair at his nape in protest but he ignored the delicious pleasure-pain, waiting until she opened dazed eyes.

"Just to be clear -"

"I love you! Now will you please be quiet and kiss me?" she pouted up at him with kiss-wet lips.

He groaned. "God, yes. No, wait. Sophie, we will be wed."

Maybe I could have phrased that better, he thought, as she stiffened in his arms.

"That is, I mean to say, hell, Soph, please marry me. No, don't speak, not yet," he rushed on, as she opened her mouth. Hardly knowing what he was doing, Cole sank to his knees.

"You have always been the light of my life, always. Well, now along with Bea, of course."

She smiled and he took heart.

"To be able to give you my name, to have the honour and privilege of protecting and providing for you and, if it pleases God, any children we may have -- that would be a gift beyond anything I could possibly hope to deserve in a thousand lifetimes. Because I don't deserve you. But I want to spend every day and every night with you, not deserving you."

He turned her hands over to place a reverent kiss on each palm.

"Life without you would be a hell far worse than anything Bella ever put me through. So please be my wife and Bea's mother. Marry me."

Tears glittered in Sophie's eyes. "Oh, Cole. To be your wife - I would like that of all things. So, yes. A thousand times, yes."

Joy, effervescent and pure, exploded in Cole's head. Surging to his feet, he grabbed Sophie around the waist to whirl her in wild circles. Their combined laughter rang in the room's dusty corners and Cole felt dizzy in a way he knew had nothing to do with the spinning. When, still laughing, she threatened to be sick on his head, Cole clasped her to him in a fierce hug. He sighed in happiness as her arms stole around his waist, to hold on just as tight.

Then she asked the same question she always asked in his nightmares.

"But Cole? When Bella told you of what she planned, why didn't you just tell her that you wouldn't do it?"