Chapter Seventeen
Penelope was confused when Henry walked away from her, but he closed and locked the parlor room door. When he returned, he took her hand and led her to the settee. She sat and he quickly knelt on the floor in front of her. When he began gathering her skirts, she shivered in anticipation.
Was this normal? To want the touch of a man so desperately? Sarah and Ana seemed to think it was a good thing. However, she’d not told them that she wasn’t sure they would marry.
Once he’d gathered her skirts to her waist, he eased her legs apart and pulled her to the edge of the seat. He glanced up at her face with a mischievous smile. Pen found she had to smile back.
Then he leaned down to lick and kiss her inner thighs. She collapsed backwards against the plush back of the settee. She closed her eyes to focus on the drugging pleasure. When he kissed a path to her core, she was panting in anticipation. The first swipe of his tongue there was a revelation. Her body wanted to bow up against him. He moved his attention to the nub he’d circled with his thumb last time, and his tongue had an even greater effect on her. She wanted to demand more, but he gave it to her without her demands. He sucked and laved that spot until she was bucking against his face with uncontrolled abandon. The quaking spasms she remembered from their last encounter hit her fiercely. She wanted to feel his fingers stroking inside of her again.
“Henry,” she gasped. “Touch me. Inside.”
He plunged fingers inside of her, curling them to stroke her. He was still sucking on her nub in a steady rhythm. The spasms gripped her so hard she thought she might faint.
As her reaction faded, he changed his touch to gentle pets and kisses. She realized she’d gripped her own breasts in the heights of her response. They felt swollen and sensitive. She wanted him to kiss them, so she pulled her gown down to expose them.
He looked up at her movement and growled. “At this rate we’ll never talk.”
But blessedly, he leaned over her to suck first one nipple into his mouth and then the other. “So beautiful,” he murmured.
His fingers slid inside of her again, gently stroking while he sucked at her nipples, and she floated on a cloud of pleasure. She wasn’t even sure how much time passed before he withdrew from her and sat back.
She struggled to sit up from her half-lounging position. “What’s wrong?”
“Not a single thing, as long as you marry me.”
She felt the need to cover herself if they were going to talk, and struggled to pull her gown over her breasts again and push down her skirts at least enough that she wasn’t bare to the world. “Let us speak plainly.” She thought she sounded surprisingly prim considering what they’d just been doing. “Do you want to marry me, or do you feel like you have to marry me?”
“Lady Penelope, I have to marry you.”
She felt her heart deflate from that admission.
He continued. “Because I want the right to do this and more to you whenever it strikes our fancy.”
Her heart sped up with a soaring hope. “What sort of more?”
He sat up on his knees and leaned closer until they were practically chest to chest and growled his response. “I want to be inside you. I want to make love to you until we’re both exhausted, then wake up in the middle of the night and do it again. I want to ward the chill from the morning air by being buried in your warmth. I’ve always admired your mind and strength, Lady Penelope, but your body has made me your servant.”
She felt drunk on his confession. “No more than your body has made me yours.”
He grinned at her. “You don’t know my body, Lady Penelope.”
“Show me,” she begged. “Teach me.”
He looked at her for a long moment, his expression difficult to read, then stood up and unfastened the placket on his breeches, pulling out his thick manhood. “Kiss me here, Lady Penelope. Use that clever tongue to pleasure me.”
***
HENNY COULD BARELY believe his own audacity, but Lady Penelope eagerly leaned forward to kiss and lave his straining erection. Bloody hell, but this woman would either be his salvation or damnation. He shouldn”t take such liberties with a gently born girl, but she was rapidly becoming more a siren than any widow or whore he’d bedded.
When he’d first discovered sex, it had been a revelation. He’d loved it. He’d fucked any and every woman he could, some nights at the whorehouses he had more than one woman in bed at a time. None of it had felt as good as Lady Penelope swirling her tongue over the head of his cock and then taking him deep in her mouth.
Kit made a comment once about how it was different with the right woman, a comment that made War sneer. Henny knew that people were sometimes addled by falling in love and hadn’t thought much about it. Now, holding the back of Lady Penelope’s silky head while she experimented with how deeply she could take his cock in her throat, he had to admit that Kit was right. He loved her. He wanted her, and only her, in his bed.
As she became bolder and more determined she placed her hands on his backside, gripping him and pulling him deeper. It was the sexiest and most adorable thing he’d ever seen. It wouldn’t take much to send him over.
“Pen,” he choked out. S’blood, he was so close. He shouldn’t assume she wanted him to spend in her, but couldn’t resist her enthusiasm for taking him deep into her warm, wet mouth. When he was done, he almost couldn’t stand.
He collapsed onto the settee next to her, his softening cock still out.
She grinned at him. “Did I do that correctly?”
He pulled her on top of him and held her tight. “You did splendidly.”
She sighed and he wished he knew what it meant.
“You must always tell me what you’re thinking, love,” he murmured into her hair, “because I don’t understand things the way others do. I don’t know why you’re sighing. Are you happy? Sad? Uncomfortable?”
She pulled away from him enough to look at him. “I’m happy. A little confused, perhaps, because I never expected that marital relations could be so exciting and freeing, I suppose. I have this tremendous sense of abandon, as though we are free to do anything and everything with each other.”
He tucked a stray tendril behind her ear. “I like the sound of that.”
She moved slightly. “Is your cock getting hard again?”
“Indeed. It senses there could be more play afoot.”
“How else can I pleasure you, other than with my mouth?”
He pulled her close for a kiss, the flavors of their intimate musks combining on their tongues. He answered her question between kisses. “You can use your hand. You can let me use your body, like trapping my cock between your breasts.” He bit her lower lip. “You can watch me stroke myself. You can let me watch you stroke yourself.” He moved over to lick and suck her earlobe. “You can let me fuck you. I think my cock was made to be in your pussy.”
She shivered and grabbed his jaw to hold him in place so that she could kiss him, sucking his tongue like she had his cock.
Maybe this was love, because he never wanted to let her go.