Eight Hunting Lyons (The Lyon’s Den Connected World)

Chapter Eighteen

T he best and worst thing about Cornwall was how empty the whole place was. Daniel enjoyed cities where a myriad cuisines could be found a short walk away. Dozens of people crowded around wherever one went. And he never, ever had to dwell in a silence that went on for days.

Cornwall was the exact opposite. It took an hour’s walk to find anyone. Here, he could see the stars and rest his body in utter stillness. And he could stand naked in the sunlight while a woman studied him as if he were a DaVinci statue.

His body throbbed, and he couldn’t take his eyes off her.

She was shy at first, the color in her cheeks flushed to a dusky rose. But her eyes were greedy as she looked him over head to toe. She canted her head to the side as she studied one part of him or another. He expected her to shy away from his organ where it thrust proudly before him. She looked. He was sure of it, but her gaze lifted back up to his torso.

She walked around him and touched the slope of his spine. A single long stroke while his buttocks tightened in reaction. Then her fingertips seemed to measure the breadth of his shoulders and the length of his ribcage.

“What do you see?” he asked. Artists always surprised him with their answers.

“Bone,” she answered. “Your bones are set straight and solid. Without the frame, the muscles can’t hold.” She walked back to face him. “You have scars, but not devastating ones. You have rough hands from work and thick legs, but I see the gentleman in you whenever you move.”

Poetry. He smiled and wanted her even more.

Her gaze dropped to his organ. It stretched up to her, already weeping with need. She stretched out a hand, but hesitated, her gaze leaping back to his face in question. She didn’t voice it and he couldn’t speak beyond a curt nod. But inside, he was begging her to touch him.

She set a single finger to his cock. Her index finger tapped the mushroom head and lightning shot through him. His breath caught and his muscles rippled in reaction, but he held himself still as she did it again. And then she dropped to her knees before him, the image filling his mind with erotic fantasies that nearly overwhelmed him.

She was bolder as she touched him now. She pushed and moved, looked above and beneath. She even squeezed him while he trembled beneath the strain to control himself. The sensations collided in his body, crashing together as eroticism pummeled at the knowledge of her innocence. She was not touching him to seduce him. What she did now was akin to a painter learning an animal. He knew that, and yet the way she marveled at his body, the way she held him or moved him had his lust surging high enough to drown his reason.

Then she looked up. He had been telling himself that she was an innocent. That she knew nothing of a man, and this was the best way to make her comfortable with a man’s body. Until she glanced up at him, mischief in her eyes.

His breath caught, and if he were an artist, he would spend his life trying to capture just that look. Since he could not, he burned it into his brain. The side eye and slight smile, the way her white teeth bit into her bottom lip, all framed by strands of dark hair fluttering past her cheek from the breeze. She knew exactly what she was doing to him, and she was pleased by it.

“Minx,” he said with a groan.

He reached down and caught her arms. He drew her up to her full height and pressed his mouth to hers. She opened her mouth to his and when he thrust inside, she thrust back. Tongue to tongue, they dueled while her hands roamed over his chest and back. And his organ reveled in the friction of her body pressing against him. His hips pulsed against her. He couldn’t stop it. She was consuming him, mind and body, and he could only react to the siren call of her.

He ended the kiss, his need pushing him to taste her skin, her jaw, and down her neck. His hands framed her head, but now he let them explore. He pushed into the black silk of her hair, pulling it from the pins to let it cascade over his hands. She arched her head back, helping him shake out her hair. And as she did so, he felt her breasts push against him. Such firm, perfect mounds. His left hand supported her head while the right moved to her breast.

He shaped it while she gasped. He teased her pert nipple as she writhed. And he kissed her again so that he could taste her passion in the play of their tongues.

Then she broke from him. She tore herself back while her breath heaved, and her hands pressed tight to her chest. “You have come for me then, tiger?” she asked, and he did not understand what she meant.

“Have you ever felt a quickening?”

She shook her head.

“Do you know what it is?”

She nodded. “I have heard of it.”

“I could show you.”

She looked around them. “Out here in the open?”

He smiled. “Wherever you want. If you want to feel it.”

He saw the debate inside her. She was so different now that the servile woman who had first come to the castle. She still held herself back, still pressed her hands together across her belly, but now he saw the daring in her. What artist did not want to feel something new? She had been bold to explore him, now he tempted her with an experience wholly her own.

“You can even stay covered, if you want.”

She did want. He could see it in the way her hands pressed against her belly then softened, pressed and softened. She was feeling the same hunger he did, but she did not fully understand it.

The day was a fine one, but the ground could be hard. He lay out his clothing as best he could, then sat down such that there was room for her in his arms. A rock propped up his back and his body was open to her. Still randy as hell, but relaxed enough to be inviting. Or so he hoped.

She looked at him, obviously torn, then murmured something that pleased him. “Ignorance is something even Mrs. Dove-Lyon abhors.”

He smiled and pulled her close for a kiss. His hunger—which had quieted for a moment—roared like the tiger she’d named him. And as she opened to his thrusting tongue, he maneuvered her to stretch out beside him.

Then he stroked her leg, pulling her skirt higher with every caress. She grabbed his shoulders, her fingers pressing hard into his bicep.

“I will let you control it,” he said when she pulled back from his kiss. “You tell me when you want more.”

He caressed the curve of her ankle up to the side of her knee. He squeezed her calf and flattened his hand over her knee, and then he teased his fingers along the narrowest part of her thigh.

“I love the feel of a woman’s leg,” he said. “Especially when she is strong like you.” Then he looked into her eyes. “Do you want to feel more?”

She nodded. He brushed his hand up between her thighs, first one side then the other. Broad strokes as if his hand were a large brush and his fingertips had the lightest dusting of paint. She trembled in his arms, but she didn’t fight him.

“More?” he asked.

She nodded, but when he passed his fingertips lightly across the juncture of her thighs, she stiffened and drew back. He immediately withdrew.

“Here then,” he said, as he returned to her thighs. He brushed her again, his strokes deeper. And while her breath caught from that, he pressed his mouth to hers. He didn’t demand this time, but teased his lips across hers. She was the one who became frustrated with that. After light touches against her lips, she grabbed his shoulders and drew herself higher in his arms. She demanded a deeper kiss, and he gave it to her with all the pent-up desire in his body.

He pressed her until she lay flat in his arms, and he followed her down as he thrust into her mouth. And when he was done, her legs were open to him.

“More?”

“Yes.”

He cupped her sex. He didn’t invade. He didn’t even move. But he held her wetness in his hand and her eyes went wide.

“Is that it?” she asked.

“What do you feel?”

Her mouth opened, but she didn’t seem to have the words. Then he pressed down with his palm. It was above her sex, but the pressure was enough. She arched into him, her sex pushing back as her tongue had.

He grinned. “Now you feel the beginning,” he said. He began to push downward.

“Beginning?” she echoed, and then she trembled from what he was doing.

“That’s it,” he said. “Let yourself feel it.”

He pulsed downward twice more, then he smiled at her. “More?”

“Yes.”

“This may surprise you,” he warned. “It is a feeling like no other.”

He trailed his fingers into her wetness. He pushed between her folds and stroked her where her sex was most responsive. She gasped and tightened, her legs quivering, but not closing. And he stopped what he was doing.

“Different, yes?”

“Different.”

“Unpleasant?”

“No.”

“More?”

“Yes.”

And so he accustomed her to his touch with short touches, each a little deeper. He paused every time and waited for her to say yes, then he did it again until her breath was short and her body quivering like a taut bow. The next time she said yes, he pressed into her. He felt her warmth slick around his finger, and he dreamed of thrusting his cock there. He knew it was too soon, so he let his fingers explore in ways that his cock could not.

She lost the ability to speak, but she nodded to him every time. Her breath came in short bursts, and her eyes were luminous with arousal. He wanted her undressed so that he could feast upon her breasts. He wanted her beneath him when she burst around him.

Instead, he gloried in her every sound and drank the sight of a woman in her first coming. She was not there yet, but the quickening was close. Her eyes fluttered closed and she pressed into his hand, echoing the rhythm he built.

She was rocking against him, and he felt every pulse, every beat of her body through his own. He pulled her tight as she writhed.

He plunged his fingers inside her. She wriggled against him.

He rolled his thumb over her nub. She strained in his arms.

Harder. Faster.

Sweeter.

Yes.

She cried out and her eyes flew wide. Her body shook as she clenched around his fingers. And he was caught by her beauty. Ecstasy in her face. In her body.

And in his as well. He erupted against her. His pleasure caught him by surprise and overpowered him. While she still trembled, joy roared through him. He pulsed as she did. He danced in bliss as she did. And he held her through it all.

Heaven.