Chapter 20
CHAPTER TWENTY
Aurelia was drifting on a sea of pleasure. Sebastian’s mouth was the rudder, his tongue the wind, the current, dragging her relentlessly onward. Now that she had climaxed once, she knew what to expect, knew that the tightening heat in her lower stomach meant she was approaching another peak.
Her night had gone so right. Some part of her was in wonder, and the other was lost in the sensation of his tongue flicking her as though he intended to savor every last drop. As though she were a feast, and he a starving man.
Yet, despite his urgency, he took his delicious time, bracing his hands against her thighs to open her for him.
Under any other circumstances, she would have felt vulnerable and exposed, but he made her feel safe.
How could she be unsure when he looked at her as though he had never seen a woman before her?
All the angry, jealous feelings vanished when he looked at her like that.
He moved, holding her open with his shoulders instead, and brought a single finger to join his mouth.
While he sucked on a bundle of nerves that made her back arch, he circled a finger around her entrance.
Around and around until she felt as though she would go mad.
She’d never had anything push inside before, but now his hand was there, she knew she wanted nothing more than to be filled.
She rolled her hips, seeking the fullness, even as he brought her closer to the brink with his mouth.
Her entire body was alive with sensation. She sang with it, and all she needed was that final push to push her over the edge.
“Sebastian…” she gasped.
“Mm?” He slowed, just a tiny bit, and it was enough to bring her back from the perilous edge she dangled over. She moaned in frustration, and his chuckle reverberated through her. “What do you want, my little minx?”
He was going to make her say it.
Words came slowly, as though through honey, but she managed to say, “I hate you.”
“That wasn’t right.” He circled her entrance again. “Try again.”
“Sebastian.” Now her voice was a whine.
“Your words, Aurelia.”
“I want you inside me.” They broke from her in a rush, and she almost hated that she had voiced her desires in such a brazen way, even if that was what she wanted.
“There we go.” He kissed her tenderly, right where she needed him the most. “That’s all I needed, my sweet.” And then, as though he had been waiting for her and nothing more, he slid his finger inside her at the same moment he flicked his tongue across her most sensitive place.
She erupted.
Catastrophically, wonderfully, devastatingly.
The climax she’d had against his leg was nothing compared to the pleasure he wrought from her now.
She was something entirely new, made of bright light and pleasure and heat, and she soared with the force of her release.
Perhaps she said something, perhaps she sobbed, but she recalled nothing but the endless ebb and flow of pleasure, until eventually it faded into a different, sharper, more insistent sensation.
Sebastian, still licking her.
At the very moment it became too much, he raised his head, his mouth slick with her juices, and grinned. There was no male satisfaction there, nothing smug and overly pleased with himself—he merely looked happy.
Happy that she had climaxed. Happy that it had been good for her. There was nothing more complicated in the matter than that.
She wanted to cry—the emotions in her chest were so big, and as though he sensed it, he rose above her body, still clothed against her nakedness, and took her face in his hands, kissing her gently.
She tasted her pleasure on his lips, musky yet sweet, and she tasted something else, as yet unspoken, flowing between them in this place of vulnerability.
She mattered to him. She, her pleasure, it was all one and the same. Now, especially in this moment, she was important.
“Sebastian…” she whispered.
“I know. I know.” He kissed her again, then the tip of her nose, then both cheeks. Then her forehead. Tender, even though she felt the hard rod of his arousal pressed against her. She might have experienced bliss, but he had yet to.
Even so, she felt no urgency in his hands or his kisses. I’m here with you, he seemed to say.
The urge to cry passed, leaving behind it contentment so bone-deep she felt certain she would feel this way for the rest of her life. And, in addition, a rather restless hunger that told her she was far from done.
She had experienced his mouth, yes, but she knew that was not everything.
“Can we…” she murmured, “…can you show me what else there is?”
It was as though her words had summoned magic. One moment, he was lying on her, all but fully clothed; the next, he had stripped his clothes from him in record time and stood before her naked.
And what a sight he was, utterly naked.
Aurelia stared for a long moment, taking him in as deeply as she dared.
He was…
Gorgeous.
There was no other word to describe him.
She had seen male bodies before, of course.
Of course. Statues and the like. She had even seen their phalluses.
But this was entirely different. His was not small in the way of Greek statues, and his body held an altogether different composition.
Broader shoulders, thicker through the chest and arms, solid muscle where marble was only smooth lines.
There was a raw strength to him, something that made her want to touch, to test the give of flesh over that hardness.
And his phallus.
She knew that he must have been big; she had felt his arousal against her more than once.
But seeing it, it transpired, was entirely different from feeling it.
Here, she could see the different parts that made up the whole—the shaft, the head, the veins down the side.
He looked almost painfully hard, and she immediately wondered how on earth he would fit inside her when all she’d taken so far was his finger.
He must have seen the panic on her face, because he came to her then, taking her hand and placing it on his shaft with a nod of encouragement. So she was given leave to explore him, then.
Well, she would take advantage of that, most certainly.
As he watched, she ran her hand up and down his erection, feeling the heat of his arousal under the soft velvet of his skin. When her fingers danced gently over the swollen head, he closed his eyes as though in pain. But when he opened them again, there was no pain in sight.
No, not pain...
“You like this?” she asked, tracing down the sides until she reached his base and the hair that gathered there. So like her in that respect.
“I do,” he muttered through gritted teeth.
“Here. Grip me like this.” He folded her fingers around him until she was cupping him in her palm, her fingers wrapped tight.
This time, when she moved her hand, the loose skin came with her, and she marveled at it.
He made a different noise this time—a hoarse grunt.
Even she had to admit that there was something unmistakably erotic about seeing her hand on him, and the slow, steady way it moved.
“You don’t need to fear,” he said as she continued her exploration, finding a slit in his head and pressing a finger to it. Her finger came away damp. “I’ll ensure you’re fully ready to take me.”
“…Will it hurt?”
He hesitated, but evidently decided that even in this moment, she deserved the truth, no matter how unsavory, because he said, “Most likely. This is my first time with a virgin, but as I understand it, the experience can be painful. You might bleed.”
Painful. That wasn’t precisely what she had been hoping for, but she would endure if it meant having him. And he would be gentle with her; she knew that much.
“Then do it,” she whispered, releasing him and lying back, spreading her legs wide. “Please.”
“Do it?” The corners of his eyes creased with a smile even as he leaned over her, pressing her into the mattress with the weight of his body.
They fit together so perfectly; it was hard to imagine being made for anything else.
“I have no need for romance, Aurelia, but I would like a little more than that.”
She laughed, covering her face in embarrassment. “Then lie with me, husband,” she said, peering through her fingers to see if this had satisfied him.
He watched her with a contemplative air. “Ask me to make you mine,” he said instead.
At the words, her breath caught. But she felt no hesitation. If he wanted to be hers, she would ask him to be—and she would offer herself to him. And finally, she would have what she had come to want: her husband. Every part of him.
“Sebastian,” she began, reaching up her hands to cup the back of his neck, looking into his eyes with all the earnestness and need she could muster. “Please, make me yours.”
A small groan escaped him, and he brought his erection to the slickness between her legs, rubbing himself there against her delicate flesh. By the dark pleasure in his eyes, this brought yet more pleasure.
Still, before he entered her—as she had expected him to do, and was bracing for the pain—he brought his fingers once again to her entrance.
As he rubbed her with the head of his erection, he pressed first one, then two fingers inside.
To her surprise, they entered easily, and he worked her with his fingers, moving them in different ways until she thought she might go mad with the pleasure of it all.
Could one go mad from pleasure?
She would certainly find out.
Finally, there was a stretch as he pressed a third inside her, too, taking his time as he moved within her, still rubbing and sliding, the dual sensations overwhelming in her body.
“Are you ready, my shepherdess?” he whispered, and she saw in his face it was a genuine question that required an answer.
“Yes.”