Chapter Seven #2
And her heart fluttered. “There is nothing about you that would make me reject you outright.” It wasn’t necessarily a lie, but she did wonder if it was the full truth. All of it fell out of her head, and it was her who kissed him again, for the feel of his lips pressed against hers was everything.
“Nothing is forever, and you may end up regretting that statement,” he whispered against her lips before claiming them over and over again in deep, drugging kisses.
For the moment, she didn’t care about the challenges between them; she had every intention of getting lost in this man right in this moment.
Without warning, Thornton broke the kiss to trail his lips along the side of her neck, nipping and nibbling her skin as he went.
Waves of heated awareness rippled through her and left gooseflesh behind.
He followed the line of her bodice for a brief time, and when she assumed he’d yank it down to bare her breasts, he surprised her when he left them untouched and dropped to his knees before her.
“Thornton?”
“Let me have this, duchess…” Then he shoved up her skirting, asking her to hold it out of his way when it bunched at her waist.
Oh, she wasn’t going to dissuade him, for she enjoyed what he was about to give to her.
What she didn’t like was the fact he’d do it out in the open in the portrait gallery where any of the servants could come upon them.
But then, that was Cecil. Public displays enhanced his performance. Why should she protest?
He pressed his lips to her mons as he encouraged her legs to part.
“Golden curls to hide the treasured pearl beneath,” he murmured in an almost reverent tone as she caressed his hands up and down the outside of her thighs before moving his touch to the inside.
Tiny shivers followed in his wake, and when he urged one of her knees onto his shoulder and she was opened to his gaze, a small moan of anticipation escaped her.
Why was she so weak when it came to this man? Why would she let him have his way with her whenever he wished it? And why was she seconds away from melting into a puddle at his feet as the warmth of his breath steamed her sensitive folds?
Before she had time to acclimate to him and how good such things felt, he’d parted that sacred flesh, coaxed the swelling button from hiding, and his mouth was on her, his tongue flicking over that nubbin. With each swipe, the beautiful, wet friction sent her closer to undoing.
“Cecil, I need…” But he was there, knowing instinctively where she wanted him to be, teasing and tormenting her with varying degrees of suction and soothing with his tongue again.
Her hands went into the silkiness of his hair; she guided him despite being on display, and she stopped caring about what that would look like when he added fingers to the erotic play he currently worked at.
That gentle, maddening rhythm he set with his mouth, tongue, and fingers quickly drove her to the brink of reality, and far too soon she shook with the ever growing and stacking need deep inside.
Bumping her hips against him, she tightened her fingers in his hair in an effort to convey how much she wanted him to finish her, but the damning man only chuckled against her flesh and slowed his movements to draw out her pleasure or torture, depending.
Then she broke. There was no other word or explanation for it.
One second Emma stood pressed against the windows with him eating her out, and in the next, she was no longer there because her soul had temporarily left her body and flew her into the heavens.
Exquisite pleasure replaced the blood in her veins, and she bucked against him while trying to stifle the urge to cry out in joy from the purely blissful sensations.
The second she came back to herself, he set her foot back onto the floor, and as he stood, he kissed her again.
That slight taste of her own juices on his lips, his tongue only made her want him more, and the feeling of desire, of being wanted completely by this man was exhilarating; had it always been this way between them, or had the separation caused that desperation?
“Watching you fall over the edge is so damned erotic I need to fuck you just so I can experience it along with you.” His hands were on her day dress, pulling at laces, wrenching buttons from their holes, and before she realized what was happening, he had the garment up and off her body.
“In the event you wondered, there was never another woman in my bed while I was away from you. I might not have wished to be with you, but I couldn’t take another. ”
Emma frowned as she relieved him of the waistcoat. “Why?”
“No other woman is you.” He shrugged as if that were the only explanation there could possibly be, and perhaps in his mind it was. One by one, he divested her of the stays, petticoat, and then chemise; the garments falling to the floor unheeded.
In a way, it was the height of romantic except for the fact that he admitted he hadn’t wanted her so soon after they’d wed.
Wisely, she didn’t question him, for that would have ruined the moment, and there was a chance they could more fully bond, so instead, she pulled the shirttails from the waist of his breeches, and he was only too anxious to help her remove it from his body.
“Thank you for honoring our vows,” was all she said then she pressed her lips to the hot skin of his chest where a thick mat of coarse blond hair mixed with silver in an abstract butterfly pattern. “It means something even if you don’t believe it does.”
With a growl, he claimed her lips in a hard, demanding kiss.
His large hands on either side of her head kept her steady, and he kissed her as if she would suddenly vanish into the air.
Every thrust and parry with her tongue had her already primed body practically humming, begging him to join them and send her flying again.
As a moan escaped her, Emma slipped a hand to cup his engorged length through the fabric of his breeches.
The hard, hot outline of his member made her crazy with lust for him.
Seconds later, she had the panel of his frontfalls open and once more took him in hand.
Would he let her pleasure him with her mouth as he’d done to her?
Before she could caress him or explore his body with the leisure she desired, he uttered a strangled sort of sound mixed with a moan.
Then he abruptly turned her about so that she faced the window.
Seconds later, he pressed her body against the glass.
“Thornton?” Anyone outside looking up at the manor would see her whole nude body—gardeners, servants, guests—it apparently didn’t matter to the duke, for he’d always favored exhibitionism even though it wasn’t her favorite thing, arousing though it was. “Here?”
“Yes, why not?” His hands were at her hips, holding her steady, and with his knee, he encouraged her thighs apart.
The press of his body against her backside, the heat of his breath at the curve of her ear, the feel of his cockhead slipping along her folds all worked at her next undoing. “Does it matter where I take you?”
“No, I suppose not.” She laid her palms on the cold glass. And dear heavens, in the distance, someone rode a horse. Would they eventually come up to the house. “Perhaps we should—”
As he lifted her slightly upward, he flexed his hips, and with one powerful, hard, and quite determined thrust, he penetrated her body so fully and so exceptionally, a cry of pure enjoyment escaped her throat.
“Dear heavens,” she somehow managed to whisper, for the act of forming other words beyond that was too much to expect from her scrambled brain.
When he began to move deep within her core, she surrendered to him.
The contrast of the cold glass against her overheated skin brought another layer to the pleasure he worked to give her, and oddly, she rather enjoyed being claimed by him like this, for the connection between them was complete and couldn’t be denied.
“Thornton?”
He grunted in response but didn’t cease shoving into her passage.
Already, Emma was nearly sobbing from the wonder of the experience. “I need so much more from you right now.” It wasn’t a lie, for she continued to crave being with him.
“I know the feeling well.” With a slight nip to her earlobe, he withdrew, and she nearly cried from the loss of connection, but when he turned her about to face him, pressed her backside to the window, he crushed his mouth to hers, claiming her lips with a strength she couldn’t deny but had remembered in her dreams.
In mere moments, all her senses were consumed by him.
The muscled length of him keeping her captive between him and the window felt like heaven.
His arms around her were iron bands, his fingers fire as he played them up and down her spine, but there was a sweet protection, a strength there she wanted time to revel in.
The warmth of his tongue as he tangled it with hers sent heated pulses between her thighs.
She moaned into his mouth and burrowed closer, her fingers digging into the naked skin of his shoulders.
“Let me hear you scream this time, Emma. I need to know I’m at least giving you something you desire, that I am not as useless as I assume.” There was a vulnerability in the blue pools of his eyes that brought out fierce protective instincts within her.
And she clung to him, kissing him back like a woman possessed.