Chapter Ten #2
His hands gathered the hem of her chemise and began to lift it, exposing her legs, her thighs, the most intimate part of her body. Eliza tensed instinctively, and he paused.
“Trust me,” he said softly. “I will never hurt you. I will never do anything you don’t want. But I need you to trust me, Eliza. Can you do that?”
She looked into his eyes, those grey eyes that had haunted her dreams for weeks, and saw something there that steadied her. Not just desire. Not just hunger.
Care.
He cared about her. Perhaps could not name it, perhaps would not admit it, but it was there in the way he looked at her. The way he touched her. The way he kept stopping to ask permission, to ensure her comfort.
“I trust you,” she whispered.
He lifted her chemise the rest of the way, pulling it over her head and leaving her entirely bare.
For a long moment, he simply looked at her. His gaze moved from her face to her breasts to her belly to the thatch of dark curls between her thighs, and his expression was something she could not quite name, reverence and hunger and something that looked almost like pain.
“Beautiful,” he murmured. “So incredibly beautiful.”
She should have felt embarrassed. Should have wanted to cover herself, to hide from his scrutiny. Instead, she felt powerful. Desired. Seen in a way she had never been seen before.
He lowered his mouth to her breast again, bare skin this time, no barrier between them, and the sensation was so intense that her back arched off the bed.
“Yes,” he breathed against her skin. “Just like that. Don’t hold back. Let me hear you.”
She could not have held back if she tried. His mouth was devastating, sucking, licking, grazing with his teeth until she was writhing beneath him, gasping his name, clutching at his shoulders with desperate fingers.
And then his hand moved lower.
He traced a path down her belly, over the curve of her hip, along the inside of her thigh. Teasing. Learning. Coming closer and closer to the place where she ached most.
“William.” His name was a plea. “Please…”
“Please what?” His fingers paused at the apex of her thighs, hovering at the very edge of her most intimate flesh. “Tell me what you want, Eliza. I need to hear you say it.”
“Touch me.” The words came out broken, desperate. “Please, William, touch me.”
He parted her with his fingers.
The first contact was a shock, so intimate, so overwhelming that she cried out. He stroked through her folds with devastating gentleness, learning her terrain, spreading the wetness that had gathered there.
“So wet,” he murmured, and there was dark satisfaction in his voice. “Do you feel that, Eliza? That’s desire. That’s your body preparing itself for pleasure.”
She could not respond. Could not think. Could only feel, his fingers exploring, discovering, touching her in ways she had never imagined being touched.
And then he found it.
The small bud of flesh at the apex of her sex, that place she had barely acknowledged existed, and when his finger circled it, her entire body seized with pleasure.
“There,” he said, and began to stroke.
The sensation built like a wave, slow at first, then faster, more urgent. His fingers moved with expert precision, circling that sensitive spot, applying pressure that was somehow exactly what she needed without her ever having known she needed it.
“Let go,” he murmured against her ear. “I’ve got you. Let yourself fall.”
She was climbing. Higher and higher, toward something she could not name but could feel approaching, a crest, a peak, a culmination of everything he had been building.
“William.” His name was barely recognisable, more gasp than word. “I can’t, I don’t…”
“You can.” He increased the pressure, the speed. “You’re so close, love. So close. Let me see you shatter.”
The wave crested.
And broke.
Eliza came apart with a cry that seemed to come from somewhere outside herself, pleasure crashing through her body in waves, radiating outward from where his fingers still moved, consuming her entirely.
She was trembling, gasping, her back arched off the bed, her hands fisted in the sheets, her vision actually going white at the edges.
It went on and on, longer than she would have thought possible, before finally, blessedly, receding.
She collapsed against the mattress, boneless and breathing hard.
William was still above her, watching her with an expression that made her heart clench. His eyes were dark with desire, his own breathing ragged, but there was something else there too.
Wonder.
“That,” he said quietly, “was the most beautiful thing I have ever witnessed.”
She laughed, a shaky, overwhelmed sound. “I did not know… I never imagined…”
“That it could feel like that?” He kissed her forehead, her cheeks, the tip of her nose. “This is only the beginning, Eliza. There is so much more I want to show you.”
“Now?” She was not sure her body could survive more.
“Not now.” His smile was tender. “Now, I hold you. Now, I let you recover. Now, I try to commit every detail of your face in that moment to memory, so I never forget what it looks like when you come undone.”
He rolled to his side and gathered her against him, her back to his chest, his arm wrapped protectively around her waist. She could still feel his arousal pressing against her, hard, insistent, obviously unsatisfied, but he made no move to address it.
“William,” she murmured. “You haven’t…”
“This was about you.” He pressed a kiss to her bare shoulder. “Today was about you. We have time for everything else.”