Chapter 18 #2
Could see the moment when that last thread snapped, and his lips parted, emitting a choked sound. “No.”
The rawness of it shot to her core, coiled in her belly. She dropped her mouth, giving him a languid swipe with her tongue.
He shuddered again but didn’t draw away. Instead, one hand returned to her hair, the other clinging to the edge of the desk as if he were trying to prevent himself from drowning.
“Shall I keep going?” She gave him another slow lick before looking up at him, her tongue tasting of salt and musk. Of male. Of her husband.
“Yes.” He didn’t hesitate before the gravelly sound tore from his throat. “God, Violet, please.”
Another heady wave of pleasure burst through her veins.
She’d never felt like this before. This needy, but also, this powerful.
She did this to him. Made him tremble and groan and want.
And while maybe it was wrong of her, she couldn’t help but test that power, just a little more, as she murmured, “Please what?”
His fingers sank deeper into her scalp, his eyelids shuttering. His head tilting back. “Put my cock in your mouth.”
Oh, my God. She couldn’t have imagined the frenzy the words would ignite in her blood. The surge of longing that would pulse between her legs.
She did just as he said, taking him between her lips, drawing him toward the back of her throat. And this time, she didn’t stop to tease or make certain; she simply caressed and sucked the way she’d read about in the pamphlets, letting the guttural sounds he made be her guide.
“Violet.” Her name was cracked and strained. Desperate. “You need to stop or I’m going to … to—”
To spend. She knew what he meant, even when he broke off into a garbled curse.
She didn’t stop, though. Couldn’t stop. Not until she saw this to completion. He may be desperate, but she was desperate, too, propelled by a need to witness—no, to cause—the culmination of his pleasure. To also drive her own pleasure so that nothing else existed in the world.
Her lips moved faster, her fingers tightening around the base of his cock. Meanwhile, her other hand grappled blindly with her skirts until she shoved them out of the way and plunged her palm between her thighs.
Mmm. She heard herself moan. Heard, at the same time, another fragmented version of her name that sounded like a warning, although it came to her as if from far away.
She was drunk with pleasure, impossibly aroused.
Just as Benedict was impossibly harder, hotter—until his desire reached a breaking point, and his body jerked with the spasms of his climax.
Warm liquid salt burst into her throat, and she continued lapping at him, taking in the heady, unfamiliar taste. Continued working her fingers against her sex, tracing the bud that contained the heart of her yearning. She’d become a mixture of agony and bliss, was both taut and soaring—
Except all at once, fingers tightened in her hair, and she felt herself being pulled away from him. The weight of a heavy gaze fell upon her, and she froze, startled, as Benedict tilted her face upward.
He was staring down at her, skin flushed, jaw slack, eyes like molten onyx.
What was she to make of that, other than he looked ominous enough to devour her whole?
What was she to say when her head was too fogged to form a coherent thought, when her body hummed with unfulfilled need, when she hadn’t a clue what he was thinking or feeling?
She said nothing, only yelped in surprise, for she was suddenly being lifted and spun, her backside connecting with the desk. Papers rustled; books thumped against the floor. However, Benedict ignored the disorder as if it didn’t exist—he was too busy hiking up her skirts.
Her thighs splayed of their own accord, and she whimpered as his palm cupped her sex, his fingers parting her folds. She fairly screamed as his thumb found the peak she’d been circling, and he applied tentative pressure.
“Yes, right there.” She was too needy to be subtle. “Keep touching me there. Don’t stop.”
And oh, sweet heaven, he listened, his fingers stroking her the same way her own had done. Almost the same way, that was, but different, too, for his were a little sturdier, a little rougher. A little more intoxicating, simply because they belonged to him.
Her eyes screwed shut, her world reduced to nothing but the pulse between her legs. To sensation.
And then, when she thought she couldn’t handle any more, that the yearning would drive her mad, his mouth fell upon her breast, his tongue finding her pebbled nipple through her bodice.
Release washed over her like a deluge, making her intimate muscles throb with torrent after torrent of bliss.
Her hands flew up to clutch him, fingers twining in the thick waves above his nape, giving her an anchor while she floated as if weightless.
And he kept her floating, kept lavishing her with tiny flicks of his tongue and caresses of his thumb until her sensitized flesh, at last, had taken all it could bear.
Even then, his hand lingered against her thigh, his head by her breasts, and she left her arms draped loosely around his neck, loath to let the moment pass. Could they stay like this indefinitely? There were far worse ways to spend a lifetime.
She’d grown dazed and sated enough that his words, when they came, possessed an almost dreamlike quality. “Shall we go to the Whitsun festivities now?”
She blinked, hazily stirring as he lifted his head and the warmth of his palm slid away. The Whitsun festivities. She’d forgotten she’d even proposed such a thing and certainly hadn’t thought he was inclined to attend.
They shouldn’t go. They’d taken their interlude, and it was time to tell him what she’d learned today, while the aftereffects of pleasure lingered to soften the blow.
Only … why couldn’t it wait a little longer? Would it be so terrible if they took the rest of the day for enjoyment and she waited to reveal what she knew until they returned home at nightfall?
Surely not.
Surely, they deserved more than just a fleeting moment to be carefree. Happy. Together.
“Yes.” She dragged her hand through his hair, pushing the errant curl off his forehead. Smiling as it immediately flopped down again. The muscles between her legs continued to tingle faintly. Her heart pattered in a way it hadn’t before.
“Yes,” she said, “that sounds wonderful.”