Chapter 18
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“Did you see that?” He asked, looking to Deborah.
Her answering smile was kind and affectionate.
“I did,” she agreed, moving from the opposite sofa to sit by his side. “It seems you two are making good progress.”
“So it seems indeed,” he murmured, still in awe of what had just happened.
Deborah scooted into the corner of the sofa, reclining a little into the space as he too shifted back and let his back sink into the cushioned high back.
Without giving it much thought, he reached for her feet and placed them in his lap, as if it were something he had always done.
Deborah, in turn, seemed to allow the intimate gesture, for she simply let him begin removing her stylish walking-heeled boots.
“How are you feeling, Cedric?” Deborah asked as he started to flick the many buttons through their loops.
“I am ecstatic over Adeline’s and my progress,” he replied, readily. “You are doing incredible work with her.”
Deborah laughed softly as she shook her head.
“Thank you, but that is not what I was referring to. I am asking how you feel after talking about your sister,” Deborah clarified, her tone gentle.
Cedric’s hands paused for a moment as his heart and mind gave off a small throb of anguish. A few seconds later, he resumed his work, ridding Deborah’s stockinged feet of the heels with haste as if it would somehow lessen his feelings.
It did not.
“I am fine,” he said, his tone light.
Deborah kicked her foot lightly, and he seethed in a breath as she accidentally brushed against his groin.
He closed his eyes, caught in a tormented place between heartache and arousal.
He captured the assaulting appendage at once and smoothed the heel of his palm into her arch.
Deborah wriggled slightly as a soft breath escaped her, but did not stop him.
“Do not lie, please,” she said, pleasure coming through her soft voice as he began massaging her foot. “I believe we are past that now.”
Cedric turned his head toward her, and his arousal intensified as he watched her try to fight the pleasure she was obviously feeling from the massage.
Even if she was able to fight the expression of enjoyment on her face, he did not miss the way her body sank further into the sofa.
Still, he tried to focus on her request and not give in fully to his baser desires.
He swallowed and continued to massage her.
“My sister was everything I told Adeline,” He murmured.
“She could have been more. If I could have stopped our father. Maybe if I had, she would not have stopped speaking to me when she had left. I regret it every day. Not being enough for her. I was her big brother. I was supposed to protect her. And I failed.”
He winced at the painful reminder, and without realizing, his grip on Deborah’s foot tightened.
Her hiss of pain alerted him to what he was doing at once, and he immediately loosened his grip and began to nurture that ache he’d just created.
“I am sorry,” he whispered, taking extra care to soothe the hurt.
“It is alright,” Deborah soothed, settling down into the sofa again, “I know you did not mean to.”
Cedric’s lips twitched toward a smile, but it was false.
“I know how it feels to fail a sibling,” Deborah went on as he moved to her other foot, “It is a sting that can never quite be soothed. You always wonder what more you could have done to help them. To save them. To…prevent losing them.”
Cedric’s heart threatened to crack as he heard the longing in her voice and saw the raw pain in her eyes.
She had been so close to getting her revenge on Sylvester last night, and though his actions seemed logical in the moment, he now wondered if he had deprived her of the very same punishment he would have bestowed upon his father if he were still alive.
Enough, a voice in his head growled. He pressed his eyes shut, feeling the burdensome heaviness of such raw emotions he usually kept in check, and shook his head. He needed a distraction. They both did. The moment was getting far too heavy.
Cedric massaged his hand into Deborah’s foot, then smoothed his hand up her stockinged calf. Heat pulsed into his veins as she let out a soft sigh and let her head fall back into the cushions.
“Enough of this sobering discussion,” he urged, letting his touch travel farther up her leg. “There are certainly much better things to do than ruminate on what we have lost.”
Deborah’s lashes fluttered open, and when she lifted her head to look at him, her expression was scolding, but her eyes were hooded and hazy.
“Not talking about something does not make the problem go away, Cedric,” she replied. Yet even so, he caught the breathiness in her tone, as if she was trying to reach for reason over the physical pleasure he was bringing her.
“Maybe not,” he agreed, his fingers slowly closing over the hem of her stocking.
Carefully, he dragged the silken fabric down from her knee, over her calf, and finally down her foot before tossing it away.
He waited for her to say stop. He would if she told him to.
Yet the demand never came, and as his smoothed his palm up her bare, silky smooth skin calf of her calf, she let out another soft sigh.
“We have had a couple of long, tense days, Deborah,” he rasped, reaching higher under her skirts to massage her thigh, “Why not give ourselves one relaxing night?”
Deborah whimpered, her head lulling back again as he used both hands to massage the warm, supple flesh of her thigh. He kneaded the muscle softly, relishing in the way her tendons began to tremble beneath his coaxing touch.
“So very tense,” he rasped, feeling his desire mount higher; he moved to repeat the same process with her other leg and thigh. “Do you not just want to relax with me, sweetheart?”
“Yes,” she breathed, her body melting into the sofa.
“Oh,” Cedric groaned, pressing her closest thigh tight against his already pulsing manhood and letting the other drape over his knees.
“There’s my good girl,” he praised, reveling in the way Deborah’s cheeks flushed a bright pink at his words.
He kept his one hand pressed tight against her thigh that was pressed tight against his erection, and with the other, he began to trail his fingertips higher up her inner thigh.
Lust pulsed in every cell of his body as he found the supple flesh near her apex slick and warm.
The sensation urged him forward, and as he reached her mons, he unleashed a groan as he found her already gushing.
Desire flushed through his veins as he slid two fingers into Deborah’s tight, willing sheath, and he was immediately rewarded with the soft sounds of her heady moans and the delicious bucking of her hips.
He stretched her sheath with his fingers, moving them as slowly as possible so as not to cause her discomfort, and when he drew them out to swirl over her clitoris, Deborah’s back arched away from the sofa and her hands dug into his forearm.
He relished the prick of her nails as they bit through his shirt and into his forearm, and repeated the motion. Thrust. Curl. Stroke. Thrust. Curl. Stroke.
“Cedric!” She moaned, her thighs already beginning to tremble.
“Shhh, I have you,” he huskily replied as his fingers continued their rhythmic ministrations, “Let me bring you pleasure. Let me help you forget. Even if just for a while.”
As he said the last part, he thrust his fingers inside her wet sheath harder, and Deborah’s body was rocked with delicious spasms as she began to make delightful keening sounds.
He kept his thrusts hard and intense, feeling that coil of pleasure grow tighter in her lower belly until it nearly snapped- and then he would slow, keeping his thrusts shallow as he lifted the pad of his thumb to her clitoris and began drawing lazy circles over the sensitive bud of flesh.
He did this over and over again, bringing her to the edge of the cliff, then slowly walking her back just as she was about to tumble off until she was a quivering, flooded mess of desire in his lap.
“Cedric,” she whimpered as he pulled her back from her last near-leap, “Please.”
“Please what, sweetheart?” He asked, feigning innocence. He wanted to hear her say it. Wanted to make her beg him again. Only this time, he had conditions. Ones that God would forsake him for, and the Devil would crow with pride.
“Open those pretty eyes and tell me what you need,” he commanded, then gently flicked the taut bud of her clitoris.
With a gasp, Deborah’s lashes flew up, revealing those startling green orbs he was so very quickly becoming addicted to.
“Please, Cedric,” she whimpered, then seemed to fight the urge to let her eyes roll back as he sank his fingers deep inside, “Let me…ohhh…”
“Yes?” He taunted, curling up toward that sweet spot that she loved having touched, “Let you what?”
Deborah drew in several deep breaths as the pink on her pretty cheeks grew crimson.
“Let…me…release,” she struggled to plead, then her head tossed back with another moan as he swirled the thumb on his opposite hand over her clitoris as he continued shallow thrusts with his other.
“Should I?” He taunted, cocking his head as he watched her threaten to tremble apart, “You left me in such a state last time. You have no idea how long my cock ached for you after you ran away from me.”
Deborah shook her head desperately against the pillows.
“I- I will not do that again,” she panted, “I did not know. I swear. Tell me. Show me what to do you and I will.”
Her willingness, her neediness, nearly drove Cedric over the edge right there, and he felt droplets of his own need begin to seep into his trousers as his mind already began to conjure images of what he would ask for.
“Say you promise,” he all but growled as he picked up the pace with both of his hands, bringing her dangerously close to her release.
“I promise,” she panted, writhing under his touch, as if trying to get his fingers to move deeper inside of her, “I promise, Cedric. Please!”
Power and pleasure surged through him as he heard Deborah beg, and he finally let his fingers slide fully back into her tight, slick channel as he increased the pressure on her bud, and Deborah shattered in his lap.
She arched her back as he felt her release gush over his fingers and onto his palm.
Her lips parted into a wide O, and he barely had time to move his hand from her clitoris to her mouth before he stifled her scream of ecstasy.
“That is it, my beauty,” he achingly rasped, watching her buck and bow under his hands as she came for him. “There’s my good girl.”
Deborah whimpered under his palm as her body slowly started to sink back down into the sofa, but Cedric was not done yet. Just as she would keep her promise, he was going to keep his.
He moved his hand away from her mouth and toward the nape of her neck and lifted, bringing her lips to his in a ravishing kiss that had them both moaning. Then he moved, laying her down fully on the couch so he could slide down between her parted legs, and slid his tongue over her soaked mons.
White stars exploded behind his eyes as he tasted the proof of her ecstasy on his tongue, and without another thought, he began to feast with utter abandon.
“Oh, God, Cedric!” Deborah moaned as her hands fisted in his dark hair.
“More,” he snarled between her thighs, and then slid his tongue deeper.
Deborah bucked and whimpered, her hands fisting tight into his hair as if it were her only way to cling to the earth itself.
Cedric was lost, his need so great that he forgot everything that was not Deborah. That they were in the parlor with the door still slightly open. That the curtains had not yet been drawn over the windows. That there was any pain, any duty, aside from making the woman beneath him come apart again.
And he did. As he slid his tongue from her tight sheath to her trembling bud, as he drew that precious bundle into his mouth and slid his fingers back into her channel, she came apart, whimpering his name as if it was the only word she knew as he greedily drank her release.