Chapter 15 #2
“I’ve had enough of the secrets and the obfuscation, Phoebe,” he said, the hand that was pressed against the door coming to twine through the hair at the back of her head. Well, so much for the coiffure that her maid had spent positive ages putting together. “Tell me what’s going on.”
It was hard to think with his face so close to hers, close enough that she could, even in the dim light, see each of his individual eyelashes.
She decided that she was going to blame the distracting eyelash thing for why she told the truth. They were just so long. Surely a man oughtn’t have such pretty eyelashes, and certainly he oughtn’t get to have such piercing eyes. It wasn’t fair.
“I have possibly made a habit of sneaking out of my father’s house and going to… less than reputable places around the city,” she admitted, because evidently those eyes could mesmerize a person.
She was almost too mesmerized to enjoy the fact that this clearly took him aback.
“You,” he repeated very slowly, “have been sneaking out. Alone, I take it?”
“Generally,” she said. “Sometimes, though, I saw people I knew there, but Ariadne was with her husband, so I don’t think there’s anything you can say about that.”
“You went to disreputable places with my cousin Ariadne and her husband.” He had that same slow cadence, like he was doing an extremely complicated sum in his head.
“Well, at first we just happened upon one another. But after that, yes. Sometimes we arranged to go together.” And since she was admitting things, she added, “Sometimes we did leave David at home.”
This seemed, somehow, to be the thing that surprised him the most.
“Before you get any bright ideas,” he said, “know for an absolute fact that the next time that you go to any such place, you will be taking me with you.”
He said it like a threat, but it was, as far as Phoebe could tell, the best thing he could have said to her.
He hadn’t tried to stop her. He hadn’t even really admonished her for what was very obviously a threat to her reputation.
He’d just insisted that he would join her.
She didn’t have any other choice but to kiss him, really. Not after that.
He pulled back after only a moment, though not far enough that he wasn’t still pressing her deliciously against the door and not enough that she had to drop her hand from his face.
“This is important to you,” he said, assessing. “You like the freedom?”
“It’s not just the freedom,” she confessed. “It’s… the shows. They’re—thrilling.”
A wicked, wicked smile crossed her husband’s face.
“That’s what you like, then, my dear wife?” he asked. “Do you like to watch?”
As he asked, he trailed a finger down the side of her throat, tracing along to the neckline of her dress and then tugging just slightly—not enough to actually dislodge her clothing but enough to make the suggestion unmissable.
Her pulse fluttered wildly. “Yes,” she breathed.
He pressed a light kiss to the place where her blood thrummed just beneath her skin.
“And do you like to be watched?” he asked, his lips caressing her skin with each word.
If she’d thought that looking at him made it hard to think, it was nothing compared to how muddled her mind felt while he pressed his lips to her throat like that. His tongue darted out for the barest instant, a lightning-fast tasting of her skin, and she let out a whimper.
“I asked you a question, wife,” he reminded her, nipping at that same spot.
“I don’t know,” she breathed. “I—I’ve never…”
He pulled back just long enough to look at her, just long enough for her to see the possessive, predatory look in his eye.
“Good,” he purred. “That means that you will be all mine.”
And then he dove for her mouth like a man dying of thirst.
He wasn’t gentle, and he wasn’t slow, and Phoebe nearly melted from the warring sensations of his probing tongue, his curious hands, and the hard solidity of his leg between her thighs.
She, too, let her inhibitions fall away, let herself finally do some of the things she’d spent so much time watching—watching and wondering about.
She grabbed a fistful of his hair between her fingers and used that grip to pull him more firmly into the kiss.
She wrenched one of her gloves off with her teeth and squeezed her bare hand between them, then tugged at the bottom of his shirt until it lifted enough that she could press her palm to the hot, hard planes of his stomach.
He groaned into her mouth at her touch, thrusting his hips forward in a sharp movement that seemed, to Phoebe’s endless delight, to be outside his control. It sparked even more heat in her, and following some deep-seated instinct, she ground her core down against the hardness of his thigh and—
Oh.
Oh, that felt very nice indeed.
She did it again and found that it felt even better upon repeated application.
She was preparing to try again at a different angle when Aaron shifted them, pulling her away from the wall and dropping his leg down from beneath her.
“Why?” she demanded, not letting go of him as she very much did not approve of anything that put space between them right now.
“Can you never just listen to me?” he asked crossly. Phoebe opened her mouth to object—she wasn’t going to listen to bad ideas, after all—but he used the moment of distraction to turn them in a deft movement then drop her down onto a settee and lean bodily atop her.
Her protest cut off before it could begin.
“See?” he asked. “Sometimes obedience has its perks.”
“You’re going to have to make your case better than that, husband,” she taunted. She hooked a leg up around his waist so that she could feel the thrilling hardness of him against her most sensitive places. This time, when she rocked against him, he hissed a curse.
She had to credit the man for giving as good as he got, though, for he responded to this by reaching up, tugging down the front of her bodice, and closing his mouth over the straining bud of one nipple.
“God!” she muttered.
He pulled back to give her a mischievous gleam. “Just Aaron will do, Phoebe. No need for more.”
What a devilish, blasphemous man! So that was how he wanted to play this, was it?
“You are very difficult,” she complained, though the effect was admittedly diminished by the breathiness of her words.
He gave a hard suck on her nipple, which made her whimper.
“Am I?” he asked, his tone far, far too smug. Phoebe, unfortunately, was in no position to argue, as she was too busy trying not to make any more sounds that would reveal her utterly.
The devil she’d married was too clever by half, however; he smirked without removing his mouth from her, which sent an aching spasm of sensation through Phoebe.
“Do you know, little wife,” he asked, and Phoebe didn’t know if she should be upset or relieved that he released her nipple to speak, “I think you are much more agreeable when you’re getting pleasure.”
“I—”
Phoebe really didn’t have anything to say to that.
But her silence served as confirmation enough to Aaron, apparently, who grinned at her in a way that she would have described as boyish if not for the utterly adult activity in which they found themselves occupied.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” he said.
And then he dropped all the way to his knees and began lifting her skirts about her waist.
“Oh,” she said.
She knew what this was—or at least she thought she knew based on what she’d seen in her excursions—but the details were generally obscured by skirts, and from the moment that his fingers touched the inside of her leg, just above where her stockings were tied, she knew—
Seeing was nothing compared to feeling.
He trailed the tips of his fingers along the sensitive skin above her knee, just a skimming, glancing touch that was all rasp of calluses and the faintest scrape of his trimmed fingernails.
Somehow, it was the gentleness of the touch that made her feel it all the more; even after he traced higher to a new, even more sensitive part of her leg, she felt the places he’d touched before like they’d left lines of fire in their wake.
“Phoebe,” he murmured, looking up at her like a penitent. She didn’t know if it was a request for permission or an exhortation, but no matter what he meant, her answer was the same.
“Yes,” she breathed.
He pressed the mass of her skirts into her hands, guiding her to hold them out of his way as he continued his slow yet inexorable exploration higher. She felt her eyes go half-lidded as she watched him watch her.
“Look at how wet you are for me,” he murmured as he placed a gentle finger against her core.
She gasped, her head falling back and her hips canting forward, propelled by the wonder of his touch, by the filthy words, by the blazing heat of his gaze as he looked upon her most private place.
“Aaron,” she whimpered. “Please.”
Her eyes had fluttered closed, but she heard the smile in his voice as he responded.
“See? Just as I said. So very agreeable when I make you feel good.”
She wanted to respond—her pride demanded a pert response—but she had none.
She was lucky she could even manage remembering to clamp a hand over her mouth before her cries drew the whole party down on their heads.
As much as she found the idea of being watched somewhat thrilling, she felt certain that the reality would not prove nearly as pleasurable. Besides, it would likely make Aaron stop, and she might honestly be forced to kill him if he stopped.
And that was before he pressed his mouth to her center.
She clamped her fingers even more tightly over her mouth as a jolt of feeling shot through her, followed by another and another with each caress of his tongue against her.
She lost her grip on her skirts, and the fabric fell over him.
She might have mourned the loss of the view of him if she had been capable of anything besides the crackles of lightning behind her eyes.
It was consuming, the way he touched her, all firm wet strokes against a place on her body that she had known about, in some vague sort of way, but that she hadn’t understood until now. Because surely, nobody had ever felt pleasure like this; surely, they were the first to manage to feel this good.
And, against all odds, somehow Aaron managed to feel it, too, because he groaned against her in a way that sent reverberations through her. She felt her legs tremble as they struggled to hold her up.
“How is it like this?” he asked, his voice muffled by the places where he was pressed against her.
Phoebe hoped he didn’t intend for her to answer. She couldn’t, not when he followed these words by returning to his ministrations, by taking the hand that wasn’t gripping her thigh and placing it against her core and then…
Everything inside her clenched as he slipped a finger into her. It was a strange feeling, the intrusion, but a pleasant one nonetheless, as it made her aware of how her body was stretching in a new way.
“Oh, good girl,” he crooned, making her clench again. “That’s right. Let me—”
He moved, fingers and tongue and lips, and Phoebe felt her breath start to hiccup beneath her palm as tension low in her belly coiled tighter and tighter.”
"Aaron,” she heard herself say, the word audible despite her effort to suppress any sound coming from her lips. “Aaron, please, I—”
And then he did something—or perhaps it was many somethings—Phoebe didn’t know as she was barely a coherent being against the onslaught of feeling as she—
Erupted.
Phoebe felt every part of herself, all of it clenching and seizing against the pressure of Aaron’s tongue and the crook of his fingers. She trembled, stumbled, barely managing to remain upright as he coaxed her through the tremors that wracked her body.
She didn’t realize that her ears had been ringing with the force of her detonation until she started hearing Aaron’s voice again.
“—that’s it… Look at you, my beautiful wife. Mine.”
The guttural, possessive word made one last surge course through Phoebe, and when she finally managed to look down at Aaron, who had disentangled himself from her skirts, she knew that she wore a wide-eyed, shocked expression.
And her husband—the serious soldier, the feared admiral, the ice-cold duke that she had married—gave her a look that could only be described as rakish as he ran a hand over his mouth—a gesture that reminded Phoebe of exactly where that hand and mouth had just been.
One last shuddering breath left her.
And Aaron—damn him—looked irrepressibly smug like the cat who had got the canary.
He stood in a fluid motion that was an insult to Phoebe, who could still barely feel her legs.
“Come now, little wife,” he said, and Phoebe would protest that nickname, just as soon as her mind started working again. “Let us return to the party.”