Chapter 15
Sybil clutched her husband to her tightly as he spilled inside her, selfishly hoping that no child would come of their coupling. Because she wasn’t yet ready to lose his nightly visits when that day inevitably came.
She kissed his neck, finding the place where his pulse pounded at a gallop from his sensual exertion, and inhaled deeply of his scent as she caressed up and down the smooth, muscled planes of his back.
His body was a thing of beauty, much like his lovemaking was.
She knew she would never grow weary of holding him to her this way, just after they made love, before he withdrew from her and everything changed.
Not for the first time, it occurred to her to see what would happen if she tried to persuade him to stay. To spend another hour in her bed, if not the whole night. Sybil was languid with desire, and her love for him couldn’t be contained.
When he shifted in the familiar motions that meant he was about to slide from her body and leave, she tightened her hold on him. “Stay.”
He stilled, lifting his head to stare down at her, a lock of hair falling over his brow. “You should rest.”
Determined, she ducked her head and kissed along his jaw, enjoying the rasp of the stubble on his jaw against her lips. “I don’t want to rest. I want to lie here with you.”
For a long moment, he was silent, and she was intensely aware of all the places their bare skin touched. The prickle of his chest hair on her nipples. The jut of his hip bone beneath her thigh, the warmth of his back, taut and tensed beneath her fingertips. He was still inside her.
She found his lips and kissed him slowly, sweetly, coaxing him as he often did to her, before sinking her tongue into his mouth. With a low groan that told her he couldn’t resist, he returned the kiss, rolling them as their lips remained fused until he was on his back and she was atop him.
They kissed for a time, hands traveling over each other’s bodies, mouths seeking.
Sybil closed her eyes, savoring him, lost to sensation.
After a time, she lifted her lips from his and settled her head on his chest, just above his madly thudding heart, testing the waters.
Seeing if he would allow her to remain or if he would seek to disentangle himself and leave.
She bit her lip to suppress her smile when his hand gently stroked over her hair. Not urging her away, but caressing her softly, his other arm wrapped lightly around her waist. Her breasts were still crushed against his chest, and his cock was still within her, already hardening again.
“Your hair was unbound again this evening,” he commented lightly, his voice a delicious rumble in the darkness. “I’m beginning to think I can use your coiffure as a means of determining your mood. When you’re displeased with me, it’s filled with pins.”
He was not wrong. There were occasions when she was feeling vexed and chose to keep her hair up quite intentionally.
“I hadn’t thought you had noticed,” she said, gently tracing the dark whorls of hair on his chest as she spoke.
“I notice everything where you are concerned.”
She jerked her head up to find his countenance serious, his gaze on her, pale but far from icy. It was aflame. “You do?”
“How could I not? You are always the loveliest woman in the room.” He frowned at her, as if the effect she had on him was displeasing.
But Sybil found it quite the opposite.
She rather enjoyed the notion that he couldn’t help but to notice her.
His revelation stirred old yearnings that she had believed long locked away.
She kissed his bare chest over his heart, absorbing the steady thrum with her lips.
He stirred within her, and she felt an answering ache of need pulse to life deep in her core.
“You flatter me, I think,” she said softly.
“Hardly.” He cupped her cheek. “Flattery is not needed in the face of truth.”
Sybil took the lead this time, craning her neck to kiss him.
He cupped her nape and held her there, his tongue tangling with hers.
His other hand settled on the curve of her waist, caressing.
This was where she came to life. Where all her discontent and hurt fell away and she could simply throw herself headlong into pleasure.
She kissed him until she was breathless and need overtook her and she couldn’t keep herself from moving.
She rode him, grinding herself down on his now-rigid cock, the angle and control filling her with a heightened sense of power and awareness.
She shifted, needing more, moving herself to an upright position, his length still lodged deep.
For a moment, she allowed herself the luxury of admiring her husband, who regarded her with a hooded gaze, his lips darkened from her kisses in the shadowy lamplight. She rocked her hips forward, the motion making her clitoris rub against him. It felt so good that she gasped and did it again.
“That’s it, wife,” he murmured, cupping her breasts and brushing his thumbs over her nipples. “Ride me.”
And she did, writhing atop him, hips finding the rhythm the rest of her needed. Her eyes shuttered and she surrendered to the blackness, chasing what she wanted, the drive of him deep inside her again and again.
He suckled the peak of one breast and then flicked his tongue over it, making her moan.
Her head fell back as she continued to move, undulating.
Her hand stole to her aching bud, the relief she needed within reach.
It was there, so close. She strummed over her nub faster, faster.
Another desperate sound fled her lips. Closer. Almost there.
“Don’t close your eyes, damn you,” he growled. “Open them and look at me.”
The urgency in his voice mingled with an anger that she didn’t understand.
But she did as he asked, her gaze holding his as she suddenly flew over the edge.
With a strangled noise of his own, he pumped frantically into her until he too reached his release and the warmth of his seed flooded her yet again.
Overwhelmed, she slid from atop him, falling to her back on the bed at his side. But Everett wasn’t finished. He kissed her again, his mouth hard and demanding on hers. And then he moved between her legs, urging her thighs apart.
“Show me.”
She didn’t understand his demand. “What do you wish to see?”
He caressed her hip lightly before his hand returned to her inner thigh. “Open your legs. I want to see me dripping out of you.”
The tantalizing ache inside her was instantly renewed.
Her breasts were heavy and full, her nipples tight points, and the flesh between her thighs was still pulsing with the aftereffects of multiple releases.
But it didn’t matter. She was intensely aware of every sensation, the bedsheets at her back, his scent wrapping around her, his heated pale-blue stare drinking her in.
So she did as he commanded, gliding her legs apart.
His gaze instantly dipped to her sex, and she felt it as surely as a touch.
“Damn.” His curse was guttural. “Your pussy looks so perfect, filled with me.”
She had to bite her lip to keep from releasing a moan of helpless desire.
He moved until he was between her spread legs, his handsome face dipping perilously near to her most vulnerable place.
With agonizing slowness, he dragged a finger down her seam, over sensitized, swollen flesh to her entrance.
He used his fingertip to gather the moisture that had seeped from her, swirling it over her.
Pleasure jolted through her, making her hips buck.
“So responsive.” He sank a finger into her channel, stretching her, pushing his seed back inside. “When you are with me, I want you to see me. To remember who your husband is.”
As if she could forget. She gasped, back arching.
“This is what we are to each other,” he murmured coolly, his head dipping so close to her that his hot breath fell across her tender flesh.
“Two bodies seeking mindless pleasure. Fucking and nothing more.” His lips closed around her pearl, sucking hard as he began to pump in and out of her, a second finger joining the first.
Sybil was helpless. She knew what he was doing—deliberately demeaning what they had shared.
Creating distance between them. Making a point of proving that there was naught between them but the physical.
And yet, he was also pleasuring her. The steady rhythm of his fingers and the suction of his mouth on her swollen bud were too much.
Desire coiled within her, the wet sounds of him sucking and thrusting in her echoing in the stillness of the chamber along with her panting breaths.
An exquisite tension overtook her, as if at any second, she would fly apart.
She couldn’t look away from his head between her thighs, and when he found a particularly sensitive part of her bud and worried it with his teeth, she lost all control.
Everything came apart.
Or exploded like fireworks against a night sky.
Or mayhap she died.
The bliss was almost excruciating, racing through her in a potent frenzy. She clamped down on his fingers, the flood of desire so intense that she cried out, back bowing from the bed, eyes sliding closed as she rode out her pleasure, so drained when it was done that she could scarcely think.
He calmly withdrew and slipped from her bed, returning to his bedroom without uttering another word.
Everett was becoming dangerously obsessed with his wife.
At first, he had told himself that he could control the reckless, impulsive need to be near her.
That he could relegate such yearnings to the bedroom each night, when marital obligation and the bargain he’d struck with her at Wingfield Hall could be his excuse.
Several weeks into their arrangement, he had persuaded himself that it was his need to secure an heir that had him visiting her bedroom every night, as if bedding her was the air he required to breathe.