Chapter Twenty-Four
Eleanor’s heart stopped, then leapt forward before settling into a frantic rhythm.
She was to direct this interlude?
Though the idea was thrilling in the extreme, it also brought back a bit of the uncertainty that had been quieted by his unexpected vulnerability.
What if she said the wrong thing? What if the things she wanted…were unusual or simply not done?
Waring’s eyelids lowered over his intense stare. “I could press my lips to yours.” His voice dropped a full register—each word becoming deeper, richer, more textured—as he dipped his gaze along her sprawled form. “Or smooth my hand beneath your skirts.”
Eleanor’s body responded to each new reverberation of his tone with a rush of tingling and warmth. Liquid heat swirled in her core and flowed to her sex.
“I could remove your slippers…” His voice rolled over her. Through her. “Help you out of your gown…expose your breasts to the dance of my tongue.”
She issued a breath that came out somewhere between a whimper and a smothered moan. She hadn’t meant to make a sound, and it did very little to release the tension twisting through her.
“Ah,” he smiled. “That appeals to you. You wish to be naked? Every inch of you laid out for my feasting. I’ll eat you alive, my beauty,” he murmured thickly. “And you’ll love every moment of it.”
She was breathless now. Desire twisting and turning almost violently through her bloodstream from his words alone. She couldn’t imagine how it would feel for him to actually do the things he described.
But she desperately wanted to find out.
His eyes flashed bright in the darkness. His body remained taut and hard and looming above her as he waited.
“I’ll need you to say what you want,” he said gruffly. “Out loud.”
Taking a deep breath, she met his stare, overwhelmed by the gift he was giving her.
It was her choice.
This wasn’t something she’d be doing out of expectation or because her position and her family required it. This would be for her and her alone. And she wanted it. So very, very badly.
Was she strong enough? Brave enough?
She slipped her tongue along her dry lips.
His jaw clenched as his focus followed the movement. For some reason his intense attention didn’t make her feel the slightest bit awkward. It empowered her. With a flash of heat and fire, she lost whatever reticence she still clung to.
“I want to be naked on this bed,” she said quietly, her voice firm and clear. “I want you to touch me everywhere. Kiss me. Everywhere.”
His gaze shot back to hers as she started speaking and by the end of her last word, a slow dangerous smile had crept across his lips, revealing the edge of his teeth.
His tone was graveled and low. “As you wish, princess.”
Gripping first one ankle then the other, he removed her slippers, flashing a grin as he playfully tossed them over his shoulder.
Then he slid both hands up one leg, gently kneading her calf, teasing the sensitive spot behind her knee with his fingertips, before continuing up her thigh to the edge of her stockings.
He held her gaze as he expertly released the fastenings.
When he slid one stocking down, down, with tantalizing slowness, then the other, Eleanor could barely breathe.
The slide of silk on her skin mixed with the warmth of his hands created deep and heady sensations throughout her body.
His expression turned suddenly, deeply wicked as he arched a brow and curled a smile. “No undergarments?”
A special kind of hollow ache settled in her core. Her response was a choked sound that caught in her throat. She’d removed them earlier when the fire in her bedroom had grown too warm.
He smiled wider at the sound she made and glanced down at her legs.
In the process of attending to her stockings, her skirts had risen to mid-thigh.
Bending one knee, she lifted her leg along the outside of his where he still kneeled.
She wanted to hook her ankle around his hips and pull him toward her, but uncertainty stopped her at the last moment.
And she replaced her foot back to the mattress.
The sound he made then was nearly feral. Growly and dark, his need was evident in the rough words he spoke next. “Don’t deny yourself. If you want something, take it. If you’re compelled to explore, do it.”
The last was uttered like a command, but she sensed a plea hiding in the back of his throat.
Following his instruction, when her next urge arose, she did not fight it.
Pushing herself up to brace upon one elbow, she brought her other hand to rest flat against his chest. The very tip of her middle finger found the bare skin at the hollow of his collarbone.
His pulse was frantic and fiercely strong.
She wanted to lick it.
But first, she wanted to see him.
Closing her hand into a fist that gripped the material of his shirt, she tugged. With a quick flicker of her gaze to his, she said, “Remove this.”
His lips twitched as he sat back on his heels and grasped his shirt in both hands to pull it roughly and swiftly off over his head.
As soon as his chest was bared, she reached for him again.
This time, her fingertips met warm flesh dusted with curling dark hair that covered taut muscle and a thundering heartbeat.
She indulged for a moment, flattening her palm over the heavy rhythm, before her curiosity urged her to explore.
With a light touch, she drifted her fingertips down his sternum to the taut planes of his belly, taking delight in the way his muscles tensed beneath her touch.
Then she trailed her touch up again along his ribs, then across the peak of one flat nipple, before slipping her hand over the curve of his shoulder.
Pushing herself more upright, she leaned forward. Sandalwood filled her nostrils and the warmth of him reached out to her.
Anticipation made her mouth dry. She licked her lips and swallowed before she followed her instinct to taste him.
The first touch of her tongue to his skin was a heady sensation.
The small hollow at the base of his throat was salty, warm, and threaded with his pulse.
Her tongue swirled over the spot before she was urged to go further.
Tilting her head, she licked a path along the ridge of his collarbone to the side of his throat.
There, she parted her lips over his flesh and sucked it gently against her teeth.
He hissed a breath and grasped her head in his hand, holding her gently to him.
His voice was a heavy vibration beneath her lips. “Your mouth is divine. Give it to me,” he ordered roughly as he fisted his hand in her hair, pulling just enough to tip her head back as he bent toward her. His mouth closed over hers with a fierce passion.
Eleanor sighed and opened wide to him. To the lick of his tongue, the heat of his breath, the possessive claiming of his lips.
He slowly laid her back down, coming over her more fully now, pressing his chest to hers, settling his hips between her thighs. The pressure of him there was wicked and wonderful. Eleanor rolled her spine, adjusting her pelvis to feel more of him.
And she did.
The thick, hardness of his arousal notched perfectly against the most sensitive part of her.
And when he gave a short rolling thrust of his hips, his erection eased along her flesh and ground her clitoris with breath-stealing pressure.
He did it again, and again. As her legs bent to better receive him and her skirts got shoved higher and higher, until she felt herself nearly completely exposed.
But it didn’t matter. She didn’t care.
All she could focus on was the pleasure of that rhythmic, rocking pressure and the way it sparked rippling sensations through her body to her fingertips and toes and the back of her skull. His kiss was drugging and deep. Drawing her into a vortex of pleasure and passion while her worries spun away.
He only briefly broke his kiss to expertly release the buttons of her gown and whisk the thing over her head. Her chemise was just as efficiently disposed of and within no time at all, she was naked. Just as she wanted.
She barely had a moment to consider the shock of her boldness before he covered her again, now sliding his kisses down her throat, across her heaving chest to the peaks of her breasts. His twirled and flicked his tongue first over one nipple than the other.
Eleanor could only gasp and purr. Though she loved having his mouth on hers, the suckling, nipping kisses he bestowed upon her breasts were yet another revelation of sensations. Her thighs squeezed against his ribs and her belly trembled in response.
When he lowered further to dip his tongue into her navel, she gasped in surprise.
And when he pressed moist kisses to the curve of her low belly, her insides quivered.
She didn’t realize she had her eyes so tightly closed until he swept his lips gently across her upper thigh and her lashes lifted swiftly in shock.
Gazing down the length of her flushed body, she saw him between her wide-parted legs. Braced on his elbows, his face poised at the juncture of her thighs, his bright eyes staring back at her with ravenous, unholy intent.
“Phin?” she asked, her voice low and tremulous.
His response was a thick growl as he bent his arms to place his palms atop her belly. Then he held her gaze and opened his mouth to drag his tongue slowly along the full length of her sex.
Eleanor’s mouth dropped open on a silent moan, her lashes fluttered at the wild and wicked sensations.
Never had she imagined… Never would she have believed such hedonism…
such decadence could exist. A tiny voice in the farthest reaches of her mind suggested she should protest. But the look in his eyes was so ferocious—so demanding and possessive—she didn’t dare.
So, she watched—heavy-lidded and breathless—as he lifted his head and rolled his bottom lip between his teeth before he went back for more.
Another long lick of his wide, velvet tongue.
A quick fluttering caress over her swollen bud.
Then a suckling kiss that drew her flesh into the heat of his mouth.
That was when she surrendered. The moan slid deep and heavy and sultry from her throat as she tipped her pelvis upward. Offering more of herself. Silently begging for a deeper kiss.
He grunted in appreciation and gave what she asked for.
Another hot, wet, suckling kiss. A deep thrust of his tongue. Then another. And another. His kisses pulsed and throbbed with her heartbeat. Bringing her right to the brink of release.
It was electrifying.
Eleanor felt certain she was falling apart, disintegrating into a being of stars, as pleasure seemed to make up the structure of every cell in her body.
And then, with the slow insertion of his fingers into her slick, swollen sheath, and another drawing pull of his mouth on her clitoris, she exploded.
The climax was quite literally obliterating. She became nothing but sensation. No thought. No physical body. Just sparkling pleasure expanding to the edges of awareness.