21. CHAPTER 21 #2
His face was between her spread thighs. His tongue swept across her clitoris.
Slow at first. Then, not slow at all. He was not teasing now.
His mouth on her was ravenous, greedy — the hunger of a man who had denied himself for years.
Something deeper within her understood the desperation that drove him.
She could not hide. Could not pull away. His arms pinned her hips while his tongue worked her without mercy. She looked down at his dark head between her thighs and understood he was not performing. He was taking what he needed from her body, and what he needed was her surrender.
And she — bound, spread open, suspended — she was helpless. There was nothing to do but feel.
He was right. It was freedom.
He looked up. Their eyes caught. Whatever she saw in his gaze — ferocity, devotion, a need so raw it had no name — it commanded her body the way his voice could not.
She broke. The pleasure ripped through her and she cried out, and his groan against her flesh sent another wave through her, and another, until she could not tell where one ended and the next began.
He pressed his face to the inside of her thigh. Stayed there. Then he lowered her with a care that made her chest ache, sliding from between her legs but keeping his hands on her until her feet touched stone.
"Can you stand?"
"Yes." Her knees didn't agree. But they held.
He unstrapped the bar from her thighs, and she brought her legs together, tender and throbbing. He stood and reached for her wrists.
His hands were unsteady.
She noticed because his fingers stuttered against the thin skin of her inner wrist as he worked the buckles.
An uncharacteristic clumsiness. She was watching his hands the way he had been watching her body.
The control he'd maintained — the precision, the patience, the iron command — had cost him. She could see the price in his tendons.
Who was this man? Cold stranger one moment. Ruthless lover the next. And now, shaking as he freed her.
When the last buckle gave, he gathered her up and carried her to the sofa.
Sat with her across his lap. His hands moved over her — gentler now, soothing — and his mouth found her hair, her forehead, her nose.
Maybe tomorrow she would feel embarrassed about her wicked abandon.
But right now, she felt no shame at being naked in his arms. It felt like the most natural state in the world.
His touch was so tender that it took her a moment to register the part of him that was not tender at all. It was hard and urgent beneath her, pressing against the place that was still sensitive from what he'd done to her.
She shifted against it, and he grunted, gripping her hips. "Don't." Half command, half plea.
"But you… you haven't… don't you want to — "
He shook his head.
"Tonight was about you."
"But — "
"I am more than content." He pressed his face into her neck. But his arms were rigid, and a tremor ran through his whole body. He was holding himself in check so hard that she could feel the effort through her own skin.
She put her hand on his face and turned it toward her. "I'm grateful. But you know what I mean."
He sighed. "That's not how I want our first time together to be."
Something in the way he said together — the careful weight on the word, the deflection dressed as romance. She heard a border that had nothing to do with patience or chivalry.
"Isn't this the way we always did it?"
He laughed. "You think this is all we used to do?"
"Isn't it?"
"Oh, no. This is only one facet. I've had you in every way a man can have a woman. Slow and tender. Quick and rough. In the bedchamber, in the sea, standing against a wall during a ball. Bent over my desk. In a carriage, in the gardens. Every way. Every place."
She absorbed that, feeling her cheeks burn and her insides clench.
They had enjoyed a vigorous marital life.
She could believe it. The hunger she felt for him, even when thoroughly sated, was absurd.
She wanted to strip him bare. Wanted to explore every inch of the body she'd felt but not seen. Wanted to watch his control crack.
"Is there nothing I can do for you now?" She pressed her face to his neck and breathed him in. "Nothing you'll accept?"
S he was unraveling him.
Every muscle he owned locked. Seven years of his own hand in the dark, and now her scent was on his lips and her warmth was in his lap and she was asking to touch him, and the discipline that had kept him sane through the worst time of his life was giving way.
He should have kissed her forehead. Carried her to her room. And spent himself alone against the cold tiles of his washroom, as he had done a hundred times before.
But she was asking to give. And he wanted to take what she was offering. God how he wanted it.
Not just release. Release was easy. He wanted her hands on him. His skin was raw with wanting it. Seven years of nothing had left his nerve endings exposed, so that even the brush of her fingers through the gap in his shirt sent a jolt through him.
Her hands were inside his shirt. Tracing patterns on his chest. Swirling. Light scratches. Did she know — did some part of her remember — that this was how he liked to be touched? That this specific rhythm of stroke and scratch had always undone him? Or was it instinct?
It didn't matter. It was everything .
"Yes. Touch me." The words came out thick. "I'm starving for your hands on me."
She didn't hesitate. Her fingers slid around his neck, into his hair, scratching his scalp until a sound came from his throat that was not quite human. She worked his buttons. Got her hands on his chest and shoulders.
His head fell back. He watched her through half-closed eyes. Auburn hair. Pale skin. The curves of her breasts. He craved to reposition her on his lap and bury himself in the slick heat between her thighs.
His cock leaked against his trousers at the thought.
The last button gave way, and the shirt gaped. She leaned in and kissed the center of his chest. It was pure bliss. It was not enough.
He pulled the shirt off. She looked at him and smiled. Tender. Open. A smile he recognized from a different life, and his throat closed on everything he wanted to say to her.
She thought he was in control. He could bind her wrists and command her body, and she could bring him to his knees with that smile.
She kissed his neck. Trailed her mouth over his chest. Buried her nose in the hair there and breathed him in. She made a small, hungry sound against his skin, and something inside him buckled.
She slid lower. His stomach clenched. His hands closed on her upper arms as she kissed down his body and settled on her knees between his legs. Her hands ran up his thighs and converged on his aching erection.
"Vivienne. Wait."
"I think I can do for you what you did for me," she said. Honest, even now. "Tell me what to do."
His breath caught. "You don't have to."
"I want to. I want to know you, Dalton. Show me who you are."
She was not asking only to see his body. She was asking him to let go.
He held her gaze as he brought his hands to his waistband and unfastened his trousers.
S he took over, parting the fabric until his rod sprang free, thick and swollen against his belly.
She wrapped her fingers around it. Solid, but the skin was smooth.
She tightened her grip, and he flexed into her hand.
Delicate flesh slid over the iron beneath.
Her other hand found and cupped the round, velvety balls at the base of his shaft. A groan tore from his chest.
"Yes. Just like that."
She squeezed, and his head dropped back. The sound he made was close to pain. She studied him. A droplet of moisture gathered at the slit. She leaned down and lapped it up.
"Vivienne." Her name came out as a plea.
She knew what he was asking for. She took the head into her mouth and sucked it.
He made a strangled, wrecked sound. She laughed around him, delighted with herself. With no memory of ever having done this, she was going on instinct alone. But her hands and mouth knew what to do. They worked together, and the sounds they drew from him were music to her ears.
She pulled back, kept her lips on his length, kissing. Then looked up.
"Tell me what you want."
"You're doing…" He couldn't finish. "Lick me. Take me in." A broken groan as she did. His hands left her arms and found her hair, combing it back from her face, holding it gathered in his fist. Not controlling her movements. Just watching.
She looked up at him through her lashes, and what she saw on his face captivated her. Need. Reverence. Terror at how much of himself he was handing over to her, who didn't even remember him.
"Use your hands. Ahhh — yes. Take me deeper."
He kept talking, but at some point, she was already ahead of him. The sounds of his body guided her. She was learning him, so attuned to his rhythms that she anticipated what he needed —
His breath changed. Everything gathered.
"Darling." His voice, ragged. "I'm going to spend. Let go — "
She moaned around him and took him deeper. She was not going to let go.
His hand flexed in her hair. And then, a beat before the crisis, he pulled her head back. Firm. Absolute.
"No — " she protested. Confused at the sudden withdrawal.
His hand was already on himself. Two strokes and his release spilled across his own belly with a sound wrenched from somewhere deep.
His other hand held her jaw, his thumb tracing her cheekbone, and the tenderness of that small gesture against the rawness of the rest didn't match.
As though one hand was being honest and the other was apologizing.
The tension left his body all at once.
But something nagged at her.
He reached for a cloth from a stack on the side table and wiped himself clean. Quick. Efficient. Habitual.
"That was…" He pulled her back into his lap, tucking her against his chest. "I have no words. Thank you."
Warm against him, she asked it before she could think better of it.
"Why did you pull me away?"
A pause. Barely there, but she caught it.
"I didn't want to overwhelm you. Not the first time."
Reasonable. The answer of a careful man. And maybe that was all it was.
But the speed and precision of that gesture had not felt like courtesy. It had felt like a reflex. Something drilled so deep that he did it without thinking.
She put it away.
"I used to do that before, didn't I?"
"Yes."
"Was it as good?"
He laughed, a low rusty laugh, and pulled her closer, his face in her neck. "I think the evidence speaks for itself. Any better and you'd have killed me."
She smiled, pleased. The closeness between them felt enormous. She trusted him now. Strange, given what they'd done. But he was holding her so gently. Not taking more .
"If not like this," she said, "how do you want our first time?"
His mouth found her ear. "When I take you, I want nothing between us. No doubts. No questions. It will be slow. Deep." His voice dropped. "I want to feel you close around me and watch your face when you break apart. And in that moment, you will know that you belong with me."
What he didn't know was she was already there.