Chapter 18 #2
“And since you belong to me,” she murmured, voice gone soft and steady, “that makes you my king.”
His nostrils flared. Argyll and Daria moved their eyes over one another.
They came together in a collision—mouths meeting in a kiss that stole sense and air alike. Daria clutched at his neck as he lifted her leg, wrapping it securely about his waist. He scooped her up by the other thigh and carried them hard against the floor-length mirror fixed to the wall.
There was nothing but breath—hers shuddering against his mouth, his drawn from her—and the unmistakable give of her body beneath his hands.
He felt the instant her strength wavered, the way she clutched at him as if the ground itself had shifted, fingers biting into his coat, her body yielding to his without hesitation.
She moaned as she parted her lips, and Argyll took that sound as invitation enough. He claimed her mouth as he meant to claim her—thoroughly, irrevocably. His tongue swept deep, demanding, learning her response with the ruthless patience of a man who had waited far longer than he cared to admit.
He pinned her between his body and the cheval glass, the cool resistance of it making her softness more pronounced beneath his hands. Gathering her wrists in one hand, he drew them above her head, not to restrain—but because he needed her there. Needed her open.
“I am obsessed with you, Daria,” he said roughly, breath sawing in and out before he swallowed her mouth again. “Since the first day—”
“Th-that isn’t t-true,” she protested, her words breaking apart as his mouth took hers again.
He felt the answer to that denial in the way her body arched into his, in the restless friction she made against him, where instinct overruled caution.
A short, unintended laugh escaped him before dissolving into a groan as she pressed harder against the hold he kept on her wrists.
He hungrily returned to her lips.
Sliding both her wrists between one of his hands, he used the other to shove the thin slip of fabric down her body.
Palming the slight weight of her breast, he raised it to his mouth and sucked the crowned pink tip.
Daria cried out, twisting and writhing against the bonds he’d made for her. “Please!”
“Please what?” he breathed against her heaving chest. “Stop or—?”
“Free me!” she gasped. “I need to hold you.”
There wasn’t anything manufactured about his wife. Every rare smile and even rarer laugh. The questions on her lips. The way she yielded to her body’s desire.
“Ah, but what if you fly away again, little raven?” he closed his lips around one swollen tip.
“I-I won’t!”
He buried his smile against her heated flush. No, she wouldn’t.
Argyll released a fake sigh. “Alas, a bird in the hand, love.” He sucked her.
Daria hissed. In time to the pace of his mouth, she pushed her hips against his cock.
Moisture hit his brow. His body was hungry for release the likes he’d never known. Ever.
Argyll worshiped at the altar of her breasts. Lavishing his attention on the cream-white, satin-soft orbs.
And while he did, he discovered much about his wife. She loved the naughty sound of his sucking on her. He flicked his tongue around the sensitive peak.
“Gregory!” Daria cried his name like a prayer and a plea. “Gregory!”
Panting, he released her wrists, and she collapsed into the wall behind her.
He fell to his knees and parted her with his hands, leaving her wide for his worship.
Argyll hissed sharply between his teeth. He threaded his fingers through her sodden curls. “You are always so wet for me, Daria,” he whispered, placing a kiss along her inner thigh.
“And is that something y-you mmmm?”
He slipped a finger inside her, and eased it out so quick that she whimpered.
“Enjoy?” Argyll supplied the rest of her unfinished thought. He chuckled. “Immensely, love.”
Her eyes formed enormous moons in her face.
Then Argyll did something he loved even more—he buried his nose into her thick triangle of curls and inhaled the hot, musky scent of her. “You talk so often about the end, little love,” he panted. “Prepare for your petite mort.”
Argyll buried his tongue deep in her channel.
Daria collapsed onto the dais. “Gregory!”
He moved his tongue within her. Grabbing his hair, she anchored him where she wanted him, where she needed him.
Setting a languid pace at first, Argyll increased the glide of his tongue.
“You taste delicious, Daria.” He flicked his tongue over her sensitive nub.
She moaned and thrashed her head. The fogged mirror at her back thumped sharply in the quiet, a quiet broken only by the sounds of their ragged breathing.
He barely broke the kiss to breathe before returning to her with desperate hunger.
Scooping his hands under her sweetly curved buttocks, he dragged Daria’s hips up and closer to his mouth. Like a man starving, he licked and sucked and tasted.
His cock bloody begged for release, and he rubbed himself in circles along her thigh, letting her feel his desire for her.
I want her. I want to feel her channel tight around me…
But he wanted something else even more.
“Come for me, love,” he coaxed, begged.
Moaning, Daria moved her hips against his mouth, her movements growing frantic.
He felt the shudder building inside her. Waited. Timed the moment. And then, using his tongue and finger together, he pushed her over.
“Gregory!” she sobbed. “Gregory.” Bucking and thrashing and cursing, she grinded herself wild against his face. “Gregory!” She cried his name over and over, letting it peal through the shop. Letting everyone knew the pleasure she received.
His ballocks drew tight.
Argyll gripped her hips harder and continued thrusting his tongue, drawing every last drop.
Until she let out a soft, broken cry.
Her replete body sank hard against the mirror. “Mmm.” A smile, one of those beautiful, elusive smiles she guarded so closely, played about her glistening lips, swollen from his mouth.
As his wife slowly descended from her climax, his body shook with the force of his lust for this woman. Drawing shaky breaths in through his nose and letting them out his mouth, he fought his baser urges. All he wanted was to fill her so deep there was no clarity of where she began and he ended.
When he took her, it wouldn’t be with a wall at her back or a floor as her mattress.
When had it ever mattered?
In truth, it hadn’t.
So why was it different with this woman? He couldn’t say. Didn’t want to say. Nor did he want this moment ruined with needless fears.
Still on his knees for her, Argyll pressed a gentle kiss to the creamy expanse of his wife’s thigh.
At her whispery sigh, he glanced up.
The quiet happiness resting on her face was his work, and the knowledge grounded him.
“Good, little raven?”
“Gregory?”
She stilled him as his mouth hovered over her damp curls. “Hmm?”
Her languid smile widened. “I flew.”
Hours Later
With a hand resting at the small of his wife’s back, Argyll guided Daria toward the southerly entrance of Forbidden Pleasures. The wiry butler, Colhoun, stood waiting with the doors thrown wide.
The escalating tensions between London’s gaming hells had required new measures.
Former guards had been replaced—hand-selected by Kilburn—and Colhoun was among them.
Each man had previously served as an Exploratory Officer with the British Army.
Ruthless in the field, their expertise in reconnaissance afforded a level of security the displaced guards could not match.
As they stepped inside, Colhoun sketched a quick bow. “Your Grace.” He bowed first to Daria.
“Hullo, Colhoun.”
Argyll started. “Since when have you and Colhoun become acquainted?”
His wife looked at him oddly. “When we departed for Madam Amalie’s.”
Argyll considered himself a fair employer, but he did not cultivate familiarity with staff. Outside of DuMond, he maintained no such relationships at all. And yet his wife, barely three days in his life, had managed it with disarming ease.
Colhoun coughed. “Mr. DuMond and Lord Kilburn request that you report to Mr. DuMond’s office upon your return, Your Grace.”
“Inform them I have pressing matters,” Argyll replied evenly—pressing matters meaning making love to his wife in a proper bed. He caught the braid of Daria’s pelisse and gently steered her away. “You are excused, Colhoun.”
The towheaded guard hesitated, then bowed again. His footsteps retreated briskly down the corridor.
Argyll pressed Daria against the wall and kissed her—slowly, deliberately, as though reminding himself she was real. That she was his.
One delightful discovery from their visit to Madam Amalie was that his wife was not prudish. As freely as she spoke her mind, she luxuriated just as freely in pleasure. The sound she made now—soft, unguarded—undid him.
Argyll’s cock throbbed from the need to be inside this woman.
“I’m going to carry you upstairs, love,” he rasped against her ear. He sucked the delicate shell.
Daria tossed her head back. “Gregory,” she pleaded.
His temperature flared. “I’m going to have you under me, in my bed,” Argyll tenderly bit the path that delectable vein traversed—as he’d been longing to do forever. He’d known her forever.
Argyll’s mind stalled, and he thrust aside everything—except this ravenous hunger for his wife. It’d only be tamed when he had her.
Argyll moved his steel-hard erection along the flat of her belly. “I’m going to take you above stairs now.” She moaned and undulated to meet his gyrations. “And take you in every way.” The grind of her hips took on a frantic rhythm.
His breath grew shallower. “I’m going to—”
Daria grabbed him by his lapels. “Gregory,” said, panting hard. “Will you please stop telling me what we are going to do and take me upstairs and do them?”
Grinning, he swept his free-talking bride up into his arms. “With pleasure,” he purred.
Footsteps approached.
Groaning against her throat, Argyll relinquished his hold, letting his wife slide to her feet.