Chapter 21
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The moment they reached the house, Alice took Frederick’s hand and dragged him upstairs. He let her set the pace, and when they reached her bedchamber, he remained almost motionless as she ripped at his buttons.
“What do you want from me?” he asked, hands clenched by his sides, as though he wanted nothing more than to touch her.
Good.
“I want to use my mouth,” she breathed.
She saw the way he swallowed, eyes darkening, still fixed on her. Oh yes, he liked the sound of that a lot.
Their conversation in the park had put a lot of things into clarity for her. Not only did he regret what he had done, but he was battling his own kind of loss. In some ways, a harsher one. They each had their demons, but she was beginning to think they could vanquish them together.
This was a test, of a kind. She pushed at his chest, and he obeyed her, walking backward to the bed. There, she pushed again, and he fell into a seated position, hands bracing on the covers.
“So you wouldn’t rather marry any other young lady, hmm?” she asked, finally forcing his waistcoat down over his arms. That joined his coat, discarded on the floor.
“No,” he muttered hoarsely.
“I want you to beg for me.” She removed his shirt, then applied herself to the buttons at his breeches. Now she had given full rein to her desire, it overpowered everything else inside her. All other thoughts and feelings.
She would not give this up merely for the sake of spiting him. After five years of living in darkness, it finally felt as though she was alight again. Alive.
She freed his length and wrapped her fingers around it the way he had shown her before. Then, watching his face slacken with pleasure, she moved her hand. He groaned.
“May I touch you?”
“No.” She leaned in, sinking to her knees. “Not until you beg.”
“What do you want me to beg for?”
“What would you like the most?”
He leaned in, over her as she bent her head to his arousal.
Even in her private thoughts, she couldn’t use the coarse term he had used, but that didn’t change the reality of what she held in her hand.
Its fragrance was that of soap and musky man, a scent that made her stomach loop with liquid heat. Everything in her tightened.
“I want to make you come with my mouth,” he grated, the words a growl.
“Then beg,” she whispered, and took him in her mouth.
The act was not as easy as she had first supposed it would be.
He was hot in her mouth, silken and hard, but for a moment, her teeth intruded and got in the way.
She changed the shape and pressure of her lips and found she was able to take him deeper.
He brushed the very back of her throat, and she gagged, the sound making him groan again.
She loved the sound of his pleasure. A woman could get addicted to that, to making him writhe under her. When she opened streaming eyes, it was to find his hands fisted in the covers, and his entire body tensed underneath her, muscles rippling.
He brushed the tears from her face, and she withdrew. Her saliva coated his length, and she looked at it with satisfaction. Then she lowered her head to take him in again. His hips jerked, a reflexive action, and a hand landed on her hair. Just as quickly, he removed it.
The hollow, aching place she had felt within herself since their very first kiss deepened, and ached further.
She felt the hot slickness of her own arousal between her thighs.
She rubbed them together, sparking pleasure of her own inside her, and brought her head down on him again.
This time, she used her hand at the same time, and curses fell from his lips in an impressively fluid torrent.
“Alice,” he rasped. “Alice, I must touch you…”
“Then beg,” she repeated. Her will against his; that had always been their way. A clash, a demand, and a victor.
With them, making love was akin to declaring war, and she reveled in the challenge of it.
“Well?” She looked at him through her lashes, and his chest heaved at the sight. “Or would you have me touch myself?”
Without waiting for an answer, she slid a hand between her legs, feeling for herself how wet she was. At the feel, though her fingers did not compare to his—they were too slim, too soft, not knowing her body as well as he already knew hers—she allowed her eyes to roll back in her head.
He thrust up into her mouth, then cursed, pulling himself free. Her experimentation the previous evening meant she now recognized the signs that told her he was close.
“Fine,” he muttered through his teeth. She had a feeling he had been withholding that concession so she would feel it was fully earned, but she didn’t mind that in the slightest. She knew he had no issues with yielding to her, just as he knew she preferred to battle before coming out the victor.
“Fine. Please, Alice. Let me touch you. I beg you.”
She smiled, both her hands braced against his thighs. “Then where would you like me?”
His eyes gleamed with the victory she had in turn handed to him, and rose, guiding her to her feet with two hands on her upper arms. He steadied her on her unsteady foot, and eased her back on the bed, so they had effectively swapped positions. He kneeled before her, his head between her knees.
“My turn,” he breathed, and there was a dark pleasure in his voice that made her think of sinful sheets and clutching hands.
He spread her legs, and she allowed him, watching his expression of awe when he saw the slickness coating her most precious place.
“I will never take this for granted,” he whispered reverently, pressing his mouth against her inner thigh.
At the brush of his hot mouth against her sensitive skin, she gasped.
Then he brought his face to her folds, and she forgot how to breathe entirely.
He made love with his mouth alone—long, luxurious licks, finding every point of pleasure and lavishing his attention on it.
There was no denying he was an expert at his craft, and she was more than happy to benefit from his expertise.
She locked her legs around his head, holding him close, and her hips jerked with every laving movement.
He peeked up at her over the concave dip of her stomach and grinned, and her heart gave an odd, unexpected flip.
“You taste even better than I’d imagined,” he growled, fingers sliding up her skirts.
There was something erotic about the idea that he was utterly undressed, and she, not at all. She bit her hand, attempting to keep her moans in, but when he slid a finger inside her, there was no holding back.
He gave a sound of satisfaction at her low, liquid moan, and with his tongue and fingers, he brought her to the brink. This time, he didn’t hesitate before plunging her over the other side. She went tight and loose all at once, her climax barreling through her.
Every time she thought she understood what her body was capable of, he served to prove her wrong. He pushed her to new heights, broadened her horizons, and each time, it left her breathless.
“Now,” he growled, surging above her—but not before taking her ruined calf in his hand and kissing it tenderly. “Now I will have my way with you, Alice.”
She could have denied him, but knowing he would do as she said and stopped made her reluctant to do it.
Even in yielding to him, she knew she had the power, and that made it all the sweeter to lay down her weapons.
And so she made no demur as he positioned himself between her legs, looking down at her clothed body with something approaching awe.
“I would love to see you unclothed,” he murmured darkly, “but this excites me just as much.”
He pushed her skirts back so they bunched around her hips, and then, standing on the floor, he took hold of her thighs and plunged inside.
The motion was almost violent, and she waited for the pain—she had been so tender just that morning, and she remembered the flash of pain that had accompanied the first moment of entry the last time.
But there was little of that now. Just delicious fullness and a surge of pleasure that took her by surprise—as though her climax had never finished, and he had just extended it.
He reached down and took hold of her hair, digging his fingers into her bun and tilting her throat to him.
Bare. Vulnerable.
Her stomach fluttered, but there was no fear here. She knew beyond any doubt that he would never hurt her.
“You are mine,” he snarled and accompanied the words with another thrust into her. She felt as though she would burst apart at the seams, but only in the best, most delightful way. “Do you understand?”
“Yes,” she gasped. “I understand.”
“And you are not to be anyone else’s.”
She nodded, wondering how she could ever want another man when he was the only one who set fire to her desires in this way. Infuriating, certainly. Difficult and tortured—yes. But regardless of all these reasons, she wanted him more than she could ever imagine wanting anyone else.
“Say it,” he told her, plunging inside her again. She watched the play of muscles, the way they moved and danced in his abdomen with each movement. Not like a Greek statue—he was utterly, vividly alive.
“I’m yours,” she breathed. “And you—”
“I have been yours since the first moment you came to me in the church,” he muttered and smiled crookedly down at her.
Her heart gave another flip, and it felt as though he filled her more than just between her legs.
He was everywhere inside her. Between her ribs, in her stomach, in her mind.
She would never be able to be without him.
“And only mine,” she whispered.
“Only yours.” He bent to touch her again, and she almost jerked out of his grasp. But he held on and did it again. And again. Everything was almost too much to bear, so sensitive she couldn’t hold still, but he was relentless, thrusting her toward the edge with almost brutal insistence.
“I want to see your face,” he growled. “And I want you to say my name.”
He had pushed her almost beyond the ability of speech. And when she looked up at him, she rather fancied that he, too, had been pushed beyond some invisible boundary. His eyes were wild, and they were fixed on her face.
Her skirts fell between them, and she wished suddenly that there was nothing but skin there.
Sweat beaded down her back, across her brow, and she could see sweat glistening on his shoulders, too.
Once, she might have thought she would find such a sight disgusting, but now she felt her body tighten at the sight of it.
“Alice,” he groaned. “Are you there? Are you close?”
All she could do was nod. Unbearably close—scarily close.
She was going to combust, and there would be nothing of her left.
This was bigger and more powerful than anything she had ever experienced in her life before then.
More than she had ever known she was capable of.
When this was over, she would sleep for days.
Emerge as a new woman, reforged, defined by his hands and his hands alone.
“Frederick,” she moaned, her voice cracking. “Frederick, I—”
“Hold on to me. I have you.” One hand still working between her legs, he reached for her other hand, linking his fingers with hers. She squeezed, desperate, and he squeezed back. A steady, grounding pleasure, even in the torment of building pleasure.
“Frederick,” she all but screamed, one final time, before the force of her climax took her in its arms and carried her away.