Chapter Fifteen #2
“Just lie back,” he said with a teasing laugh. “And tell me afterward how good you think I am.”
Well, the man had confidence. Such a shame that the last time a man had had such self-assurance, it had been such a disappointment.
Rose allowed herself to fall back so that she was lying on the hearthrug looking up at the ceiling and wondered what on earth the man was going to attempt. If he was just going to jam his member within her, she would have something to say about—
Oh, dear God.
“Samuel!” Rose moaned.
She had not intended to moan, but she rather thought no woman would be able to help herself. After all, the man had kneeled between her legs, pushed up her skirts, and delicately slipped down her drawers.
Oh, and so delicately. His fingertips brushed her thighs, sending sparks up her whole body, but there was no roughness, no haste to his movement. Just an inexplicable expertise that softly whispered of previous women adored and satisfied.
Satisfied as apparently she was about to be.
It was on the tip of Rose’s tongue to ask Samuel to be gentle with her, but she was forced instead to bite her lip as the man lowered his mouth to her secret place…and kissed it.
She was going to expire. That was the only thing that was going to occur. She was actually going to expire right here before the fireplace.
“So beautiful,” came his murmur from between her thighs. “And so delicious.”
Another kiss and Rose quivered, not sure whether it was his touches or his words that flickered such heat through her whole body.
She was aching now, and dripping with need, and all she could do was lie back and accept the teasing nibbles that were so exquisite and yet most definitely not enough.
“Samuel,” she breathed.
His response was to place his hands on her inner thighs and part her legs, opening her even farther for him, and Rose’s hands clenched around the edges of the hearthrug as she fought the instinct to tighten her knees around him.
The man did not deserve to suffocate. Not as his tongue lapped, just for a moment, at her folds.
The curse Rose uttered was undignified.
Samuel chuckled against her flesh and she squirmed, lowering herself into his mouth, but he leaned back, refusing to satisfy her. “Such a hungry girl.”
“It’s you who should be eating.” Rose moaned before she could stop herself.
“Oh, you filthy thing,” exhaled the man between her legs. “And yet so delicate, and so perfect. So warm, and so wet, and so ready for me.”
She truly was going to expire. Precisely why did such praise make her whole body quiver, make the sensations he was bestowing heighten, make her want to get on her knees and worship him?
“I’ve wanted to do this for days,” Samuel said before brushing a kiss over her folds. “No, not days. Weeks.”
“Samuel,” begged Rose in a hissing whisper, twisting her hips as though to force him to lap at her once again.
“Good girl. Nice and quiet.”
She was rewarded with another tongue lapping and Rose was forced to bite her lip to prevent herself from crying out. She would be a good girl, if that gained her another tongue lashing like that.
“You’ve been very good to me, Rose,” Samuel whispered, his thumbs stroking that delicate skin that led to her secret place. His tongue slowly, slowly licked up her slit, making Rose pant. “I want to reward you.”
Rose’s fingers were growing numb. Her fists were so tightly clenched as she tried not to make a noise.
The man was a god. He certainly had not been jesting when he’d said he knew how to give pleasure.
That tongue of his slowly reached her clit and Rose bucked, unable to help herself, as it slowly encircled that throbbing nub within her.
It was only to be one thrust as Samuel’s hands held her fast against the hearthrug. “That’s naughty, Rose.”
“Please.”
She had not intended to say it, merely scream the single word in her mind, but the aching need within her was growing to a pitch with his teasing that pushed her restraint over the edge.
If only the damned man with his magic tongue could push her over the edge…
“Well, as you asked so nicely and you taste so good…”
And then his tongue was inside her, deep within her folds, lapping and sucking, one of Samuel’s hands somehow no longer on her inner thigh but up past her stomach and squeezing her breast, his thumb and forefinger somehow twirling around her nipple, which he had freed.
Rose was undone, unable to think, unable to breathe as waves upon waves of bliss were mercilessly poured through her body and his tongue worshipped her clit and—
“Samuel!”
Rose could not help it, but it no longer mattered.
She could not be punished because she was soaring, soaring through ecstasy that had not let up and his tongue and his hands and his whole body seemed to be pumping even more through her and when she cascaded down, down through the levels of ecstasy until she was a mere quivering mess of bliss, Rose could do nothing but look up and see… Samuel.
Samuel, leaning over her, smile wide, a breathy look of satisfaction on his face.
She could barely think. Him, satisfied? Was not she the one who had been utterly destroyed?
“And that,” he said softly, “is the little pleasure I wished to show you.”
Rose allowed her head to fall back on the hearthrug as her lungs tried to remember how to work.
‘The little pleasure’?
“Rose? I… I did not hurt you, did I?”
It was the concern in his voice that did it. Without that tinge of apprehension, Rose could have shaken hands with the man and walked out of the room.
Well, perhaps not shaken hands with the man. And perhaps not walked. Hobbled. Her thighs might never be the same again, and her knees were weak, and—
The point is, Rose thought furiously, that now he’s had the damned decency to be nice, I really do love him.
It was most disagreeable.
As it was, there was nothing she could do but sit up, push the man back so that he was now the one looking up at the ceiling, and glare ominously down at him.
“I really wish you hadn’t said that,” Rose said with perfect sincerity.
Samuel’s face was a picture of worry, puckered lips and furrowed brow, and it amused her for a brief moment that the man was so instantly willing to believe that he had acted incorrectly, when all he had done was please her to within an inch of her life.
Perhaps farther than that.
“I didn’t hurt you, did I?” Samuel asked weakly as Rose started to do the only thing she could.
Take off her clothes.
“You did not hurt me,” she said with a wry expression, her unbuttoned skirt slipping off as she rose to her feet. “Quite the opposite.”
The relief was another indication that this man, this impossible man, was a far better one than she had ever presumed. “Oh, that’s excellent to hear. And you are removing your clothes…why? In advance of losing our next chess match?”
Rose giggled as she glanced at the board, its pieces dispersed across the carpet. “No, I would have beaten you.”
“You would not—”
“It is your time to be quiet. If you can,” Rose said softly as her fingers finished untying the laces of her bodice.
The fabric fell to the ground along with her underthings.
It was perhaps not the best angle to view her. Oh, she knew her body was hardly unpleasant to look at, but every actress knew that one’s chin did not look so prominent—or double—if viewed from above.
Those in the cheap seats at the front of the stage always saw her with at least five more chins than she actually had as they stared up at her.
That was precisely the angle to which Samuel was being treated now, though Rose had to say that his unabashed stare of admiration as she stood there, utterly naked, was mightily flattering.
“You are the most perfect woman I have ever seen,” Samuel said hoarsely.
“That is only a compliment,” she said softly, stepping forward and lowering herself to straddle the man still wearing his blessed undergarments, “if you have seen a great many women in the nude. Have you?”
There was no flush in his cheeks, no shame in his eyes as he said, “A fair few.”
Rose nodded. She would not have believed him if he had said otherwise; a lord like him, eldest son of a marquess, was sure to have befriended a widow or housemaid or two in his time.
But he was hers now.
The thought rose unbidden, but she could not quash it. Not when it was the truth. “No more after me, please.”
“Yes, Rose,” Samuel said hoarsely as her fingertips traced the line of his skin where it met his undergarments.
“No one except me,” she emphasized, knowing it was foolish, knowing that in a year the new Marquess of Aylesbury would be bedding a fresh widow or even his second wife and Rose would be somewhere on the Continent, never to see him again.
His dark eyes met hers and air caught in his throat as he breathed, “No one except you.”
It was not difficult, in theory, to remove a man’s undergarments, especially when he was lying so obligingly still and prone. The trouble was Rose’s fingers, which were shaking after he had made her what felt like another promise.
Beyond their wedding vows, oaths made to satisfy a vicar and a solicitor, this promise was far deeper. Far more personal.
Far realer.
Rose gasped as the undergarments were flung to one side—not toward the fire—and she saw the full… well, equipment that Samuel was working with.
The suggestion through his undergarments had if anything, underplayed his hand.
“Oh, goodness,” she breathed before she could stop herself.
“Not a disappointment, I hope.”
She heard the worry in his voice, the worry that every man experienced by the time he realized he would have to be naked in order to penetrate a woman, though Rose wondered how on earth a man of this… well, stature could ever be concerned.
“Not a disappointment, no,” she said, the truth once again laced with mirth. “Now be quiet, and do what you are told.”
Rose was still so wet from the thorough ravishing that Samuel had given her but minutes ago that it was not difficult at all to lower herself, to spear herself on the throbbing warm manhood.
What was difficult was not coming to a peak of pleasure in doing so.
“Oh, God, Rose, you feel so—so—”
It was delightful to see Samuel so equally undone, and Rose tried not to smirk as she slowly rocked on his manhood, drawing herself up over him then thrusting herself back down in a rhythm all of her own making. “I am what?”
Samuel’s eyes widened and his lips twisted in unspoken, unspeaking words as he moaned. “Rose!”
And it was charming, wonderful to utterly ruin a man for all other women.
Rose tried to keep her own diversion at bay as she slowly, slowly increased the rhythm, sometimes allowing him to thrust deeper within her, sometimes remaining above him for a beat so that Samuel moaned in unsatisfied need—and when he grabbed at her hips and tilted her ever slightly, his manhood slipped deeper within her and Rose’s eyelashes fluttered.
“I—I’m close,” she panted, unable to keep it to herself.
When she looked down, it was to see Samuel looking up at her with gritted jaw. “Please come soon. I can’t—I can’t hold on much!”
Rose let herself go, riding him hard and fast, and it did not take long to reach her climax—especially with Samuel’s thumb moving to where they joined and twisting around her clit.
“Samuel!”
All thoughts of quiet gone, she lost herself in the experience of being truly at one with another man, a bliss only increased as Samuel swore and thrust upward in a feverish rhythm of abandon.
“Rose—Rose!”
When the pleasure faded, and it could have been an hour, Rose slowly lifted herself off the man and half-lowered, half-dropped herself onto the hearthrug beside him.
Their breathing, ragged and uneven, filled the room. It was the only sound Rose could hear as she realized three most inconvenient things.
Firstly, she loved the blaggard.
Secondly, her heart would break when she had to leave him.
Thirdly, they had not used a preservative.
In this moment, she did not know which was worse.