Chapter 16 #2
He was in no hurry. He kissed her as though the world had stopped and there was nothing left except her body, his mouth, and the warmth of the fire.
Then his mouth found her center, and she nearly bowed off the floor.
“Oh!” The word broke in the middle.
He held her hips with steady hands. Scarred knuckles against the pale skin of her thighs. His mouth was hot, wet, and devastatingly slow.
He ran his tongue through her slit, and she heard herself make sounds she had never made before. Sounds she had not known she was capable of. Sounds that came from a place so deep that three years of careful silence could not hold them back.
She had trained herself to be quiet. She had trained herself to make no sound that could be heard through a door or down a corridor. His tongue undid three years of training in ten seconds.
She cried out. She could not help it.
His tongue circled the tight bundle of nerves at her center, slow and precise and merciless, and she cried out again. Her hand found his hair and pulled on it.
He did not stop. He pressed closer. His tongue moved in a rhythm that built and built like a tide rushing toward the shore.
She could feel a wave gathering low in her belly, immense and warm and inevitable.
And yet she did not have a name for it because she had never felt it before.
She had read about it in books. She had imagined it in the dark.
But her imaginings were thin next to this.
His hand moved up her thigh, before one finger pressed against her entrance, slow and questioning.
She nodded. She could not speak. Every word she had ever known was gone.
There was only his mouth, his hand, the fire, the prickly-soft pile beneath her back, and the ceiling above her, blurred by tears she did not know she was shedding.
He slid one finger inside her. Slowly. Carefully.
She gasped at the fullness. Tight and new and strange and good.
His finger curled inside her and brushed a place that sent a jolt of pure white heat through her entire body, from her center to her fingertips to the crown of her head, making her sob his name in the quiet room.
“There,” he purred against her pearl.
Her back arched off the floor like a bowstring.
He added a second finger, stretching her gently, giving her time to adjust. His mouth returned to her pearl, and he worked it with his tongue in steady, maddening strokes. His fingers moved inside her, curling and pressing and finding the rhythm that made her lose herself.
She was falling and climbing all at once.
Her thighs shook. Her breath came in ragged gasps that she could not control.
She was saying his name. She was saying please.
She was saying words that were not words at all, just sounds, just need, just the open throat of a woman who had been silent for three years and was finally, finally making noise.
His mouth did not stop. His fingers did not stop. The wave that was building inside her reached a peak she did not know existed, a place beyond thought or language or control, and then it broke.
She came apart. The orgasm hit her in a wave that started where his mouth was and radiated outward through her belly, her thighs, her chest, her arms, her fingers. She cried out so loud, but she did not care.
Her body clenched around his fingers and pulsed, and she felt every pulse in every nerve. He held her through it. His mouth gentled. His fingers slowed.
He eased her down from her high the way one eased a horse out of a gallop, gradually and carefully, because he knew that part mattered too.
She lay on the carpet, breathing hard. The ceiling was blurry.
The fire crackled. She could feel his cheek against her inner thigh, warm and rough with stubble, and she realized he was still holding her.
His hand on her hip. His body between her legs.
Steady. Patient. Waiting for her to come back to reality.
She came back slowly. The room reassembled itself like a puzzle being put back together. The ruined portrait on the wall. The paint on the floor. The smell of turpentine, woodsmoke, sweat, lavender, and him.
He kissed her thigh. Then her hip. Then her belly. He gently pulled her skirts down and moved up beside her. He lay on the floor and stared up at the ceiling.
Neither of them spoke for a long time. The fire popped. A log settled. The clock on the mantelpiece ticked.
“Are ye all right?” he asked.
“I am better than all right.” She turned her head to look at him. “I am lying on a carpet in a drawing room, with paint in my hair and a ruined portrait on the wall, and I have never felt more like myself in my entire life.”
“That is a strange thing to feel after what just happened.”
“It is not strange at all. For three years, I was not allowed to feel anything. Now, I have felt everything in the space of ten minutes. I think I am owed a moment on the floor.”
He almost smiled. “Take as many moments as ye need.”
“I intend to.” She paused. “Edward?”
“Aye?”
“Thank you. For not asking permission.”
“I asked three times.”
“You asked if I was sure. That is different from asking permission. Permission implies I need to justify myself. You were checking that I wanted to be here. I did. I do.”
He said nothing. But his hand found hers on the carpet, his painted fingers lacing through hers. They lay there like that, connected, quiet, while the fire burned down and the clock ticked.
Then she turned to him with a look on her face that he had not seen before. A look caught between mischief and confession. And he knew, before she opened her mouth, that whatever she was about to say was going to change everything.