Chapter 14 #3
He sucked hard on the skin just above her mound, and this time, he left a mark. “Tell me how much you want it,” he said into her skin. “Make me believe it.”
That was not what he had meant to say. He couldn’t remember suddenly how he’d meant for this to go—he was lost in the scent of her skin and the taste of her arousal. He wanted to hear her beg. He wanted to believe that she needed him the way he needed her—always, consumingly.
“I want it,” she said, and he had to tighten his hands to keep her hips from jerking up against his mouth as she spoke.
She liked this, he realized. She liked it all.
“Want you so much,” she whispered. “I need your mouth on me. I need you to make me come. I need you inside me, and I want to come while you watch.”
Oh God. He should have known she was so much more than he’d expected. He should have known she would somehow upend everything. He had thought to make her beg—and now he was the one mindless with need.
He buried his fingers inside her, stroking hard, sucking her clitoris with steady relentless pressure until the walls of her sex clamped down around his fingers.
He could hear her broken mewling cries, her hips twisting against him, her legs shaking so hard he had to hold her down against the shelf.
She came and came, and when she started to ease, he was up on his feet, his hands at her waist, her breasts, tangled in her hair.
“Don’t go,” she whispered. “Please, Christian, don’t go yet.”
He was helpless and selfish and unmade. He kissed her, and when he felt her fingers deftly unfastening his falls, he let her.
The feeling of her fingers closing around his cock was a revelation.
She made another sweet little gasp as she circled her fingers around him—and God knew what sounds he made.
Something greedy. Desperate. His hands were full of her breasts, his fingers rolling the tight nipples, and she tipped her head back to expose the line of her throat.
He kissed her there, and then she wrapped her leg around his hip and drew their bodies together.
At the first touch of her body on his erection, Christian knew he was all but done. Her sex was slick and hot, and she felt so right, so exactly right, this perfect impossible woman.
He pushed back the layers of skirts and petticoats between them. “Look,” he said. “Look how you take me.”
She watched, cheeks flushed, as he pressed the head of his cock inside her.
And Christian watched her. He memorized the way her lips parted, the way her lashes fluttered closed, then open again, as if she did not want to miss a moment. He watched the pulse beat beneath her jaw, and the way her throat worked as he pulled back, and then plunged hard into her body.
And then he stopped watching and let the screaming demand of his body overtake him. He hitched her leg up higher on his hip and thrust harder, faster, jostling her back against the shelves. His pleasure was mindless, deep and animal, pulling sparks through his blood.
“Need you to come,” he managed. “Fuck—Matilda. Touch yourself.”
And ah, thank God, she listened, one hand slipping between their bodies, her head falling back as she circled her fingers. He could feel the pressure of those fingers, the soft rhythmic pulse as she worked herself and he pounded into her.
Everything was hot and cold and bright, and he needed her to come right now, and then—God—she did, her head tossing from side to side as her body clenched around his cock.
It was almost too much. He withdrew and took her small hand in his own, wrapping their palms together around his length as he thrust, as he spilled his seed on her thigh in hot waves that seemed to go on and on, waves that dragged him under and would not let him go.
When he opened his eyes, she was panting and sticky with his spend.
“Jesus,” he said, “you look so pretty like that.”
“Christian—”
“No,” he said, “wait.” And then he sank down to the ground and pulled her with him.
As it had been the first time, Matilda thought, the aftermath was all tenderness.
He cleaned his seed from her skin, then spent a long time toying with the ends of her hair. He kissed the top of her shoulder, the line of her neck.
“Did you know,” he murmured to the skin beneath her ear, “you have two freckles right here?”
“Yes.”
He touched them with a finger and then with his mouth. “Sweet,” he said. “God, you taste so sweet.”
Matilda lifted a hand and stroked his thick black hair, the clustered threads of silver.
Almost she could believe that this was real. That she was precious to him, as precious as his soft whispered endearments and careful tending made her feel.
But she recalled what had happened the last time. She could not let herself be crushed that way again.
She wanted to tell him that she’d lost her heart to him. She wanted to tell him that if only he would let her stay, she could make them all so happy. She could make this dark, lonely estate into a home.
Instead she said, “I want you to know I have no expectations of you.”
He stiffened beneath her. “Expectations?”
Marriage, she realized. He would think she meant marriage.
She hastened to clarify. “If you want to continue this part of our relationship while I am here in Northumberland, I would of course be amenable. But if this too was a mistake on your part, then—I—”
To her absolute horror, her voice broke, and her idiotic eyes filled with tears.
But Christian’s arms closed hard around her, and he pressed his lips into her shoulder. “I don’t know what this was,” he said, “but it wasn’t a mistake.”
She untangled her fingers from his hair and let her hand drop to her side. She left it open, palm up, but he did not link his fingers with hers.
He turned his head so that his bearded cheek rested against her skin. “Do you … have regrets?”
“No,” she said, “no regrets.”
It was not precisely a lie. She did not regret what they’d done. Only she wanted—oh devil take it, she wanted so much more.