Chapter Fifteen #2
Clarity struck through his mind.
Yes, he needed her, but she needed him more. She needed to feel, not just think, that he was in love with her.
And besides, he would be a selfish man indeed if it was his pleasure he focused on, his climax he started with.
And to that end…
Montague deepened the kiss further, assailing her mouth with torturous, rapturous bliss. His woman, his Calliope, quivered underneath his touch, falling back until she was lying on the sofa and he was above her. Careful not to crush her, his heart thudding wildly, he hesitated.
Was she…would she let him…would she want—
‘Whatever it is you are attempting to ask me—’ said Calliope, looking up at him with pins falling out of her hair and an expression of complete trust, ‘—the answer is yes.’
Montague tried not to growl as he kissed her fiercely, but it was difficult. Would she ever cease surprising him?
His kisses trailed lower, lower to her neck and trailing across that delicious décolletage, which promised so much and yet hid just as much.
His right hand moved just as slowly but in the opposite direction, caressing first her thigh over her muslin gown, but then inch by inch the material was gathered, revealing ankle, knee, thigh—
Calliope shuddered underneath him and he was quite ready to cease, before Montague realised she had—whether consciously or unconsciously—parted her thighs and spread her knees, welcoming him in even as she lifted her mouth to be kissed.
Well. It would be rude not to.
Careful not to move too fast, knowing that rushing now would be the very worst thing to do, Montague nuzzled her neck as his fingers slowly stroked their way up her inner thigh until they met the crease of her secret place.
Two things happened quite at the same time.
Firstly, Calliope arched her back with a moan into his fingers, her breasts somehow struggling free of her stays.
Secondly, Montague knew he would never, ever be able to share this intimacy with another woman ever again.
‘Oh,’ Calliope exhaled. ‘That—that feels—’
‘I only want to please you,’ Montague murmured, finding to his delight that his statement was perfectly true. ‘Tell me if I’m pleasing you, Calliope…’
‘You annoy me most of the time,’ came her wicked reply as she opened her eyes and smiled teasingly. ‘But this—this I will allow.’
Triumph burst into his chest and Montague lowered his head to worship her breasts, his mouth capturing first one nipple and then the other, his tongue laving them as his teeth nibbled.
He was rewarded not only with the quickening of her breath, the increase of her quiet moans, but with a rush of wetness that met his fingers.
Dear God, she wanted him.
Moving slowly, hoping to goodness the maid didn’t wander back in to see if they wanted tea, Montague tried to ignore the throbbing ache in his own breeches as he sought to satisfy his future wife’s obvious need.
‘I love you,’ he whispered between kisses that meandered around one of her shell pink nipples before returning to her mouth, capturing her lips as two fingers slid inside her wetness, glorifying in her readiness for him.
‘I—I love you,’ was her returning gasp.
That was when Montague quite lost his head. Burying his face in her neck, he pressed a kiss on the soft skin and curled his fingers within her.
The jolt and corresponding whimper was precisely what he wanted.
But he could give her more.
Concentrating hard on varying the softness and pressure, Montague slid his thumb into her wet folds, pressing against her nub as his fingers worked her.
Calliope’s breathing was growing shorter and shorter, her whimpers quiet but searing into his soul, and it was all he could do to prevent his own pleasure from bursting from him.
‘Oh Montague—it’s—it’s—I don’t know what’s happening!’ Calliope whimpered, her hands clutching at his shoulders as though he were the only real thing in the whole world.
Montague smiled against her neck and lifted his head to look deep into her eyes as he said the words he knew he had to say. ‘I’m making you mine, Calliope Oliver.’
She might have responded, if she’d had enough air.
As it was, Montague had chosen that moment to quicken his fingers and slowly circle his thumb over that peak of pleasure within her.
He watched, as though watching the sun slowly rise above the ocean, as her bliss edged closer and closer to that peak.
Her eyes widening, her brows puckering, her breasts heaving until—
‘Montague—’
He swallowed her moan, her cry of ecstasy, as he felt her whole body shudder and collapse around his steadily working fingers.
Montague continued to stroke her, to keep his fingers moving until the ripples within her ceased.
Only then did he slowly remove his hand, slowly move down her skirts, and look into the eyes of the woman he might now possess, but who had owned him for a long time.
Calliope blinked up in dazed wonder. ‘That…that was—’
‘Just a taste of what lies in our future, I promise,’ Montague said, hardly able to bear thinking about it without exploding in his breeches. ‘God, you are spectacular.’
Her flush was a new one and he catalogued it away eagerly. The flush of climax.
‘You weren’t too shabby yourself,’ she said lightly, as though she had not just come apart around his hand on her aunt’s sofa.
Montague breathed a laugh and she joined him as she pushed him back slightly and she straightened herself to a sitting position.
‘Well that…that was not what I expected,’ she admittedly ruefully, cheeks still pink as she refused to quite meet his gaze.
‘But was it what you wanted?’
This time, Calliope met his eyes. ‘I think it’s all I’m ever going to want.’
Relief, sweet and pure, rushed through Montague. You never knew with well-born ladies. He had heard tell of wives who did not even enjoy their husband’s ministrations, though that arguably said far more about the husband than the lady in question.
‘I want you for you,’ Montague said seriously, taking her hands in his and squeezing them tight. ‘I have never wanted anything like I want you.’
This time, it was not a proposal in the middle of an art gallery with strangers and Mrs Gower and the boy looking on. This time it was just her and him, the quiet of their love and the pounding of their slowing heartbeats.
Montague swallowed. ‘Marry me, Calliope.’
For a moment, he truly thought she would deny him. She would be within her rights, he was not the sort of cad to take a woman by force.
And then she smiled. ‘Montague Donovan, I will marry you.’