Chapter Nine
Griffin waited until Olivia finished her cup of hot cocoa and daintily dabbed at the faint chocolate outline that defined her upper lip before he bore her off to bed.
He had never before experienced breakfast as foreplay but that was what it was.
It occurred to him belatedly that he may have been the only one to realize it, because when he seized her by the arms and hauled her out of her chair she was struck dumb.
She recovered by the time he tossed her on the bed and followed her down with his own body. Her accents were charmingly outraged. “My lord! It is daylight.”
He did not so much as glance toward the window where earlier he’d parted the drapes.
“You cannot object to daylight. It is the natural order of things.” He rubbed his lips against hers.
“Night followed by day. As clever as it is simple.” He kissed her, first attending to her bottom lip, then repositioning his mouth and giving equal attention to the upper one.
Somewhere during the transition she’d stopped squirming and sighed a bit gently.
He was pleased when her arms came around him, though he had liked the squirming well enough.
Her kisses tasted like sweet, warm cocoa. She surrendered them as one drugged—slowly, thickly, with infinite care. He decided then that she could have cocoa at every meal if she liked, but that he would insist that it be served at breakfast.
Olivia sensed the change in the shape of his mouth. She pushed at his shoulders so that he would raise his head. “You are smiling,” she whispered once she could see him clearly. “Why are you smiling?”
“You cannot expect that I will enumerate all the reasons now.” He bent his head and touched his lips to hers again, then drew up and kissed the tip of her pared nose, between her eyebrows, and finally the center of her forehead.
When he lifted his head and looked down at her, he saw she would not be moved. His smile actually deepened.
“Oh, very well, you may have your secrets,” she said as though she hadn’t just been made breathless by the wicked curve of his lips. Her fingers threaded in his hair, tugged, and brought him to her mouth once again.
Olivia hadn’t expected to want him. When he’d picked her up and carried her to his bed, she had thought of nothing save that she would be made to suffer his touch in the full light of day.
It wasn’t until he placed his mouth over hers that she reconciled to the fact that there had been no suffering the night before and there would be none now.
She was yet undecided if that were necessarily good.
She’d been aware of his eyes on her while she ate.
They often fell on her mouth, which made her think she had a crumb on her lips.
That made her touch the tip of her tongue to the corner of her mouth, which had the effect of making his eyes narrow a fraction.
Believing that her manners were not up to the standard he set for his table, she raised her serviette several times to remove the offending bit of toast and invariably came away with nothing on the linen.
She’d run her tongue along her teeth then, thinking perhaps a bit of bacon was lodged between them.
That had only made his eyes darken somewhat dangerously, and Olivia fully anticipated that she would be asked to remove herself.
She used what was available to hide her mouth and raised her cup of hot cocoa and sipped it as delicately as she could from lips she pressed into a perfect bow.
It was then that he looked as if he might come across the table at her.
Of course he did, but not in the way she had imagined.
Now she was under him, though not exactly, because he kept himself from trapping her with the whole of his body and took most of his weight on one hip, thigh, and elbow.
He had done the same last night, she remembered, and she’d thought it had been considerate of him even then.
As impossible as it seemed, she felt sheltered, not suffocated.
Her fingers twisted in his hair. She was not certain what she might do with her hands that would please him, while he seemed to have no such reservations.
His hands were very busy, had been since the moment he fell onto the bed, and everywhere he touched pleased her. She had not suspected it could be done.
How had she not known of the spot just behind her earlobe that was so sensitive to touch that her skin pebbled?
Or that brushing the inside of her upper lip could make her breath hitch?
She had lived inside her skin for four and twenty years and knew less about what made her body thrum than Griffin had discovered in one night and a morning.
She moaned softly, tried to bite it back, then moaned again when he bent to take her breast a second time. He’d actually grinned as he lowered his head, watching her all the while, well pleased it seemed as her body betrayed its need and rose in offering.
He suckled her through the cotton shift, changing the texture of the fabric as it became wet and slightly more abrasive.
Her breast swelled, the nipple hardened.
He tugged on it with his lips, and she felt cords of pleasure being pulled between her thighs.
He was changing the texture of her there as well; she was already something more than damp.
Olivia tugged at his nightshirt, drawing it up at the shoulders.
Curious about him, she walked her fingers down his back, then allowed them to glide sideways at his hip.
The faint hollow intrigued her, but the taut curve of his buttocks was where her hand found a perfect fit.
She heard him groan softly against her breast when she squeezed.
She had no time to relish this small proof of her power to move him because he was engaged in new exploration.
His interest in her breasts was all about diversion.
His fingertips had found an opening between her knees and were now sliding purposefully along her inner thigh.
She slammed her legs closed, trapping his hand, but it did not serve her in the least. He contented himself with teasing her other breast and in time she felt her thighs simply ease apart with no urging from him.
She tensed again when his fingers reached most intimately between her legs, but that is where his foray stopped.
He simply cupped her mons while his mouth released her nipple and moved upward, lingering at her neck, then her jaw, and finally coming to rest against her lips.
He licked, parted them with his tongue, and drew a whimper from her as she felt heat stir in her belly.
Another diversion, she discovered, because his fingers were suddenly inside her, probing, sliding. She tore her mouth away from his, gasping, and pushed at his shoulder, but only to give herself something to brace as her body lifted in a perfect arch.
She thought she might actually scream as pleasure flung her upward, but she swallowed it along with the breath she was holding right up to the moment Griffin’s thumb found the hard kernel of flesh between her damp lips and rubbed. That was when she simply came out of herself.
This was no prickly pleasure skimming the surface of her skin. What she felt began deep inside and radiated outward, spinning, sparking, turning what was a warm glow into heat and light of an intensity she had never known before, one she had not suspected existed.
Watching her, feeling her shudder, knowing he had finally given her the fullness of pleasure she had been denied last night, Griffin delayed his own satisfaction in favor of enjoying hers.
Her eyelids dropped to half-mast, her kiss-swollen lips parted, a flush rose from the neckline of her gown to steal over her complexion.
She stared at him, though the look was more vague than pointed, her dark eyes not quite focused on any particular feature.
He smiled, bringing her attention to his mouth, then he lowered his head slowly and kissed her at his leisure.
When he drew back, their lips parted with a damp little sucking sound that made him chuckle but discomfited Olivia. He saw her distress and tempered his amusement, moving more to one side as her fingers worked somewhat nervously on rearranging the hem of her nightgown.
“I find you are unexpectedly modest,” he said. “No matter. It is rather charming.”
“It is not an affectation.”
“I didn’t think it was. The affectation is when you pretend otherwise.” He tapped her lips with his forefinger when she would have objected. “It was not long ago that I asked you if you were a whore. You didn’t blink or blush then. In fact, I recall precisely what you said. You—”
Olivia talked around the finger that was still lightly pressed to her lips. “I said I had given you enough reason to think it. Really, can I depend on you to echo our every conversation?”
“When it’s pertinent, yes.” He removed his forefinger to tap the tip of her nose.
She brushed his hand aside. “It is annoying, you know, to have to reflect upon one’s words at a moment of your choosing.”
“Quite possibly true, but there you have it. So why is it so important to you to pretend one thing when you are altogether something else?”
“Why does anyone?”
“I am not asking about anyone. I want to know why you do it.”
She shrugged, looked away. “Fear, I imagine.”
He considered that. “What are you afraid of?”
“You cannot expect I will answer that.”
“I can, but I won’t insist.”
“You wouldn’t answer it.”
“I might.”
Olivia took the bait he dangled and dared to ask the same question he’d put to her. “What are you afraid of?”
“Why you, of course, but I mean to overcome it.”
What he did, Olivia realized when she could breathe evenly again, was overcome her.