Chapter 11 #2
She made a strangled sound in her throat.
“Haul your skirts up for me, Miss Sheffield.” There was a heated look in his eyes. A certain knowing. “Show me how wet you are.”
It made her feel shockingly vulnerable.
This wasn’t her at all. Oh, perhaps the flaming cheeks yes, but the woman who looked him in the eyes and slowly dragged her skirts up her thighs?
“Wicked,” he whispered, with a satisfied smile. “But nowhere near high enough, Miss Sheffield. Show me that hungry little quim of yours. I want to taste it.”
So wicked. She gasped and closed her eyes as he kissed his way down her stomach, his lips trailing over the serge of her gown.
“I think I have a new appreciation for this material.”
Edwina couldn’t help herself as she felt his breath on her bare thighs. She tried to close them and only succeeded in clamping his shoulders between her knees.
Sterling looked up with a wicked grin.
“Aha,” he whispered, tracing his fingertips over her knee. “I knew it. Miss Sheffield, you are wearing silk garters. Pink silk garters.”
It was the only hint of decadence she could afford.
She scowled as he bent to press a kiss to her knee, and then his thumb slid beneath her garter, stroking back and forth.
“These are not practical at all,” he whispered, resting one fist beside her hip as he loomed over her. “Why, they’re practically decadent. Sinful, even.”
“Oh, stop it,” she whispered. “Or I’ll throttle you with them, and then I can claim they’re eminently practical.”
Sterling froze, his head cocked on a considering angle. And then he smiled.
The devil had a smile like that.
“Practical,” he purred, tugging at the ribbons that bound her garter to her stockings. “Mmm, why don’t we see if we can find a practical application for them.” Sliding them free, he captured her left wrist. “Lay your hands flat above your head.”
“What are you doing?”
“I wasn’t asking, Miss Sheffield.”
Edwina swallowed and drew her arms over her head. He bound them together with her garter, and then tied her wrists to the bedhead with the strings.
“Sterling!”
“Do you trust me?” He was a golden, tousled god, kneeling between her thighs.
“Of course, I do.”
“Good.” Bending low, he gripped a fistful of her skirts. “Because it might be best if you didn’t move.”
And then he tore her gown clean up the center, using both his fists and a burst of his telekinesis.
Edwina gasped as the gown came apart at the seams. “What are you—?”
“I told you what I was going to do with this thing.” Sterling’s hands slid beneath her skirts as he drew the remnants of her gown out from underneath her and balled it into his fists, before throwing it in the direction of the fireplace.
“Don’t you dare!” she cried, but the gown fell harmlessly short.
“Missed,” he said, with a challenging light in his eyes as he knelt between her thighs.
“That was my best gown!” she growled.
“If I had my way I’d keep you wearing nothing more than this chemise,” he said, tickling his finger under the hem of it. “Or better yet, naked. But I promise I’ll buy you a new gown. A silk one.”
“Maybe I want another one exactly like it,” she growled.
He laughed. “I’m only going to tear it off you again.” And then his eyes smoldered. “Although, I think you’re not protesting nearly enough. Did you like that, Edie?”
“You are an utter Neanderthal.”
“I am a desperate man, driven to the edge by his beloved.” Bending low, he kissed her again, and despite her anger, she arched into the caress, nipping at his lower lip.
He laughed again.
“Marry me,” he whispered, kissing his way down her throat.
Oh gods, it was all happening at once. She felt overwhelmed; both with sensation and with the bombardment of his words. Her wrists were bound to the bed. She was utterly at his mercy.
“Did I not say yes?”
“I just want to make sure.” His clever fingers found the buttons on her chemise, and he kissed his way down her chest as he parted them.
“Because if you marry me, then I will have license to burn everything in your wardrobe and replace them with all the pretty pink silk I can find. If you marry me, then we can spend the next sixty years arguing in the library. If you marry me, then I can bend you over my desk and make you beg for sweet, sweet mercy. I will drink enough tea to sink a ship. I will be your partner, your lover, your anchor, your shield.”
“If you think for one second,” she gasped, “that I will allow you to make away with my wardrobe, then you have another think coming. I am not wearing pink.”
“Perhaps we can negotiate on that matter.” His tongue circled her nipple. “What would you consider appropriate?”
It was becoming difficult to breathe. Harder still to think. And the devil knew it. Edwina shifted restlessly, but there was a muscled thigh between hers. She forced herself to say the first thing that popped into her head. “Blue,” she breathed. “The same color as your eyes.”
He smiled at her. “Blue it is, then.”
Blunt fingers found her, teasing her between the slit in her drawers. Brushing back and forth, back and forth. Tantalizing circles that never quite found the right spot.
“Sterling!”
“Yes.” There was wickedness in his voice.
She wanted to scream. “Oh. Gods.”
“What’s wrong, Edwina?” His fingers vanished. And then they hooked in the edge of her drawers. “Do you want these off?”
She shouldn’t.
She absolutely should not.
No man had ever looked at her there.
But as she gasped for breath, a shiver of need working through her as her body screamed for more of his touch, she found herself nodding. “Yes.”
“So. Responsive,” he purred, tugging them down her legs. Tossing them aside, he let himself survey his new trophy. The look in his eyes reminded her of a starving man staring at a banquet. “God, you’re so pretty.”
She wanted to close her thighs. Look away.
But she was helpless to resist as he knelt over her, and trailed those teasing fingers up her thigh. “Open,” he whispered, looking up the length of her body and staring into her eyes. “Show me how much you want me. Show me how wet you are, Edie.”
It took everything she had to let her thighs splay wide.
He rewarded her with a dangerous smile and a gentle touch, stirring his deft fingers through her slickness.
A shock of lightning lanced through her. Exquisite torture.
“Oh gods,” she gasped, arching her spine.
“I need to taste you.”
Capturing her thighs in both hands he spread them wide, pinning them down with both palms laid flat upon her skin. And then his mouth claimed her, his tongue stroking deep within her.
Edwina gasped and writhed. The garter pulled tight around her wrists.
Sterling’s tongue swept her in slow, unhurried strokes.
Plunging his fingers inside her, he curled them up, stroking against something within her that melted her. But it was his tongue, flickering over the delicate bundle of nerves between her thighs that undid her.
She had to have more. Had to have him… There. Right there. Grinding herself shamelessly against his face, she cried out as the edge built within her.
Release beckoned. It teased at her as surely as his tongue.
“Fuck,” she moaned.
“Edwina Marie Sheffield,” he mocked, nuzzling into glistening flesh. “Such language!”
And then she was shattering with a cry, spilling over that promised edge into pleasure so absolute that she could barely breathe.
She came to long seconds later, gasping and whimpering as Sterling rose over her, wiping her slickness from his mouth with a feral grin.
“Beautiful,” he told her, pressing a fast, desperate kiss to her mouth.
And then he was rearing up on his knees.
Tearing his shirt off. Working at the buttons on his breeches and shoving them down his thick thighs. It took him short work to strip himself bare, until he was kissing his way up her abdomen, his lips shirring the soft fabric of her chemise.
“Marry me,” he growled, teasing his cock through her slickness.