Chapter 27 #2
“Stay,” he said to Elodie, rising to close the door. The corridor was empty, but in the distance he could hear workers carrying away rubble and servants clearing the dishes from the afternoon tea. With finality, he closed the door and turned the key.
He returned to Elodie in long strides, finding her still there, trembling with tension.
“Thank you,” she whispered, and he kissed her knee as he passed.
He stopped between her legs and studied her flushed cheeks, tense arms, and shallow breath. He traced one finger along the inside of her thigh, and she shuddered from head to toe.
But there was a thought he could not dismiss as he searched for the right words.
“It is not right for you to discover pleasure like this,” he said. “It is a disgrace that you are forced to preserve yourself until some drunken wedding night gives you your first taste of sex. That you may have to learn from a stranger how a man can love your body.”
Elodie’s brows drew together. “As though my husband would have any interest in showing me what pleasure or an orgasm is.”
Will nodded sadly. He had suspected as much. Arranged marriages were an outdated, barbaric system, but he expected nothing else from Bloodgrove. “You should be in love. Trading sweet kisses for tender touches in the sunlight. Worshiped… seduced.”
“And you would give me all of that?” Elodie might have sounded mocking if the strain of holding the position had not begun to make her tremble.
“No.”
“Was your first time like that?”
Will’s back straightened. “No. That is why I wish it for you.”
Elodie tipped her head back and looked at him through heavy-lidded eyes. “I fear I was not made to be loved. I dream of being devoured alive, of giving myself greedily to an animal. I do not want to be loved.”
Will laughed dryly, though he felt every word.
He reached for the slender column of her throat, which she offered so vulnerably in that position.
His fingers curved around the back of her neck, his thumb tracing circles up to her chin.
Standing there with her center only a hand’s breadth from his groin, the small, possessive gesture was obscene.
But another thought, one he had never allowed himself before, flashed unexpectedly through his mind. She did not want to be loved—but what if he fell in love?
His hand against her throat felt so right, and that fevered gaze could belong to him. She frustrated him regularly, used him without his consent, was his employer, and yet…
And yet.
“Stay like that,” he repeated. He would not fall in love. He would not confuse that rare, innocent feeling with lust, which he could no longer deny. His cock strained hard against the seams of his trousers, heavy with blood and far less patient with the game than he was.
Obediently, Elodie allowed him to remove her panties, which now showed her arousal beyond question. He held them up mockingly.
“Duchess, one might think you enjoy this little game. But it was meant as penance for your errors.”
Elodie bit her lip. She was clever enough not to answer.
Instead, she moaned openly when his finger slid through her wet lips.
A curious part of him wanted to see her naked in daylight, to understand what had made her come only nights ago. He wanted to explore and taste her, test and try until she screamed for him again.
He allowed himself this because he understood lust. If he took with enough heat, devoured with enough hunger, he could silence the other thoughts, trample the nobler feelings beneath them.
With his fingers, he spread her folds farther and examined the swollen bud where her nerves gathered.
Everything inside him wanted to lick it again.
His finger traced the rim of her entrance and whatever was meant to remain untouched there for her future husband, and Elodie whimpered.
Then his finger moved lower, toward the place with which Will was far more familiar.
Elodie froze as he circled it.
She stared at him with wide, panicked eyes, but before she could speak, he sank to his knees and licked across her center.
“Oh.” Elodie relaxed.
From here, he saw only her legs and the waves of her skirts, not her face. He imagined her head falling back, her eyes closing as she enjoyed being enjoyed by him.
A satisfied, hungry growl escaped him the moment her rich, spiced taste returned to his tongue.
And her wish was his command—he devoured her like a starving animal, his hands closing around her thighs and sinking into the softness of her hips.
His tongue danced across her lips, from the swollen bud to the hot, tight opening.
Elodie cursed his name, her body trembling half from the strain of the position and half from pleasure as her orgasm built piece by piece. Will felt it and drove her onward until the waves were just about to break.
Then he stopped and rose.
“What in damnation are you doing?” Elodie stared at him in disbelief, pressing her knees together in an attempt to catch the orgasm before it escaped, but he forced them back into position.
“You damned bastard!” Breathless, her head fell to one shoulder.
The flush had spread from her cheeks to her throat, and a thin sheen of sweat gleamed above her lip and at her temples.