Chapter 16 #3
His palm remained on her face, his mouth against hers with an unhurried certainty, as though he had arrived at his destination and had no intention of leaving.
When he pulled back, his eyes went to her mouth and stayed there.
“Turn around,” he said.
She turned, and his hands went to her shoulders, then to the back of her neck, just below where her hair was put up, and he pressed his mouth there, warm against her skin.
“Oh,” she moaned and gripped the back of the bench in front of her.
He pressed another kiss lower, moving patiently, and her eyes closed.
He drew her back from the bench, one hand settling at her waist, until her back met his chest. His mouth moved to her temple, then the corner of her jaw.
“I’ve been watching you all evening,” he said in her ear. His hand spread flat against her stomach. “Every man who spoke to you. Every time you laughed for them.” His mouth found the side of her neck. “Every note you played.”
“Dominic—” She moaned, and he shuddered, teeth locking as his entire body flushed hot.
“Tell me to stop.” He gritted out, desperate.
If he didn’t stop now…
But Annabelle turned her head, and he caught her mouth again, deeper now, all thoughts of stopping flying away momentarily. One hand moved to the silk of her skirt and gathered it in slow increments until the night air reached her calves, her knees, the bare skin above her stockings.
He pressed his palm flat against her thigh and held it there.
“Tell me, Annabelle.” he rasped.
Please.
“Don’t stop,” she said, and that was all he needed to hear.
He turned her gently and walked her two steps back to the garden wall. The stone was cold through her gown, a sharp shock against her sensitized skin. He looked at her once, his entire being bare before her, and then he went to his knees on the garden path.
His hands moved under the silk, a heavy, warm contrast to the night air, and he pressed his mouth to the inside of her knee. She went still against the wall, her back flat against the stone, her fingers finding his hair without her having decided to reach for it.
He pressed another kiss above the first, then higher, his breath hot against her skin.
“Let me,” he murmured, the words a low vibration against her thigh that made her shiver. “Let me have this. I’ve dreamed of nothing else.”
She was acutely, helplessly aware of every sound from the house: the violin, the voices, the entire ordinary evening proceeding ten yards away behind a pane of glass.
He reached the inside of her thigh, turning his face to press his jaw there, rough and warm. Her free hand went flat against the stone behind her, her knuckles white. He gripped her hips, anchoring her to him, and looked up through the dark.
“Look at me,” he commanded softly, his voice thick with a reverence that made her chest ache. “Don’t hide from me. Let me see what I do to you.”
When his mouth found her sensitive center, the sound she made was immediate and unguarded and formed of pure breath.
He was not hurried. He had none of the urgency she might have expected from a man who had been performing restraint for two months.
He worked with the same attention he had given her neck, her jaw, patient and utterly present.
When she whimpered, a fractured, desperate sound that threatened to echo across the lawn, he paused just long enough to press a kiss to the soft flesh of her inner thigh.
“Beautiful,” he breathed against her, the word a ragged praise. “Cry out for me. Let them hear how much you belong to me right now.”
He resumed, responding instantly to the change in her breathing, the tightening of her fingers in his hair.
Her spine curved away from the stone. Her legs were no longer reliable, liquefying beneath her.
He used one hand while his mouth did the rest, holding her steady, guiding her weight.
He understood, without her telling him, exactly where to press and when to ease off and when to go back.
As the tension coiled unbearably tight within her, his thumb found her hip, digging in just enough to keep her grounded.
“That’s it,” he whispered, a dark, encouraging promise against her skin as he drove her higher. “Take it. Give it all to me.”
She had her fist against her mouth and her eyes clenched shut, and the violin behind the glass went on and on—
“Dominic!” She came apart quietly against the garden wall, his hands firm at her hips.
The late roses went on smelling of nothing but themselves, and the cool night air came in off the beds, and none of it touched the heat of her skin.
He pressed one long, unhurried kiss to the inside of her thigh. “My Annabelle, I want to taste you more…”
“Oh,” Her hands went loose in his hair as her hips jerked, shaking through the aftershocks.
Dominic was on his feet and had Annabelle’s skirts smoothed to her ankles before the second set of footsteps found the gravel.
His hand came back to her jaw once more, fast, and he kissed her again.
Gravel shifted on the garden path behind them—
Footsteps, and they were more than one set approaching.