Chapter 23 #2
Dominic sought her out late that night, when she was busy writing some correspondence for her brother, knocking on her door.
“Come in,” she said.
He opened the door and stopped in the frame. His coat was off, his shirtsleeves down, and his hair had lost whatever order it had held through the evening. He looked at her.
“I wanted to thank you,” he said.
She set the letter aside. “For?”
“For James.” He tilted his chin once, the way he did when he was choosing from several things and discarding what wasn’t needed.
“I like James,” she said. “It isn’t management. It’s what you do when you’re fond of someone.”
“I know.” A beat. “That’s what I’m thanking you for.”
She looked at him standing in the doorway, in his shirtsleeves, getting the words out in the order he had chosen for them, his hands loose at his sides.
“It is my pleasure,” she said.
His chin lifted a fraction, and the register of his expression shifted — only slightly, only just enough — and the corner of his mouth moved.
“As it happens,” he said, “I have been giving some thought to your pleasure.”
Her pulse made a decision before she did. She kept her expression where it was. “Have you?”
“If you were open to a further discussion on the subject.”
She reached over and closed the inkwell.
“Come in,” she said, her heart in her throat. “And close the door.”
He crossed the room without hurrying and sat on the edge of the bed, and his hand came to her jaw and turned her face toward him.
She went without being asked. He kissed her the way he had in his study that first night, with full attention, and she put her hand flat on his chest and curled her fingers into the linen and felt his heartbeat.
He drew back far enough to look at her face.
“Lie back,” he said.
She did, and he worked the buttons of her nightgown at the throat with efficiency, which bared one shoulder.
“Ah, you entrance me,” he groaned. “Do you know,” he said, “what I have been looking at all evening?”
His mouth went to her throat, her shoulder, the line of her collarbone. His hands moved the nightgown from her other shoulder, and he drew back again.
“Your throat,” he said. “In the drawing room.” His mouth moved there. “And here.” His thumb traced the ridge of her collarbone, slow, and his lips followed the path it made. “I have been losing my mind over the line just here, all evening, in polite company.”
He drew back and looked at her in the low light. His hands moved to her waist, the curve of her hip.
“Every part of you,” he said quietly, and his mouth moved lower, “is going to get my full attention.” His lips found the swell of her breast, warm and unhurried. “I have been waiting to do this since well before supper, and I intend to take my time.”
When he shifted down the bed, and his hands moved to the hem of her nightgown, her hand went to his hair on reflex. He paused.
“All right?” he said.
“Yes,” she said. The word came out low, eager even.
Emboldened, he set his mouth to the inside of her knee, and she let out a long breath through her nose and lay back, because she had learned once already what patience meant when Dominic applied himself to a thing, and there was no point in bracing for it.
“Dominic.” She complained, her breath expanding restlessly inside her.
“Mm.” He moaned in response, not a single smidge of remorse in the sound.
“You’re doing that on purpose.”
“Why, yes I am,” he said, against her skin. “That is quite the point of this whole affair, isn’t it?”
His teasing words shocked a laugh out of her. “Dominic!” She gasped, but she could barely get another word out after the feeling of his tongue inching ever closer to her center. “Ah.” It came out as a small, private complaint.
He built it slowly, with the attention he gave anything he meant to do correctly — reading her by the change in her breathing, the shift in her hips, the exact pressure on his hair when her hand tightened.
When he found the right angle, her hips moved toward him, and she made a sound through her teeth, low and bitten off.
“Dominic—”
“I know,” he said.
“I’m not —I can’t…” she trailed off, her breath catching in her throat.
“I know,” he said again, and he did not hurry, and the knowing was worse than anything, and then there was nothing to be done about any of it at all.
Her hand went from his hair to his wrist, not pulling him away, and he moved with the direction of it, and when she finally lost any grip on composure—when her voice broke and her back lifted from the pillow and his name came out of her stripped of everything else—he followed her through it.
When she came back to herself, the room was quiet, and he was beside her, his shirt untucked, his expression composed in the way of a man working considerably harder at the composure than he was presenting.
She turned to him, her hand to his face. “Now, won’t you teach me what brings you pleasure, Dominic?” She murmured, reaching for his waistcoat.
His gaze came down from the ceiling to her. “You needn’t—”
“I am aware.” She reached for his waistcoat. “Answer the question.”
He looked at her. Then he raised himself enough to shrug the coat off and let it go.
She worked the shirt open, button by button, the fine linen parting to reveal the warm plane of his chest, the faint dusting of hair that arrowed downward.
He lay still while she did it, his breath controlled, though his pulse leaped under her fingers when she passed his throat, a rapid flutter betraying the composure he clung to.
When she spread her palm flat over his chest and moved down—slowly, without hurrying, the way he had not hurried—his skin heated beneath her touch, muscles tightening in subtle ridges.
She felt the quickening of his heart, the way his abdomen drew taut as her hand slipped lower still, beneath the waistband, until her fingers closed around the hard, velvet length of him.
His breath left him in a rush. His hand came to her face, thumb at her jaw, tilting it up until she was looking at him. His eyes were very dark.
“Magnificent,” he said.
And his breathing shifted at once, a deeper draw that caught in his throat. He caught her wrist. Not to redirect. Only to hold, as if anchoring himself while she learned the weight and heat of him, the silken skin stretched tight over rigid flesh.
His eyes stayed on her face, dark and unwavering, even as she began to stroke—deliberate, unhurried glides from base to tip, her thumb brushing over the flushed, sensitive head where moisture already beaded.
She looked back at him and worked by the shift in his breathing and the weight of his grip, finding the pace by those alone: a firm, rhythmic slide that made his hips jerk once, involuntary, seeking more of her palm’s slick friction.
“There,” she said.
His jaw tightened. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Sound pleased with yourself.”
She slowed her grip, deliberately. “Would you prefer I sound displeased?”
He exhaled through his nose, sharp and unsteady, and his eyes closed for a moment, lashes casting faint shadows on his cheeks. His hand on her wrist tightened, not in restraint but in raw need, fingers flexing as she twisted her grip just so.
“Faster,” he said.
“I beg your pardon?”
His eyes opened. “You heard me.”
She held his gaze. “Say it properly.”
Something crossed his face — the last of his composure making its exit. “Annabelle.”
“That’s not what I asked for.”
“Please.” The word came out low, stripped of everything but the asking. “Faster.”
She held the pace, varying the pressure — slow drags that made him exhale in pieces, then quicker strokes that coaxed more from him, easing the glide until her fingers glistened.
His chest lifted with each ragged breath, the lean muscles of his stomach clenching visibly as pleasure coiled tighter within him.
“B-Belle,” he groaned, surrendering to the building heat, the slick sounds of her hand on him filling the quiet room.
His thighs tensed beneath her, hips rising in shallow thrusts that matched her rhythm, chasing the friction she gave so generously.
When the end came for him, it broke over him in waves: his whole body going taut, back arching off the bed as his manhood pulsed hard in her grasp, spilling thick and hot across her fingers and his own skin.
“Annabelle,” he pressed her name out in a breath so low she felt it more than heard it, raw and reverent against her ear, his grip on her wrist finally easing as the last tremors shuddered through him.
After, she lay against his chest in the dark. The fire had gone to ash, and the room was cool, and neither of them moved to fix it.
“We are considerably more interesting than friends,” she said, and he found some measure of amusement in her words because he chuckled.
“I think I am wont to agree, wife,” he said.