Chapter 44 #2
His eyes blazed with a light she’d never seen. “I’m saying I love you, damn it.”
The room was quiet and the candle flickered, making it feel as solemn as a church. Certainly, it was time for the honesty of one. Charlotte knew her answer, but she took a breath and looked deep inside.
Yes, of course you love him! cried her instincts, lit up and glittering.
Yes, yes, and get back to the good stuff, said the ache between her thighs.
Oh, all right, called her poor overworked brain, before it collapsed into a heap.
But the most important voice was the last to answer. Tell him. You mustn’t hide any longer, it said from deep inside her chest.
She cupped his cheek and offered her answer plainly, no laughter, no jest, nothing to hide behind. “I’ve loved you for years, Wolfgang.”
His eyes blazed even brighter, and when they kissed, it felt like a promise. She arched her back and helped him part her wrapper to reveal her night rail, and he traced the V at her neck with the thick pad of one finger and stared at the tops of her breasts with helpless fascination.
Oh God.
Charlotte arched higher, pressing her breasts more firmly against his chest, which made Wolfgang growl and her legs feel so restless that she curved one foot around his ankle…
His bare ankle. A bare length of calf.
She wound her arms around his neck and burrowed her fingers into the thicket of his hair, arching her hips as a breathy little sigh escaped her.
He worked his way up over the impossibly thin silk of her night rail, his broad palm on her waist, and her rib cage, and the slope beneath her breast, until both her nipples were stiff and aching for the feel of his fingers, or—oh God!
—the wet heat of his mouth. Even over the fabric she could feel the roughness of his chin, but it was too much separation, the night rail was such a botheration, and Charlotte wasn’t sure which one of them began to work the row of clever buttons down the front.
Only her back was bowing even more, and the lace scraped over her nipples so they were naked to his gaze, and his hands, and his glorious mouth, sucking hard and soft, licking, teasing with nips and bites.
She felt so damned good, and yet impossibly empty.
“Wolfgang!” she cried, and it came out like an order.
“Yes, Charlotte?” He rolled her nipple between his fingers and the way her mouth fell open on a gasp must have pleased him, because his eyes blanked with pleasure and he did it again.
“I can’t stand it!” she gasped.
He dipped down to suck her bottom lip. “We both know you can.”
Then he was cruel, because that wretched mouth of his returned to her breasts but went so slowly, each lick long and raspy, each open-mouthed suck just rough enough to make her desperate.
He was so heavy between her legs that Charlotte couldn’t help but buck against him, needing something deeper, harder.
Needing it now and suffering without it.
But if she hurt, he seemed to feel the same distress. Each time she moved her hips, his breath went jagged and his hand fisted on the mattress. An idea sparked in Charlotte’s head, and a different kind of satisfaction flooded her.
This game was new to her, but she was playing to win.
Her hand slipped under his robe, and he hissed as she touched bare skin, roaming over his chest and down his waist, until she had a palm full of firm male ass. She clutched him tight, hooking both legs around his hips and grinding herself up hard against him.
“Christ.” There was a sheen on his neck, and Charlotte licked it, tasting salt.
“Wolfgang, I need you,” she said, partly because she couldn’t help herself and partly to see how he would take it.
The noise he made sounded suspiciously like a yelp.
A long stretch of bed filled with a long stretch of man.
She had so many ideas.
But so, it seemed, did Wolfgang.
He reared up on one elbow with wild eyes—hungry, feral, and filled with an intensity that made Charlotte’s belly swoop and tremble.
Before she could so much as catch her breath, he reached down and ripped her night rail in two.
Buttons scattered across the mattress and onto the floor as cool night air rushed over her impossibly heated skin.
She was completely naked and he didn’t seem to know where to look first, his large palm flat on the stretch of bare stomach just above her belly button to pin her to the bed as he raked his gaze over the rise of her chest, the curve of her waist, her pale hollows and dips.
The lower his eyes traveled the hotter they gleamed, and when a sudden flare of selfconsciousness made Charlotte twist under his hand, he pressed down to hold her still.
“No. Stay. You’re fucking perfect. Everything I could… Christ!”
It was the work of a second to shuck off his robe, and before Charlotte knew it, he was flat on his belly, his shoulders pushing her legs even wider, parting her dark thatch of hair and staring down intently at where she was pink and swollen for him.
He muttered something blasphemous, and then Charlotte couldn’t hear anything else but the rushing in her ears because he licked and licked again, long, greedy strokes of his tongue like he couldn’t stand not to, like he’d never get enough, like he’d suck and swallow as much as he could because it was so good—
So incredibly good—
Her stomach quivered and her back bowed, arching higher and higher.…
“No. Not so fast.” He slurred like he was drunk, but nevertheless the command was clear. Wolfgang the officer. He licked her again, but slowly, achingly slowly, his tongue gliding soft and gentle.
“You think you’re the only one who can tease?” he growled.
It was Charlotte’s turn to whimper and shift and angle her hips, all but begging, but he pulled back and grunted, watching the tip of his big, blunt finger running restlessly up and down against her, faint as a whisper.
“More!” she commanded.
The damned man grinned and his finger slowed. “You’re in no position to order me about.”
Charlotte scowled and her head shifted restlessly against the pillow. “Damn you, Wolfgang!”
“Mmm,” he murmured against her, sending little tickling vibrations running up and down her legs. “How sweetly you talk.”
Which gave Charlotte a new idea.
Sweetness.
She’d never tried it with him before.
“Your mouth, Wolfgang—I love it so. I need it on me. Only you make me feel so—”
Poor man. He cracked before she completed the sentence, licking her hard and thoroughly, swirling his tongue just where she needed it, biting, sucking, lapping, and so lost in his own sloppy pleasure that she shuddered, her breath coming in great, gasping gulps that brought her back up off the bed.
Her belly melted into a hot, wet mess, sugar dissolving into caramel, and her brain went blessedly clear of all thought except Wolfgang.
Right where she wanted him.
Charlotte’s eyelids began to flutter, her hands dug into the mattress and into him, and her final thought before her back bowed and she shot off like a comet in a hail of sparks was that it felt right.
It felt real.
It felt outrageous.
It felt like forever.