Chapter Thirteen #3
“You brought up the topic first.”
“True.” He sucked on her intoxicating bottom lip. “Shall I first take off your shift?” She tasted of wanton and wine. “Or would you like to take off my shirt?”
“Your shirt, please,” she meekly asked. “Only fair if you go first, as you have more experience.”
He’d had no experience like this. He pulled back, and, suppressing the fear she would turn away in disgust, gathered up the fabric and whipped off all that remained of his clothes.
She exhaled. “No corset.”
He scowled. “Why the devil would I need a corset?”
She shrugged, eyes wide. “How was I to know?”
Her gaze moved back and forth between his shoulders, and then slowly down his chest. Then, her eyes shot back up to fix on his own.
Not disgusted. But not yet comfortable, either. “Are you still willing to do the same?”
She nodded shyly as she gathered her shift in her lowered fists, and then shimmied until she, too, could pull the garment off over her head.
At first, he didn’t see her at all, only undulating stars. Slowly, however, she came into focus. Breasts that went on forever. A neatly nipped little waist. A delicious nest of soft curls between her already pinked thighs.
He raised his gaze to her face. She hadn’t been searching his face for a reaction as he had hers. Instead, her lower lip had disappeared into her mouth, her gaze fixed in fascination on his right bicep.
Of course, he flexed.
Her quick, sharp inhalation was everything.
“I’ll never complain about my physique again.”
“Why should you complain?” She looked confused. “You’re finely formed.” Then, her gaze dropped. “Although that looks as if it could cause you discomfort.”
Discomfort didn’t encompass what he was feeling by half. “Ignore him for the present.”
“Ignore?” Her brows went up. “Not possible.” She went right on speaking to his prick. “Eliza said you would, ah, thrust your”—she swallowed—“your cock inside of me.”
Damn. He might have just seeped.
“She also said only the first time would be uncomfortable. But—” She shook her head. “I think… I fear…”
He sat down on the bed and pulled his reluctant wife onto his lap. Ah, the heavenly sensation of her bare bum against his thighs. Gradually, she relaxed against his chest. Nothing like skin against skin to provide comfort.
“Let’s leave your sister out of the bedroom, shall we?” he suggested gently.
“I’m sorry. I—I thought she might have been wrong.”
“She wasn’t.”
“Then I hope she wasn’t wrong about the earthshattering pleasure, either.”
He couldn’t help a rough chuckle. Just what was Adrian doing with his wife?
Neville tucked Millie beneath his chin and caressed her back. Adrian had probably done everything Neville could think of, and possibly more. After all, the man used to disappear into the Lyon’s Den’s upper rooms for hours at a time on a nightly basis.
Next to that, his meager two sexual encounters seemed inadequate tutorage for the task at hand. But one’s ability to please didn’t lie in the number of partners one had had, but the effort one expended and the depth of one’s desire.
This, he knew, without ever having been told.
He drew back and lifted her face. “Earthshattering.” He sealed the promise with a kiss.
“Now,” he smiled, “get back on the bed so I can have my wicked way with you.”
“Finally.” She mock-sighed, as she crawled backwards toward the pillows. “The swiving.”
“Is that your preferred term?”
“Slightly more elegant than grind.”
“Say that again and there’ll be preemptive thrusting.”
“I thought thrusting the main attack?”
He laughed lightly as he kissed her. “Am I never to have the last word?”
Her retort turned to a whimper as he palmed a peaked nipple. Now he knew one way to steal her breath. He intended to discover them all.
So long he’d been celibate, but only since he’d met Millie had the state caused him pain. He trailed his lips from her mouth to her neck, and finally to her breasts. With a sigh of complete abandon, he cupped one in each palm.
She gazed at him in bewildered bemusement. “Why are they such a marvel to men?” she asked.
“I know only that they are,” he answered. “Primal instinct, perhaps. Or maybe we are simply easily stimulated creatures?”
He flicked a nipple, and she shivered.
He’d been told not all women liked their breasts touched. Fortunately for him, Millie clearly did. Using her hitching breath as a guide, he bent down to suck and lave. And—very well—satisfy a bit of his own hunger with an occasional, rougher bite.
“What are you doing to me?”
“You tell me,” he suggested.
“I’m hot.”
“Yes,” he agreed with a hum. “So hot.”
“I’ve an ache that makes me feel quite…undone.”
Undone. Very nice. “An ache?
Keeping his mouth at her breast, he let his fingers travel down. Lazily, he dragged his hand back and forth across her inner thigh, shortening his strokes as he edged ever closer to the space between her legs, her muscles hot and trembling.
“Where?” he whispered, nudging ever closer toward those enticing curls.
“Nearly there, I think.”
She was so, so swollen, so ready, he could sense and smell her wet.
“Here?” he teased.
“No!” She whimpered and wiggled. “Not quite.”
First, he gently inserted one finger, then two, though not as much for her pleasure as for his own. His prick had to wait, but patience did not preclude a foretaste of what was to come. And he could not have chosen a more tantalizing hint—soft, tight, wet and more than ready to welcome.