Chapter 21 #2
“You can,” he breathed, and his mouth returned. The flat of his tongue dragged through her, then the point of it circling until her thighs shook, then a long, devastating suckle that wrenched a moan out of her so raw she wouldn’t have believed it came from her own lips.
Her free hand flew over her mouth and clamped down hard.
A rough groan left him against her flesh, as if the sound she’d made had undone something in him too, and the vibration of it shot through her sex so fiercely her fingers clenched in his soaked hair.
Gripping her thighs, he hauled her closer to his mouth, and the scrape of stone beneath her was nothing compared to the feel of him positioning her exactly where he wanted her.
“That’s it,” he rasped. “Give me more, Emma.”
He pulled his mouth away, and she nearly sobbed at the loss. His teeth sank into the tender flesh of her inner thigh, and she jerked so hard her elbow nearly buckled. His tongue traced the sting, and then he bit down again, higher, closer, and a whimper crawled out of her throat.
“Vincent, please…”
Lifting his head, his grey eyes found hers from between her thighs, and the sight of him there—jaw wet, gaze burning with want—nearly stopped her heart.
“Touch your breasts for me, Emma.”
Her face burned. “I—what?”
His thumb stroked a maddening circle on her inner thigh. “You want to be taught pleasure? Put your hands on yourself,” he ordered, his voice dropping to that low, authoritarian note that brooked no argument. “Over your gown. I want to watch you.”
She brought her trembling hand to the sheer nightgown over her breast, and the moment her fingers found the stiffened peak through the linen and pressed, a helpless whimper escaped her that made his grip tense on her thigh.
“There’s my girl…” he growled against her wetness, and his mouth sealed over her again.
She was lost. His tongue worked against her while she rolled her nipple between trembling fingers, and every tug fed the ache building low in her belly until she couldn’t tell where his mouth ended and her own touch began.
Her head lolled back onto the grass, and her breath dissolved into shuddering little moans she couldn’t quiet no matter how hard she bit down on her lip.
Pulling back just enough to speak against her, he rasped, “Pinch them.”
She obeyed. The sharp sting shot straight through her belly to where his tongue was stroking, and the cry that tore from her had his hand pressing harder against her thigh.
Then his hand left her thigh entirely. His fingers traced from her hip down through her slick folds, and her hips bucked off the stone.
“Oh god—”
Pressing a kiss to her belly button, he murmured, “Easy. Stay with me.”
He slid one finger inside her, and the stretch of it had her gasping. When he curled that finger while his tongue found the swollen bud of her, her vision blurred. A second finger followed, and her back arched clean off the stone as a broken cry ripped from her throat.
He thrust them into her, curling on every stroke, his tongue matching the rhythm, and she could hear herself—god, she could hear the desperate, wanton moans spilling past her palm, could hear the slick sounds of his fingers plunging into her—and shame scorched through her chest even as the pleasure mounted and mounted and refused to cease.
“V-Vincent—” she choked into her palm, her heels scraping uselessly against the stone, “—I can’t, can’t feel my legs, it’s too—”
“Let go, Emma. I need to feel you come apart for me. Come for me…”
I need. Not I want.
That word undid something in her she would never get back.
His mouth closed over her and suckled hard, his fingers driving into her, curling against a place inside her that sent pleasure searing up her spine so fierce her vision went black, and Emma shattered.
Her spine bowed off the stone. Her thighs clamped around his head.
The cry that ripped from her was so loud her palm couldn’t catch all of it.
Wave after wave of it crashed through her, pulling her under, and her body shook and shook while his mouth gentled but didn’t leave her and his fingers stilled but stayed buried inside her while she clenched around them.
When she finally went limp, gasping on her elbows in the glossy moonlight, her nightgown rucked to her waist, he withdrew his fingers slowly and tasted them. She shuddered at the loss of him.
He pressed one last lingering kiss to her inner thigh and rested his cheek there.
For a long moment, she could only breathe. Her chest heaved. Her thighs ached where his teeth had marked her, and the slick heat between her legs pulsed with every heartbeat.
A shaky laugh fell out of her. She truly couldn’t feel her legs.
“Vincent…”
“Hm?”
“Is it… always like this?” she breathed.
His soft chuckle vibrated against her thigh. “No, pet. It gets better.”
Sweet heaven…
Lifting her legs from his shoulders, he gently arranged her nightgown back down modestly over her knees, and then leaned up on his elbow on the stone edge, his eyes studying her face. “Are you all right?”
“I—” she let out another small, breathless laugh, “—I don’t know what I am.”
The edge of his lips kicked up. “That is the right answer.”
Lifting a hand, she traced a single drop of water crawling down his temple. “And you? Should I… do something for you?”
“That is enough for our first lesson.”
“But you must be—” her eyes betrayed her, dipping below the dark water before she could stop them, and her cheeks flamed.
“I am fine, sweetheart,” he repeated gently.
She gave him a look she could scarcely believe she was capable of, and he huffed, caught between a laugh and a groan. “Let’s get you to bed, Emma. Before I teach you everything in one night and leave all the fun.”
He braced both hands on the stone ledge and hauled himself out of the water in one fluid motion, and the moonlight silhouetted his powerful frame.
He appeared like a Greek God in her blurry vision.
Water sluiced down the hard planes of his chest and stomach, tracing that thin line of dark hair that bisected his lower abdomen and disappeared into—
Emma’s eyes snapped shut.
A deep, throaty chuckle rumbled from his chest. “You may yet be the death of me, pet.”
She heard the rustle of fabric, the soft slap of wet linen being pulled over skin, and she kept her eyes firmly, resolutely, absolutely shut until his voice came from closer.
“You can look now.”
She opened her eyes to find him in his breeches and nothing else, his hair dripping onto his bare shoulders. Before she could speak, he bent and scooped her off the stone, and her eyes flew wide as her legs swung over his arm.
“Vincent! I can walk—”
Adjusting her weight against his chest, he strode across the lawn toward the house. “You told me yourself you can’t feel your legs.”
When she couldn’t summon the words to contradict him, he only smiled a, “That’s what I figured,” and carried her inside.