Chapter 20 #2
He had never told another woman she was exquisite.
The knowledge slipped beneath Darcy’s defenses with startling ease.
She knew how experienced he was, knew there had been other women in his bed and pleasures shared long before she had stumbled into this secret world of his.
She had accepted that truth. Yet somehow, impossibly, she had been given something none of them had.
Something small, perhaps, but his. A tenderness swelled inside her chest, so sudden and profound that for a moment she could only look at him.
She felt absurdly pleased, almost shy beneath the force of it, and beneath that pleasure lay something more dangerous, a yearning to believe that whatever was unfolding between them was becoming as singular to him as it already felt to her.
Darcy reached for him, letting her fingertips trace lightly along his jaw.
“You are my first in every regard,” she murmured. “I find I am rather glad to be your first in this.”
His gaze held hers, and the intensity there made Darcy’s breath catch.
She slipped her arms around his neck and drew him down with her until her back met the cool silk of the bed.
The contrast made her shiver, coolness beneath her naked skin and Sebastian’s heat settling above her.
She brushed her lips against the corner of his mouth, a tender caress that seemed almost unbearably intimate after all the bolder liberties they had shared.
For a heartbeat, neither moved. Their bodies rested together, bare skin against bare skin, and Darcy felt every quiet breath he took, every subtle shift of muscle beneath her hands. Then Sebastian turned his face and caught her mouth with his.
He kissed her slowly, with such unexpected gentleness that her throat ached.
Darcy softened beneath him, her fingers sliding into his hair as his lips left hers and wandered along her jaw to the sensitive flesh beneath her ear.
He lingered at her throat, kissing and tasting his way downward until anticipation became a warm, restless ache beneath her skin.
His mouth reached her breast. He kissed the soft curve first, almost reverently, while his hand traced her waist and settled against her hip. Then his lips closed around the aching peak.
Darcy drew in a broken breath, her back arching as pleasure rippled through her. She gasped as his tongue circled the tight bud, teasing it into an even harder point before he drew it deep into the heat of his mouth, sucking gently at first, then with a hunger that made her gasp his name.
Sebastian released her only to lavish the same attention on the other, his teeth grazing the sensitive flesh in a way that sent sparks of pleasure straight to her pussy.
His mouth trailed downward, a wet, burning path over the trembling expanse of her belly.
She felt every kiss like a brand, every flick of his tongue against her quivering skin drawing her tighter, winding her higher.
He paused at the sensitive hollow of her hip, nipping gently, before his lips found the soft, heated flesh of her inner thigh.
He kissed her there once, then twice, his breath hot against her most intimate place, and she trembled with her fingers fisted in his hair.
Then he knelt between her thighs, spread her open with his hands, and lowered his mouth to her pussy.
Darcy cried out as his tongue found her, stroking her slick folds with unhurried passion.
He worshipped her with his mouth, circling her pearl until she was writhing, gasping, her fingers twisted in the sheets.
When he plunged his tongue inside her, she shattered, her release crashing through her with an intensity that tore a cry from her.
He turned her gently onto her belly, his hands settling upon her hips and coaxing them upward until she knelt before him, her cheek pressed into the cool silk of the pillow.
Darcy’s breath quickened as he arranged her with an unhurried care that made the intimacy of the position all the more acute.
Her spine curved beneath his hands, her bottom raised, leaving the most private parts of her body utterly exposed to his gaze.
There was no hiding from him like this. No modest angle she might turn to, no pretense that he could not see every intimate detail she had never willingly revealed to another soul.
The realization ought to have mortified her.
Instead, heat rushed through her.
She twisted her fingers into the silk as Sebastian’s hands remained upon her hips, his thumbs moving in slow, almost absent caresses over her skin.
She could feel the warmth of him behind her, could sense the weight of his attention traveling over her nakedness, and anticipation gathered until even the cool air against her exposed flesh seemed unbearably sensual.
“How pretty your pussy is,” he murmured.
Darcy shivered.
The word was vulgar, wicked, and upon his lips devastatingly intimate.
She had heard such language within Aphrodite, had even painted acts far more scandalous than the one unfolding now, yet nothing had prepared her for Sebastian speaking so about her body while she knelt naked and offered before him.
“How wet,” he continued, his voice roughening. “How ready.”
A helpless whimper escaped her. Darcy pressed her burning cheek more firmly into the pillow as another rush of desire gathered between her thighs.
There was something almost unbearable about being admired by him so openly, about knowing that this beautiful, experienced man was looking upon her with such unabashed hunger.
And still his hands moved gently over her, one sliding between her thighs until his fingers traced the slick seam of her sex.
Oh God.
Her clitoris throbbed for his touch. For him.
“For ten days you stayed away,” he murmured. “The taste of your cunt haunted me every damned night. Tonight, I am going to love you slowly.” His hand lingered between her thighs. “And I am also going to fuck you.”
Two fingers slid deep inside her.
Darcy gasped, her fingers twisting into the sheets as he stroked into her with maddening deliberation.
“For the next few days, whenever you sit, I want you to feel the soreness and remember how thoroughly my cock fucked you.” His voice had gone rough, the obscenity of his words at startling odds with the tenderness of his touch. “I want you haunted by me when we are apart. Do you understand?”
Heat flooded Darcy’s belly. Her entire body trembled, desire climbing so swiftly beneath his words that she scarcely knew whether she wanted to hide her burning face in the pillow or beg him for everything he threatened to give her.
That contradiction undid her most of all.
He spoke with the wickedness of the rake she had painted and secretly craved, while his hands treated her with almost unbearable care.
His fingers moved slowly within her pussy, each deep stroke sending pleasure burning through her, while his other hand caressed the curve of her hip and wandered along her waist as though he had all the time in the world to learn every inch of her.
Darcy trembled beneath him, caught between tenderness and debauchery, until the need became almost unbearable and she wanted to turn beneath him and plead for whatever wicked pleasure had put that rough hunger into his voice.