Chapter 11 #2
He wished to see every bloom of color upon her skin, every involuntary tremor, every parting of her lips. And he wished to see it now, in this moment.
He eased her back against the pillows, the feather mattress yielding beneath his weight as he followed.
His mouth sought first the delicate skin beneath her ear, tasting the faint salt of her warmth mingled with the scent of chamomile and clean linen.
She drew in a sharp breath. Her fingers curled into the sheet.
He lingered there, tracing the slender column of her throat with open-mouthed kisses, feeling the rapid flutter of her pulse against his tongue.
When at length he drew back sufficiently to look upon her, her eyes were half-closed, the pupils dark and dilated in the firelight.
He slipped one hand beneath the hem of her night-shift, his fingertips brushing the tender skin behind her knee.
She made no motion to prevent him. On the contrary, her thighs parted the smallest degree, an invitation so modest it might almost have passed for accident were it not for the soft catch in her breath that followed.
He proceeded with the same unhurried care, stroking the silken flesh of her inner thigh in slow, passes, granting her every moment in which to halt him.
She chose instead to watch him, to decide against refusal.
When at last his fingers reached the warm, secret place between her legs, he paused, the pad of his thumb resting lightly against her most sensitive flesh.
She gasped, sharp and startled, and her hands flew to his shoulders, nails pressing through the linen of his shirt.
He circled once, gently, then again with firmer intent, observing how pleasure chased astonishment across her features.
Her thighs quivered. Her back arched in a slow, helpless curve that lifted her breasts toward him.
He bent his head and took one nipple into his mouth through the thin lawn, suckling softly at first, then with greater insistence when she uttered a low moan and threaded her fingers into his hair.
The fabric grew damp beneath his tongue.
He could feel the hardened peak beneath it, could feel how her body answered every pull of his mouth with a fresh tremor.
At length, he drew the nightrail up and over her head, casting it aside.
She lay bare before him, and he was still for a moment, simply looking.
Her skin was flushed from throat to navel, the dark tips of her breasts peaked and sensitive, and at her abdomen, the early, unmistakable swell of the child she carried.
He set his palm there, briefly, carefully, with a gentleness he had not planned and did not examine, and felt her go very still beneath the contact.
He raised his eyes to hers. She was watching him with an expression he could not entirely read, between wariness and wonder, as though she had expected the sight of her increasing to diminish his wanting and was not yet certain that it had not.
He kissed her to settle the question.
He kissed a path downward after, along the sternum, beneath the soft swell of one breast, then lower still. When he settled between her parted thighs and set his mouth to her, she gave a soft, broken cry and clutched at his hair as though to anchor herself against the sudden flood of sensation.
He was unsparing in his thoroughness. Tongue and lips and the lightest graze of teeth.
Slow circles, then rapid flicks, then long, languid strokes that drew her hips upward to meet him.
He slid two fingers inside her, curling them against the place that made her sob his name, and worked her with mouth and hand until her thighs closed about his head and her whole body bowed in a long, shuddering paroxysm of pleasure.
He held her through it, laving her gently as the aftershocks coursed through her frame, until at last she lay spent against the pillows, breast rising and falling, eyes wide with stunned wonder.
Only then did he rise above her once more.
He divested himself of shirt and breeches with a calm he did not feel.
When he settled between her thighs again, the broad head of him nudged her entrance.
She reached for him, slender fingers wrapping about his length and guiding him with a boldness that stole the breath from his lungs.
He entered her in one slow, inexorable thrust, feeling her yield and clasp about him in hot, liquid welcome.
She was tight, silken, and the sound she made, half moan and half sigh, was the most exquisite thing he had ever heard.
He paused when he was fully sheathed, forehead resting against hers, allowing her to accommodate him.
Her legs rose to encircle his hips. Her heels pressed into the small of his back.
He began to move, long, languorous strokes that dragged against every sensitive place within her, careful of his weight and of the life between them, finding an angle that drew her breath in sharply and kept it.
She met him, hips rolling in a rhythm that grew less restrained, less governed with every passing minute.
Her nails marked his shoulders. Her breath came in ragged gasps against his mouth.
When she tightened about him again, inner walls fluttering in warning, he quickened, deeper, pursuing the precipice with her.
She shattered first, crying out against the curve of his neck, and the rhythmic clench of her body drew him over the edge after her.
He buried himself and spent with a low, guttural groan, pulsing deep within her as pleasure tore through him in blinding waves, and he knew he had made the right decision.
There was no walking away from the fair Josephine.