Brazen and the Beast (The Bareknuckle Bastards #2)(86)

She reached to help him.

“No,” he said, as he worked to lay her body bare. “This is for me. You, on my lap, wrapped like a parcel. It’s like Christmas.”

She flushed at the words. “Is it?”

He slowed, holding her gaze for a long moment before he answered, “How could you not know?” The strips fell away and her eyes went hooded with the pleasure of their loss—so keen that Whit felt it like a blow, his mind going blank but for the single goal of making her feel a pleasure to rival it again and again, forever.

She returned to her senses too soon—almost immediately—and instantly moved to cover herself, an impossible task as the beautiful globes overflowed her hands. The vision was the most erotic thing Whit had ever seen, and he could not contain the growl that came from low in his throat as he leaned forward and pressed a kiss to the straining flesh above each hand, licking slowly over the red, worried skin there.

“Poor love,” he whispered. “You must take better care.”

He covered her hands with his own, threading their fingers together as he tracked the red lines that crisscrossed her breasts. Another kiss, and another, and another, soothing her sensitive skin with soft, gentle kisses and lingering licks and tiny sucks at the impossibly soft outermost edge of one breast. Then the other.

He worshipped her until she was rocking against him once more, until she forgot her embarrassment. Until she forgot her nerves. Until she moved her hands—and his—and revealed herself to him.

Stealing his breath.

Her skin was red and mottled by the bindings, but her nipples, pink and perfect, strained in the cool air in the room, and he took one stunning peak in his mouth and licking over it with his tongue before sucking gently, again and again, until she was panting with pleasure, her hands fisted in his hair.

Whit reveled in the sting of her hold, even as he turned his attention to the other breast, repeating his actions. He scraped his teeth across the peak, then soothed it with tongue and lips. She cried out, and for a wild moment, Whit thought he might come in his trousers like a boy.

He released her, needing to collect himself—to tamp down the riot of emotion he felt with this woman in his arms—eventually dragging his attention to her eyes once more, reading the desire there, and the uncertainty. He wanted to destroy one and flame the other, and so he did the only thing he could think to do; he lifted her in his arms and carried her to the pillows strewn before the fireplace.

He followed her down, loving the way her body turned itself over to him, relaxing into his. One of his hands stroked down her now naked torso, toying at the waist of her trousers. “More wrapping,” he said quietly, his fingers at the fastening.

“I wish I were wearing something more exciting,” she replied.

“I don’t,” he said, leaning over her to nip at the line of her jaw before reaching to pull off her boots in quick succession. “These trousers have been teasing me all night, tracing every inch of you. Making promises that I very much hope you intend to keep.” He grasped the waistband and tugged, and magnificently, she let him strip them from her.

He lost his breath at the vision of her, bare and beautiful, the peaks and valleys of her body, her soft curves made stunning in the flickering firelight, and there, at the apex of her beautiful thighs, a thatch of curls that had his mouth watering. “Christ, Hattie. You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

She smiled, shy and sweet, her hands coming to cover herself. “You make me nearly believe that.”

He slid his hands up her legs, leaning over, unable to stop himself from pressing a lingering kiss to the back of her hand where it blocked his view, the sweet scent of her turning his words into a growl, as he continued up her body. “I’m not letting you up until you believe it, entirely.”

“That might take some time,” she said softly, almost too soft for him to hear.

“I have a lifetime.”

Her head was turned toward the fire, staring at the flame. Somewhere along the way she’d lost her hairpins, and her beautiful blond mane spread out on the pillows like silk thread. Whit wanted to bury himself in it, in her. “You have tonight.”

He hated the words, not liking the truth of them and the knowledge that, after tonight, nothing would be the same. Instead, he pressed a kiss to the soft swell of her rounded stomach, then licked up to the curve of her breast, reveling in the taste of her.

A night would not be enough time to explore. “Then I shall have to make it feel like a lifetime.”

He sucked a nipple between his lips, loving the way it hardened against his tongue, the way she gasped at the sensation, her hips rocking back into the silken cushions. “Whit,” she whispered, one hand coming to his hair, the tremor of it echoed in her voice when she added, “Please.”

Anything. He’d give her anything she asked.

His cock throbbed against the buttons of his trousers, desperate to be released. Desperate for her.

Slow, he thought. It was her first time.

Christ, it was her first time.

Another man, a gentleman, would pack her up and send her home at this point. A better man. A stronger one. He didn’t have any business being a part of this. Of ruining her. She deserved better than a boy from Holborn who’d lived on scraps and fought for everything he had.

He knew it . . . but he wasn’t sending her home.