First Comes Scandal (Rokesbys #4)(83)

“Oh!”

“Shhhh.” His hand came up to cover her mouth. “We must be quiet.”

But his tongue was stroking her at her very core, making lazy circles on the spot she’d learned was the most sensitive.

“Nicholas, I—”

He shushed her again, slipping a finger into her mouth, then groaned, when she started to suck it.

“My God, Georgie,” he groaned against her. She could not imagine that he was feeling as much pleasure as she was, but there was something about sucking on his finger that made her feel so excessively wanton, so hungry for more.

His tongue began to move faster.

She sucked harder.

“Georgie,” he moaned, his words vibrating against her.

She grew tighter, tenser.

He worked her with his fingers, sliding two inside, even as his mouth nibbled and licked.

She exploded.

No, she came. That was the word for it, he’d told her, at least one of them. And it made an odd sort of sense, because when she came, when he brought her to the point that she came, she felt as if she had arrived somewhere very important.

She could not have explained it, could not have defined it, except that she knew she was exactly where she was supposed to be.

With him.

With Nicholas. Her husband.

Home.

“Oh my,” she sighed. She wasn’t sure she could move. He might have melted her bones.

“I love feeling you when that happens,” he said, moving up her body until his face was near hers. “It makes me want you even more.”

He nudged against her, not in a demanding way, but rather just a little reminder. He was hard, and he still wanted her.

“I need a moment,” Georgie somehow managed to say.

“Just a moment?”

She nodded, although in truth she had no idea. She was completely undone. Her skin was sensitized beyond belief. He was still touching her, lightly, just on her arm, but it made her shiver uncontrollably.

“What are we to do with you?” he murmured, a hint of laughter in his voice.

“I can’t move.”

“Not even a little bit?”

She shook her head, but she made sure to keep a teasing expression in her eyes. They lay side by side for a moment, squeezed together on his narrow bed, and finally Georgie said, “You didn’t even undo your breeches.”

“Do you want me to?”

She nodded.

He turned, kissed her cheek. “I thought you couldn’t move.”

“It might be possible to rouse me.”

“Is that so?”

She nodded again. “I want you to be pleased, too.”

His eyes turned serious. “You always please me, Georgie.”

“But you didn’t …”

His hand covered hers, and he rolled them both so they were face-to-face. “It’s not a quid pro quo. I give to you freely.”

“I would like to give to you freely,” she whispered. Then she felt her face grow sheepish. “When I can move again.”

“I can wait,” he said. He kissed her on the nose, then on each closed eyelid, then on her mouth. “For you, my love, I can wait forever.”





Chapter 22





“I don’t understand bloodletting.”

Nicholas looked at Georgie in surprise—nay, in shock.

Nay, in astonishment.

Because barely five minutes had passed since the most extraordinary sexual experience of his life—which perhaps wasn’t that meaningful a descriptor considering he’d only started having sexual experiences a few weeks earlier—but still.

He was quite sure they had turned the earth on its axis. Weather patterns would change. Day would be night.

Hell, he would not have been surprised if they had created their own gravitational force. They might have pulled down the moon.

None of which explained his wife’s sudden inquiry into the taking of blood.

“What did you just say?” he asked.

“Bloodletting,” she said again, not looking the least bit interested in romance despite their current position, which was to say, naked in bed. In one another’s arms. She shifted her weight so that she could look at him more directly. “I don’t understand it.”

“Is there any reason you should?” Nicholas hoped he was not condescending; he did not mean to be. But it was a complicated topic. Most laypeople did not understand the science behind it.

To be honest, he wasn’t sure he understood the science behind it. He wasn’t sure anyone did, just that it seemed to work. Some of the time, at least.

“Well, no,” Georgie said, scooting out from under him so that she could lie on her side, head propped up on her hand. “Not really. But I heard a little bit of the lecture earlier today. It didn’t make much sense to me.”

“Today’s lecture wasn’t specifically about bloodletting,” he told her. “It was just mentioned at the end as a disruptor of circulation.”

She blinked a few times.

“Which was the topic. Circulation.”

Again, she said nothing. And then, as if she’d decided she’d heard his words and found them irrelevant, she said, “Right. Well, here is the problem. I don’t understand how, if men regularly bleed to death on battlefields, not to mention all the other people who bleed to death at other times, people think that the removal of blood from the body can be helpful.” She stared at him for a moment. “It’s clear that blood is necessary for survival.”