The Perfect Crimes of Marian Hayes (London Highwaymen, #2)(80)

“Are you hard? Don’t tell me it’s from dressing wounds.”

“I’ve been half hard since I saw you in those breeches.”

The leather breeches were, in fact, all she had on. She gave him a shove and he lay back on the bed, then she swung a leg over him. “You like them?”

He made an incoherent noise and then seemed to collect himself. “Your arm. We can’t.”

“Is that a challenge?”

“Christ, no. It’s—all right, danger takes some people this way. I understand that.”

“It certainly seems to take you that way,” she said, pressing the palm of her hand to his growing erection. He made a helpless sound that made her mouth go dry. “Get your clothes off.” He complied swiftly, his clothes landing in a pile at the foot of the bed. She took her hair out of its plait and let it fall around her shoulders, because she knew Rob wouldn’t be able to resist getting his hands on it, and sure enough, he reached for her, pulling her down, tangling his fingers in her hair.

“What would you like?” he murmured, speaking the words against her mouth.

She shook her head. “Just lie back.” That had come out far too sweet, so she cleared her throat. “And behave.”

She had been paying attention to all the little things he liked, greedily amassing information, storing it away with the goal of rendering him a shivering, begging, helpless mass of muscle and longing. “You were so good tonight,” she said, pausing to bite his collarbone, “letting me get what I needed from that horrible man and then taking care of me.” Propping herself up on her uninjured arm, she moved her mouth lower, giving some attention to one nipple, and then the other, teasing him until he tried to twist on the mattress beneath her, the muscles of his shoulder and chest bunching and shifting with the effort of remaining still.

When she moved lower, he swore. She kissed his lower abdomen and the top of his thigh, never quite reaching his straining erection. Only when she saw him reach above his head and grasp the headboard did she take the tip of his cock into her mouth.

He was breathing heavily now with the strain of not bucking his hips, but she kept her kisses light and insubstantial. This was part of the pleasure for him, she knew. He liked being made to wait, he liked the knowledge that his discipline pleased her.

“You can touch me,” she said, and in an instant one of his hands was in her hair, not pulling or pushing but just feeling her, and she could sense the effort it was costing him, too. She rewarded him by taking him a little deeper.

She felt his fingers on her cheekbone, tracing her lips, pushing the hair out of her face. It was as if he couldn’t stop touching her. She pressed into his touch while at the same time moving her tongue along his shaft, and he made a noise of desperation. He likely couldn’t hold out much longer, so she nudged one of his legs aside and slid a hand up the inside of his thigh. No sooner had the pads of her fingers come to rest behind his bollocks than he thrust the jar of salve into her hand.

She pulled off him and laughed. “I’d swear this was across the room a minute ago,” she said, uncorking the jar.

“I think I moved it with my mind,” he said, sounding a bit dazed.

She laughed again, muffling the sound in his thigh. She moved a slick finger against him and felt a shudder run through his body. “Tell me what to do,” she said.

“Inside,” he said, his voice rough. “Please.”

She felt the heat of him around her finger, heard the strangled noise he made as his body gave way. “Do you know,” she said, “Percy tells me that they sell cocks made out of glass and wood and all manner of interesting things.”

“Do you need a list of acceptable topics of conversation for when you have any part of your body inside me? Because Percy would not be on that list.”

“So fussy,” she said, then added a finger, twisting them until he shut up. “I bet you’d like me to get you one of those so you can get properly fucked.” Deciding she had been altogether too nice for the past few minutes, she added sweetly, “Would you like that, darling?”

“Yes, Marian, do you even need to ask?”

“It figures you’d want to be lazy,” she said. “You’d want to just lie there and have me do all the work.”

He made a sound that was somewhere between a laugh and a moan, as if he were in on the joke—Rob might have many faults, but laziness wasn’t among them—but enjoyed the fiction anyway.

She might not understand the appeal of having anything inside her, but she was beginning to appreciate being on the other end—she relished the sensation of his body opening for her, the sight of his arm thrown across his eyes, his face turned to nearly hide in the pillow.

Now he was begging very prettily so she decided to relent. “I’m afraid you’ll have to make yourself useful because I only have one hand and it’s busy. Bring yourself off.” She watched him stroke himself, his fist moving quickly over his length. “You’re gorgeous for me,” she said. “Look at you.” And he came in his hand and around her fingers, the tension building and releasing from his body, right before her eyes.

“You’re a witch,” he said a few minutes later. “No other explanation.”

“I don’t see you complaining,” she said, yawning.