Her Reformed Rake (Wicked Husbands #3)(45)

He groaned and kissed her neck. “Curious little buttercup. You’re playing with fire.”

She traced the circle, rubbed her thumb over the tip as he’d done to her. He withdrew his hand from its task of pleasuring her and flattened her palm over his chest before guiding it lower. Down over his taut, ridged abdomen and lower still, until together they reached something long and hot and hard.

Surely it could only be his manhood, but it wasn’t at all as she’d imagined it would be. Here was a part of him that was firm like the rest of his body and yet soft as velvet. Her fingers closed over him, and he was large. Impossibly large. She was not ignorant of what passed between a man and a woman, thanks to Aunt Caroline. How would they ever fit together?

As he showed her how to touch him, moving her hand up and down, tightening her fingers over his shaft, she cast the uncertainty from her mind. For touching him, feeling his strong body jerk against hers, hips thrusting, hearing his gravelly moan, sent an answering pulse of heat and wetness flooding between her thighs.

And then his fingers were once more upon the flesh he’d so tortured, circling and playing, at first lightly and then harder. Her entire body tightened, anticipation a delicious trill up her spine. He kissed a path to her breast, closing his mouth over a nipple and sucking, nipping, licking until she thought she’d go mad. Every part of her was unbearably aware, from the way his scent engulfed her to the sensation he rung from her with his mouth and fingers. It was too much.

It was everything.

And she wanted…

“Sebastian,” she whispered his name again, almost a benediction. Lord, how she wanted. For the first time in her life, she felt alive. Felt it with such exhilaration, that wild surge of something primal and invigorating speeding through her.

He tore his mouth from her breast, breathing heavier even than before, his gaze meeting hers. “Spend for me, love.”

There was something about his command—laden with authority, knowing and dark and decadent—that sent her crashing over the edge. A burst of violent, delicious pleasure assaulted her. She cried out, fingers tightening on him reflexively, twisting her lower body into his. Tremors seized her, little bursts of dark stars flashed through her vision, and she came undone as she never had before. Shaking, heart hammering in her breast, the world swirling around her, she clutched him to her in a half-embrace.

“My God, you’re so bloody beautiful.” His fingers slipped from her pearl down across the seam of her folds, seeking. He kissed his way back up her throat, worshipping every part of her with that wonderful mouth of his. Her chin, her cheek, her jaw, the tip of her nose. “I want you so bloody much I ache with it.”

“Yes.” She stroked him the way he’d shown her, knowing that even with the release he’d already given her, she wouldn’t feel complete until he had fully joined with her. She wanted him inside her. She was hollow and aching. Needing. “I want you too.”

His tongue found the dip behind her ear, that miraculous place only he had ever discovered, and when he ran it over her skin, she nearly climaxed all over again.

“I shouldn’t,” he muttered, alternating between kisses and licks.

She didn’t know what he meant, but she was also sure she didn’t care. Her capacity for reasoning, logic, and any sort of thought that didn’t involve him and what he was doing to her, had long since fled. “Please, Sebastian.”

She wasn’t even certain what she pled for. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but him and her and the depraved passion they unleashed within each other. She didn’t want a courtship. She wanted him. The absence of fear was a thrilling, ridiculous thing. She felt so giddy that she would have laughed if he had not taken her fingers from his shaft and if he had not run his length over her wet, sensitive flesh where she wanted him most.

“Forgive me,” he said into her ear, and then the head of him, hard and thick and demanding, thrust inside her.

His entry robbed her of breath. Pain, burning and sharp, stabbed through her. Her body stiffened beneath his, a gasp tearing from her throat. She’d known there would be pain. Aunt Caroline had warned her, but it had still taken her by surprise, lost as she’d been in the heady pleasure he’d already visited upon her.

“Bloody hell,” Sebastian swore, holding himself over her and scouring her face with his concerned, dark-blue gaze. He remained still within her, rigid and hot and not at all unwanted in spite of the unfamiliar intrusion and its accompaniment of discomfort. “I’ve hurt you.”

In truth, she had been more startled than anything. Her father’s fists and boots had inflicted far more damage upon her over the years than Sebastian ever could. With this pain would come great pleasure. With the other pain had only come the fear of more, inevitable pain and suffering

“I shall survive. I’ve been hurt far worse in my lifetime.” She blinked away the tears stinging her eyes.

“I’m sorry,” he pressed his forehead to hers for a moment, his warm breath fanning her lips. “I’m so sorry, buttercup. It will only ever pain you the first time. Let me make it better for you. Please?”

Sebastian raised his head again, searching her eyes. He trailed the gentlest of touches over her cheek. His beautiful face had softened, his expression tender, etched with concern. She would have given him anything in that moment. There was a darkness inside him that she sensed, for she had the same darkness dwelling within her. Sebastian was the first person who had ever made her want to drench the darkness in light—both his and hers. She couldn’t shake the feeling that somehow, as strange and incomprehensible as it seemed, they had been meant to come together. Just as she couldn’t shake the feeling that he could and would make anything better for her.