Surrender to Me (The Derrings #4)(36)

He swallowed visibly, his throat muscles working.

Excited beyond endurance, every nerve in her body screaming with a desperate urgency, she parted her legs, leaving herself exposed to his searing gaze. Cool air rushed over her, caressing that most vulnerable part of her.

One hand still holding his throbbing member, the other clutching the counterpane, she urged him closer, thumb rolling leisurely over the velvet tip of him, eyes never moving from the taut lines of his face.

A bead of moisture rose up to kiss her thumb and want twisted deep inside her. She rubbed the evidence of his desire over him.

Guided by her hand, his body came closer, beautiful and glistening in the firelight, his hips widening the gap between her thighs.

Squeezing his pulsing length in her hand, she teased him at her opening, nudging him against her, watching hungrily as his eyes dilated with desire. His chest lifted on a ragged breath as she traced the head of him over her folds, rubbing him in her moistness, tormenting herself—tormenting them both.

“God,” he gasped, eyes burning blue fire as he bucked against her hand, trying to bury himself inside her.

She smiled coyly and shook her head.

“What are you doing to me?” he groaned.

Making it last. Making it so good and so perfect that it would be enough. Enough for a lifetime.

Unable to stop herself, or the siren that she had become, a siren that she never knew she could be, she bent forward and tasted him, savoring him with a single, deep lick of tongue.

He shuddered, his hand diving into her hair, tangling in the loosened strands, gripping her head as she took the head of him in her mouth.

Her gaze flicked upward, relishing the sight of his head flung back, the tendons in his neck stretched taut, the muscles in his chest strained tight with tension. Urged by some dark, unknown part of herself, she devoured him, loved him with her mouth, fueling her arousal as she wrenched groans and cries from deep within him.

Leaning back, she released him, beyond teasing, beyond delaying the desire that had turned her into a wanton creature.

Falling back on her elbows, she met his gaze. “Take me,” she whispered.

He came over her, his arms falling on each side of her, caging her in. His gaze held hers, dark and dangerous, feral as a jungle cat cornering its prey. He prodded her opening with his hard heat.

Legs wide, she lifted her hips to meet his first thrust, ready for it, taking him in as deeply as she could, crying out and arching beneath the invasion that stretched her, filled her to capacity.

Leaning forward, her hands clawed down his back, seizing the tight mounds of his buttocks, urging him on, needing the ferocity of this union, the sense of coming apart inside herself from his each and every thrust.

He dragged his mouth down her throat to her shoulder in a blistering trail.

“Harder,” she gasped in his ear and he increased his thrusts.

In answer, he plunged fiercely, burying her deeper into the soft bed.

She moved beneath him, desperate for more, for all, for an end to the torment, an end to the aching emptiness…for him to never stop…never leave her.

“Astrid,” he gasped, biting down on her shoulder.

She arched beneath him, breasts pressed into his sweat-slick chest, his crisp hair against her nipples incredibly erotic. He followed his bite with a kiss to the bruised flesh, his tongue licking and laving, sliding upward, over the column of her throat.

She let go then, surrendered, muscles squeezing and tightening in a blinding flash of pleasure and pain.

Her vision grayed at the edges and she wondered if she had perhaps died, the feelings rippling through her too great, too powerful, too…much, reminding her with startling suddenness why she hid from such tumultuous emotions.

Her muscles relaxed, body liquefying into a puddle as he moved a final time inside her, the heat of him pouring into her.

She lay utterly still for a moment, her legs spread wide beneath him, his large body heavy and sticky atop her, his member still twitching inside her.

As the pleasure ebbed, so did the feelings, the emotions she had allowed herself to feel. Like water spilling from a cup, they poured from her, fleeing from the hidden depths of her soul.

Slowly, Astrid returned to herself. She looked down at herself, at his dark head resting against her shoulder. One bare breast peeked out from beneath him, gleaming golden in the glow of the fire.

Her legs, spread widely, indecently, appeared to belong to someone else, some other wanton creature of the night that permitted emotions to tumble from her as easily as her clothes. Someone like her mother.

Damnable tears pricked her eyes. It had come to pass. Just as her father said it would. She had become as capricious as her mother. An amoral creature that succumbed to passion and emotion without a shred of sense or dignity. Without a thought to the obligations weighing on her.

No. She would not be that person. Would not become her. One fall from grace did not constitute a total lack of control or loss of responsibility.

Her knees trembled slightly, shaking at the effort to stay upright. The slopes of her thighs glistened with a fine sheen of perspiration, the muscles beneath the flesh quivering. Unable to hold them up, she let her legs slide down, the bottoms of her feet gliding over the furred coverlet.

He stirred against her—in her—and lifted his dark head. Staring at her, his lids heavy over the light blue pools of his eyes, a familiar lick of heat twisted inside her belly.