The Duke with the Dragon Tattoo (Victorian Rebels, #6)(74)

A muffled groan passed between them. His. Hers. She couldn’t be sure. It was low. And it was raw. And it was followed by a violent reaction on his part.

He reared back, breaking the kiss, and grasped the lace collar of her nightgown in both hands, rending it in half from her body with one smooth, powerful jerk.

It was in her shy nature to cover herself, and she moved to do so, but her arms were still trapped in the sleeves, which he tucked down next to her body, rendering her immobile.

He stared down at her silently. Like a pilgrim would a relic, his eyes bright and savage. So opposite from what they’d been that first night when all she’d read within was a selfish, unsympathetic hunger.

She worried now that he considered her something other than she was. Not a skinny cripple on the wrong side of thirty. But a woman. A provocateur. Someone who enticed and aroused him.

Would he always see her thus?

He gave her no words, no platitudes. He didn’t call her beautiful. He didn’t have to. She caught the image of herself reflected in the hunger tightening his brutal features. In the awe glowing from his gaze. In the hitch of his breath, and the heat of his sex.

Tonight, words served them not at all. There was so much to say. And so little language to properly convey what was lost and found between them.

First. There must be this. This merging of selves. This meeting of the inevitability of their past and the indefinite future.

He’d not take her. Not this time. He’d promised not to.

This time, she would give.

Lifting herself, she blindly sought his mouth, unable to reach for him as her arms were still trapped.

He responded immediately, descending on her, ravishing her mouth as his hands explored her body where his eyes no longer could. She had one blurry glimpse of dark lust on his features before he did, indeed, press her down. Down. Engulfing her with the yielding mattress below, and his hard body above in a cocoon of warmth and need.

Where her calm had surprised her before, now she fought another sensation. The urge to move. To squirm against him as he took his time shaping his hands to her body. He’d claimed to want this for twenty years, dammit, so why did he insist on touching her in places that mattered not at all?

His mouth moved to nibble delicately at her jaw, her ear, the hollow of her throat as his hands spanned her ribs, followed the curve of her waist to the flare of her hips, charted over the smooth expanse of her belly. None of those places were even remotely sensual, were they? Just various innocuous parts of her, and yet he seemed to delight in finding them. In stroking them. In exploring them as though he’d never before touched a woman.

After so long, she made an impatient noise, flexing her quivering knees and wriggling impatient hips.

Lord, what a heathen she was turning into all of a sudden … But she couldn’t help it.

She’d not been the only one waiting for twenty years, and since Ash was here in the room with her, she was good and ready to make up for missed time.

An appreciative sound purred from his throat, and he gave her what she wanted, and then some.

His hot mouth closed over her chilly nipple at the same time his hand slid over the soft nest between her legs.

She didn’t know upon which incredible sensation to focus. The dance of his tongue on her breast, or the stroke of his hand over her sex. He petted her downy curls before parting them. His fingers were cool against her hot, intimate flesh.

They gasped together as she saturated his questing hand with moisture. For a moment, she surrendered to it all. Both the sweetness, and the shame.

The heat of his breath against her breast distracted her for a moment, before his clever, careful fingers began to dip and toy with the slick desire her body had released, drawing it up to the tiny place that swelled and ached for him.

She dared to look down at him, to gauge his expression. She found it intent with lust, his color high and fevered. His gaze desperate.

But his hands, his infuriatingly stable hands belied what she read on his face. They made sly and circular motions around that place where her sensation culminated, unhurried even as she writhed beneath him, clutched at him. Gasping wordless pleas for something she didn’t understand. Couldn’t express.

She. Just. Knew. Knew he was taking her body on a taut, excruciating journey with a devastating end.

He seemed to draw pleasure from her agitation. To savor it. So, unable to stand it anymore, she pressed her head back into the mattress and squeezed her eyes shut. Surrendering to the moment.

To him.

A finger found its way inside of her, and she jerked, but he crawled up her body, soothing her with a gentle, probing kiss. His strokes became wicked, then torturous. Quickening in pace and rhythm until she surged in trembling, taut thrusts. Riding his fingers as she imagined one rode a horse, hips moving in time with the animal, urging it onward.

He slid another finger inside her, and she sobbed at the pressure of it. The pleasure of it. It threatened to annihilate her. To rush toward her with the speed and inevitability of a rogue wave, and there was nothing to be done but brace for the onslaught.

Which she did. She clutched him, her true source of strength, as it crashed down upon her and threatened to sweep her away. He held her. Soothed her. Encouraged her. All the while continuing his ministrations, his fingers slipping easily into her wetness. Pulled deeper by grasping, pulsing muscles.

He never let her go, not even when he brought her down slowly. Dragging his lips over hers as she twitched and shuddered long after his hands withdrew from her swollen flesh, leaving it not only empty, but oddly unfulfilled.