The Governess (Wicked Wallflowers, #3)(101)

Broderick drew back, and she cried out, clenching her fingers in the fabric of his jacket to hold him close, but he was merely shifting his attentions to the neglected peak of her other breast.

“Broderick,” she moaned, her head falling back. Her plait whipped the sheet music from the stand, scattering those pages about them, forgotten.

He suckled and teased, worshipping that tip until Reggie’s speech dissolved into an incoherent half plea, punctuated by the strident discord of the pianoforte.

He sat, and she cried out at the loss of him. His passion-glazed eyes never breaking contact with hers, he slowly drew her night rail up higher. “Since the moment in your hall when you called me out for the bastard I am, I have dreamed of this.” He edged her nightshift past her calves, and then higher, exposing her thighs, and ever higher. She lifted reflexively, allowing him to guide the garment up to her hips, so that she lay bare before him.

Broderick reached down and caressed her right calf. “Freckles,” he whispered with such reverence it pulled a breathy laugh from her.

“They’re hideous.” She’d long despised those flecks that marked her skin.

Lowering his head and drawing her leg up, closer, Broderick traced the path of those flecks with his lips. “Beautiful,” he said between kisses.

And for the first time in the whole of her eight-and-twenty years, she believed it. Felt it.

He stroked his hands up along the expanse of her leg. “They go on forever.” His breath came fast, like one who’d run a great race. That evidence of his desire for her sent a thrill of feminine satisfaction coursing through her, and of their own volition, her legs fell open and her hips arched up.

Broderick groaned, and then dropping to his knees, he buried his head between her thighs, jarring the keys.

Reggie’s entire body tensed, and a hiss exploded between her teeth as she caught the edge of the instrument.

“Let yourself feel,” he urged, stroking her wet channel with his tongue, suckling her folds.

Reggie closed her eyes and then let her body sag, turning herself over to simply feeling.

Her hips rose and fell in time to the rhythmic stroke of his tongue, their every movement jarring the keys. And they played in her head, a song beautifully perfect in its dissonance as she ceased to exist outside the ache burning at her center.

“That’s it,” he praised, his breath hot against the inside of her thigh.

Reggie bit her lower lip hard. Needing more. Wanting more. “I’ve never felt this way,” she rasped. “Neverrrr.” That last word came out as an endless moan as he slipped a finger inside her wet channel.

“Come for me,” he urged between each stroke of his tongue.

Reggie gripped Broderick’s head, threading her fingers through the light, luxuriant strands. Panting, she pumped her hips, frantic.

Then he sucked her.

Reggie’s body stiffened.

She came on a piercing scream. Wave after wave of pleasure crashed through her, swallowing her with its intensity, muting all sound but for the clashing harmony made by those ivory keys.

And she didn’t care if anyone heard it, didn’t care if they were discovered. She wanted nothing more than for this moment to go on forever.

Panting, Reggie went limp. She caught her elbows on the scalloped wood, the engravings biting into her skin. Tears pricked behind her lashes. “I didn’t know I could feel . . . I thought . . .” How many times after rutting painfully between her legs had Oliver called her a cold fish? He’d been wrong. So very wrong, and about so much. A single tear slid down her cheek as she reveled in this newfound power. “He said I wasn’t capable of—”

Broderick stood and cupped her gently by the nape. “Don’t let him in here. He was never worthy of you.”

Reggie pressed her cheek to his chest and breathed deep the sandalwood scent that clung to him; the steady throb of his heartbeat thumped reassuringly against her ear. She stroked her palm over the place where it beat, and his muscles jumped under that light touch.

Because of me . . . his body is responding to my touch . . .

Emboldened and empowered, she caressed her fingers over the corded muscles of his chest, lower to his taut belly.

Broderick caught her hand. “Reggie.” Agony wreathed his voice. “Don’t . . .”

She faltered, her confidence flagging. “I see,” she said dumbly, drawing away from him. Mortified heat burning her cheeks, Reggie presented her back to him and hurriedly dragged her bodice into place. A puffed cotton sleeve twisted, and she struggled to thrust her arm through the tangle.

Broderick stalked over, placing himself before her. “What do you think you see?” he murmured, staying her frenetic movements.

She fixed her gaze at the golden whorl of curls exposed at the top of his shirt. It was a state of dishabille she’d seen him in countless times, and yet there had never been this level of intimacy between them. Her mouth went dry. I’m a pathetic harlot. Lusting after a man who doesn’t want to lie with me . . .

“Reggie?” he repeated, his melodic baritone breaking across her shameful musings.

She spun away from him. “You don’t want to make love to me.”

“Is that what you think?”

“That is what I know.” She refocused on that damned lacy sleeve, fighting the fabric.

“You’re wrong.”