Page 76 of Duke of Destruction
He touched it again now, and she nearly floated up to the ceiling.
“Yes,” she breathed again. He hadn’t even asked her a question, or at least she didn’t think so, but she would give him her approval until he gave her what she needed—as many times as she needed to say it. It didn’t matter, as long as he showed her how to release this restless ache inside her.
He rubbed at her sensitive spot, the feeling so overwhelming that it almost distracted her from the blunt pressure of him at her entrance, then the aching stretch as he pushed gradually inside her.
“Oh, God,” she whimpered. “Oh, goodness.”
Percy froze. “Do you need me to stop?” he asked. She could tell that the question cost him.
She gathered her mental resources enough to dig her fingernails into his shoulders.
“Don’t you dare,” she told him.
His kiss brought him a fraction deeper into her body’s embrace. Catherine marveled that she could want something that didn’t quite feel good. Some innate sense told her that itwouldstart to feel marvelous if she just kept going.
And she was a Lightholder. Tenacity was in her blood.
Percy was gentle and relentless, each movement forward accompanied by a gentle retreat, followed by a press just a little bit deeper. Back and forth, back and forth. The movement was practically mesmerizing and, by the time he was seated fully inside her, his hips flush with hers, she realized that the discomfort had long since disappeared, replaced with the aching, clawing desire for more.
“Are you all right?” he asked hoarsely, holding himself all the way against her. His limbs trembled with the effort. She’d seen this in him before, his struggle to hold back his energy, but never so strongly as he displayed it now.
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, yes,pleasemove.”
And, for once in his stubborn life, Percy did as she asked without complaint. His movements began controlled, smooth gliding that caused her to shiver and tremble with this novel way of feeling. Gradually, however, he began to move more and more quickly, his thrusting a little more erratic as his own pleasure took him in his grasp.
“Catherine,” he gasped. “Touch yourself for me. Please. I shan’t—I shan’t last very long.”
Catherine, too, was feeling unusually accommodating. She let her hand come between their two bodies, following his guidance, and touched that sensitive place. She didn’t need to do much; the way he was moving against her moved her hand in turn in a way that caused the most marvelous friction. Yet the addition of her fingers gave her just a little more contact, a little more pressure, a littlemore.
“Oh,” she murmured. Who had ever known a person could feel this good?
Her legs began to shake with her incipient crisis. She dropped her knees wider, making space for him to go just a little bit deeper, to press against her just a little bit harder. Percy’s control wavered even further in response. Their movements became a touch frantic. He bit his lip as if fighting to hold himself back, and a flop of hair fell over his brow.
The sight of him so undone ratcheted up Catherine’s pleasure in turn, and the tight knot of tension that had been building inside her finally released explosively. She clutched at his shoulders as her crisis overtook her, clinging as though she might never let him go. It seemed to go on for ages and ages and, God help her, she wished it would never stop.
Percy continued making love to her through her climax, his face a mask of agonized pleasure. As soon as her limbs went limp, he pulled hastily free from her body and grasped a fistful of the sheets as he spilled himself onto the linen with a hoarse cry.
Catherine knew this was for the best. She knew, with a detached knowledge that came from animals rather than humans, that something to do with the spilling was what caused confinement—and that Percy’s actions had been doubtless to prevent her getting with child out of wedlock.
She knew it was for the best and yet...
And yet part of her was sorry that she hadn’t quite gottenallof him.
Even so, she was too well-pleasured to really object. She laid there for a moment, her body cooling, her breath gradually calming. The frantic desire had left her spent, and she could feel exhaustion tugging at her limbs, not that she could afford to give in to it just yet.
If she poked too deeply at her emotions, she might rouse the frisson of fear that was hiding deep inside her. That fear told her that this had been too good, too perfect, and that she would never again feel anything half as satisfying. That she would never again feel so beautiful or as though she mattered to someone in this precise way.
Even more alarming was the thought that lurked even deeper, the one that asked,What if?That tiny thought was the guardian to a door markedhope, and openingthatdoor simply was not something Catherine could permit herself to do. At the very least, she needed a clearer head.
So, she didn’t try to rouse herself. Instead, she drifted, just a tiny bit.
She drifted enough, in fact, that it took her a moment to realize that Percy hadn’t turned back to face her. He was there, and that was all that mattered.
Or at least it was, until he pushed himself up to sit without ever once turning back in her direction. Then, crushing worry dropped over Catherine, banishing all the good feelings that their encounter had left in her.
She felt suddenly too naked. She scrabbled for a sheet to cover herself as she sat up, too.
“Is…is everything all right?” she asked, hating how small her voice sounded. It made her feel powerless, and she’d never felt that way—and certainly never with Percy.
