Page 32 of The Matchmaker Meets her Duke
"Emmett! I haven't done this before."
"That's where the imagination comes in." She lifted her head, and their gazes locked. There was a hint of fire in those eyes. She wanted this. She wanted him as much as he wanted her.
Pandora's arms came untangled around his shoulders. He shrugged out of his shirt, and slowly she placed her hands flat against the hard planes of his chest. "This?"
"Yes," said Emmett. Or meant to say, but the words escaped him like a croak. Good God, one would think he had never done this before! He, who had bedded more women than a farmer raised livestock.
But none of them had ever looked at him the way Pandora was looking at him now, as if their bodies were listening to one another, speaking the same language. None of those women with their seasoned mouths and small, simple touches had ever scalded him like Pandora's.
Emmett could only hold back for so long. The beast of desire raged between his legs. He put a steady arm around her back and held her face. Her hot breath was a whisper on his lips as he pulled her in for a kiss.
She shivered and pressed her body against his naked chest. It should have been a simple kiss. And at first, it was. Their lips. Small, soft bites, a collision of mouths that had waited too long and had tired of waiting. But soon Pandora's grip was tightening around his shoulders. She whimpered and moaned into his mouth. She clenched her hand tighter in his hair. He nibbled on her bottom lip, eliciting a gasp from her, a nudging to part her mouth. She obeyed and their tongues touched.
Pandora took the next step all by herself. She gathered her gown by its generous slit, and, rather ungainly, plopped down on Emmett's thigh. All the blood rushed to the back of Emmett's eyes, and he bit back a shout.
Heavens, it was a poor angle. A pin in her gown had come tumbling out, and by a peculiar stroke of ill-luck found its way right into raging hot flesh of his member. It shot mercilessly into the throne of his desire, and Emmett clutched his member and heaved off the bed, and groaned.
Pandora lifted herself off at once. "Emmett, my goodness–"
"It's fine–" It was theoppositeof fine.
"I'm so sorry, are you all right?" Her gaze bore all the pained panic he imagined his bore as well.
"I'm all right, Pandora," he said. But he wasn't all right. For a split second, he was convinced he was going to die. He was seeing red, black, terrible colors of pain.
All the blood that had once pooled between his legs had now storming in his head. Pandora knelt beside him and patted his thigh lightly until his head felt lighter his gaze clearer. It wasn't funny.
It shouldn't have been funny, but now there was the ghost of a smile perched on the corner of her mouth, and Emmett's eyebrows shot up to the ceiling. "Are you…smiling?"
"No!" shewas.
"You're laughing!"
"I would have you know that I won't stand for your ghastly accusations!" she cried. But after the breath of a second, Pandora clutched her midriff and bent forward, laughter crashing out of her mouth in soft, cascading waves.
Two minutes ago, Emmett would not have imagined that he would draw amusement from such immense pain. But now he watched the crinkle around his wife's eyes, the terrible way that she was trying and failing to laugh and breathe at the same time, and his shoulders shook with laughter too. Damn it, what a night.
"We keep stopping short," Pandora said after she had stopped laughing and gathered herself together.
"How do you mean?" he asked when her question had settled in his ear.
"I mean… we." She cleared her throat, clearly not comfortable enough yet with speaking of bedroom affairs. "We get together, we kiss, we have each other in our arms and then we don't."
"You mean Rose walking into the garden?"
"Yes. And our wedding night. And now this."
The painful incident of the pin digging into the hot flesh of his member now a far distant memory at the back of his mind, Emmett reached for Pandora's hand. She inhaled a sharp breath and let him take it in his. He did not take his eyes away from her as his thumb drew small, intimate circles in the middle of her palm.
"What are you doing?" she whispered her question like a secret only the both of them could ever share.
"What does it look like?" he answered. "What does it feel like?"
Not that the answer to his question would have been relevant whatsoever, but perhaps Pandora would have found an answer to it if he did not claim her lips for the second time that evening. He kissed her with a fervent urgency that she responded to with writhing heat of her own.
He put his tongue in her mouth, on her cheeks, trailing down the creamy curve of her neck, into the slope of her bosom. In one swift movement, his hand was on the small of her back, untying the knot of her chemise. Pandora gasped as her breasts sprang free. She writhed under the heat of his gaze and tried shyly to cover herself.
Emmett wouldn't let her. He took both her hands in his. He drew them to his lips. "You're so beautiful," he said, his breath ragged in her ear. He let his lips do the rest of the speaking, trailing her cleavage lightly with the tip of his tongue. Pandora moaned and writhed, and he pinned her down. He couldn't have his bride falling off her own bed before they had gotten to the good part.
