Page 80 of Claimed By Her Forbidden Duke
The room filled with her moans, as she was unable to hold them back, not when he used his mouth in such a way. Her cheeks burned, and when a knot tightened in her chest, blooming lower, she tightened her hold on him. She was about to spiral back into that delightful place he had brought her to in the library. She was about to?—
Edmund pulled back with a wicked grin, and although a protest died on her lips as he began to kiss his way up her body, the shivers that ran through her from the disrupted pleasure made her feel somehow better.
“Forgive me for being greedy,” he murmured into her mouth, kissing her lower lip tenderly. “But I wished for us to claim pleasure together. The night is long, but I fear I will get so lost in you that I will lose track of time. So before that happens, I want to ensure that you experience everything you want to before you tire.”
“Let us not speak of parting,” she desperately pleaded, pulling him to her.
“Let us not,” he agreed.
He kissed his way down her neck, almost animalistic with the way he chased every inch of her body with his mouth.
“I will never hear you speak another terrible word about yourself. You are stunning, Penelope Clarkin.”
Her full name on his lips made her ache all the more. Pushing his kisses off, needing to see more of him, she began to rake her hands over the front of his shirt. Smirking down at her, Edmund rid himself of his shirt, yanking it off with the same roughness he had treated her dress with.
“I will buy you a thousand dresses if it will get you to believe me,” he muttered in another kiss, and she giggled.
She parted her legs as far as they would go, and she flushed as he dragged his gaze down the length of her body. As he undressed, she did the same, not even caring to hide her attraction. He would read it even if she tried to hide it.
Tanned skin stretched taut over broad shoulders. Arms corded with muscles led down to his ridged abdomen. He had a slimmer waist, toned, which led to narrow hips.
Penelope swallowed. She had never seen anything like it except in paintings. What had he done to have such a form?
Edmund had a few dark freckles here and there, small black marks that she immediately wanted to kiss. Among them were scars. So many of them that she gasped, unable to look away. Thin, knife-like wounds, bullets, burns. They painted his skin, but they were not unsightly. If anything, she wanted to trace them with her mouth.
Despite being on the curvier side, Penelope felt dwarfed by his sheer size as she took in the thickness of his thighs. And there, stiff between those thighs, his length was as proportionate as the rest of his body.
“Heavens,” she whispered, momentarily embarrassed by her lack of elocution.
Edmund laughed breathily, the sound dangerously attractive. “Yes?”
You are large.
She did not say that out loud, but she had a hard time lifting her eyes back to his face.
“I…” She let out a quiet, nervous laugh. “I do not know where that is meant to go. No, Ido, of course. I know the ways of intimacy, but…” She glanced down, jitters flitting through her. “I do not knowhowyou think it will fit.”
“You compliment me well,” he told her, leaning down to kiss away her further mumbles about his ridiculously handsome body and how he indeed looked as though he belonged in a painting. Something Grecian. Something heroic. “And if I belong in a painting, my fair Penelope, you belong right alongside me. You are luscious, and I wish to map every curve of your body. Every dip you possess and every ridge will not go untouched. I will lick my way along every valley of your skin, every inch of you that I can get my hands and mouth on.”
His body rolled against hers, and she felt the full length of him grazing her core, slotting them together without entering her. Still, her breath caught at the promise.
“By the time I am done with you,” he continued in that low, velvety voice, “there will not be a part of you that does glisten with the remnants of worship.”
As if to make his point, he moved down her body to kiss one erect nipple and then the other, swiping his tongue around it to make it glisten beneath the low light. But as he distracted her with such a lewd kiss, he pressed the tip of his length to her entrance.
At the first press, the kisses on her breasts were not quite enough to distract her from how it felt. But Edmund kept his eyes on her, his palm sliding down her stomach to intertwine their fingers lest she need something to anchor herself. At least that was what Penelope told herself. It was not an act of affection. It could not be, surely.
But her contemplation was quickly snatched away, replaced by nothing but mind-numbing, blissful pleasure. Her breath left her in choked-off gasps, the desperation pouring from her mouth in needy sounds. Edmund’s fingers tightened around hers as he slid in deeper.
“I got you,” he told her.
She didn’t realize how much she needed to hear such a thing.
Passion sparked inside her, rolling through her body in high waves. Edmund was a riptide, and Penelope had flung herself knowingly into those waters with a smile. He caught her smile and leaned down to kiss it, to lick it right into parting on another moan as he finally sheathed himself in her fully.
With no more depth to find within her, Edmund exhaled, his eyes fluttering closed.
The muscles in his back tightened. Penelope moved her hand to his shoulder, marveling at the tautness. One day, she would find out what had honed such a body.
