Page 46 of Miss Dauntless
By slow, lovely degrees, lips came closer to lips and breath to breath. The moment etched itself in Tremont’s memory as full of fierce satisfaction and fiercer longing. His body yearned, his soul was enchanted, and all—everything past, present, and future—came right when Matilda kissed him.
She took her time learning his features—a caress here, a stroke of her fingertips there. She explored—with her tongue,with her lips, with her hands—and she considered. When she drew back, Tremont waited, then grasped that he was being invited to reciprocate, and so it went.
A thorough, mutual investigation was punctuated by sighs and smiles, and from Matilda, even a groan or two. For Tremont, sweet sensations gradually subdued the roaring river of his thoughts, and in that magical peace, he, too, surrendered to his first real experience of lovemaking.
The soft weight of Matilda’s breasts against his chest.
The feel of worn linen in his hands at Matilda’s muttered, “I want… The chemise, Marcus. Now.Please.”
The absolute rightness of her beneath him when they rolled and rollicked on the great bed.
The glorious heat of her flesh pressed to his and the sharp intake of her breath when his cock brushed her sex.
“Slowly,” Matilda said. “As slowly as you can.”
The fog of pleasure lifted enough for Tremont to hear a note of reluctance in Matilda’s voice. He mentally spared a curse for the pair of louts and schooled himself to self-restraint.Moreself-restraint. As much self-restraint as he was capable of, which would be, he vowed, enough to acquaint Matilda with the nearer reaches of frenzy.
She began to move beneath him, to undulate into the slow slide of his hard flesh against her damp sex. She tucked her forehead against his shoulder, locked her ankles at the small of his back, and clutched his bum with delicious firmness.
“Marcus…”
That note of command in her voice could inspire him to keep up the temptation all day, all winter. Over and over again, he flirted with penetration, paused, resumed, and flirted again. He palmed her breast, experimented with caresses and would have indulged in further explorations of precisely how Matilda liked her kisses, except that she yanked the hell out of his hair.
“Marcus. Now.”
“Now?”
Another yank. “On the instant.”
“Hmm.”
As he’d hoped she would, Matilda took the matter—and her lover—in hand. She put him where she wanted him, gloved him with a slow, voluptuous slide of her hips, and appeared intent of galloping off with his much-vaunted self-restraint.
“Matilda, a moment, please.”
She moderated her enthusiasms, but did not stop. “For?”
Words… He needed words. Short words. “I’ll spend.” And that would serve him right for assuming his control was equal to her inspiration, but he owed her restraint.
She brushed his hair back in a caress that was not particularly erotic, and yet, it was loving. “Isn’t that the point?”
Vaguely, Tremont perceived that her words revealed a gap in her marital education, a lack of meaningful experience, but parsing the particulars was beyond him at that moment.
“No, that is not the point. My eventual satisfaction isapoint, one of several, but by no means the most important. Kiss me, or I will commence babbling.”
She obliged him, and that, oddly enough, helped Tremont reestablish his balance. He was reluctantly relieved when Matilda gave up her hold on his backside to clutch at his wrists as he braced himself above her.
Note for the record: I adore having her hands on my backside.
Matilda was strong, and moment by moment, her grip on his wrists grew tighter. Her undulations became determined, then demanding, then desperate, while Tremont moved in her with a relentlessly unperturbed rhythm.
Matilda was the sea, Tremont was a three-hundred-foot cliff face of male consideration against which she could surge andsigh her way to satisfaction. He had resolved that it should be so, though the precipice was perilously close to crumbling into the waves when Matilda bowed up and seized him in a tight, panting embrace.
The tremors passed through her, and still Tremont held himself in check, even when she shuddered her way to a second taste of satisfaction. She eased back to the pillows in a panting heap and at last went still.
“What is the name for that?” she said, brushing at Tremont’s hair again. “There has to be a word for it. Don’t you dare move.”
“Pleasure,” Tremont replied, his voice slightly raspy. “The word for it is pleasure.”
