Page 16 of His Scandalous Lessons
“Christ,” he breathed.
“Please,” Anne whispered. She hated that she was begging for the smallest scrap of tenderness because she didn’t know how it felt. That was what Kendal had done to her, what her father had done. “Just...just don’t kiss me on the lips, all right? I don’t like it.”
Kendal had kissed her there. It had hurt the way he did it, his lips punishing against hers. He’d told her he hated her. He’d bit her lip and made it bleed. He’d—
Richard’s fingertips brushed the underside of her jaw to tilt her head up. “Where did you go just now? In your memories?”
She didn’t wish to tell him about those other kisses, those other touches, those other memories. So she told him, “They have no place here.”
Somehow, he understood what she needed. He understood that she needed his lips against her throat as gentle as moth wings beating there. That she needed his hands sliding down the slopes of her shoulders until they came to the neckline of her dress.
And he knew, somehow, that she needed him to lower the neckline to kiss her exposed skin with the kind of reverence a man would give a goddess, if he came to worship her.
“A husband should touch you like this,” Richard murmured, trailing his lips across the tops of her breasts. “As if he can’t get enough of you. As if he’d die if he stopped.”
Anne threw her head back as he pressed her against one of the columns in the gazebo. “What else?”
“He should always ask you a certain vital question.”
“What’s that?”
Richard gazed up at her through his eyelashes. “What do you want?”
Anne paused.What do you want? No one had asked her such a question, not ever. It had no place in her life, where she existed only as a memory bank for her father, as a future bride to a duke who loathed her. Such a question was for women with freedom, who could name the things they felt and identify their wants.
But Anne? She barely had the vocabulary. She barely knew how to ask. “What if I don’t have the words?”
“Then allow me to give them to you. I stop when you tell me to stop.” His hand moved to the back of her dress. “Do I unbutton?”
“Yes,” she whispered.
She held her breath as he deftly undid each button until the bodice of her dress sagged. Slowly — as if he waited for her answer — he peeled the wet fabric away from her breasts to bare them. “You want me to kiss you here?” He stroked a thumb across her nipple.
“Yes.”
Richard leaned forward and set his mouth on her, sucking.
Anne arched against him. “More,” she gasped. “I feel...I don’t know.”
“Show me where you want me to touch you,” he said, drawing his tongue across her skin to latch onto her other breast. “Take my hand, Anne.”
She grasped his hand, drawing it down her hips, then — before she changed her mind — she placed it between her legs. “Here.”
Richard made a rough sound in his throat. “Honest language?” he said, his breath harsh against her breast.
“Always.”
“Cunny,” he whispered, dropping to his knees. “Cunt. Quim. Pussy.” He lifted her skirts and slid his hand into the slit of her drawers. “What about here, Anne?” He gazed up at her with such heat and longing that Anne trembled. “Shall I kiss you here?”
Anne gasped softly. “Yes.”
“God, you’re exquisite,” he said, lowering her drawers. Then, very slowly, he pressed his mouth to her.
Anne cried out, pressing back against the column as he kissed and dragged his tongue to places that drew noises from her. That made her tremble until she felt as if her knees might give way. Then he slid a finger inside her. His name was a ragged sound from her lips, drawn against her will. They were not pretending. This was a lesson not in seduction, not in conversation, but in desire. She knew the feeling now; she doubt she could forget the way his warm tongue lapped against her, the sounds he made and whispered encouragements for her to come.
All at once, she shivered and something exploded inside her. She couldn’t understand it, the way she could barely keep her balance, how she couldn’t catch her breath, how his name became more of a plea on her tongue.
He came to his feet and held her against him until it subsided, and Anne felt more at peace than she ever had in her life.
