Page 100 of The Duke With the Dragon Tattoo
He spread her legs with rough hands, and she braced herself for the pleasure his fingers would surely impart.
“You’re so fucking beautiful.” His voice had become deeper, more savage. “I need to taste you.”
“What?” He couldn’t mean—
Without warning a strong, wet lick split her sex, strangling all protestations along with her breath. The pleasure elicited by the wicked deed rocked her so incredibly, her knees instinctively closed.
Ash’s strong arms anchored her thighs apart, his mouth burrowing into her core, lips exploring the pliant ridges of flesh and the throbbing apex above.
Unlike his callused, clever fingers, his tongue was warm against her sensitive sex, smooth, and delectably wet. It slipped and slid among her increasingly slick topography, leaving trails of pulsating pleasure behind.
Nowthiswas something Veronica had never prepared her for. This shocking, scandalous act. Something so selfless and sacrosanct, she wasn’t certain God allowed for it.
Because nothing so heavenly should be allowed in the human experience.
She blinked down at the dark head playing between her thighs, her insides both quivering and aching. If the depths of physical pain and suffering could be so acute, so terrifyingly exquisite, shouldn’t moments of pleasure be, as well?
Had they not both earned this?
He thrummed at the sensitive bud that was the center of her need. His tongue rolled, and his lips nipped at it, playfully teasing her with apparent delight before he gently ground against it with the flat of his tongue. A thrill of bliss shot through her with such force, her fingers sought and clutched at his hair, tugging insistently in no particular direction.
His sound of appreciation vibrated against her core, unleashing a tide of need from deep in her belly. She couldn’t call back an insistent mewl, then a hoarse cry as her need bloomed beneath his expert mouth. Her toes curled in their boots as her soul began to sing. A rhythm so ancient and primal melding with the dance of his tongue until ecstasy pulsed from her womb, to her bones, and sang through her blood.
Her body strained against the strength of his hold, her limbs thrashed, and her hips bucked beneath him. Later she’d be mortified that she’d become this uninhibited creature of wanton, voluptuous lust. That she’d abandoned all sense of modesty or dignity in favor of craven desire and this all-consuming rapture. The pleasure melted her into a miasma of shuddering wet pulsations. She’d become weightless with it, a being both created and dismantled by its relentless, agonizing waves.
A few helpless sobs escaped her as the sensations flowing from his mouth to her core reached a peak so indescribable, she wasn’t certain her body could contain it.
As though he sensed he’d overwhelmed her, he liftedhis head, allowing her hips to float back to the bed. She’d been unaware they’d ever thrust away from it.
He crawled up her body, licking his glossy lips like a satisfied cat, his eyes glittering like volcanic shards of dark intent.
Her muscles, replete and heavy, melted beneath him.
“Did you mean it?” he asked tightly. “Can you take all of me?”
Sighing, she wrapped her arms around his wide torso with more urgency than even she had expected, her heart contracting with a thousand different forms of love. “Every part of you.”
He sank inside her, stretching her untried muscles in warm, luscious increments. Her still-pulsing core gave way reluctantly at first, but his second slide was faster, wetter, and he didn’t stop until he was buried to the hilt.
“Yes,” she hissed into his ear as he buried his face into her hair. “Please.” It wasn’t the insistent plea that caused him to set a deep, stroking rhythm that quickly catapulted them both to the stars. It was what she whispered next. What she’d cried before her intimate muscles clenched around him in yet another release.
“Ash.”
CHAPTERTWENTY-ONE
“Lord and Lady Southbourne.”
Ash didn’t recognize the designation as belonging to him until Lorelai said, “What is it, Jenkins?”
He glanced up from where he, Lorelai, Moncrieff, and Blackwell were bent over the map, listening intently to her observations on how to safely approach Tersea Island.
“I’ve installed a Scotland Yard inspector in the parlor. He insists on speaking with you both.” His repugnant message delivered, Jenkins clicked his heels like a Hessian, and marched away.
They’d been expecting a police inquiry of some sort, of course. Mortimer Weatherstoke, a peer of the realm, had been recently murdered rather publicly, after all. His wife and sister kidnapped by the infamous Rook, only to be returned some three days later none the worse for wear by an unknown cousin of dubious Continental origin.
Ash Weatherstoke.
Gods, after all the time he’d spent insisting the boy was dead, he had to resurrect him. Here. At Southbourne Grove. Yet again.
