Page 89 of The Duke With the Dragon Tattoo
His mouth moved to nibble delicately at her jaw, her ear, the hollow of her throat as his hands spanned her ribs, followed the curve of her waist to the flare of her hips,charted over the smooth expanse of her belly. None of those places were even remotely sensual, were they? Just various innocuous parts of her, and yet he seemed to delight in finding them. In stroking them. In exploring them as though he’d never before touched a woman.
After so long, she made an impatient noise, flexing her quivering knees and wriggling impatient hips.
Lord, what a heathen she was turning into all of a sudden… But she couldn’t help it.
She’d not been the only one waiting for twenty years, and since Ash was here in the room with her, she was good and ready to make up for missed time.
An appreciative sound purred from his throat, and he gave her what she wanted, and then some.
His hot mouth closed over her chilly nipple at the same time his hand slid over the soft nest between her legs.
She didn’t know upon which incredible sensation to focus. The dance of his tongue on her breast, or the stroke of his hand over her sex. He petted her downy curls before parting them. His fingers were cool against her hot, intimate flesh.
They gasped together as she saturated his questing hand with moisture. For a moment, she surrendered to it all. Both the sweetness, and the shame.
The heat of his breath against her breast distracted her for a moment, before his clever, careful fingers began to dip and toy with the slick desire her body had released, drawing it up to the tiny place that swelled and ached for him.
She dared to look down at him, to gauge his expression. She found it intent with lust, his color high and fevered. His gaze desperate.
But his hands, his infuriatingly stable hands belied what she read on his face. They made sly and circular motionsaround that place where her sensation culminated, unhurried even as she writhed beneath him, clutched at him. Gasping wordless pleas for something she didn’t understand. Couldn’t express.
She. Just. Knew. Knew he was taking her body on a taut, excruciating journey with a devastating end.
He seemed to draw pleasure from her agitation. To savor it. So, unable to stand it anymore, she pressed her head back into the mattress and squeezed her eyes shut. Surrendering to the moment.
To him.
A finger found its way inside of her, and she jerked, but he crawled up her body, soothing her with a gentle, probing kiss. His strokes became wicked, then torturous. Quickening in pace and rhythm until she surged in trembling, taut thrusts. Riding his fingers as she imagined one rode a horse, hips moving in time with the animal, urging it onward.
He slid another finger inside her, and she sobbed at the pressure of it. The pleasure of it. It threatened to annihilate her. To rush toward her with the speed and inevitability of a rogue wave, and there was nothing to be done but brace for the onslaught.
Which she did. She clutched him, her true source of strength, as it crashed down upon her and threatened to sweep her away. He held her. Soothed her. Encouraged her. All the while continuing his ministrations, his fingers slipping easily into her wetness. Pulled deeper by grasping, pulsing muscles.
He never let her go, not even when he brought her down slowly. Dragging his lips over hers as she twitched and shuddered long after his hands withdrew from her swollen flesh, leaving it not only empty, but oddly unfulfilled.
She blinked up at him with dazed fascination. Hissweat-misted brow. His unconcealed tenderness. But, where his hands were steady before, now they shook when they touched her.
A dark intent lurked beneath his tenderness. A hunger too long denied.
He’d reached the edge of his legendary self-control.
And now, he meant to claim her.
***
He’d meant to wait. To draw this out. To wring every last moment of pleasure he could from her body.
This was what he’d come back for. Wasn’t it? To take her. To fuck her. To claim what he’d been denied all these years.
And he was about to. God help him. Because he was a man no longer used to denying himself.
Except… He’d forgotten various and sundry things in his life, but never anything so important as what her gentleness did to him.
Thatwas what he’d come back for. He understood now. He admitted it to himself.
It wasn’t this raging inferno of desire. This rutting instinct. Not entirely.
It was the small hand delicately exploring the surface of his chest. The softness of her beneath him. The sweet, feminine fragrance of her. The heavy-lidded satisfaction bedazzling her sapphire gaze. The trusting, lazy half-smile she offered him.
