Page 52 of Lady Diana's Lost Lord
“But I can hardly see you.”
“Better that than to risk breaking them.” He could have dived down and found them if they had fallen to the bottom of the pond. But he couldn’t replacethem so easily. “Tell me what else your sister-in-law has told you,” he said, and pulled back onto his knees to look at her there: a work of art spread out upon a tattered quilt.
“Why?” she asked, and he felt the quiver of her muscles when he laid his palm across the warm skin of her belly, let his fingertips trace the dip of her navel.
“Curiosity. I suppose all men must wonder from time to time what it is that women talk to one another about.” God, she was so beautiful. He might have spent hours just learning the feel of her, the lovingly-shaped contours of her body, the velvet and silk textures of her skin.
She wiggled as his hands spanned her hips, gasping a little at the flex of his fingers. “Oh, you know,” she said, on a breathy little sigh. “Just—justthings.”
“What things?” He stroked the outer edges of her thighs, moving in a slow arc inward.
“She said—she said I ought to learn how to please myself in the event that I ended up with a bumbling fool for a husband, because it was more common a problem than I might know.”
Ben tried to stifle the laugh that rumbled in his chest, and failed miserably. “And does she have a bumbling fool for a husband, then?”
Diana’s brows pinched together. “One doesn’t like to think of one’sbrotherin such context, you understand,” she said. “But…I think not. I suspect that if she did, I’d have caught them at theirrecreational activitiesin public areas of the house significantly less often than I have.”
“Recreational? Ratherprocreational, I should think.” Idly, he rubbed his thumb across a tiny freckle there on the inside of her thigh.
With a small shake of her head, Diana said, “No, I think not. According to Lydia, they are taking precautions to avoid another child while their son is still so young. I think—I think they simply enjoy one another.” Wryly, she added, “Perhaps a bit too vigorously at times. It does grow wearying, having to listen at doors prior to entering just to ensure I won’t interrupt a spontaneous tryst.”
Another chuckle slid out of his throat, and he found the delicate skin behind her knees. Lax and pliant, she allowed him to lift her there, and to plant her feet flat upon the worn surface of the quilt. “Show me,” he said. “How you please yourself.”
“Oh.” Her cheeks flushed and her toes curled; a helpless little bashful motion. “I couldn’t.”
Ben turned his head and pressed his lips to her raised left knee. “You must. I haven’t got a sister-in-law with such wisdom to impart, so you’ll have to show me how to please you.” In all actuality, he had a rather good idea—but he wanted to see her touch herself.
That blush descended down her skin, painting her breasts a rosy hue. With a little sound that he supposed was conjured up from embarrassment, she cast her left arm over her eyes to shield her face and slowly she slid her right hand down her belly to the juncture of her thighs. Riveted, he watched as she parted sleek, dewy flesh and used her fingers to stroke herself there.
Light pressure, slow circles. Ben had never seen anything half so lovely as the play of her elegant fingers over her own soft flesh. His head swam, as intoxicated by the sight as if he’d imbibed an entire bottle of wine in one long swallow, and his cock ached with need.
A small sound eked from her throat. From between the splay of her fingers over her eyes, she peeked at him. “Would you—” Her pink tongue slicked over her dry lips. “Would you…touch me?”
God, yes. “Where?”
She reached for his hand, peeled it from its clench upon her knee, and laid it, palm-down, over her breast. Her head fell back as he shaped the soft flesh with his fingers, lightly stroking. He found the little bead of her nipple with his thumb and rubbed it to a tight point, manipulating it gently between his fingertips until her head fell back with a sigh.
“Like that?” he asked.
She managed a shaky nod. “It’s different,” she said. “Being touched instead of touching.”
“Yes.” The soft clutch of her hand had brought him dangerously close to climax in no more than half a dozen strokes. He could have devoted half the evening to learning the feel of her breasts in his hands, soothing away the chill bumps that the evening breeze scattered across her skin. Instead he wrapped his fingers around the wrist of the hand that played between her thighs, withdrawing her fingers. “Let me.”
Diana whimpered at the first touch of his fingers there, the muscles of her belly contracting. She felt impossibly soft beneath his callused fingers, the delicate flesh hot and slick. And she writhed, just a little, as he stroked her. A soft gasp, and she threw her head back as he found the tiny crest sheltered beneath tight, crisp curls. “There?”
“Yes.Yes.” Her hips canted into the tender touch, seeking a deeper pressure, more friction. The rumpled curtain of her dark hair spread over the quilt contrasted sharply with her fair, moon-drenched skin, and in this moment she looked every inch the Roman goddess whose name she carried.
She deserved to be worshiped as one, and he—he could make her come undone. His fingers drifted lower, between delicate petals of flesh softer than those of a rose, and found the hidden entrance to her body. One finger, two; they slid so easily into the hot, wet channel, and those small, secret muscles inside of her clenched around them.
Diana made a sound that was half-gasp, half moan, her hips arching to take his fingers deeper still. A wild undulation, reckless, helpless, and then a small cry of surprise given to the night air. The passionate little sound warbled around them, echoed back in whispers by the leafy trees.
He could see the taut muscles of her thighs flex with each slow plunge of his fingers, feel her chase the fullness of them upon each retreat, her hipslifting to follow. Her breath came in broken pants, and a fine mist of sweat glistened on her forehead and shimmered on her breasts.
“Ben.” She lifted one hand, caught at his shoulder, and her nails dug into his skin. “I need you inside me. Now.”
He had never considered the effect that such words might have upon him. Hell, he’d never thought to hear such words fromanywoman—but that they had come fromthisone seemed a gift, a blessing that he could never have deserved.
Somehow, in the space of a blink, he had fallen over her, and every soft inch of her was plastered to him, making space for him there within the clutch of her arms, in the cradle of her thighs. Somehow, he’d braced himself upon one elbow and slid the other arm beneath her neck to pull her into a fierce kiss. Somehow, she’d twined her legs about his hips, rocking hers against him.
