Page 22 of The Spy Who Loved Her
“You mean to say?” he prompted.
She jerked, as if the words had startled her out of some stupor to which she had fallen victim. In a rush, she said, “That’s just how it’s done.”
A laugh—or something near enough to it—eased from his throat, muffled against the skin of her inner elbow. “No, it’s not.”
“It is!” The starch in her voice warned him of a flair of temper. “I would have cause to know, wouldn’t I? Having once been married, I mean to say.”
“Yes, more’s the pity. That doesn’t mean your husband wasn’t a graceless sod who cared more for his pleasure than yours.”
A gasp, high and offended, tore from her throat. Her fingers clenched into a fist, and she gave a futile tug at her arm in an attempt to wrench it away from him. “How dare you presume to render judgment upon the state of my marriage. As if you have any right!”
He supposed that while she might have drawn her own conclusions about it already, it did not make them any easier, any more comfortable to accept. One could know a thing to be true and still not wish to hear it spoken aloud by another. “I know what it feels like when a woman comes around my cock,” he said. “It is not arrogance to say that I pleased you. I know I did—you told me yourself. With your sighs, your trembles, your moans. The way you tightened around me like a fist. And you—you are going to tell me again. Right here.”
She made a small sound of surprise when he released her wrist to grasp her waist, lifting her off her toes to set her at the edge of the desk. The affronted anger, the misplaced instinctive loyalty to her deceased husband, and the general awkwardness all fell away like a discarded cloak the moment he fisted one hand in her hair, dragging her down until her back was flush against the solid surface of the desk.
Her hands clutched at his shoulders, something soft and vulnerable lurking in the fullness of her lower lip. “I shouldn’t enjoy this,” she whispered, her lashes fluttering across her cheeks. “Being manhandled.”
Probably it weighed upon her conscience, little Puritan that she was. A woman accustomed to doing the right thing, thinking the right thing, saying the right thing. There was no room for shades of grey within the strict order of her life. So much the suffering saint that she would have lived out her life in silent martyrdom with an unrepentant bastard of a husband, without offering so much as a word of complaint.
Her buttons were at her back. If he had given more thought to it, he would have undressed her before he had placed her here upon the desk. He’d have liked to watch her breasts bounce, those pretty, coral nipples ripe as berries to suck into his mouth. Later, then.
“I suppose your mother told you before your wedding that you weremeant to close your eyes and think of England,” he said, and felt the hitch of her breath beneath the hand he laid upon the cage of her ribs.
“Something like that,” she admitted, her hands flexing restlessly at her sides. “I suppose many ladies are told the same.”
“I don’t want a damned sacrificial victim in my bed,” he said. “But close your eyes and think of England if you must. For as long as you are able.” His hands fisted in the folds of her skirts, tossing up flounces of silk and the petticoats beneath. Her legs jerked at the touch of his hands, a token resistance to the thumbs he pressed between her knees, wedging them apart.
A faint splutter; probably he’d half-buried her beneath the skirts he’d tossed up. There was the soft rustle of fabric as she batted it away from her face. Her heels braced upon the side of the desk as she levered herself up onto her elbows.
“What in the world are you doing?” she inquired, her voice laden with confusion as he sank to his knees.
It was a damned tragedy that she didn’t know. Ambrose had more to answer for than he’d ever suspected. The globes of her bottom tensed in the grip of his fingers as he slid his hands beneath her, dragging her closer to the edge of the desk. She squeaked her bewilderment, momentarily unbalanced. A froth of petticoat slipped down over his shoulder, the fine, lacy fabric draping itself over his elbow.
“Rafe?” A tremulous murmur. Suspicious, yet rife with disbelief. He felt her shift, lurching to support herself upon one elbow while the opposite hand struggled with her disordered skirts in an attempt to shield herself from his gaze. Her fingers splayed over her intimate parts almost desperately. “You reallyshould not—”
“Ireallyshould.” Someonedamned well ought to have. Pity that the lamp was some distance behind her. He’d have liked to see more than the shadowed valley half-hidden there beneath the few flounces of her petticoats she’d managed to wrench down.
The muscles in her thighs flexed and tensed; a half-hearted, instinctive attempt to shove her knees back together. Slowly that tension dissolved beneath the strokes of his fingers up the delicate skin of her inner thighs—only to return again when his fingertips stirred through the crisp cluster of curls that shielded her sex.
He delved deeper, parting her curls, fingers slipping smoothly across soft flesh already slicked with a revealing moisture. A small sound, hardly more than a gasp, and her knees fell open just a hair wider.
He touched her with the tip of his tongue.
Her elbow slid out from beneath her. Her head hit the desk with a pronounced thunk. She muttered, “Ouch.”
And then she gasped, “Oh, my word,” as her hand fisted in his hair. Then she lost the abilityto speak at all.
Chapter Eight
Aman had his head between her legs. Beneath her skirts. Where he touched her in an unmentionable place. With histongue.
Emma wasn’t certain if it was the knock to her head or the breathlessness created by the wicked flicks of that tongue over her private flesh that had sent the ceiling spinning, but the intricate molding whirled above her no matter the cause. And she—
She stroked his hair. She had meant to pull him away, she was sure of it. This, surely, was beyond improper. She had wrenched herself up, and had grabbed up a great fistful of his hair, intent upon yanking him away.
He’d done something with his tongue—something terrible; wonderful.
She’d drifted back down to the desk, limp as a wilted flower.
