Page 47 of Unmasking a Wicked Marquess
“Edward …” The way she moaned his name as he stopped moving his fingers, removing them from her, was overwhelming.
This is something more.
Edward’s breath hitched in his throat as he moved over her and captured her lips with his own. He’d been with women before, but never had he been so entranced, never so fixated on watching her as he was tonight. It was everything.
And yet, she is forbidden to me.
With these words, he kissed her harder, feeling her wrap her arms around his neck and pull him in tighter. His body moulded to hers, and their hips brushed together. One of his hands moved beneath her skirt again, and he gripped her hip, holding onto her bare skin there, thrilled by it. As his length brushed her centre through his trousers and she moaned into his kiss, he felt a cold reality watch over him.
It was as if the sky above had suddenly become clouded with a storm, and lightning had struck his back.
She is out of bounds. What would our parents say?
He pulled back from their kiss, staring into the blanket as she continued to kiss down his neck. Those small, peppered kisses were a tease, promising more. He yearned to tear the waistcoat and shirt from his body to give her complete access to him, but he couldn’t.
What if he got her with child? What would his parents say then?
“We have to stop,” he whispered. Her lips pulled back from his neck, and she laid perfectly still on the blanket, her arms still around his neck. When a small crease marred her brow in a frown, he placed his lips to it, trying to smooth her skin once more. “Believe me, Juliet, I do not want to, but … we both know we must.”
The wind bristled the two of them for a second, the chilly air making the tendrils of their hair dance a little. He thought the only answer he would get was that wind rather than her words. He wasn’t exactly pulling away, not when his hips were still against hers, her skirt bundled around her hips.
She smiled rather sadly as he looked her in the eye again.
“A momentary rebellion,” she whispered, that sadness extending further.
It does not have to be the only time, Juliet.
Yet before he could say the words, she nodded.
“You are right; we should return to the house.”
Neither one of them moved right away. He kissed her again, slower than any other kiss they had shared, making the moment last for as long as he could before he would have to leave her.
“Come on the ride tomorrow,” he pleaded, finding the request leaping from him.
“Tomorrow?” She raised her eyebrows. They both knew at dinner that her father had asked her not to go.
“Please?” Edward asked. When she nodded, he sighed with relief.
***
“Juliet? Are you all right?”
Juliet seemed to hear the words as if they were at a great distance, being shouted at over the horizon. She sat in the saddle of her horse, her leg wrapped around the pommel so she was in the side-saddle position, as her eyes settled on Edward across the stable yard.
He had yet to take his place on his own horse and was walking around, helping others to prepare their horses. Juliet could not take her eyes off him. She just kept watching him, thinking of all they had shared outside in the parkland of the house.
He had introduced her to pleasure she had not thought was possible. She could still remember now the way her toes had curled, and the pleasure had shot through every fibre of her body as he urged her to reach some sort of pinnacle of thrills.
Her whole body had not stopped shuddering for an hour afterwards, and though she knew they’d had to part ways, that they should go back to the house, she had been unable to sleep for the rest of the night, thinking of just one thing.
I wish he had not stopped.
She kept imagining him releasing his length from his trousers and showing her the complete thing, what it could have been truly like.
“Juliet!” Violet snapped again and even waved a hand in front of her face to get her attention this time.
“What is it?” Juliet looked at her sister to find Violet red in the face and huffing.
