Page 14 of The Devil of Drury Lane
When he brought her to her feet, he immediately began to work on the fastenings of her gown. She assisted, though his fingers were talented, shimmying to let the rumpled silk slide to a puddle at her feet. Kicking it aside, she smiled when she felt him pause, a ragged sound slipping past his lips.
“I don’t bother with the silly trimmings for my studio,” she whispered into the hollow denting his collarbone, pressing kisses around his nipple before sucking it between her teeth. “Stays, corsets, drawers. A chemise and stockings are enough for art’s sake, wouldn’t you agree?”
“The color,” he said in a strangled voice, then tipped her head to capture her mouth in a kiss that was no longer gentle, “is unexpected. But the beauty of you is not.”
Losing track of the conversation, she trailed her hand to his waist. When he didn’t stop her, she moved lower, brushing his shaft, his labored exhalation telling her everything she needed to know. “What can I say, DeWitt? I like pale pink reminiscent of a rose petal and lots and lots of lace. French. Abby says they’re indecent when I think they’re lovely.”
“Lovely,” he murmured and pulled her under, easing her into a haze of desire.
In reversal of her request that he disrobe, she found herself raising her arms, her chemise fluttering away from her, leaving her in stockings and nothing else. The rip she’d heard when Damien wrenched the garment high was of no consequence. She and Pierre had not taken the time to disrobe, and the sensation of bare skin to bare skin for the first time was remarkably electrifying.
Damien’s caresses grew frantic, his breath uneven where it struck her cheek. Kissing his way to her breasts, he suckled her nipples until they stood at sharp points, and her body was melting.
Stumbling back, the arms circling her quivered. Lowering his hand, he cupped the hard ridge tenting his trousers and stroked himself through the thick broadcloth, an intimacy she’d not imagined experiencing in this lifetime. His spectacles were charmingly askew, his cheeks glowing, his lips plump from her kiss. “Let me touch you, Ainsworth. As I’ve dreamed of doing. I brought myself to completion last night and the night before and the one before that thinking of you. Of this.”
She flattened her palms on his chest, a thousand images assailing her at once. Damien DeWitt beneath her, behind her, crawling between her legs, and making her his. “If you’re asking, I’m saying yes.”
He seized her lips as his hand skated down her body. Her skin heated, a slight sheen breaking out until she felt slick. She was flushed and swaying. Her head dropped back when his fingertips danced over her thigh, sliding between her legs to graze the aching petals of her sex. His touch was light, delicate, gentle; his mind, she could see, attuned to each soft sigh, each groan, recording, observing.
This is what it’s like to make love to a brilliant man, she thought in wonder.
All the while, the rigid line of his arousal dug into her hip, tempting her.
Damien waited until her nails dug into his shoulder, impatience riding her fiery murmurs, before he nudged aside her folds and slipped his finger into her warm channel. He worked her into a frenzy with relaxed strokes, holding her off with a languid kiss when she tried to increase the pace. Only when she’d begun to tip her hips and move with him did he add his thumb, circling her sex, pressing, rubbing. Her vision spotted, a sudden pinch of sensation hitting her at the base of the spine and crawling higher. “Damien…now.”
“Look at me, minx.”
Mercy opened her eyes and his wicked smile swam into view. “Are you going to make me beg?” she asked with no little heat in her voice.
Damien laughed and stroked as her breath rushed from her lungs in a tripping burst. “No, I’m going to beg to taste you, to have you shatter with my lips around you, my tongue inside you.”
Mercy gasped, her body clenching in anticipation. She’d never considered this, even while touching herself in her bedchamber many a lonely night.
She didn’t deny him as he sank to his knees before her. The light shimmered off his lenses as he gazed at her. “You’re the most gorgeous thing I’ve ever seen, Mercy Ainsworth, the bloody most. I’m not going to waste one second.”
Ignoring the pulse beating in her ears, she lifted his spectacles from his face. His eyes were filled with raw desire but also a gentleness that shook her. “These might get in the way,” she said, breathless.
He hummed and took her free hand, hooking it on his shoulder. “Hang on, minx.”
Warning given, his mouth fell to her thigh, sucking, biting, his tongue following behind to soothe the skin he’d tormented. He played, keeping her off kilter. Kisses upon her right leg, then the left, his hand behind her knee, trailing across her bare bottom, and down the warm crevice between. Soon, he found his way to her moist folds, sliding a finger inside as his lips covered her sex, savoring her as he’d promised. To keep from spilling to the floor, she threaded her fingers through his thick strands. He grunted when she tugged, her subsequent moan filling the studio with colors of another kind.
His brilliance was highlighted in his combined assault.
He didn’t allow her to adapt to one devastating sensation before he initiated another. His fingers and his mouth working in tandem to overpower her. Her breath gusting, hips curving into him, she was lost, her nerve-endings firing like a piston. Groaning low in his throat, he looped his arm around her waist and pulled her into the assault.
She swayed and clutched his head in both hands. “Damien, I can’t…my knees are weak…I’m going to fall.”
Rescuing her, he walked her back a step, where she surrendered, collapsing to the settee. Unapologetic, he spread her legs and, with a sizzling glance, his eyes the color of the tourmaline in her grandmother’s brooch, dove back in.
Her limbs somehow made their way over his shoulders, heels digging into the firm muscle of his back. She arched and groaned, forgoing any semblance of restraint.
This was delightful madness and nothing but.
Their need was luscious and beautiful, exposing sides they’d never shown another person. When he caught the pebbled bud at the top of her sex between his lips and sucked, she exploded, her nails scraping his scalp as her body erupted. Heat and a quivering vibration rattled from the bottoms of her feet to her brow. She felt in places she’d never felt before. Choked out sounds of delight she’d never heard herself make.
Awareness fled for long seconds after she cried out and pushed him away, her skin too sensitive to accept more. She understood what the whispers in dark parlors were about—when one dared stumble over a man who knew his way around a woman’s body. If she combined sensations such as these with love, she’d be doomed.
Was she already doomed?
