Page 63 of The Pearl (The Godwicks 3)

She stood up and Arthur looked at her. “Are you leaving?” he asked.

“I can’t. It’s raining, and I didn’t bring my umbrella.”

“Then you should stay.”

“You have a bedroom in this house, I assume,” she said.

“I do. Do you want to sleep in it tonight?”

“Yes,” she said. “With you.”

Arthur rose from the sofa and just as he was coming to her, the lights flickered again and went out.

She reached for his hand in the dark and found it. The wind gusted. The house shook. His hand was warm and steady and strong.

Something thumped on the floor close to them in the dark. The lights flickered on again.

They turned and saw a book on the floor, fallen off the shelf. It had landed face down, the pages open.

Both she and Arthur stared at it as if a snake had suddenly slithered into the sitting room to warm itself at the fire.

“Leave it,” Regan said. “We’ll look at it in the morning.”

* * *

Arthur tookher by the hand and led her into the entryway, to the stairs and up, up, up to his bedroom. As they ascended, the wind grew louder. Leaves blew past the windows and cast strange shadows on the walls like a thousand shadow birds.

When they reached the landing, the lights flickered off again. Arthur was able to guide her to his room in the dark. Inside the doorway, he said, “Stay here. I don’t want you to trip over anything and hurt yourself. I’ll find candles.”

He started to leave her and she grabbed him by the wrist and pulled him back to her. On the threshold of his bedroom, in a house gone dark and the storm suddenly quiet, their mouths found each other in an electric kiss. It was a kiss on the edge of a knife, a kiss at the edge of the world. His mouth was hot and hungry and charged with meaning and need. She opened her lips to his tongue and tasted him, the taste that was just him, only him.

“We don’t need candles,” she said, “if we stay here.”

Arthur reached under her dress, lifting it to her waist to find her knickers. He hooked his thumbs under the lacy edges and pulled them down her legs and over her boots. Where they landed, she didn’t care. On his knees, he lifted her dress higher, kissed her stomach, quivering and taut, then her naked hips. His lips brushed over the sensitive skin, teasing and tickling. His hands cupped her bottom and kneaded her there.

His head came to rest against her stomach and she found his hair, black silk, and wound her fingers into it and held him there.

“Last night,” he breathed, “was the longest night of my life. And today was the longest day.”

“You shouldn’t feel this much for me. You’re only going to lose me sooner or later.”

“I pick later, then.”

She might have chided him for his naiveté—spoken just like a twenty-year-old half-grown man—thinking they could build something on this alone. She didn’t mock him, though. She wanted to believe it, too.

He kissed her again, all over her thighs and sides and down her legs all the way to her knees and back up again. She reached between her thighs and found the folds of her labia, spread them and pushed her hips forward. He brought his mouth to her cunt and lapped at it, licking her clitoris as he held her against the doorframe by her waist. The heat from his tongue, the wetness warmed her to her core. Each flick of his tongue sent waves of pleasure shooting up her spine and down the backs of her legs. And this, him on his knees in front of her, his head in her hands, his heart and soul and life in her hands…

The hollowness inside of her ached to be filled. The need to touch him grew unbearably strong. Regan tugged on his hair, pulling him off his knees. She reached for his shirt and almost tore it from him in her rush to reach his body. Finally she had his flesh under her fingers—hard chest, flat firm stomach, strong broad shoulders. She touched him everywhere front and back, and drew him against her so she could run her hands up and down the long furrow of his spine. She trailed her fingers around his sides and to the front, to his stomach, to his jeans, the button, the zipper.

His cock was brutally hard. He inhaled sharply as she wrapped her fingers around it and stroked. He rested his head on her shoulder while she rubbed him with both hands, making slow long explorations with her fingers. She circled the head and gathered the pearls of come and massaged them into the tip so that he would be as wet as she was when he entered her.

She brought his cock between her legs, the tip against her clitoris. He took himself in hand and stroked that aching knot.

“No more,” she said. “Now.”

What she said, he did. Regan was suddenly pushed hard against the doorframe, and his arms wound round her. He lifted her and brought her down, impaling her. A cry escaped her lips as she sunk down onto him. She was pinned to the frame as he pulled her legs around his waist. She locked them at the ankles, trapping him inside of her.

She clung to his shoulders and felt his mouth at her ear. Her vagina clenched around the thick organ inside her.

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