Page 37 of The Marquess' Wicked Wager
“Just,” he licked his lips, “don’t say a thing.”
“Why—”
“Because if you say a thing, a single thing, I shall… I shall…” He was panting now, and his eyes flickered away. Edna reached for his hand again.
“Your touch is worse,” he whispered, and Edna was completely at a loss. “You need to leave.”
She whimpered, clutching her dressing gown more tightly around her. “What have I done?”
“It’s not what you’ve done, it’s…” His hand was close to hers again. “I should not have invited you in here. I don’t know why I did. It was uncouth. It was stupid.”
“It was only for a drink.”
“None of this isonlyfor anything, Edna!” He spun around, and the room seemed to spin with him. He ran his hands over his face, over his arms. “Not when I’m… Not when I feel…”
His hands were balled in fists in front of him, and Edna’s head began to hurt from how tightly she had furrowed her brow. She wanted to know what he felt more than she wanted tobreathe.She strode toward him. “Tell me,” she pleaded softly. “Calm yourself, Albert, and tell me.”
She brought her hand to his cheek, and he was burning, fever hot. He could not bring himself to look at her.
“You wish to know what it is I feel?”
Edna nodded. All was quiet then beyond the cooing of a lonely owl beyond their window. He pressed his cheek against her palm. He nuzzled closer, and closer until his lips were on her skin. And then he was kissing her, right there, where fingers met her palm. And then, he trailed his kisses down to her wrist. Hegrabbedher wrist and held it against his mouth, lapping at the skin there.
She tingled all over. But the tingling was the least of her concerns as he slid his hand down her arm until he hooked her beneath the shoulder. He sunk his mouth into the crook of her neck, and Edna was blinded by the light of the moon.
She let out a pleading sigh, feeling boneless in his hold. His stubble ran across her skin, and ithurt, but she didn’t want him to stop. He leaned into her, scooping her up like she was weightless. And she stood on the tips of her toes as his mouth finally found hers.
“This is what Ifeel,” he hushed against her lips. “This is what I feel for you.”
His body writhed against hers in the greatest, truest, expression of his feelings. His passion. Hisneed. This must be what drove people to scandal. This dance, thisyearning. At last, Edna understood.
She understood as she grew senseless without thought. She understood as her fingers dug into his back through the fabric of his shirt. She understood as he brought a knee up between her legs, and she all but lost the concept of time. There was only him. He was all that mattered.
He whipped her around and lay her on the bed. She felt like she was floating, and he stood over her like an angel. He climbed atop her, straddling her as he undid the sash of her gown. He lifted her up, one hand beneath her back, as he pried it off her and threw it aside.
“Youmake me hunger for you like no one ever has,” he admitted as though in confessional. The moment was like a sanctuary.
“Albert,” she sighed in prayer.
He kissed the spot where her neck met her chest. “Tell me you feel it too.” She nodded and twisted her fingers in his dark shock of hair.
“Tell me you want me as much as I want you,” he added.
She noddedagainand tugged on the fabric of his shirt to draw him up to her. “Yes,” she breathed and pried open the top buttons of his shirt until she could go no lower for his dratted vest. She pressed her hands against the skin of his chest, and he was so hot where she was cold.He hungers for me. He wants me, she chanted in her mind.
Edna had no idea what she was doing, how she drove him to such madness. She could not put into words what she wanted him to do to her, what she wanted to do to him, only that it felt like dying of thirst. The most terrible, spiritual, divine thirst.
It was his pool she wanted to sip from. Him she wanted to imbibe. His soul. His heart. Anything she could get her hands on.
“I told you I would not take anything more from you without you asking,” he breathed against her, his voice a saddled rasp. “So,” he began, and his next words were her undoing, “ask me.”
Edna let out a moan, biting at her bottom lip so hard she feared she might draw blood. “Kiss me…”
Albert smiled in the darkness and pressed his mouth against hers. It was not enough. “And now?” he growled.
“Touch me,” she murmured, “where I need you most.”
The words spilled from her like a poem she had known her whole life. Breathlessly, Albert worked his way down her body. He moved her chemise aside, exposing the skin of her arms and shoulders. He pecked her collarbone, the top of her bosom, his hands digging into the flesh at her waist.
