Mindless, feeling as though she was half mad with pleasure, she reached for his length, wrapping her fingers around him and moving. His entire body jerked and shuddered, and he let out a gasp, which only seemed to spur him on. Now she knew a little of what she was looking for, she understood from his panting breath that he was close to his climax.
She longed to be the one to give it to him, and he did nothing to knock her hands away.
“Don’t hold back,” he said. “Tell me you love it when I touch you. Show me what you want. I want to see you writhe in my arms, sweetness.”
There was no world in which she could do anything else. She opened her mouth, and nothing but moans and gasping left her lips.
“My good girl,” he muttered. “You have a natural affinity for this. For pleasure. For—” He cut himself off, and said her name again, pushing closer to her. She felt him jerk, heard the groan that broke from him, and felt the warmth of his seed across her stomach and chest. The primal nature of his marking made her heart pound.
She washis.
Yet even though he had just spilled himself on her, he did not stop. No. Instead, he spread her legs still wider, staring at the apex of her thighs with such hunger, it made something in her chest pinch and ache.
“Oh yes,” he whispered, moving his other hand to her folds as he pressed another finger inside to join the first. “You have been very good. Do you want me to bring you to your climax, my sweet?” The eagerness in his voice could not be denied. He very muchwantedto give her pleasure.
“Yes,please,” she gasped. “Yes, sir. Thank you.”
“You have made life particularly difficult ever since you arrived here as my wife,” he said, stroking her again, then sliding one finger inside her. Her back arched from the bed. “And you refuse to allow me to go back to my old ways. How am I to ignore you in times such as these?” He kissed the inside of her knee, an oddlytender gesture that made her heart contract. “How am I to want to when you put yourself so easily in my power?”
“Sebastian,” she pleaded, already close.
“I never had any desire for a companion, much less a wife. I wanted for nothing. And still, I want for nothing. You should understand that.”
She did not,couldnot, but she had no air left with which to speak.
“I am content as I am. You cannot change me, sweet.” He pressed his thumb against her pleasure point. “I will not bow to your expectations of me. You would do better not to try.” He worked her, watching her with an almost pained expression on his face. “This cannot happen again. Promise me that, Eleanor. Promise me you will not try to break me again.”
She had not been attempting anything of the sort, but the raw agony in his eyes told her that he believed she was—if not attempting it, then close to succeeding. She wished she knew what lay inside his mind and heart, why he told her to leave while beckoning the sweet oblivion of pleasure closer with every heartbeat.
He was a man built of nothing but conundrum, and she was determined to discover what lay behind his contrary, contradicting statements.
Pleasure burst over her like a firework in the dark, an explosion of color and light so vast and consuming, she lost herself for several long moments. When she came back into herself, Sebastian was kissing her thighs, soft, sweet kisses that nearly took her breath away.
She blinked at him, her chest suddenly so full she thought she might cry. “That was wonderful,” she breathed, her words constricted.
He looked up at her, the harshness of his face softened by the light and the gentleness of his expression. “Stay there,” he said, then rose. She lay where she was as he walked to a bowl of water no doubt placed there by his valet, and brought back a damp cloth. He then cleaned her, wiping her breasts with more of that tenderness she had never thought she would experience from him.
Now, more than ever, she felt certain she had made the right decision in coming here, even if it did mean invading his personal space.
“Sebastian,” she whispered, catching his wrist as he went to move away. A great languor had settled over her body, but she knew she needed to say this. “Why do you push everyone in your life away? Do not tell me you are content. No man can be content with isolation.”
The softness in his face vanished; his jaw flexed. “Do not presume to know me so well, Eleanor. You might be my wife,and you might have visited my bed on this single occasion, but that does not give you a right to my thoughts, and it never shall.”
“I—”
“It is time for you to leave. Surely now you have received all you came for.” He gave her a smile, the cruel edges of it slicing her open. Yet despite the harshness of his words, she saw a flash of pain in his eyes. In intending to hurt her, he had hurt himself. He was pushing her away just as he wanted to push everyone else—because he was not yet ready to let her in. Whatever had happened between them hadn’t been enough. She’d thought perhaps it might have been, that his plea for her not to break him hinted at a removal of the iron walls he’d placed around his heart, but that was not so.
And she saw the pain it caused him as clearly as if she had plunged a dagger into his chest. Whatever he might pretend to himself and her, he was not indifferent.
She would not allow him to continue in this way.
“I will leave you now,” she said, gathering her nightgown and holding it against her body. “Thank you for the gift of pleasure you gave me. I shall not soon forget it.”
His eyes looked very dark in his face as he watched her, but he said nothing as she left the bedchamber and returned to her own.
Sebastian stared at the door long after Eleanor had slipped through it. His mind raced, though it kept fixing on the expression on her face when she said that he could not be happy. His resentment caught in his throat.
Of course his life made him content. No man could be happy all the time—that was a fool’s errand! And her presumption in thinking thatshecould compel him to be happy.
