“The mattress,” she began, her face still muzzled in his neck. “It is soft as a cloud. I feel the chilled air above me, it is soothing over my skin.”
“Good,” he rubbed his cheek over her hair. “And what are you feeling in your heart and mind?”
“Relief,” Alice whispered. “It feels like it’s a river flooding through my veins. But before, it was pure despair. All I could think about was that so little of my life was in my control. That I couldn’t help my sister. That I couldn’t fulfill the promise I’d made to our parents, and that Penelope was going to live a half-life.”
“And now?” He brushed his nose across her cheek. “How do you feel about that?”
“It’s… the worry is still there, but it is not cutting me up inside,” she sighed. “I don’t know what will happen from here, but I know I’ve done all I could do. I suppose there is… there might be more to do, but I—I’ll have to see how that goes.”
Her breath skittering over his skin left a path of gooseflesh in its wake. He slid his fingers into her thick hair, softly meeting her lips to his. “It is time for your reward. Get on your back, Alice,” his tone dropped to calm control.
She turned without question and slipping to the edge of the bed, he placed his hands beneath her knees and spread her legs wide. Her back arched, “What are you doing, Ed—Sir?”
“What I’ve wanted to do for the longest time,” he soothed, his breath hot on her belly. “You trust me.Yes?”
“Yes,” she breathed, “with my life. But—but what are you doing?”
Sliding the silken gown up further, he nonchalantly whispered, “I am going to give you the wickedest kiss men give women, and lick up every drop when you come for me.”
“Are-are you—”
His fingers dug into her skin as he swept his tongue over her from her core up to her nub. “Edward!” Her voice was a strangled cry that was the sweetest he had heard in months.
He licked her again, slowly, leisurely, and alternated between nibbling at her lower lips and lapping at her opening. She let her thighs fall wider; slowly, he took her swollen bud between his lips.
“Oh my—” Her legs kept jerking, no matter how firmly he held her limbs.
“Hold still, Alice.” His nose bumped against her most sensitive spot, and she cried out again. His lips drew away and he put firmpressure on her nub with his thumb. “You look beautiful tied to my bed, Alice. I can see that red hemp knotted all around your sweet little body.”
She writhed beneath him, twisting the bedsheets in with trembling fingers. “It all feels beyond wicked!”
“It should.” He blew a cool breath of air over her damp flesh. “You taste amazing. Like honey and spice. Having you is going to be my favorite dessert.”
He pushed her legs back, licking and suckling at the peak of her sensation; his tongue circled her opening… then thrust inside. In response, she rocked her hips into his thrusts, pulling at her bindings frantically, but when Edward scraped his teeth over her inflamed flesh; she was gone.
Her neck arched; her body shattered around him. Wave after wave of pleasure crashed over her face and seeing her bliss, ignited his; a jagged spark of lust shot to his erection, making it throb against the taut ridges of his trousers. A low groan interrupted his heavy breathing.
“Edward?”
He looked up. “Don’t mind me. You are utterly beautiful when you are brought to crisis. I almost embarrassed myself just looking at you.” His chest brushed her breasts a moment before his lips whispered across her cheek.
He was so aroused when she faced his voice, in all her despoiled primness and awakened sensuality, that he feared spilling in his trousers like an untried lad.
Rejoining her in the bed, he drew her back onto his chest; the rain now flowing steadily against the windowpane. “You did so well, Alice. I am delightfully surprised that you took a spanking so well.”
“I don’t want Benedict,” Alice admitted indolently. “I—I can’t see a life with him.”
He cocked a brow to her. “And why is that?”
“I swear to you that I never got involved with Benedict on false purposes, but… as we grew closer, I began to see him as a way out,” Alice sounded tortured. “I took him as a path to give my sister a better life and for me to leave the hateful house I had lived in for so long.
“That night in the maze, when you asked me if I loved your brother, I truly did not have an answer for you, because I didn’tknowwhat I wanted,” she craned her head up to him.
But instead of the languid, redolent look he expected to come from her, she looked anguished. “I want you, but I know I cannot have you. Not—not the way I would want it to be.”
Her words rammed right up against the iron-clad barrier that hadno marriagechiseled hard into its surface. No, marriage was not for him. Not anymore.
But… is a grudge against your father that much of an impetus to tread the road of life alone? Wouldn’t it be much happier with someone?
