He paused, only for the briefest moment, his fingers stuttering in their task. “It seems evident to me,” he replied, careful. Controlled. “I will not take your virginity from you until you ask me to.”
Her eyes flew open, her hands coming up to hold the neckline of the gown to her chest as it started to sag. She turned half to the side, unwilling to risk the dress in a full spin of outrage. “What?” she demanded. “What nonsense is that?”
He shook his head, pulling at the laces in loose, languid strokes now as he steadied the parting of the bodice. “It is exactly what you wished for,” he reminded her. “Patience.”
“Patience,” she echoed, her voice gone whisper thin with indignant fire. “It is not about patience. You want me to beg.”
He stepped back, giving her the space to turn toward him fully, the dress hanging off her skin. “I never said beg,” he corrected, taking in the sight of her without mask or apology. “I said ask.”
“You want me to kneel at your feet and plead with you to deflower me,” she pressed, taking a step closer, dropping her hand so that the dress spilled down around her hips, revealing the glinting ivory corseting underneath. “Don’t you lie to me, Ambrose Aster.”
“I am not the liar here,” he said, eyes still on her body, voice still soft. “I think you know that.”
She flashed him a humorless smile. Her teeth felt sharp against her lips. She reached down and pushed the rest of the dress off her hips, letting it pool on the floor, and stepped out of it, kicking her shoes away in the process. She turned abruptly, gesturing to her back, where the laces of the corset were still strung tightly together.
“There is more,” she hissed, “if you please.”
She thought he made a little sound then, something in his throat. He returned to attend her, his fingers sliding into the space between the boning and the strings, steady and deft, despite how her body was currently thrumming with outrage.
“If you are so unmoved by me,” she whispered, feeling the corset come loose, “I will not petition for touch. I can be perfectly happy in a cold bed. I will not beg you.”
“Who said I was unmoved?” he asked, his breath hot against her hair. He tugged the corset free, slipping the string from the bottom and pulling it entirely away from the construct so that it fell from her like a shell, uselessly tumbling to the floor.
“Ambrose!” she chided, gasping at the violence of the motion.
“You know I am not unmoved,” he continued, wrapping a hand around her waist and pulling her backward, into the column of his body, still fully covered in his wedding suit. He turned his mouth into her neck, his tongue flicking out gently against the skin there as he anchored her hip backward into his body. He kissed down the column of her neck, his lips curving when she gasped at the feeling of his arousal against the thin slip of her chemise from where she was being held. “Do you feel what you do to me?”
She couldn’t breathe for a moment, couldn’t do much more than feel the heat raging through her. “You said you wouldn’t,” she managed, against the lack of air.
“I said I wouldn’t cross that final threshold,” he corrected, sighing softly into her bare shoulder as he rocked his hips against her backside. “I didn’t say anything at all about playing with you otherwise.”
“Playing,” she repeated, her throat constricting as his hand slid up the silken fabric at her stomach, brushing the underside of her breast.
“It is a game for two,” he told her softly as he traced the outline of her bust, his breath coming heavier in her ear. “You are welcome to join the festivities, Vix. I know you want to.”
“I—” She cut herself off, swallowing down a whimper as he filled his palm with her breast, his fingers sliding over her nipple through the fabric of her chemise. She glanced down at herself, at how his hand looked, touching her this way, filled with her flesh and moving indulgently.
She could not bear it, but she couldn’t move either. She couldn’t bring herself to stop it.
“I knew you would like this,” he told her, his fingers teasing at her breasts, tormenting her. “I’ve wanted to touch you this way from the moment I set eyes on you. I’ve been thinking about it, picturing it while I am alone in bed, wondering at how you might react once I could finally get my hands on you. Attempting to conjure the sounds you might make.”
She released a little gasp, a helpless thing, fragile and trembling.
“Yes, like that,” he groaned, gripping her tighter. “Better than I imagined.”
“You didn’t,” she protested, dropping her head backward onto his shoulder.
He breathed out, thumbs moving in agonizing circles. “I wanted to touch, to bare, to taste,” he whispered to her. “I am still going to taste. Would you like that?”
She blinked, her eyelids heavy, her limbs anchored by invisible weights as he started to press the straps of her chemise down the line of her shoulders.
“I think you would,” he breathed, lingering just short of tugging the chemise down fully. “Come here.”
“Hm?” she attempted to ask, finding herself lifted and moved to the foot of the bed. She watched through hooded eyes as he moved her things to the side and pulled her onto his lap, draping her legs over the edge of the mattress and running his fingers over her hair and down the sides of her face, those inky eyes traveling back and forth over her features. “Ambrose?”
“Vix,” he answered, and then kissed her, his lips slanting down over hers with a hunger she had never experienced from him before, an urgency as those hands of his slid lower, back to their torment at her breasts.
She gasped into his mouth, her arms coming up to steady herself against him, looping around his shoulders.
