He tasted darker, she thought. Deeper than he had at the altar.
She thought she could taste his desire in the coiling demand of his tongue. His desire for her.
It was for her. She felt dizzy with the knowledge of it, and before she could even properly contain the thought, she felt his fingers hook into the neckline of her chemise and peel it down over the swell of her breasts, exposing them to the warm night air.
He pulled away from the kiss, his lips wet and shiny, his eyes gone dark. He looked at her face first, and then allowed his gaze to drift lower, to soak in what he had uncovered, to trace the bounty of it with the pads of his fingers.
He ducked his head, his lips and tongue descending with enough heat and hunger that Vix briefly saw stars.
She found her fingers had dug themselves into the pale strands of his hair and her back had arched against the grip of his arm. She was certainly pleading now, even if the murmuring noises escaping her throat were nonsensical and without form.
She tried to say his name. She tried to beg him both to stop and to give her more. Nothing came out. Nothing coherent, anyway.
“Yes,” she managed, at long last. “Yes.”
“Yes?” he repeated, his mouth warm against her breasts, one of his hands sliding down the length of her torso, over the soft curve of her hip and beneath the hem of her chemise. “More?”
“Yes,” she breathed again, shivering, gasping.
He groaned like it pained him, his fingers gliding along her thighs, pressing them gently apart as he held her firmly in his lap. His own hips continued to rock under hers, his voice a grumbling rasp in his throat as he feasted at her flesh, as his fingertips landed at the center of her desire and made her body jolt. He still held her fast. He kept her steady as he ruined her.
“Open your legs,” he whispered, coming up only to kiss her again, only to taste her mouth before returning to her breasts. “Yes, like that.”
She fisted her hands in his hair, her body twisting from the force of it as he stroked her, as he tested against her entrance with gentle, devastating devotion. He seemed to know exactly where sensation had pooled, where to touch so that its concentrated force would sing with violent delight through her entire core.
The combination of sensations—of his hand down there and his mouth where it was; of the scent of his hair and the feeling of his grip holding her in place; of his arousal underneath her, grinding against the barrier of the chemise—all of it was too much. All of it felt like a propulsion, a maddening shove higher and higher to something she could not see or touch.
And then she fell. She tumbled away from herself, her body cracking apart with the sheer force of pleasure, ripping a shocked cry from her throat in the process. For a moment, everything splintered away, light and sound and form, leavingnothing but the pulsing, thumping beat of her heart and her body against his.
She only returned when she managed to breathe again, when she found her way back to sucking oxygen into her lungs, clawing and gasping as she crashed back to reality.
Ambrose was holding her tight, his cheek against hers, his fingers sliding up and down the naked column of her spine. He was murmuring in her ear, telling her how extraordinary she was, letting her scratch and thrash and grip at him without a single move to resist it.
And when she calmed, at long last. When she could open her eyes. When she could breathe again.
He only smiled at her.
He kissed her, gently.
And he told her once again, “You are extraordinary.”
CHAPTER 16
It was with great regret that he laid her down, once she’d caught her breath.
He stood over the bed and watched her, still dazed and panting, wriggle the rest of the way out of her chemise, leaving only her stockings and her wedding ring on her remarkable body. He stood and he stared, because even a saint would stare in this situation. And when her breathing began to deepen and her lashes ceased to flicker, he finally pulled a blanket over her, ran his hands over his head, and turned to seek out a set of pajamas and some remaining semblance of his own sanity.
He picked up the remains of her wedding gown and her corset. He discarded his own suit too, all on that chair by the door. There would be time tomorrow to stow them properly. And he looked back over his shoulder again at where she slept, a kind of wonder settling over his shoulders in the process.
How long had he been in love with her? Was it just tonight? Or had this been going on for some time?
He frowned, tugging the pajama shirt on over his head and shaking his hair out with his fingers.
She had been wound so tight that a single release had toppled her directly into unconsciousness. The very first stroke of pleasure had rendered her nearly mute. Vix, he realized, never came undone, even when she was alone.
Not until tonight.
He glanced at the door, wondering if he ought to fetch her water. Perhaps even food.
