He groaned into her mouth, his tongue finding hers. She could not stifle the sound of need emerging from deep within her. It was not just this meeting of lips she wanted, but something more. Something deeper and far more fulfilling.
She wanted him inside her just as he had been last night, hard and rigid and hot, claiming and taking and possessing. That was what she wanted. Him. Inside her.
Feeling bold, she slid a hand down his throat, over the protrusion of his Adam’s apple, down his chest, marked with scars and stippled with hair. Violet loved each unevenness, every smooth line, each puckered ridge. She loved all of it, all of him. Taking her time, she allowed her fingers to dance over his bare skin, and he let her, not shying away from her touch.
She was careful to keep the bedclothes in place. To give him the shield he felt he required. Down the taut muscles of his chest she went, over the well-delineated ridges of his abdomen, the skin so unlike hers. It was smooth, yet coarse; perfect, yet scarred, masculine to her feminine, and it felt like heaven to her fingertips.
And then, she foundhim. The part of him that was large and thick and so very male. The part of him that went inside her. She knew not what to call it—his member, his maleness? Whatever the proper name, she loved the way he felt in her hand.
He was smooth, so smooth and soft, and yet warm and firm. She gripped him and an answering ache bloomed in her core, where she wanted him again. Now that she knew without a doubt what transpired between a man and a woman, she felt advanced beyond her years. Bold too.
She felt as if all the power were in her hands, and she had but to snap her fingers, or bring his hardness to her softness, and all would be hers. She wanted that heady sensation of him moving within her. Wantedhim. And she ought to be properly shocked by her reaction, she was sure.
Between her legs, she was wet and aching, and she needed Griffin. More Griffin. Deep inside her, taking and claiming and pleasuring. Undoing her all over again. Taking her apart, and then putting her back together with his touch and his tongue and his kiss.
The breath rushed from him when she tightened her grip, and she stilled, watching his expression, wondering if she had done something wrong. “Do you not like my touch?”
“I don’t like it, Violet.” He kissed her, a quick peck on her mouth that was over before it had begun, and then his fingers clasped over hers. “I bloody well love your hand on my cock.”
Cock.
There was the word she had been searching for, all succinct consonance, dominant and muscular and masculine. His cock went even harder in her hand, growing as he guided her, showing her how to touch him. Together, they stroked him until a moan tore from his throat. Until moisture seeped from him, and somehow her hand was slick, and he was a hot, silken brand on her palm.
“Damn it, love,” he gritted. “I want you again, but it is too soon.”
He was even more beautiful like this, pleasure flushing his skin, his body responding to hers. His full lips were slack, his eyes half-closed, burning into hers. How she wished he would allow her to see him, to see all of him, to kiss and worship her way down his body, to give him the same rapturous release he had given her with his mouth.
You must not push him, she reminded herself.He will reveal himself to you when he is ready.
“I want you too,” she said instead, her gaze locked upon his as she drew her face even nearer to his.
They were so close they shared a pillow. So close the humid head of their breaths mingled and became one. So close she tipped up her chin and ran her nose alongside his.
He closed the slight distance with his lips. And this kiss was nothing like the gentle, loving brush of mouths they had shared thus far this morning. He kissed her as if he would consume her, hungry and hard. His other hand tangled in her hair, grabbing a fistful of her wayward curls, so tight she felt a prick in her scalp. Not pain, but tension, and the delicious awareness she was helplessly in his grip.
He held her there for the onslaught of his mouth, not allowing her to move away. Nor would she have, if she had been able. But there was something about the contrast of his touches—reverence and dominance at once—that made her breasts feel heavy and full, made her nipples tighten, and produced a fresh pool of wetness between her thighs.
She was wet and throbbing and aching for him, just from his kisses and his hold on her and his cock in her hand. His tongue was in her mouth, his teeth nipping her lower lip, and she nipped him back and sucked his tongue, kissing him with every bit of the ferocity roaring to life inside her.
He released her hand, freeing her to continue working him on her own. And then his fingers were nudging her thighs open, and he traced her slick seam. He parted her folds, glancing over the hungry flesh within. When he worked his way to the bud of her sex, she jerked, crying out into his mouth.
Griffin broke the kiss as last, but he did not withdraw his touch. Instead, he circled it with his forefinger, one slow, lazy circumnavigation. And then another. And another. Deliberately, he avoided the sensitive underside, refraining from giving her the pressure she desired.
“Griffin.” His name left her on a sigh. She arched into his long, lean body, rubbing her nipples over the bedclothes separating them because it felt good. Because she was desperate for any contact, desperate for release. She felt like the female cats she had seen at Albemarle, rubbing their bodies sinuously against any object, making strange sounds and low trilling meows as they called for their mates. She had not comprehended then, the consuming need those animals had felt to be with another. But she understood it now, because it was how she felt, how this man made her feel. As if she could not ever have enough of him.
As if she could never be close enough or kiss him enough or lose herself to the spiraling waves of pleasure in his arms enough.
He dragged the rasp of his beard down her throat, burying his face in the crook between her shoulder and neck. “You smell so damn sweet, here and everywhere. And you’re soaked for me, aren’t you, darling?”
Giving himself the answer he sought, he slid his fingers through her folds slowly, temptingly. The evidence of her desire was bathing him, making him glide easily through her engorged flesh, the wet sounds of him toying with her loud in the stillness of the chamber. Louder than the harsh panting of her breaths as he once more teased her by avoiding the bundle of nerves that so longed to be stroked.
“Yes,” she said on a sibilant moan. “You make me go wild, Griffin. I…I cannot think when you touch me like this.”
“Are you sore, love?” he asked, flicking his tongue against her skin.
She knew what he meant, because she was. Between her legs and deep inside, she felt as if she had been bruised. But it was a different sort of bruise. It was a soreness, and yet, a delicious ache. It was the knowledge she had been stretched and breached, that her body had given way for his, but that it craved that same, sweet invasion once more.
She wanted to be filled. Wanted the ache and the burn and the sting and the decadent rush of release.
