She saw the direction of his gaze and shielded herself with a hand. He caught her wrist in a gentle grip, brought it to his lips for a kiss. “Let me.”
He drew her hand back to his shoulder, and he did not wait for her response this time. His head dipped. He kissed a path along her inner thigh, all the way to her sweetly spread cunny, then kissed her there too. Once, on her pearl. She stiffened, but made no move to push him away. He licked, just a flick of his tongue along the turgid bud, and she cried out, her fingers tensing on the muscles of his shoulders.
“Lucien,” she said, half moan, half protest.
He suckled her, then licked again and traced her seam with his fingers. “Shall I stop, sweetheart?” he asked, blowing a stream of air onto her exposed flesh as he glanced up at her.
“No,” she whispered.
He smiled, then buried his face between her legs once more.
The Duke ofArden possessed a miraculous tongue. This was Hazel’s sole, coherent thought as he devoured her with his mouth. Wicked and long and knowing, his tongue licked over the sensitive bundle of flesh at her center. Then he traced a path of decadence through her sex, lapping at her entrance.
Helpless. She was helpless to ask him to stop, to want him to stop. Sheneverwanted him to stop. Her initial embarrassment at the depravity of her pose—foot upon a chair, her thighs parted to reveal the most intimate part of herself to his voracious gaze—fell away. What a beautiful sight, the high and mighty Arden, a man whose very dressing gown was of better quality than almost every garment she owned, on his knees before her.
He was, as he had said, loving her. Licking her, laving her, sucking, using his teeth to nip at her pearl until she moaned, grinding herself against him. More. She wanted more of everything he was doing to her. There was his tongue again, playing at her channel, subtle licks, circling, teasing. He wanted her as much as she wanted him inside her. That huge, hard maleness of him she had felt against her and beneath her hand would stretch and fill her there, and she wanted that too.
Wanted him.
He groaned. She felt the rumble against her eager flesh. A warm surge of wetness pooled between her thighs. She was slick, the sounds of him pleasuring her filling the silence of his massive bedchamber. Her foot slid on the damask of the chair, opening her to him more, and her hips instinctively thrust forward again and again.
He sucked her, then released her and drew back, his eyes darkened with pleasure, his lips red and glistening with the evidence of her desire. “Yes, Hazel. Show me what you want, what you like. Make me do your bidding. Tonight, I am your servant.”
His words made a heaviness settle low in her belly, the tingling coil of desire tightening into a knot that drew tighter by the moment. She relished in this great and powerful man, urging her to use him for her pleasure. There was no time for thinking or hesitating. Her fingers found his hair—she loved his hair, so dark and luxurious, with a curl to it. She gripped handfuls and urged him back to her mound.
Humming his approval, he tongued her seam, licked over her channel, his tongue dipping inside her, then darting back out again in shallow thrusts that made her desperate for more. He buried his face deeper, his tongue traveling lower, sliding over another, equally forbidden part of her. She jolted at the unexpected contact as he lapped at her, varying long and slow licks with faster flutters.
“That is… You should not… Lucien…”
She could not seem to finish her thought. Some part of her knew she should protest, but what he was doing to her was transcendent. It was wicked. It was wonderful. It was…
Oh.
His fingers found her pearl, petting her in tantalizing strokes as he continued his shameless sensual torture. Everything within contracted. Sensations coursed through her. She was mindless, boneless, and breathless all at once. For the third time, Arden brought her to a shattering, beautiful release.
But this time was different. More intense. As she rode the first, blinding wave of pleasure, she screamed. She forgot about servants or Lady Beaufort overhearing her, forgot she was not meant to be in Arden’s chamber, let alone naked and at the mercy of his skilled fingers and even more skilled tongue. She was wetter now than she had been before, and this too, he lapped up, moaning into her flesh, as if she were the most delicious feast laid before him.
As awareness and lucidity gradually returned in the wake of her release, she realized she was gripping fistfuls of his hair tightly, and she relaxed her fingers, exhaling slowly. Her heart pounded and the rest of her tingled everywhere. Even her scalp and the bottoms of her feet.Dear God, the way he had owned her body, wringing pleasure from her in places she had never dreamt could be pleasured in such wicked fashion…
He took his time, kissing her everywhere. Flicking his tongue back over her pearl until she jerked and shuddered, ready for more. And then he kissed her thigh, the prominence of her hip bone, the curve of her belly. He stood, his expression that of a drunken man, and it was heady, so heady, to realizeshewas the reason for that look. That he was drunk uponher.
“Hazel,” he said, his gruff baritone making the already pulsing flesh between her thighs quiver anew. “Fuck, Hazel.”
His curse did not startle her. Nor did it offend. She had heard coarser language in her years as a Pinkerton. She allowed her foot to slide back to the floor and looped her arms around his neck. He was taller than she was, but not so very tall she could not reach him. Not so tall she could not rise on her toes and kiss his mouth. His filthy, wonderful, beautiful mouth.
He tasted earthy. Musky. Of herself and something elemental. Lust. Intercourse. Man and woman, woman and man. He tasted like nothing she had ever tasted before and could not wait to taste again.
He caught her waist, lifting her feet from the floor, and she allowed it. And when he ordered her to wrap her legs around him, she did without hesitation. And when he carried her all the way to his bed, her core sliding over the silk of his dressing gown with every step, she could not stop kissing him. His lips, his face, his throat.Ah, his throat. So strong and vital. She dared to taste him, to run her tongue over the prominence of his Adam’s apple.
He laid her on his bed as if she were as delicate as the magnolia flower she had assured him she was not. She was still wearing her stockings and garters, but she lay in the center of his bed and watched as he made short work of the knot on his belt she had been unable to free earlier. When he shrugged the robe to the floor, she could do nothing but admire him.
His shoulders were broad, his chest strong, delineated with muscles that bespoke a man who was active. Dark hair stippled his pectorals and arrowed lower into a mouthwatering trail that led over the hard plane of his stomach and straight to the prominence of his manhood.
She had known that part of him was large because of her previous encounters with him, but then, he had been clothed. Now, he was nude. And the full effect of the Duke of Arden naked and ready to join her in his bed was mouthwatering, astounding, and intimidating all at once. His cock was a thing of beauty, full and thick and long. Much larger than she had even supposed.
She stared at him for longer than was polite, she knew. If indeed it was polite at all to stare at one’s bedmate’s erection? She had no earthly idea. It was a concern that had not troubled her until this moment.
“Do you approve?” he asked, amusement lacing his perfectly clipped accent.
