He did not want to know how she knew how to pleasure a man so well. She had been a virgin, but he could not fathom she would know how to touch him with just the proper amount of pressure and tenderness, how to stroke him and bring him to the brink.
She did. God, how she did.
And he knew a fire of jealousy, lit deep within him, and envy toward the man who had earned her heart, the betrothed she had loved and lost, before ever marrying. Some part of him, the possessive beast who had fallen beneath her spell, envied that man, who had been the first to teach her passion. Envied that man, who had won her heart.
Christ.What was he thinking? The pleasure was making him mad. He did not believe in love. Or in the fickleness of hearts. He did not believe in anything other than pleasure. Bodies. Nature. His cock in Hazel’s pussy. Yes, that was what he believed in. That was all he could afford to trust.
She stopped, either sensing the maelstrom within him, or uncertain of herself. “Is something wrong?”
“No,” he bit out.
Yes, he thought.Yes, by God there was.Everything was wrong, because she was making him feel things. Things he had not felt in years. Things he had not believed himself capable of feeling any longer. She was…undoing him.
Slowly.
Surely.
Seducing him, transforming him, and he could not stop it, any more than he could stop the sun rising in the east. It was elemental, inevitable. Just as she was. Some mad part of him wondered if she had been destined for him, if their bodies were meant to be joined. And then, he told himself that was foolish. Nothing was meant to be.
She stopped stroking him, but did not ease her grip. “Should I not touch you?”
“Fuck.” He muttered the epithet in a bitter tone, and he knew he ought not to say it before her, even if they were naked, and even if he was about to lose himself inside her body without the sanctity of marriage. “Always touch me, Hazel. Never stop.”
“Are you certain?” Her tone was hesitant, a reminder that, regardless of whatever knowledge she had obtained from her betrothed, she was still very much an innocent. A fact he could personally attest to, since he had been the one to take her virginity.
“I have never been more certain of anything in my life,” he gritted. “Stroke me. Do what you like with me. I am at your command.”
As he said the words, a hot rush of excitement burned through him. It was what he wanted, he realized. What he longed for. He wanted Hazel to take control of him, to govern her own pleasure, and his. He wanted to be at her mercy, utterly and completely.
“At my command,” she repeated slowly.
“I am yours,” he said.
Her grip tightened on his cock. He nearly spent in her palm.
“Mine?” she asked, resuming her strokes. Up and down his shaft, her thumb finding the tip, rubbing over his sensitive head.
“Yours,” he growled.
“What if I want you on your knees again?” she whispered, leaning into him, her mouth close enough to claim, her breath hot and sweet as it skimmed his lips.
“On my knees pleasuring you?” he asked, getting harder at the thought.
“Yes.”
Suddenly, all his intentions fell away. Desire hit him like a locomotive, full in the chest, speeding down the tracks. There was no turning back.
“Tell me to do it,” he told her. “Order me.”
“Order you?” she asked, her tone suddenly hesitant.
“Yes.”
Her response was instant. “Get on your knees.”
“And then what?”
She flushed, her cheeks warming, and it spread, all the way to the tops of her breasts. “You know, Arden.”
