Her right hand paused over his heart, absorbing its steady thumps. “Perhaps I wanted you to ravish me.”
“If it is a ravishment the duchess wants, then a ravishment she shall have.” Sensual intent simmered in his baritone. He caught the hand over his heart. “Feel what you do to me.”
With her free hand, she found the belt keeping his dressing gown in place and tugged. It gaped, revealing his bare chest and the lean plane of his abdomen. But also revealing his long, thick cock jutting proudly outward. She grasped him boldly, wrapping her fingers around his shaft.
“I do feel it,” she whispered, rising on her toes to kiss him again.
The luxury of touching him so freely was not lost upon her. Nor was the delicious weight of him. His hips rocked forward. He kissed her back, hard. She savored the bruising intensity, stroking him from root to tip. A low growl sounded in his throat, telling her he liked what she was doing.
So she thrust her tongue into his mouth and did it some more.
He ended the kiss and tore off his dressing gown in two savage motions. The scars on his shoulder were still pink and new, though they had healed. She kissed him there on the everlasting symbol of the day he had saved her life, reverently, gently. All the while, she continued to stroke him.
“I love you,” she said against his skin.
“And I love you, my sweet darling.” His fingers began to work upon the line of buttons fastening her dressing gown. “Blast it, Isabella, I thought I told you no more buttons to your neck.”
She laughed at his teasing. “It is not black, however.”
“No, it is not,” he agreed. His hands trembled as he worked the buttons free. “An improvement, to be sure. But not as good as this.”
Tenderly, as if he unwrapped a precious gift, he slid her dressing gown from her shoulders. Beneath it she, too, was naked. His hands were upon her, then. Cupping her breasts, fingers stroking her puckered nipples. Caressing the curves of her waist, her hips. Liquid seeped from the head of his cock as she grasped him more firmly. She slicked it over the crown with her thumb.
On another low sound of pleasure, he began moving them as one to the bed. Their lips clung, hands roaming everywhere. In a blur of sweetly escalating desire, she found herself on her back, legs spread to accommodate his big body between them. He leveraged himself with his uninjured arm, his cock pressed against her aching center.
She wiggled beneath him, the friction of him on her slick folds sending pleasure radiating through her, along with need. He bowed his head and took a nipple in his mouth, sucking. She arched into him, her fingers once more sifting through his silken hair.
Benedict released the greedy peak. “You are perfection.”
She had many faults and she knew it, but in the intensity of his gaze, love blazing there, she felt more beautiful than she ever had before. “There is nothing perfect about me,” she said, breathless.
He licked her nipple, then bit it. “On the contrary, my love. Your breasts are perfection.” He kissed the swell, then drew her other nipple into his mouth.
Wet heat engulfed her. The suction made an answering pulse pound deep in her core where she wanted him most. He abraded her nipple with the sharp, white edge of his teeth.
Air hissed from her. “Wicked man.”
“See? Perfection.” He nipped her. “Perfectly sensitive. Perfectly delicious.”
The pressure between her thighs grew almost unbearable. She undulated against him, and when the tip of his rigid cock glanced over her pearl, she could not suppress her moan.
He kissed his way down her belly. “Utter.”Kiss.“Perfection.” He tongued the impression of her navel, making her shiver. “Every part of you is so damn beautiful.”Kiss, kiss, kiss, all the way to her mound.
When his tongue dipped between her folds, it was as if she had been touched with an electric current. He flicked over her in wet, quick strokes. Liquid pleasure shot through her.
“You are perfect here, too,” he said. “Pretty and pink and so wet.”
He sucked hard on her pearl. Her hips lifted from the mattress. A moan fell from her lips. His tongue moved lower, to her entrance, and he licked into her. She grasped his hair, undulating against him. Needing him to fill her. To stretch her. To take her. The slick intrusion was too much, and yet it was not enough.
She was restless. Wanton.
“Perfection,” he said, licking back up to her pearl, his eyes intense upon hers.
She could not look away. The sight of his handsome face between her thighs was unbearably erotic. As he sucked once more on the bud of her sex, he slid one long finger deep inside her channel, stroking as he had done with his tongue.
She twisted beneath him, trying to drag him deeper. As he tortured her with his mouth, a second finger joined the first. She gripped him, this new sensation atop the decadent pleasures of his lips and tongue sending her careening dangerously close to the edge.
Desire was a knot, spiraling, growing.
