Time to finish.
She was not going to let him leave this chamber until they both had what they wanted.
“Wrong madness.” But as he said the words, he kissed the bridge of her nose and his fingers, still between her thighs, slid through her folds, parting her. Probing. The tip of his finger moved over her drenched opening, then slipped inside.
“I want you to take me, Neville,” she whispered, urging him on with her hips, pleading to him with her body just as she did with her words.
He made another low sound of desire, kissing her cheek, her ear. “Not here, not now. Not like this.”
“There will be no better time,” she argued, frustrated. A tip of her hips brought his finger incrementally deeper. Still not sufficient. She felt hollow and aching and restless. “Please.”
“Darling.” His tongue traced her ear and then slid into the hollow behind it, sending a new frisson of desire through her.
But still, he was clinging to his honor.
And she was having none of it.
Her questing hand again found the thick outline of his erection, straining against the fall of his trousers. She stroked him, daring to apply firmer pressure this time as he had done to her. Another growl was her reward as he kissed down her throat and then sucked a nipple into the warm, wet recesses of that surprisingly wicked mouth.
She began thrusting into his hand, her body instinctively showing and taking what she wanted. Her fingers found the buttons on his fall. One by one, she plucked them free. The fabric of his smalls thwarted her as he caught the peak of her breast between his teeth and tugged.
“Charity.”
Oh, there was an opening. Her hand slipped inside the slit of fabric, and then she felt him. He was hot and thick and long, his skin surprisingly soft.
“Charity,” he repeated, far less warning in his tone this time as her fingers wrapped around his shaft.
She guided him to her aching center, where she knew he was meant to be for the act to be completed. “Neville, if you do not cease dallying, I shall perish of desire.”
His fingers left her, and then he was chasing her touch with his own, gripping himself between them. The head of his shaft glanced over her slickly. The connection was pure electricity.
He moved, driving her to the edge as he alternated between rubbing the tip of him over her engorged pearl and running it down her seam. His breaths were ragged and warm as he pressed his face between her breasts, kissing the center patch of skin there, head bowed as if he were in prayer. She clutched at his shoulders for purchase, finding him tense, as if he waged a war against himself.
As if he struggled for restraint.
“You feel so right, so good,” he murmured. “I want you, Charity.”
“Yes.” She was winning this battle between them. Slowly, surely. His defenses had fallen. The lines between what they should and should not do had finally blurred. “I want you too, Neville.”
Again, he stroked over her, toying with her sensitive flesh until at last, he kissed his way to her throat. Burying his face in the crook between her neck and shoulder, he guided himself to her entrance. He exhaled slowly, and she felt the gust of his hot breath on her skin as a sign of his surrender in the same moment he entered her.
Such a strange sensation.
Not at all as she had expected it.
He stilled, lodged within her, lifting his head. “Are you…well?”
How polite he was. She would have laughed, but mirth was beyond her.
“Is there not more?” she asked, curious.
The press of his body to hers was pleasant, and the feeling of him inside her was uniquely pleasing—nothing more than a bit of discomfort as she had stretched to accommodate him. But surely the effusive prose she had read in bawdy books would not have pretended the act of coupling was so wondrous if—
“Yes, darling,” he said, giving her the most beautiful smile, a true smile, one which made the corners of his eyes crinkle.
Darling.
It was the second time he had referred to her thus, and the endearment—any endearment—from his lips seemed rare. How wondrous a prize, to be the source of this man’s crumbling restraint. To be the one who lay with him, her body joined with his.
