Her question trailed off as his head dipped, and he licked her seam, parting her folds with his tongue, finding her nub and stroking it lightly. The taste of her filled him with raw, animal lust. Feminine, sweet, forbidden. Fucking delicious.
Mine, he thought, drunk on the taste of her, on the way her hips bucked, bringing his face deeper into her heat. His cock throbbed in his trousers, and he longed to drive himself against something for mercy, but this was not about him. It was about his marchioness. He could tend to himself later, when he was alone. Or never. At the moment, his own release had ceased to matter. All that did matter was her.
She gasped from somewhere above him. “Oh.”
He had the presence of mind to tip his head back, seek her gaze. Her blue eyes were half-closed, shuttered by long lashes, and yet when her stare found his, it still seared him with its intensity. And in the violence of his need, it took a moment for the English words to filter through his mind, like sunlight through murk.
“It is good, yes?” he asked, noting the way he had spoken the words.
Not like an Englishman, he thought. But like the Boritanian he was. A man who didn’t belong here, and who most assuredly didn’t belong between this beautiful woman’s thighs. Even if it was only his tongue he intended to sink inside her, rather than his aching prick.
“I…” Her words trailed away as she swallowed, and he tracked the subtle movement in her pale, elegant throat, an indication of how thoroughly undone she was.
He felt victorious. This was how he imagined a general felt after emerging victorious from a tremendous battle. His chest swelled with pride, and his cock swelled in equal measure.
“No words?” he teased softly, blowing a stream of hot air on her sex.
She panted then, her hips rocking in a silent plea, lips parted.
It was wrong and wicked of him, perhaps, but he suddenly wanted to force her surrender from her entirely. To hear this proud marchioness beg for what she wanted. He watched her, running his hands up and down her inner thighs in a steady caress, content to make her plead. To show her who had won this little skirmish between them, even if he was the one on his knees.
“Tell me,” he urged.
She whimpered, her even, white teeth sinking into her lush lower lip.
He flicked his gaze back down to her cunny, noting how she glistened in the candlelight, so very wet. Swallowing hard against a rush of need, he forced himself to take in the rest of her, the picture she presented. Deus, she was lovelier than any woman had a right to be, sitting somehow naked before him, as if he deserved the honor. Her folio and porte-crayon still lay abandoned and forgotten on the upholstered seat at her side, a slight recrimination he couldn’t ignore.
This night had not begun in debauchery.
But that was how it was going to end. They had progressed beyond the bounds of propriety. The night before had been but a taunting prelude to now, and he intended to have his fill of her so that when sanity returned to them both with the morning’s light, he wouldn’t have a single regret over what he hadn’t done.
Still, she hadn’t given him what he wanted. No words. He needed to hear her say it.
“Do you want my tongue on you?” he pressed, using his nails to rake white trails up her inner thighs, all the way to where her legs and cunny met.
Ever so lightly, he dug his fingertips into her there, pulling her open, spreading her lips with his thumbs.
She swallowed hard and then released another gust of pent-up air. “Yes.”
Permission.
Not enough.
“Say it,” he demanded, drawn to her, his head lowering until his lips almost grazed her most-sensitive flesh.
“I want your tongue,” she said in a rush.
But Theo wasn’t done.
“Beg,” he bit out.
This time, she didn’t hesitate. “Please.”
He smiled, and it was a true smile for the first time in as long as he could recall. Then, he lowered his mouth to her, intent upon giving her everything she had asked for and more.
* * *
Pamela wasnothing and no one. She had ceased to exist. Or perhaps, more accurately, the woman she had been before Beast had crossed the threshold tonight had disappeared. In her place was a wicked wanton lost to any sense of guilt or conscience. Lost to everything but the moment.
