“We don’t have to go on,” I say roughly, “if the risk is too much.”
He shakes his head. “No. Please. Touch me.”
His desperation sends me reeling again. For a moment, I am not sure it is wise to touch him. Not with the strange tenderness swirling inside of me.
I shake my head. I have no idea why I am being so sentimental. I can touch him likethis. It will not overwhelm me to do so. It is not too intimate, not too much for a heart that, after all my years of apathy, now seems surprisingly vulnerable.
“This is your shaft,” I say, stroking downwards. “And a very nice one it is.”
“That feels—so good,” he pants.
“And this will feel better,” I say, bringing my hand up to the head of his cock. “Here is where all of your pleasure iscentered.”
He groans in response. Moisture wells up into my hand.
“You’re so responsive,” I say. “That is very good.”
“Is it?”
His eyes meet mine.
My breath catches in my throat.
I look back down.
“It is by touching here that you make yourself come.”
I swirl my fingertips along the cum-slick head again and he jerks in his seat.
“Annabelle,” he pants.
When has a man ever said my Christian name in such tones?
Never, I am certain.
Sometimes my lovers use my name. But they never sound likethatwhen they do.
Alfred Saintsbury might be a virgin—but he is a seducer of the first rank. And he doesn’t even know it. The only problem is his particular skill lies not in wringing orgasms from my body but tender sentiments from my heart.
I need to steel myself. I am being silly.
And I need the man to come so that I can deposit him at the vicarage. I need to stop drawing it out. I am savoring him far too much. And his moans, his tender submission to my touch, are endangering me far more than I care to admit—even to myself.
I rub him with his own wetness, letting a little roughness into my stroke. With this roughness, I express frustration at my own vulnerability to him. Frustration at my surprising softness where he is concerned.
In response, he lets out an abandoned sound—and unfortunately, it goes straight to my quim and heart at once.
He issoresponsive. It was true what I said.
“You are clearly a sensual man,” I say without thinking, “who has been imprisoned within what passes for morality and respectability.”
“I—am—wicked,” he says, his eyes riveted where my hand strokes him.
“No,” I object. “It is a tragedy for a man such as yourself to be denied pleasure. A pretty, strong man like you. Who comes so beautifully.”
“I wish to be good,” he says.
“Oh, Alfred, you are. Just not in the way you have been taught to be.”
