A whimper escaped from somewhere in my chest but he swallowed it as his own. Kit took it as a sign of permission to set about weakening my knees with the movement of his tongue. Was this what everyone felt? This ache? This fire? This dizzying desire?
Kit slipped his fingers between mine and tightened his grip when he dipped from my lips to torture my jaw. And something about it was so perfectlyKitthat my heart tripped in swirls of lust fogging my head.
“Kit…”
“If you want me to stop…” His words ghosted against the skin of my neck. “I need you to tell me.”
My response was instinctive, guttural, desperate. “Don’t stop.” I fought to free a hand that he released easily, sensing my intent. Once untangled from his fingers, it sought curls. Dark, messy curls that should have been coarse but were cloud soft.
“Davina,” he groaned. The whiskey-soaked curse echoing through my mind only to be cast aside for sensation when his newly freed hand traced the edge of my ribcage. Up, up, up, it settled just below my breast, waiting for permission once again.
Kit, my Kit, grumpy, honorable Kit… The hand in his hair tightened to a fist, and apparently his hair had a direct connection to his hips because they thrust forward before he pulled back. Laudanum-heavy eyes found mine.
“Yes.” I told him, nodding.
He swallowed roughly, the thumb hovering beneath my breast brushing upward. “Yes?”
“Yes,” I affirmed.
“Fuck,” he muttered as he released the hand still pinned to the wall in favor of my neck, crashing our lips together at the precise moment his other hand found the swell of my breast.
Kit was careful with me. He didn’t push or grab. He caressed. He teased. He drove me out of my mind in the most perfectly restrained way.
But the tightness in his shoulders, the sure sweep of his tongue, the grind of his hips… He was hanging by a thread. The devious part of me wanted to snip it, wanted to know, to see, to feel what Kit could do when he was untethered.
I rather thought he might ruin me, and not in the way everyone whispered about when they spoke of garden walks and empty alcoves. No, in a way that was specific to me. Because I never wanted to stop. And that way led to ruin. Ruin and something I’d never considered before.
Something more.
And then his tongue swept away even that thought. He was relentless, my Kit. I’d always known that. He was determined and focused in his work. And apparently in his single-minded destruction of every one of my defenses.
With one last press of his lips against mine, they trailed back down my jaw. His breath blowing my loose waves, brushing them against my neck. And when he tilted just right, his own curls joined in the dance against my flesh.
Then his lips darted lower still, dangerously low. His tongue traced the neckline of my bodice right over where his hand continued working my breast.
He would pause, he would pull away, wait for my affirmation, and I couldn’t bear to have his lips from me that long. “Yes,” I demanded, pinning his head in place. I felt more than heard his breathy chuckle.
Think me a wanton all you want, Christopher Summers. You made me so.
The hand over my bodice pulled away only so far as to tug it down. It didn’t matter that it was purposeful and temporary, my whimper was entirely involuntary.
“Davina… I’d never dreamed…”
One more yank, and my breasts popped free from beneath my corset. Before I had the chance to feel the chill, he slid to his knees. There he wrapped his lips around one and his hand across the other. My hands dug into the mess of his curls, pinning him in place.
He did something with his tongue at the same time he did something else with his hand and my head fell back to the wall with athunk.
His lips abandoned my breast against the pull of my hands. “Are you all right?”
I forced my head back down to meet his gaze. “You won’t be if you don’t get back to it.”
The smile started in the outer corner of his eyes. It bloomed down his cheeks, before it finally found a home on his lips. Finally, a full, complete, entire smile.
My heart skidded to a stop before starting again in a rush. One of my hands abandoned the bird’s nest I’d made of his hair, to brush my thumb across his lower lip, tracing the new expression, memorizing it. I needed to keep this one safe, cherished forever.
He pressed a kiss to my palm, the smile returning as soon as his lips left my skin. There was something different about it this time, though. This one was more tender, softer, more full of…
Oh.
