His eyes caught hers, a question clear in them. “Yes?” he whispered.
Eliza nodded with her own breathless yes.
Wet heat pooled where his thigh met her apex, and desire curled into her belly. Her nipples tightened in the balmy night air, sending tiny sparks through her body with every rustling brush of his chest.
Her body’s reaction to these simple movements would have left her embarrassed if his expression wasn’t just as shattered. Benedict’s lips parted, his breath falling in sharp pants across her chest.
The burning hand on her hip urged her to rock against his leg again. Once, twice, and then the stars aligned, and so did their bodies. The thick thigh beneath his trousers brushed against her nub through gossamer cotton.
“Benedict!” she sobbed in a harsh whisper, clutching at the fabric of his shirt wantonly.
“There? That’s it?”
She nodded, and he urged her to rock again with the hand still on her waist.
“Good, good. More?”
“Yes.”
“Take what you need. God, you’re so beautiful, all undone for me.”
At his urging, her body found a rhythm. Tension coiled in her center as every inch of her ached for him.
“Touch me?”
“Anything. Where?” There was a pleading note in his baritone voice.
“Everywhere.”
His hand smoothed down her jaw before it swept across her shoulder blade in a reverent caress, as innocent as it was gentle.
Benedict gathered her curls in that hand, drawing them to one shoulder with a muttered, “So damned soft.”
With one last step, the air between them vanished. Benedict’s lips fell to her neck, brushing along the tendons there before settling in the cradle of her shoulder blade. The change in position brought his thigh even tighter against her core. A cry escaped her chest.
“Shh, I’m here.”
“Benedict, I?—”
“I know, little violet. I know. Do you know how beautiful you are like this? What you do to me? I didn’t— I never expected—never dreamed… I don’t deserve— Eliza, I can’t—” Benedict mouthed nonsensical words into the divot of her clavicle, his damp breath pooling there, cooling her overheated skin, even as Eliza chased her release under his guiding hand.
Benedict discovered the heartbeat of her cadence. His hips met hers in a sensual dance. He’d long abandoned sense in his words, but his body knew what his mouth did not.
“I can’t. I want to give you everything until there’s nothing else left.”
“Kiss me?” she asked, her lips as needy for his touch as the cleft between her legs.
His groan was too loud, but she couldn’t bring herself to care.
“I’m dying to. I want to kiss youeverywhereuntil there’s no part of you I don’t know. But not this way. I shouldn’t have come—not drunk. You deserve better than this—me.”
“Benedict, no?—”
“You’re a goddess—soft, warm, violet-scented goddess. Didn’t even know what violets smelled like until you. Now I’m tormented by it day and night. And now, knowing you like this—with your quim soaking my breeches—I want to drown in you.”
Somehow, Benedict halved the nonexistent space between them, and Eliza felt the hardness of his length beneath histrousers. He thrust against her hip. Their groans formed a breathy harmony in the night air.
“Are you close? I need to see it. Please, let me see.”
