He reached up and slid a finger beneath her chin. Slowly he tilted her face toward him until she had to look into his eyes. “I was wrong, Sarah,” he whispered.
She gasped. “What?”
“I was wrong for treating you so callously that night with Meg. I was wrong for judging you after. Certainly I would not want to be judged by my worst moment, my silliest mistake. I was wrong. And I’m sorry.”
Her eyes flooded with unexpected tears and she lifted a hand to her mouth. He let her sit that way for a moment, then his fingers stroked her thighs, gliding beneath the hem of her drawers to find bare skin.
She jolted at the contact and found her hips lifting.
“I won’t ever do that again,” he continued. “Judge you. Iwouldvery much like to touch you like that again.”
She found her lips tilting in a smile, and she nodded. “I would very much like the same. Please.”
“You say please so prettily,” he said, his voice becoming dark with promise as he caught the edge of her drawers and began to tug them. She lifted her hips and he pulled them away, drawing them down her legs and setting them aside.
Now her cheeks burned like fire, for she was bared to him. Fully revealed. And his wide eyes told her he liked what he saw. Wanted it.
“I wonder how many ways you will say please if I do this.” He pulled her farther forward again, making her slouch on the chair. He pushed her legs wider, making a space between them, and then he placed the flat on his hand on her once more.
Only this time there was no barrier of cloth between them. Just the heat of his rough palm on the heat of her slick sex. He pushed and electric sensation jolted through her from head to toe.
She gripped the edge of the chair, digging her nails into the fabric as she cried out, “Please!”
He smiled up at her. “And this?”
Now his fingers stroked her intimately, gliding along the entrance to her body, parting the sleek curls there. He smoothed and smoothed, and then he breached her just a fraction, parting the outer lips of her sex and pressing a fingertip inside.
“Please, please,” she mumbled, incoherent, she knew, but unable to find anything else to say when his touch awoke such wicked needs in her. Sensations she hadn’t ever felt before.
Her breasts felt heavy, her nipples were hard and rubbed deliciously against her chemise beneath her dress. Her legs shook a little as ripples of pleasure seemed to pulse out from the place where he touched her.
He parted her fully, opening her with his thumbs, and she squeezed her eyes shut. He was stroking her still, gently at first, but building the pressure, and then she felt something she would never have expected.
The warm of his breath blowing along her slit.
Her eyes flew open and she stared down at him. His dark head was bent between her open legs, his stare focused on her, his lips puckered as he blew air over her. She gasped at the coolness against her heat, dry on wet.
“I’m going to kiss you,” he said, glancing up. “Here. And it’s going to feel wonderful.”
She had no chance to respond to that shocking claim. Before she could, his head lowered farther and then he did exactly as he’d promised. His hot mouth closed over her in a wet kiss, his tongue tracing the same route his fingers had earlier taken.
He hadn’t lied. His mouth felt wonderful against her as he tasted and teased and explored her in a way she never would have guessed was possible. Her body was on fire, the flames licked higher and higher by his tongue. There were waves of pleasure that he stoked, the tingles intensifying.
His tongue crested over some hidden part of her, a bundle of nerves, and when he focused his attention there, she gasped. He smiled against her flesh, but did not cease the heavenly torment, instead swirling his tongue around and around that place. The intensity of sensation grew, reaching a point where she felt balanced on the edge of pleasure and pain.
And when he sucked that little part of her, she fell into the sensation fully. Her body began to buck as waves of intense pleasure rocked her. She bent her head back, her body shaking as the sensations went on and on, driven by his relentless attack on her body.
Only when her quaking had begun to subside did he lift his head and smile up at her. He looked satisfied, smug even, with his mouth glittering with her juices and his eyes lit with desire and triumph. He leaned up and kissed her. She tasted herself on his lips, sweet and salty and intoxicating. Her arms came around him and she sank into him, into this. She wanted more.
She wanted everything. She knew it in that moment, and also knew what folly it was. And yet there it was, an itch in the back of her mind that kept calling for her to scratch it. But she couldn’t tell him how she felt, because he’d never want that. He’d turned to her in pain, in gratitude for what she’d done in the lake.
She knew that. This tryst, this affair, this whatever it was…it couldn’t last. Kit would marry some daughter of an exalted title and he would carry on his father’s legacy with her.
Sarah was a passing folly, just as he’d described his own father’s affair with Phoebe’s mother.
She jolted. God, would he now think her the same as that woman he claimed wanted only money? Who would sell her child without thought?
She pulled away from his kiss and he let her get up, pushing past him as she swept her skirts back down and picked up her discarded drawers from the floor. She felt him watching her as she struggled to right herself. But she had no idea what he would say. No idea what he must think now. Only knowing that despite any promises he made not to judge her, she might have just made the biggest mistake of her life.
