She stroked her hand over him, watching with curiosity to see how he would react. He jerked against her, his abdominal muscles tightening as he grunted in pleasure once more. She smiled. This was power. He was a duke, her employer, a man who could crush her like a bug any time he wanted.
And she held power over him that she could wield whenever she…
She stroked her hand again, and he cursed. “You will kill me,” he grunted. “And I don’t want to die like this. I want to be inside of you, watching you shatter.”
Her eyes went wide, but she didn’t resist as he put his hands beneath her chemise straps and glided them down her arms. It was all she wore beneath the fancy gown, so when the thin scrap of worn cotton fell at her feet, she was naked. With him.
She blushed, turning away as she lifted her hands to cover herself.
“Please don’t,” he whispered as he caught her hands. “I want to look at you.”
“No one has ever looked at me,” she said.
“I realize it’s strange. But you are so beautiful, Sarah. And looking at you is almost as much of a pleasure to me as touching you.” He slid a finger beneath her chin and tilted her face up so that she looked into his eyes. “Please grant me that boon.”
It was impossible to deny him when his seduction was so gentle, so in tune with her fears and her worries. He didn’t judge, which was strange given their past. He just…was. And she wanted to give him everything he desired and trust she would get something in return.
She faced him straight on and dropped her hands, letting him see her. And he looked. God, did he look. His eyes caressed her, sweeping over every naked inch like she was the goddess he had pretended she was earlier. His to worship. As he stared, her discomfort began to fade, replaced with something else. Something warm and wonderful that spread through her, awakening the same nerves he did when he touched her.
“I would very much like you back in my bed, Sarah,” he growled, his tone suddenly low and possessive.
She nodded as he backed her toward that very bed. Her backside hit the edge and he crowded in, his hands closing over her bare hips as his mouth crushed to hers. She opened, swept away by the increasing passion of his kiss, and then she felt him lift her onto the high edge of the bed. Her legs came open and he pushed into the space. She felt his cock at her entrance and shivered at the feel of hard on soft. She braced for his entry, but he didn’t make a move to take her.
In fact, instead, he stepped away and helped her settle onto the pillows before he joined her, lying on his side as he returned to those kisses that set her on fire and made her want more and more.
His hands roamed her body, fingertips skating over her hot skin, cupping her breast, stroking her sensitive nipple so that she broke her mouth from his with a harsh gasp of pleasure. He smiled and his dark head bent as he covered that same place with his mouth. His tongue was rough as he stroked it along the peak, nipping and sucking as she writhed beneath him in a pleasure she had never dared imagine. It pulsed through her very blood, settling between her legs, teasing her with the release he’d shown her earlier in the day.
While he switched his tongue from one breast to the other, his hands roved down her body, fingers brushing her ribcage, her stomach, her hip, his nails gently raking her thighs, and she arched beneath him helplessly. Finally, he settled his hand between her legs and her sigh turned to one of relief. Now he was touching her. Now she would be free.
He opened her gently, massaging the sensitive folds of her sex, teasing the nub of her clitoris as he smoothed her own juices over her shaking body.
“I want to help ready you,” he gasped as he broke from her breast. “It will feel strange. Let me know if there’s pain.”
She nodded. Her mother had vaguely spoken of what happened between a man and woman. Not particularly kindly, mostly of bearing a husband’s touch, but no details. Isabel had been more open, but there was nothing to prepare Sarah for the exquisite feeling of Kit’s index finger gently breaching her trembling body.
When she gasped, he slowed his entry and looked up at her face. “Pain?”
“No,” she breathed. “I don’t know what it is, but it isn’t pain.”
He smiled. “I’ll teach you what it is, Sarah.” He pushed a little farther, always gentle as he stretched the untried channel. She felt a twinge of discomfort, but it wasn’t pain. Just a strangeness that another person was inside her body, a fullness as he stroked inside of her, a shocking pleasure at the wickedness of this act.
He pressed a thumb to her clitoris as he fully seated his finger inside her. She gasped at the electric sensation that sizzled through her. He stroked, thrusting as he circled her clitoris, slowly, gently. Until she was gasping in pleasure, until the same explosion of release that had happened earlier in the day overtook her and she gripped the coverlet with both hands and called out his name in a long groan.
When he withdrew his finger from her body, she saw the streak of blood and blushed. “I’m…sorry,” she gasped.
He wrinkled his brow. “Why? My purpose was to ease the way. Of course we would encounter your maidenhead. But now it should be easier for you.”
She swallowed as he rolled over her, his big body covering her, but not crushing her as he braced himself away. She opened her legs out of pure instinct, giving him a place to rest between them, and he moaned softly as he settled there so that his cock nudged where his fingers had just departed.
“I can’t keep this from hurting,” he whispered. “I wish I could. Do you still want this? Because you don’t have to do anything else. We could lay together, I could—”
She shook her head, shocked at how easily he could give without expecting a damned thing in return. After all those years she’d thought him cold and judgmental, he was so far from that. That man she’d thought she knew did not exist.
Just this one who she loved.
“I want you,” she whispered, cupping his cheeks and drawing him down for a kiss. “I want this.”
His mouth took hers gently, probing and claiming with an almost lazy rhythm that mesmerized her. Enough so that when she felt him shift, felt the head of him at her entrance, she no longer feared what would happen. He slid forward, taking just an inch, and she gasped at the invasion, parting their mouths.
