She tensed. “Please don’t. Let this be about pleasure now.”
He nodded. “I know. I know you’re not ready for the other. I’m not asking you to be. You asked me what I wanted to feel. I want to feel what you always make me feel, whether I deserve it or not. I want to feel…seen.”
His words moved her. He could see it in the way the light entered her eyes. Feel it in the way that her hand moved over his and she squeezed gently. But then the fear returned, the doubt, the desire to build walls between them.
She leaned up almost painfully slowly, her breath stirring his lips as she whispered, “I see you.”
Her mouth covered his and he felt his breath exit his lungs on a ragged sigh. She took advantage, letting her soft tongue move past and tangle with his. For a long time they simply kissed, with her taking the lead, exploring the same way he had explored her over the past few days.
But there was no controlling the wildfire of heat that those kisses ignited, and the shift in her was obvious as she began to make little sounds of pleasure in the back of her throat. He wanted so much to lay her back on the settee and make those noises increase and echo all around him.
But he didn’t. He gripped his hands against the settee cushions and allowed her to continue. Her hand drifted down his chest, fingers clenching against his stomach and then his hip and his thigh. She massaged him there, working against the heavy muscle, inching ever higher toward the cock that was waiting for her. All for her.
When she traced him with her palm, he lifted his hips out of instinct rather than choice. She smiled against his mouth and pulled away. “What did you say to me what feels like a lifetime ago? Moan for me, Theo.”
Theo was not a man accustomed to having desires driven by another person.Hewas the driver. But that order, said in her sweet voice, nearly unmanned him and she hadn’t even unfastened his fall front. He held her gaze, sank into the sensation of her stroking his length through the fabric.
And he moaned. He moaned her name, he moaned his pleasure and her face lit up with power. “Oh yes, I like that,” she whispered. “I can see why you want it.”
“Etta,” he said sharply, lifting against her again.
She shook her head. “No. You aren’t going to force me. Though I suppose if you want to beg me, I’ll listen to your pleas. I will do what I do in my time and you will feel…seen.”
She accentuated that statement by sliding her hands beneath his jacket and pushing it from his shoulders. He shrugged out of it and pulled it away. Then she tugged his cravat knot and unwrapped the length of it with painful slowness.
“My God, I see you,” she said, her voice cracking. She unbuttoned his shirt and leaned up to lick the little path of skin she had revealed. He dropped his head back on the settee, moaning again because he couldn’t stop himself. This was what she did: she stripped him bare, and he loved it. Longed for it. Felt safe in giving it, even with the pain that had been caused earlier in the day. Even in the uncertainty.
She offered him heaven and for the first time in a great many years, he shoved aside all thoughts and arguments and just…took what she gave. Her mouth moved lower as she spread the shirt wide. She tasted and teased and at last tugged at his waistband.
He opened his eyes with a smile. “Need help?”
“Take it off,” she responded, then gave her own deceptively innocent smile. “Please.”
He had never taken a shirt off so quickly. He thought he heard the fabric rend a bit before he tossed it aside, but that was something for this valet to deal with later. She placed her palms on his bare skin and hissed with desire.
“How are you so beautiful?” she murmured as she pressed her lips to his collarbone. She glided her mouth lower and swirled her tongue around his nipple, just as he had done to her so many times. “
“I ask myself that about you all the time,” he murmured.
She darted her gaze up and he saw the heated flash of her doubt. Then she dropped her eyes away. He sighed at the battle they would continue to have, but then dragged his hand into her hair, tangling his fingers in the locks and watching them fall from the style and around his chest.
She slid her mouth across to the opposite nipple, swirling and sucking there, too. She made a little sound of pleasure in her throat and started to ease even lower, tracing his abdominal muscles with her tongue even as she returned her hand to his cock through his trousers.
He felt painfully hard and powerfully sensitive and the slide of the fabric against him made him twist against her with a low grunt. She smiled up at him, just a little wicked, and he nearly lost control again. No one matter how many barriers she tried to place between them, he knew that no one else saw this version of her. He wanted to be the only one for the rest of her life.
She shifted her weight on the settee and slowly came to her knees on the floor in front of him, pushing between his legs. He looked down at her, fully clothed, staring up at him, fingers moving to unfasten his trousers. The most erotic thing he’d ever seen in all his days.
She lowered the fall front and too him fully in hand, stroking him from balls to head. “Fuck,” he grunted, head flopping back again. “Etta.”
She gave a husky little laugh and then he felt the heat of her breath stir not his lips this time, but his cock. His eyes flew open and he jerked his head up. “You don’t have to—”
She didn’t wait for him to finish. Her tongue darted out and traced the head of his cock. She was hesitant, and he could guess why. Her rotten, foolish husband hadn’t even embraced her enough to bring out the desire in her like this. But she still did it, circling him again and then taking just a bit of him into her mouth.
“Fuck,” he repeated, drowning in the sensation.
“Teach me how,” she whispered, stroking him with her hand again.
He tried to find words, thoughts when she was smoothing the wetness from her mouth down his length so perfectly. “Well, you—” he began.
