Her eyes went wide. “Wh-where?”
He slid his hands into her inner thighs. Above where her garters were tied, below where her chemise was bunched. Bare skin to wickedly bare skin.
“You’re so soft, so wonderfully soft,” he murmured, almost like a prayer she wasn’t meant to hear.
But she did hear it and it set her body afire all the more. This man wanted her. Truly wanted her when he could have anyone else in the country, perhaps the world. She certainly couldn’t picture the lady who could refuse him.
His thumbs pressed higher, hitting the edge of her chemise and the drawers beneath. He grunted out displeasure and then looked up at her. “I want to see you, Marianne. I want to see you and touch you and taste you until you are weak with it. Tell me yes. Please tell me yes.”
CHAPTER 11
Marianne could barely think enough to answer Sebastian’s plea as she stared down at him, perched between her legs so wickedly. He waited without pressing her and at last she found the ability to nod. Despite being dizzy with heated desire, she was unable to allow her modesty to override the momentum of this moment.
He pushed her gown and chemise up to her stomach and then he untied her drawers. They loosened and he tugged, sliding them from under her and tossing them away over his shoulder into the darkness.
Now she was bared to him, splayed like a reckless wanton, not a shy wallflower. But still, this didn’t feel like she was parading around like someone she wasn’t. No, this felt like glorious freedom and shocking fantasy rolled up in one.
He shook his head as he gently pressed his hands higher and his palms cupped her between the legs. This was wrong, so many people had said that to women over the years. Somehow it felt anything but. It felt hot, the pressure making her legs shake and her inner muscles squeeze against emptiness.
“I’m going to kiss you, Marianne,” he whispered. “Just like I did your mouth. I’m going to kiss you right…” He leaned down, lewdly close to her spread body. “…here.”
And then his mouth covered her in a place she had been taught to barely touch, in a place that had been preached as the property of some nameless, faceless future husband. But right now, with Sebastian’s dark head between her legs, his fingers peeling her open wider, his tongue tracing her and tingles rushing through her entire body, she didn’t feel like something to be owned. She felt like this magical man had opened her gilded cage and now she was flying.
She lifted into him on instinct, grinding up to find his firm tongue. He licked harder, grunting like it pleased him to taste every inch of her. He swirled across her entrance and past it, thrusting gently, then he withdrew and focused attention to some hidden, wonderful place that made her breath short.
“Oh, that feels good,” she gasped out, gripping her hands against the edge of the bench seat.
“That’s your clitoris,” he murmured without lifting his mouth from her. His muffled voice reverberated through her and she hissed out pleasure. “And I want it to feel good. I want you to feel so good that you scream my name until you’re hoarse. That you lose control of every part of your body. I want to feel your thighs grip my shoulders and your hands push my head in demand for more, Marianne.”
She lolled her own head against the seat with every wicked word and the images they created, which merged with the sensation as he returned his full attention to that same place…clitoris, he’d called it. He swirled his tongue around it, lapping and licking a never-ceasing rhythm. Pleasure was mounting in her in a way she’d never experienced before. An excitement and a building pressure that bloomed between her legs. She dug a hand into his hair just as he’d told her he wanted, feeling his head bob against her as he chuckled against her.
“More,” she moaned, no longer caring about propriety or wantonness or anything but his tongue on her flesh.
He didn’t disappoint, for now he began to suck her, his tongue tapping as the pressure grew more and more. Her legs were no longer hers to control, she was only his marionette, and she danced in time to his ministrations until finally, in a burst of wetness and heat and unbelievable sensation, waves of pleasure rocked her.
She wailed because she could do nothing else, grinding in time to his endless torment as the pleasure edged out of control and her body quivered with sensations she’d never imagined were possible. His fingers dug into her thighs, his mouth moved faster against her and his panting breaths were hot against her as he forced every last drop of desire from her now-weak body.
Only when she went limp did he lift his face to look at her. The shadow of whiskers on his chin was damp with her juices, but it didn’t seem to bother him. He licked his lips as he smiled up at her, triumphant as a cat who had caught himself a mouse and toyed with it until he was satisfied.
But after the briefest of moments, his smugness faded away. His expression drew down and she saw the same thing she’d seen on his face the previous night when he kissed her on the terrace: regret. The pain of it was worse for her this time because what they had shared was no mere kiss! This was something far more intimate and life-altering. Something that had changed her being down to her core.
“What is it?” she asked, shocked she could formulate words in a reasonably calm tone when her whole body was still tingling from pleasure.
He found her drawers and handed them over. Once she’d slid them on, he reached up and gently tugged her skirt back down to cover her, then got back to his feet and backed away. “Marianne, I am not a gentleman.”
She wrinkled her brow as she sat up straighter. “Of course you are.”
He stared up at the vaulted glass of the orangery ceiling and the stars that sparkled above them through it. “My actions aren’t gentlemanly. My thoughts and designs when it comes to you are certainly not.”
When it came toher. So she wasn’t wrong. He didn’t just want someone, anyone. Somehow, impossibly he wantedher.
In that moment, she felt a wave of emotion come over her just as the wave of pleasure had moments before. It was also just as revelatory because she knew, like a lightning bolt from the sky, that she was in love with him. She had always been in love with him, this man who had been like a star out of her reach for all the years she’d known him.
Tonight he’d come down from his orbit and she feared she would chase the feeling of his blinding light forever.
“Sebastian,” she whispered.
He shook his head and his voice was rougher when he said, “Please. Your brother has only ever put one rule on our friendship. That I must never corrupt you.”
