Gratefully, he continued to explore.
Gently at first, he touched her with merely the tip of his finger, sliding between the lips of her cunny, where the slickness told him she wanted this, and more.She was already quivering, her breath coming in shallow gasps, while he stroked her slowly, carefully, leaning back to watch her face in the candlelight.
Her eyelids had fluttered closed, her lips fully parted, and the color in her cheeks had risen to ruddy red.
He had never wanted anything as much as he wanted to see her come undone.
“Let me,” he whispered.“Let me give you this.”
She nodded wordlessly, while he circled the small nubbin nestled there like a precious jewel.At the same time, he still teased her nipple, feeling it pearl beneath his gliding finger.
“Ohh,”she breathed, as he kept up a steady movement.
When he felt her body jolt, he knew her channel was tightening around ...nothing.The place his cock was meant to be.If only ...
Varying the pressure of his fingers around and against her sweet bud, while steadying the rhythm, he paid attention to every hitch of her breath, every roll of her hips against his hand.Her body soaked his fingers, and his own arousal was a hard, aching line against his breeches.He ignored it.This was for her.This was all he could give her.
“Jonathan,” she whimpered, and he increased the pace, the heel of his hand massaging her mound while his fingers worked relentlessly.He wished he could insert one inside her but dared not.“Jonathan, I ...oh God!”
She broke off with a shudder, her whole body becoming taut as she leaned against his steady hand.Gasping, mewing, and then, going limp, Lise melted like beeswax, and he held her through it, stroking her until the waves of her pleasure subsided.
Catching himself murmuring some stupid endearment, he gritted his teeth and stopped his tongue, while making sure he was no longer touching any part of her.He even smoothed her skirts.
When she opened her eyes, they were glossy bright.“I did not know,” she said, her voice shaking.“I did not know.”
But then her hand moved, uncertainly, toward the fall of his breeches.
His breath stopped.He looked down as her fingers grazed the hard ridge plainly outlined, and he groaned, his hips jerking forward involuntarily.
“Lise —”
“You are suffering,” she said, and there was something fierce in her gaze now, something that made his knees weak.“Is there something I can do?”
“Absolutely not,” he managed to grind out before stepping out of her reach, away from the sweetest torment he could imagine.
“I want to,” she whispered.
He closed his eyes for mere seconds, wondering where he found the strength to be such a saint.“You don’t even know what you’re saying,” he said, a little gruffly.“Anything more, you will do with your husband.I will not accept what belongs to him.”
Even speaking those words made him want to put his fist through the wall.
At his rejection, given in the tone of a reprimand, Lise looked wounded.No longer trapped by his body, she moved sideways a few steps away from him.Then she turned her back to him and completed a quick examination of the state of her gown.While retying the green satin ribbon of her bodice, she couldn’t look at him.
Straightening, tucking a loosened strand of her honey-brown hair behind her ear, she turned with her cheeks flaming and stated the regret he’d feared would come next.
“This was wrong.We should not have ...Ishould not —”
“Youdid nothing,” Jonathan interrupted.How had her tone gone from bliss to misery in a heartbeat?“This was entirely my fault.”
He ought to have known better.He did know better.What he’d done was the act of an unconscionable rogue, as if she were nothing but a strumpet.
“I must go.Henrik may be wondering,” she said, her voice soft as a whisper.
Jonathan doubted her brother was wondering anything beyond which KGL officer had the best war stories or hip flask of brandy.But she was right, of course, about getting away from him.
“Yes.”He executed a bow, perfectly proper, as though he had not just had his hand under her gown, committing an act that would have ruined her had they been discovered.“I cannot escort you back as we should not be seen coming from this hallway together.In case anyone else noticed how long we’ve been missing.You must hurry.”
For a moment, she looked frightened, perhaps realizing belatedly that a disheveled gentleman and a flushed lady emerging from a darkened corridor would set tongues wagging with the speed of a Thames tide.
