“Teddy, no.” She shifted, planning to gather the mistreated artwork, but he grasped her by the waist, lifted her with, seemingly, no effort at all, and deposited her before him onto the mattress.
“They’re not important to me at the moment,” he said in a low voice. “Lie back.”
“They are to me. Teddy, what are you doing?” she demanded, when, with a gentle shove, he toppled her onto her back, though her legs still hung over the side of the bed.
“I need a visual cue for another drawing.”
“Of what?” she demanded.
Then he crouched before her, his hands fisting in her skirts.
In an instant, heat pooled at her apex, despite the air wafting over her stocking-clad legs. Then he gripped her hips, and dragged her so her bottom half hung over the mattress edge.
Her eyes opened, and she grappled with the bedcovers, trying to pull herself back. “Teddy, I hardly think…”
“That’s your problem, darling,” he murmured. “Thinking far too hard, whereas I”—he spread her thighs apart, then feathered kisses from the inside of one knee along her thigh, growing ever nearer her core—“whereas I,” he repeated, turning his attention to her other thigh—“am justhard.”
Then his tongue lathed over her, gently, so gently, where no man’s mouth should be only,Dear Heaven,she could not bring herself to ask him to stop. He flicked the tip of his tongue over her and followed with his lips.
She could no longer speak. Could barely breathe.
“Mmm,” he intoned against her flesh, then pulled back, only to replace his lips with his fingers. He traced her opening and whispered, “Pink and perfect, wet and luscious, and utterly delicious.”
In the next instant, he dipped his tongue inside her, then his fingers. He licked, he caressed, he suckled. Soon she could not decipherbetween his fingers, his tongue, his lips as a firestorm of need raged through her. She reached for him, fingers weaving into his thick hair to grasp handfuls and tug.
He moaned against her and whispered naughty words, that curled through her, tangling her insides into tighter and tighter knots, until she thought she might expire from sheer desire.
So close. That shimmering release hovered just beyond her reach. “Please, Teddy, please,” she begged.
“Yes, sweetheart, yes, come for me. Come apart in my mouth.”
Faced with his relentless torture, she could do nothing less. Shuddering helplessly, pleasure exploded through her.
And love. So much love.
When she thought she could take no more, he reached for her, yanking her from the bed and into his arms. “Wrap your legs around me, sweetheart,” he ordered in a gravelly voice.
She obeyed without hesitation, needing to be close, needing no space to separate them.
In two long strides, he carried her to a blank section of the wall, pressing her back against the cold plaster. Then he fiddled with his clothing and surged into her.
She clung to him, arms and legs trembling with the effort to keep him locked to her as his hips pumped into hers in a steady, pounding rhythm.
He drew his lips to her ear, his harsh breaths curling through her. “Tell me. Tell me, sweetheart. I need to hear you say the words.”
She did not have to ask which words. They were the very words burning her lungs, desperate to come out. “I love you, Teddy, I love you so much,” she half sobbed.
He whimpered in response, the tempo of his thrusts increasing. “Hold onto me, sweetheart. Don’t let me go,” he choked. “Tighter.Tighter,” he ground out in time with his thrusts.
Without warning, another climax erupted through her. She gaspedand shuddered with violent, endless pleasure.
As if her release triggered his own, he gave a hoarse shout of pure masculine triumph, then threw his head back as, his hips grinding into hers, his entire body went rigid.
Afterward, he held her aloft against the wall, as, seemingly both of them struggled to come to terms with the magnitude of what they had just experienced in each other’s arms.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The following morning,Georgina descended from her carriage and waited as Thomas stowed the carriage step, climbed back on the box, and resumed the reins.
