She gasped, turning her head with her mouth already open to rebuke him, but never got to speak as he swooped down to catch her ire with his own lips, delighted at how it spiced her kiss. She froze as though she might shove him off and then chose to pull him to her instead, opening her mouth under his to invite him closer.
“Should I show you what sort of torment I meant?” he asked, rolling over her and bracing his arms on either side of her head, gazing down at the way her curls spilled out over the pillow. “The kind I enjoy so much?”
“I recall,” she said sharply, “you leaving me in the hallway alone. Leaving me on my bed unkissed. I don’t care to be stoked and doused again, Elias. I shan’t tolerate it.”
“Ah, you lack imagination,” he teased, leaning down to kiss her jaw, her chin, her neck. “Sometimes the torment isn’t a douse, only a very slow addressing of the flame itself. You know, that was always my intention for our first time. It is only that you ruined it.”
“Iruined it?” she repeated, giving a little thrash under him that made him grin and nip at her throat.
“You did,” he said, pinning her with his hips and running his hands along the silk covering her arms. “You made it impossible to go slow. You broke me.”
“Hm,” she said, mollified for the moment. One of her legs snaked out of her nightrail, wrapping around his hip and stroking along the backs of his thighs. “You seem plenty whole to me.”
He exhaled, a sound of defeat and surrender. “You are doing it again.”
“Am I?” she asked, sounding very pleased by the prospect. “Good.”
“Oh, you are asking to be tormented worse than before, Harriet,” he chided, reaching down to stroke the leg that was wrapped around him and following it up to the curve of her backside. “Do you really want to challenge me like that?”
“Of course I do,” she replied. “It is not as though you’ve ever been victorious.”
It was his turn to gasp in outrage.
“Alone in that hallway?” he mimicked. “Unkissed in your bed?!”
She grinned, her teeth glowing in the low light of the night. “Mere parrying,” she said, rolling her hips beneath him until his breath escaped him in a sharp, little hiss.
“‘Parrying’?” he repeated, dipping down to speak into her ear, soft and warm, their skin sliding against one another. “It sounds like you want to meet my sword again.”
“Only if you are prepared to face torment in equal measure,” she replied, her hands raising to stroke the sides of his face. “You are, after all, an excellent teacher in such matters. Did you think I might only learn one dialect of the silent language and not all?”
He flashed his teeth at her, searching her eyes in the dark. “I had not considered it.”
“Foolish,” she chided, dragging him down to kiss her again. “Perhaps this time, I will riposte instead. It seems, for a man who loves torment, that you inflict it far more than you experience it.”
“Oho,” he chuckled, running his hands up her thighs to ruck up the thin material of her nightrail. “You are mistaken. This very body of yours has been tormenting you since my very first blush of desire. It has been a long and arduous gauntlet of denial.”
“By your own hand,” she retorted, lifting her arms so that he could peel the fabric from her body. “Not mine.”
“I assure you,” he told her, pulling the gown away and setting it gently aside and then sitting back on his heels to observe her as he moved to remove the fabric covering his own form. “My hand tried its best.”
“Elias!”
He grinned at her, pulling away the cotton that confined his chest and then lifting to divest himself of the pajama trousers. He lifted his chin in satisfaction at her intake of breath at the reveal of just how hard she had made him, at the proof that his claims were true.
He leaned forward, parting her legs and stroking the soft, supple skin on the insides of her thighs, just shy of touching her where he knew she wanted him to. “You never had to wait,” he whispered, “until recently.”
She made a frustrated little flutter in her throat, twisting her hips in an effort to force his touch higher, and received only a chiding click of his tongue in response.
“What about you?” she whispered, sharp and glinting in the dark. “With the way you stroke that wineglass at me. What if I were to touch you that way? You couldn’t stand it.”
“I already told you,” he said softly. “That is unintentional.”
She pushed herself up on her elbows, scooting her hips closer as he teased just short of pleasuring her. “Perhaps it was,” she answered, reaching out to mimic what he was doing, to run her fingertips along the flesh of his thighs. “I do not for an instant believe it remains so.”
He smirked, refusing to answer her one way or another.
“You know what you are doing,” she breathed, inching up to cradle him at the base, feather soft and delicate as she demonstrated the motions she had watched him inflict on the poor crystalware. “Stroking the texture at the bowl of the goblet, stroking the length of the stem. Pressing your lips to the rim.”
