Perfect. No, she was far from perfect. He’d find it out for himself sooner or later, and she’d go back to who she’d been before him—the heroine of an adventure or a fairy tale, but never a romance. The thought made Sophia draw back slightly, away from him, but Tristan didn’t give her a chance to go far. He slid his hands up her body, buried them in her hair, and turned her head gently to one side. “I want to see you.” He caught her earlobe between his teeth and nibbled at the tender flesh until he’d tugged a soft gasp from her lips. “Show me, Sophia.”
Sophia lowered her hands to the bottom edge of her tunic and then hesitated, twisting the fabric nervously between her fingers. Privacy was in short supply at the Clifford School, so she’d never been shy about her body, and it wasn’t as if Tristan hadn’t seen her before.
But he hadn’t seenallof her, and he must be accustomed to London’s most beautiful ladies, voluptuous courtesans and wealthy widows with smooth, white skin, who wore the finest silks and knew how to seduce a man. She was small, her curves slight, a waif dressed in coarse black linen with scraped palms andscarred knees.…
Tristan was nipping at the sensitive skin behind her ear and trailing his firm lips up and down her neck, but when she paused, he raised his head and looked down at her. Whatever he saw in her face made him close his hands over hers, still frozen at the edge of her tunic. “You’re exquisite, Sophia.”
Sophia gazed up into those burning gray eyes and her hands relaxed, her fingers going slack around the hem of her tunic. Together they drew it up and over her head. Sophia held her breath, half-anticipating and half-dreading the moment his gaze would fall to her bare curves. He’d seen her breasts before, the first time he’d taken her to his bedchamber, but this… this time itwas different.
More, somehow.
Tristan’s eyes held hers as he lowered his mouth to her lips, the tunic drifting from his fingers to the floor. His lips were tentative at first, softly coaxing, opening her for his tongue, but his control slipped when she let out a little moan and sank her fingers into his hair. His kiss became more demanding then, his mouth growing hotter and more insistent as she pressed closer to him, chasing the delicious slide of his tongue against hers.
“I want to taste you.” Tristan’s low growl vibrated against her neck, making her shiver. He scraped his teeth gently over her, his tongue darting out to lick her heated skin before moving lower to suck at the hollow of her neck. He let out a low groan as he felt the frantic flutter of her pulse under his tongue. “Do you want that, Sophia? Do you want my mouth on you everywhere?”
“Yes.” Sophia gripped his hair, closing her eyes at the slide of those silky dark strands between her fingers, the rough scrape of his emerging beard against the center of her chest as he nuzzled his face between her breasts.
“Here, pixie?” he whispered, rubbing his bristled cheek over one stiff nipple. “Do you wantmy mouth here?”
Dear God,yes. Sophia plunged her fingers deeper into his thick hair and tugged hard, nearly clawing him with her nails in her desperation to feel that friction against her tender nipples again. He growled low in his throat at the sting and dragged his cheek over her other nipple, making her jerk in his arms. “Ask me to suckle you there,” he demanded, withholding his mouth until she was moaning incoherently for him, begging between panting breaths for his lips and tongueon her breasts.
A lifetime passed before he obliged her, or so it felt to Sophia as he tormented her with the rasp of his cheek against her nipples. By the time she felt his hot breath against the straining peaks she was clinging to him, her body arching against hisin desperation.
Then, in the next breath he was where she’d begged him to be, his wicked tongue circling and teasing her nipples until Sophia wasn’t sure if she’d scream or swoon. He was no less frantic, his hands closing around her waist to still her as he devoured her, drawing one nipple and then the other into the heated cavern of his mouth, making her squirm and gasp in his arms. He grew more passionate, more desperate with every tug until one of his hands fell away from her waist and a ragged groan dropped from his lips. “Look at me. This is whatyou do to me.”
Sophia looked down, dazed. Tristan had kicked his breeches off and was stroking himself from his base to his tip, his big hand wrapped tightly around his hard length, the swollen, damp head flushing a deeper red with every pull.
She watched in fascination as his cock twitched and throbbed, her own skin flushing with every broken moan that left his chest until all at once, she couldn’t wait another moment for him. She took his face in her hands and pulled his ravenous mouth away from her breasts to tug at the loose neckline of his shirt. “Take this off.”
Tristan gazed up at her for a moment, his lips as red and swollen as her nipples, his hand still moving up and down his cock. One stroke, two, then he released himself with a hiss and raised his arms. Sophia gathered handfuls of the fine linen in her fists and tugged the shirt over his head. “Make love to me, Tristan.”
“God, yes.” He slid lower to press a hot, wet kiss to her belly.
Sophia lay back against the bed to take in the sight of his smooth, golden skin pulled taut over his broad shoulders and powerful arms. His chest and torso were long and lean, the hard muscles twitching under her stroking hands as she explored him, fascinated.“You’re so…so…”
She trailed off, flushing. The word that came into her head was “beautiful,” but it wasn’t a word used to describe a man, so she held it back, uncertain how he’d react, even as she thought no other word did him justice.
Hewasbeautiful.
He didn’t look like the one other lover she’d had, or like any man she’d ever seen before, and Sophia couldn’t stop herself from trailing her hand over his bare chest, reveling in the warm, tight skin under her fingertips. His body went rigid when she teased a fingertip around his belly-button. She dragged her fingers through the line of soft, dark hair underneath, a smile curving her lips when shemade him gasp.
“Sophia.” He let out a harsh groan when she traced one finger down his rigid cock, reveling in the heat of that velvety skin and the way it twitched against his stomach, as if inviting her touch. She stared down at the straining length of him for a breathless moment, then cradled him in her hand, her breath coming faster when Tristan’s eyes dropped closed. High spots of color painted his cheekbones, and his lips parted as he dragged in one ragged breath after another. “Are you teasing me?”
Was she? Sophia hardly knew. She wanted to touch him, to see him pant and groan for her as she’d done for him. “Perhaps I am,” she whispered, her gaze locked on his face as she tightened her fingers and stroked him up and down, as she’d seen himdo to himself.
His hips shot up and a sharp hiss fell from his lips. “Harder, pixie.Yes, like that. Your touch drives me mad, Sophia.”
Sophia loved touching him, loved listening to the helpless moans on his lips as he arched and shuddered under her hands. She tightened her grip around him, stroking him faster now. Desire unfurled inside her lower belly when his head fell back and he thrust into her fist, once and then again before he caught her wrist with a strangled groan. “No…no more, or I’ll lose my seed in your wicked little hand.”
A light sheen of sweat covered his chest. She ceased stroking him, but his cock was still twitching insistently against her palm. She knew what it meant for a man to lose his seed, and for one mischievous moment she was so tempted to see him spill into her palm her hand began moving again ofits own accord.
She didn’t get far with her teasing, though. Tristan twisted out of her grip. “No. I want to be inside you.” He raised an eyebrow at her boy’s breeches, a devilish smile curving his lips as he neatly plucked one button loose, then the other, and dragged the breeches over her hips. “Much easier than skirts, stays, a chemise…”
Sophia let out a breathless laugh. “To say nothing of a corset.”
He made quick work of the breeches, his throat moving in a convulsive swallow when she was bare before him. “Sophia,” he breathed. He took in every inch of her with his heated gaze before reaching out to run his hand over the smooth skin of her thigh. “I want you so much.”
She rose to her knees in the middle of the bed, her gaze still fixed on the slick, flushed head of his cock. Tristan let out a husky groan as it responded to her rapt gaze, throbbing insistently against his stomach. She watched as it twitched and jerked, straining for her, a soft gasp leaving her lips when a drop of fluidbeaded the tip.
