She stepped out of it, feeling like Venus disembarking from her half shell.
Thesoundhe made when she stood nude before him.
He pulled his shirt off over his head, and while he did that, she reached for his trouser buttons with trembling, greedy fingers, and when they were all undone then he pulled the trousers off and gave them a kick for good measure.
She could not have in her wildest dreams imagined anything as glorious as his naked body.
His hands glided along her throat, the blades of her shoulders, following the nip of her waist to the flare of her hips. He was savoring her, and the pleasure he took in her body, the pleasure he gave, made her outrageously glad to have skin. This was the whole point of it, surely. She could feel his hard cock against her thigh, and shamelessly she ground against him. With a low growl he lifted her up, his arms banded hot across her back.
He lowered her until, to her surprise, she felt the give of the bed against the bare skin of her back.
He knelt between her legs, gently parting her thighs so he could dip his head between. And when his tongue first touched her, then stroked, the sound she made, an animal keening, shocked her. She had not known such pleasure could be had.
His tongue and his fingers colluded in driving her nearly mad. The velvet heat of his tongue against her slick heat, the searching glide and stroke of his fingers, mustered an unendurable need from all corners of her being. It was sinful sorcery, and she was the wickedest, luckiest woman alive. She moved with him, abetting him, begging him shamelessly.
She was going to scream. She threw her forearm over her mouth and did, coming apart with a sob of hallelujah.
He was on his feet to hook her legs over his shoulders, and the mad speed with which he plunged told her that he’d been wild, too.
She lay sprawled and sated on her back beside him, while he lay on his stomach and propped himself up on his elbows. He’d fetched the letter and read to her what appeared to be lyrics.
“‘Queen of the Deep, why must you’... I believe this word is ‘abandon’? ‘forsake’?... ‘me. I am your humble servant.’”
“I think the lobster is singing to the mermaid,” he told her.
“Well, that’s very sad, don’t you think? Is the lobster in danger? Poor thing!” Her voice was drowsily amused.
He smiled at her and read on.
“I think it’s jealous of... I think this word is ‘Neptune’? The lobster is jealous of her lover Neptune. ‘My heart is on fire with jealousy,’ I think it says.”
He lowered the letter.
“This is a bloodymasterpiece, Mariana.”
“It will be, when I sing it,” she said, placidly.
He smiled at her.
She’d been watching his face while he read with a little smile. When he turned to her, they gazed at each other silently for a moment.
She reached up and gently, with one forefinger, traced his eyebrow. Then the other. Her smile faded when she moved her finger to his mouth and traced it with a feather-soft touch. He drew her finger into his mouth and sucked gently.
Again and again, the luscious beauty of her stunned him like a club to the head. The tapering line from her full breasts to her round hips was hisidea of a masterpiece. If the ceiling of his London townhouse had been painted with her image, he’d never see the floor again.
He dipped his head and closed his mouth over the little raspberry peak of her nipple in a languid, teasing caress of tongue, and teeth, and lips. Her eyelids fluttered closed, to isolate herself with the pleasure, and she absently stroked the back of his head. Her breath was ragged through parted lips.
“Oh...” she sighed.
He moved his lips to her other breast, and she shifted her body so that she was beneath him, and his swelling cock pressed against her hip. She combed her fingers up his neck, lightly around the whorls of his ears. It made him wild.
He knew from her shuddering, desperate breaths, the jump of her ribs, when she was ready, and he pinned her gently. She arched her hips up so he could ease into her, and she clung to him, her breath hot in the crook of his neck as he moved in her, slowly, slowly, teasing both of them, prolonging the mad, wicked bliss of being so tightly, hotly sheathed. The friction of his chest against her nipples. The heat of their gazes, locked.
“James...please...I...”
Her head whipped back and her body bowed beneath him. He followed her, seconds later, into the heavens, shattered into light and cinders, her name on a hoarse cry.
The clock softly bonged two o’clock.
