“And this.” She dipped her tongue.
“Ombelico.”
“And this?” she whispered. She closed her lips over his cock.
“Paradiso,”he sighed.
Heaven.
She laughed softly and pulled away. “I am gettingquitean education.”
She closed her mouth over his cock again.
His low groan of pleasure was more inebriating than a pint of bolted liquor. More drugging than anything Mr. Delacorte might sell to an apothecary.
“Mariana...” He half laughed. “I beg of you...succhi...”
“Ti succhio adesso,” she whispered, and did just that.
It was quiet apart from the tiny sounds of the crackle of the fire, and of her lips, her fists, her tongue, her fingers moving over him in the rhythm and friction that she had learned, in a few short nights, drove him near to insanity. He twined his hands in her hair. There was a part of him that battled the pleasure, and she understood. Tobe so wholly owned by it, to abandon yourself to the mercy of desire, to another person’s mercy—it wasn’t in his nature to surrender. But the deep and molten seam of passion was in his nature. And the primal hunger was. And the gift he had for giving pleasure was. He understood pleasure the way he understood war.
Or maybe all of this was just the alchemy of the two of them, the duke and so-called harlot, together.
His low groans and soft oaths, his hips lifting from the bed.
“Dear God,” he rasped. “Please.”
And who was this person she became? She wantonly sought her own pleasure. She wanted to look down into his face consumed with his own lust. Watch the stunned wonder in his face at the sight of her body moving over his. The dark ferocity as he raced toward his release.
She lowered herself onto his cock.
And for a time she controlled it. Until she heard him growl, and he arced his hips upward as his release rocked him. Whipped from her body, she heard her own voice as if from a thousand miles away, frantically calling his name.
They collapsed side by side. He turned and wrapped his arms around her, pulled her against his body, and she burrowed in.
He felt ferociously protective of this small, lush, velvety, feral, gentle, generous person. How dangerous, in some ways, it felt to just hold her.
For four mad nights in a row, she had come to him.
Last night he had closed the door and had at once gently pinned her against it. He hadn’t said a word, but she’d readnowin his face, and she had reached for the buttons on his trousers. He took her against that locked door, his hands scooped beneath her buttocks as he thrust, her legs wrapped around his waist, her breath in his ear, whispering oaths, begging him, urging him on.
The night before, on a blanket laid out in front of the fire, she’d crouched on her knees, round arse up in the air, while his hands glided over her back and between her legs as he moved in her. He’d watched her fingers curl into the blanket to withstand the pleasure, her little muffled moans of amazement at the sheer magnitude of pleasure the two of them could conjure together.
And conversation meandered, lazily and idyllically as a spring, between lovemaking. Profound and utterly mundane. Laughter and lulls. Those moments were the easiest his life had ever been.
Now, behind them the pendulum on the clock swung toward one o’clock in the morning. Gently, softly, he stroked her shoulder, her arm, her hip, her thigh and back again.
“Lovely as velvet,” he murmured.“Velluto.”He would love to dress her in velvet. Shower her in shiny things.
“Velluto,” she murmured. He could feel her smile. Feel her body begin to melt into surrender again.
He slipped his fingers softly, softly between her thighs. Drew delicate patterns with his fingertips.
“Like satin,” he murmured.“Raso.”She would glow in satin.
“Raso.”Her voice lulled. Her breath was swifter now.
“Wet,” he predicted on a whisper into her ear, as his fingers delved to stroke. She was hot and slick again, and he caressed until he heard that sweet sound, that little whimper in her throat.
