She slid them along the ridge of his collarbone.
“I think perhaps you have long needed someone to be gentle with you, Christian,” she whispered.
He’d lost the ability to speak.
How odd that this pleasure should shock his body more than even pain. He had learned to accommodate pain. There was no precedent in his life for what surged through him when this particular woman’s fingertips moved over his skin. For the way his every cell came alive with a near frantic demand.
It was a terrifying thing, realizing the power she had over him.
It was a beautiful thing, witnessing her discover the power she had over him.
Watching her reclaim her own power over a man was yet another gift.
Buthewas going to lose his mind.
In no time, his cock was so hard he thought the top of his head might launch like a cannonball.
Slowly, as if the air through which they moved was soft and thick as velvet, his hands rose to cradle her face. He dragged his thumbs along the clean edge of her jaw. Back and forth. Back and forth. Her eyes had gone smoky blue. The man he saw reflected in her big black pupils was utterly in thrall.
He touched his lips to hers, soft as a breath, a tease, dragged them lightly, lightly across that pale pink curve of her bottom lip. Showing her that he knew how much pleasure was hidden in her lips alone.
She sighed. Her eyes shuddered closed.
“Aurelie.” His voice was a scraped whisper. “What happened to you...” he brushed his lips against hers again, this time more lingeringly “...it bears as much resemblance to lovemaking between a man and a woman as the slash on my torso does to what you’re doing now. One is violence. One is heaven.”
Did he tell her because he wanted her desperately?
Did he tell her because he knew she wanted him, and needed permission?
Did it matter?
“Show me.” Her words were scarcely more than an exhale against his lips. “Please show me.”
“Aurelie...” His voice was shredded with doubt and an absolute agony of want.
“Please show me. I want to feelyouinside me.” Her voice shook with vehemence. “It’s you I need.You.I want you in—”
She met him fiercely when he crushed her lips beneath his.
He moaned low in his throat. He felt savage; need coursed through him with such violence his limbs nearly shook from the effort to leash it. And he couldtasteher hunger: everything furious and everything loving. The lush silk give of her lips, the sweet, velvety heat of her mouth, the wild joy with which she met him, all nearly brought him to his knees.
And he began to show her.
Like a magician, he turned her knees to smoke, and the room into a whirlpool, and the kiss into a world. She slid her arms around his neck and clung, and as she gave herself up to the hot satin of his mouth, the demand of his lips, the sinewy twine of his tongue around hers—his fingers trailed ribbons of sensation along her throat, up the nape of her neck, the whorls of her ear. Everywhere he touched he awoke pleasure, and like a chorus of wild things, every part of her he touched called to the other parts of her body. She hadn’t known that her body contained such hidden treasures of bliss. Pleasure spilled into her veins like a drug.
And the trails his fingers blazed were followed by his lips... and tongue... and breath.
She turned her head, an absolute weather vane to the pleasure he gave.
“Hawkes,” she breathed, wonderingly. It was already too much and not enough, because she already sensed there was more. She wanted more.
“Do you see? We aremadefor pleasure,” he whispered into her ear. “To give it and revel in it.”
He drew his fingers down. Across the bones at the base of her throat. Into the valley between her breasts.
Then lightly down, dragging his thumbs across her nipples, peaked against her bodice. A shocking bolt of pleasure drove right down through her, snatched the breath from her. She moaned softly.
“If you tell me to stop, I shall stop. If you are afraid, tell me. Tell me anything. Ask me anything.”
