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“More. Do it again.” His tickling caress stuttered to a halt, his hand jolting to cup her quim, pressing his palm against her slickness with what felt like a raw, primal claiming. Sofia whimpered, digging her nails into his flanks and drawing at his nipple in a long, hard pull.

“Sofia.” The plea echoed harshly off the walls of the moonlit room, mingling with the sounds of the string quartet still drifting down the vacant halls.

With a groan, Sofia slid her hand in a determined path down his abdomen, her knuckles skimming through his lightly curling hair. He adjusted his hold between her legs, curling one finger in a teasing stroke between her sensitive lips. Sofia’s head swam with lust, her skin prickling, reaching towards the flash of pleasure.

“Christ, you feel perfect. What you do to me … my God, Sofi.” His lungs pumped like fireplace bellows.

His thumb grazed her bud and she writhed against him, her own hand forgetting its course.

“Just wait for it, sweetheart. Don’t work so hard. I’ve got you. You’re beautiful the way you open for me.” The tip of his finger slid inside and she could feel her walls clamp and pull at the insufficient pressure.

“Please.” Her legs trembled with equal parts frustration and pleasure as he added a second finger to join the first and stroked inside her with a maddeningly slow rhythm, his palm brushing lightly across her clitoris with every thrust. “Just a little faster. A little more. I’m almost⁠—”

“No.” The blasted man lightened his touch and slowed his pace, sliding the evidence of her arousal up and down through her folds, revelling in her abundant desire for him. She was unravelling. Frantic for completion. And he was just as insistent in his determination to hold her captive on the brink of madness.

“Can you wait a little longer, Sofi? Let me taste you?”

Her orgasm crashed over her then, tore through her with violent shudders. Sofia clutched onto his solid form. And Christopher did not relent, his clever fingers working to pull pleasure from within her until her muscles subsided into languid softness.

When she opened her eyes again, he was watching her with something like awe. She reached for him without thinking, aware only of her need for more intimacy. More tenderness. More Christopher. He opened his arms, engulfing her smaller body against his own, and held her tightly.

“I believe I promised you multiple orgasms, Miss Lioni, and you found your pleasure before I could even have a proper taste of you. Very unsporting, sweetheart.” He licked his lips.

The evidence of his arousal, pressed between their bodies and blithely ignored by Christopher, kindled a renewed warmth beneath Sofia’s skin. When he moved to drop to his knees between her splayed legs, she shook her head and ghosted the tip of her finger down his abdomen.

“You distracted me,” she chastised between light kisses across his chest.

“Sofia. This is not a good idea.” He nearly groaned as she nibbled a path towards his nipple.

“I disagree. I think this may be the best idea I’ve ever had.” Skating her fingers past his waistband, she trailed up and down the length of his erection and he pulsed against her exploring touch.

“If you loose a single button of my falls, I will have you pinned on your back, sprawled across that billiards table with my face between your legs. And if you free my cock from its confines, Sofia, I will have you in every way. I will bury myself inside you and there isn’t a sound my conscience could utter that I would notice. You are the only person that can stop me, Sofia.” He sucked in a breath. “And I won’t have the fortitude to say this again.”

His face was deadly serious, and she nodded, not wanting to plant any regrets in the perfection of the night. “Then enjoy this for as long as you can last.” She stroked his cock through his trousers and he let out a guttural moan. “And then you can finish without me. Like before. I liked watching you.”

A feral hunger flashed in his eyes at her admission and he pulled her roughly into his body, covering her neck and breasts with ravenous licks and nips. His hands kneaded into her arse and roved over her body with clumsy urgency. Every rhythmic press of his cock against her stomach grew more frenzied.

With some effort, she eased him away, creating only so much distance between them as to insert her palms against his abdomen. She nearly tore open his trousers when he rutted at the air for a beat and let out a savage growl at the loss of contact.

“I distinctly remember you making me wait. You didn’t think I would let you rush off without the same treatment, did you? Foolish man.”

Sofia’s mouth ran dry at the look he gave her. As if he were reconsidering tossing up her gown and having her right there.

His hand defiantly went to his cock, and he stroked long and slow as he watched her through lowered lids.

“Hands off, Christopher.”

“But you like to watch me pleasure myself.” He repeated the stroke, slower.

“Not yet.” She reached for his hand and removed it, replacing it with her own. Sofia toyed with the buttons of his placket and he twitched beneath her fingers. “I want to know more about what you like.”

“Hard. I want you to grip me hard.”

She grinned.

“So, not like this then?" She traced the shape of him with her fingertips, watching his vein throb in his neck. When he began to thrust into her palm, she pulled her hand away, her nails biting into his hips to hold him fast. He let out a choked sob, a drop of dampness from his tip seeping through his trousers. She stroked a fingernail across where it coloured the fabric.

“Christ, Sofi.” He sucked in a breath. “Kiss me. I need … I want …” He shook his head when more inelegant, fractured sentences emerged, then speared his hands into her hair and crushed his mouth to hers. He begged with his touch, pleaded with deep searing kisses and vulnerable little whimpers, but she refused to alter her careful perusal of his cock.