“Lean forward.” Another dark throaty command.
She did as she was told, stepping between his splayed legs and bracing her hands on his shoulders. Her breasts were where they should be, level with his mouth. Derek flicked the red nub with his tongue. Her skin held the subtle fragrance of some wildflower and tasted…indescribably good. A taste that could easily become addictive.
Her nails dug through the wool of his overcoat into his upper back. That was soon followed by a ragged whimper. He treated her ruched nipple to another swipe of his tongue. Her legs gave away and she sagged into him.
Circling his arms about her waist, he dragged her still closer, keeping her upright as his hands cupped the rounded cheeks of her bottom. He squeezed and kneaded, savoring the feel of delectable, pale, female flesh, so firm and soft.
“Oh,” she said on a choked gasp of wonder.
He liked the sounds she made. God, he could not remember wanting a woman more.
Derek didn’t know precisely when it occurred. When need obliterated all judicious thought. Gone were the many reasons he could not—should not—take what they both wanted. Lust replaced logic, belated honor lost its valiant fight.
He broke away long enough to divest himself of his clothes. He yanked off his coat, waistcoat and shirt in a frenzy of movement. Frantic fingers made quick work of his trouser buttons. And then finally, thankfully, he was dragging the trousers down over his hips, freeing his erection. Forest green wool crumpled at his ankles and he hastily kicked it off.
The savage in him wanted to part her thighs and sink endlessly into her. But in some lucid functioning part of his brain, he remembered she was a virgin. He had to take it slow.
He groaned into the lower curve of her breast when his cock brushed the sheltering hair between her thighs. He could almost feel her tightness wrapped around him, taking him deep, squeezing him.
Her pants came more rapidly now. She inched her legs apart and he gently pressed them wider as his lips coasted down from the tip of her breast over the peach warmed skin of her belly. Her breath stuttered when his lips reached the tender skin above her sex. With his shoulders, he forced her open to him.
“No, you mustn’t.” She was staring at him, her expression stricken with embarrassment. “I’m wet.” The two words were pained, barely audible. It must have cost her the Earth to utter them.
“That’s alright,” he soothed, parting her soft, pink flesh with his fingers. “So is my tongue.”
And with that he licked her.
She emitted a high keening sound. Bewildered. Aroused. Her hips jerked, her back coming clear off the bed. Derek stayed with her, steadying her hips in his hand as he licked, tongued and sucked her until she was babbling incoherently, her head thrashing against the pillow. Hips, slim and giving, demanded, cajoled, pled for satisfaction, wider, granting him full access to her swollen, wet heat. He tortured her with long languid strokes before catching the sensitive nub at the hood of her sex between his lips. He worried it with his tongue and then enclosed it in his mouth. He suckled her once, sending her into a paroxysm of pleasure. Her cry, high and plaintive, sounded as if it had been ripped from her throat. Her back bowed tight before she let out a shuddering breath. Then she went limp beneath him, satiated and spent.
God she was glorious. Derek wanted to watch her come again. He wanted to be inside her when she did.
He placed on last kiss on her damp center. She whimpered and her hips undulated in response as she plowed her fingers through his hair. He forced himself to go slow, kissing his way back up her body to swell of her breasts before taking the nipple between his teeth.
“Oh God, Derek.”
The thrust of her hips grew in urgency, her nails scoring his scalp, his neck and then sinking into his back. In minutes, she was ready again.
He released her nipple and positioned himself between her thighs, his cock so hard it hurt. He dragged it over her wet folds and her eyes fluttered open. What he saw in them froze him in place.
Bloody hell, he didn’t want her affection. It was bad enough he didn’t even know what he felt for her anymore. And if he took her virginity…
Derek started to pull away but her legs locked around his waist and her arms manacled his neck.
He groaned. “I can’t,” he ground the words through clenched teeth as he held himself still against squirming, soft female flesh when all he wanted to do was slide into her.
“I need you,” she whispered, panting, her mouth next to his ear. Then she ducked her head and began kissing the side of his neck and bucking her hips until she had his cock prisoned between her legs, snug up against her mound.
Derek’s arms trembled but not from physical strain, propped above her as he was trying to play the saint when there wasn’t a saintly bone in his body when it came to her.
“Take me.” She followed her whimpered command by nipping him on the neck and sliding her hands down his back to grab hold of his buttocks.
Derek couldn’t take a second more of her torture. In a flash, he had her arms pinned above her head. If he let her touch him right now, it would be over much too soon.
But she didn’t need her hands to excite him and when she arched against him, demanding her bliss, he thrust hard into her and was encased in her slick heat.
“Sweet Lord, Elizabeth.” She was tight. He gritted his teeth as he strived for control. His exit was excruciating slow for he wanted to savor the feel of her, memorize the way her muscles contracted around him. His reentry was swift and jolting.
She gasped, her eyes again closed, her face a picture in ecstasy and her hair a silken tangle on white bed sheets.
Derek experienced pleasure beyond belief. And all too soon his mind released its control to his hips as he pounded into her.
The moment he registered the tremors of her release—the sweet pulsing around his cock—he came utterly and completely undone, giving himself up to an orgasm that wracked his body inside out, wringing him dry. His usual finesse had long abandoned him, and he came down hard on her, drained as he’d never been.
He’d been having sex since the age of fourteen. Sex touched every one of his senses and he knew the feelings each elicited intimately.
Swiftly, he rolled from atop her.
This had not been sex.
It took several minutes to recover, for her body to become her own again, moving under her directive and not his.
Collapsed beside her liked a man who’d been felled by a much greater force, Derek’s chest continued to heave, his breaths frequent and ragged.
Outside, the sun had set leaving the room faintly lit by candlelight. Cooling air prickled her sweat-dampened skin. She shivered and reached for the dark green counterpane, a poor substitute for what she really wanted.
In the aftermath of his climax, he’d all but thrown himself from her, their only contact was where the hair on his thigh brushed the baby fine hair on hers. Why hadn’t he drawn her into his arms? Was this not the time to pepper her face with tender kisses?
He turned to look at her and nothing in his expression spoke of a man who’d just taken her as if the pleasure of it had to see him through the next ten years. He quickly returned his gaze to the ceiling, one hand propped behind his head.
“Elizabeth Ann Smith, you grew up in Penkridge, Staffordshire in a small cottage with a small parlor and no servants. You have an older sister named Madeline who became acquainted with my younger brother, Henry. She came close to ruining his life,” he said in a very flat voice.
Shock rendered her mute and deathly still. Her heart, not yet returned to its normal rhythm, began an erratic thumping in her chest.