How to Impress a Marquess(43)

He tore away from their kiss, clamping his strong hand atop hers. His chest heaved with labored breath. “Please, woman,” he said, low and hoarse. “I’m too weak to deny you as I should. You owe me nothing. ”

But she’d made her choice. Other women wanted a ring, husband, wedding night; she wanted pure beauty and truth—these rare things trembling between them. They might never come again.

“‘O! let me have thee whole,—all—all—be mine!’” she quoted Keats.“‘Withhold no atom’s atom or I die.’”

“You don’t know what you’re asking of me. You’re not…ahhh.” His trousers fell away and his cock thrust up, rigid and wide. For a moment, she just took him in, letting her fingers gingerly explore, learning his contours. Slowly she caressed him, all the while watching his face. His eyes were closed, mouth opened in pleasure. “What we’re doing is wrong,” he said in a low rush of breath.

“Hush, my handsome lover.”

He leaned forward, his mouth roughly taking her breast, letting his tongue flick across the top. The surge of pleasure caused her to halt in her work, his magic paralyzing her body. She felt another hand slide between her wet, swollen folds and a finger slide inside of her. She released a high whimper.

“Dear God, Lilith,” he whispered over her breast.

What had been a dull, aching throb turned acute. She pushed against him, thrusting her nipple deeper into his mouth, pleading for more of his magic. Her entire body seemed to balance on his finger as it delved into her. She arched her back and made a strangled cry. “I want to feel you inside me.”

She toppled him to the floor beside his sketch. Now he lay before her. He was too powerful, too big. She didn’t know what to do.

Her only knowledge came from silly illicit books circulating at school and from what Frances had told her. But nothing could prepare her for this.

She tentatively, cautiously straddled her legs over his sex. “I want you to show me how to love you.”

“I can’t resist you. Don’t do this. I beg you.”

She leaned down, letting her lips hover over his, her hair falling around his face. “Let me love you.”

He closed his eyes. She could see the conflict on his stricken face. Proper, old-fashioned George trying to protect her virtue. She kissed around the edges of his mouth. “Let me.”

“You’re a virgin,” he hissed, his jaw tight. “This isn’t the best way.” He drew her onto his body, running his fingers lightly up and down her sides. Then, in an easy motion, he rolled until he was on top. He rose to his knees, letting them push her legs apart. She had managed to cede her power. Now he could walk away.

Yet he continued to stare at her, her face, her belly, and her open, exposed sex.

“Please,” she whispered.

He released a hard, anguished cry and threw off his shirt. The dim light and shadows contoured his taut, powerful muscles. He gently lowered himself onto her, sheltering her.

His tongue stroked and soothed hers as his cock progressed along her swollen folds, finding her core. He pressed gently, seeking entrance. For several long moments nothing happened, even as his pressure increased.

What was wrong?

He withdrew from their kiss to whisper “Try to relax” in her ear. She obeyed, letting go into his embrace, feeling the protection of his powerful body over hers.

A twinge of pain shook her. He caught her gasp in his mouth, his fingers tightening around hers. She stayed in his kiss, letting his caresses chase away the sting.

Gently he slid into her, letting her adjust his weight and heat until inch by inch he was snugly inside.

“My beautiful lady.” He studied her, not with the hard concentration of the drawing but with dark want. Then he smiled tenderly, letting her know she was safe in this new sensuous landscape.

He began to move with gentle strokes, leaving tiny explosions of pleasure in his wake.

“Oh my, ohh…” Her words drowned in a high, soft cry.

“Does this please you?” he asked.

She wasn’t capable of words and pulled him back into a kiss, letting her tongue answer.

His pace quickened, his strokes deepened. Her body moved in unison with his, rising in welcome with each thrust, and then writhing, grinding against him, trying to sate the hunger he elicited. Pleasure yearned for more pleasure, like air to fire. She began to rebel against his controlled and gentle motions, pushing harder, greedy for the sensation. Her body needed no guidance, instinctively knowing to shift her thighs and arch her back, allowing him to penetrate more fully.

He clenched his teeth and closed his eyes as if pain.

“What’s wrong?” she cried, trying to rise up to hold him.

“I’m— I’m trying to control myself,” he choked. “Dear God! I can’t.” His motion turned wild and savage. He thrust and thrust and thrust. She met every one, squeezing his cock, trying to relieve the mounting pressure within her walls else she would burn to death from the inside out.

She was so close to something she didn’t understand. She dug her nails into his skin, her thighs quaking.

He drove deep inside her with a teeth-gnashing grunt, raising her thighs off the floor. Wet heat filled her womb as he shuddered. Then his frantic energy subsided like a storm passing. Yet she continued to move, rocking against his now quiet body, pleading for the same relief. All his tension was gone, but it remained in her, burning and painful. She whimpered in frustration, turning her head and biting down on her fingernail.

“My poor beauty,” he said. “I was too excited. I was…” He didn’t finish, but slid off her.

“No,” she cried. He couldn’t leave her in this torment.

But he hadn’t left her; instead he stationed himself between her legs. He drew up her knee and opened her folds with his fingers.

“What are—” She gasped as his tongue brushed across her peak. He lapped, licked, played, toyed, letting her body grow rigid and her legs quake again, until she could almost reach a pinnacle of something. What was it?

Release? Ecstasy? Incineration? He tortured her with pleasure, seeming never to tire of the game. She was open and at the mercy of his tongue. He let it swirl on her apex until she reached that state again where she could scarcely breathe and her body trembled. A roar filled her ears, she opened her mouth to scream but only the shrillest thin sound escaped. In this place she was suspended. Then his tongue moved a fraction higher and her muscles contracted, waves and waves of tension gushing out of her. His tongue kept moving, milking her until the climax petered away.

He rose up to his knees and studied her spent body. “I think I should draw this—Muse After Rapture.” He lay upon her, letting his cock, now aroused again, rest against the wet curls between her thighs, his arms resting on either side of her, keeping her close. Perspiration gleamed on his muscles.

“That was the most exquisite thing I’ve ever experienced,” she confessed, once she could talk.

He chuckled and kissed each of her hardened nipples.

“No, no, I am wrong,” she corrected. “It’s the second most exquisite.”

“Impossible. What could possibly be better?”

She twined her finger through a strand of his wet hair, drawing it roguishly over his forehead. “When I saw your art in the attic.”

He didn’t say anything. Light from the grate reflected in his deep gray eyes. The scorching heat of desire now cooled, yet there remained inside her the feeling of safety in the embrace of a man she had despised for years. Whom she had penned terrible things about under the guise of fiction. Who created the most stirring, precious art. Tears gathered in her eyes.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” he said, distraught. “I tried so hard to be gentle.”

“No.” She traced along the lines cutting down his cheeks. “It’s that I love you,” she said softly. He deserved to know. “I love you with all my heart.”



She loved him.

The words should have incited fear. He should have been panicking over what had happened.

He felt none of this. Only a deep satisfaction arising from some place deep below his thoughts. Lilith was his.

Finally.

He would like to think he was under some spell of her beauty, as her addle-minded art friends would say, but he knew in a primitive way what he was doing as he entered her body. He knew the entire time. He had recklessly claimed her, driven by desire, with no care for the consequences. He had forced his own hand and there was no going back.

Lilith, the unruly family outcast, was to be the next Marchioness of Marylewick. There was nothing to be done.

He rose to his knees and studied the shadows from the fire dancing on her thighs and breasts.

“What is wrong?” she whispered. “Don’t be upset. Come, let me hold you.”

“I’m not upset.” He chose his words carefully. “Having a wife who loves me is the ideal situation.”

“Wife?” She propped herself on her elbows. “What do you mean, ‘wife’? Are you suggesting that we marry?” She laughed, albeit a bit nervously.

“We must, after what I’ve done.”

“My lover.” She sat up and kissed his forehead. Her warm touch seeped past his flesh into the marrow of his bones. “We did this together. I came here tonight because I wanted to. I love you, but I don’t want to marry.”