His mouth left her nipple and kissed the underside of her breast, her ribs, the other breast, before nibbling upward to settle in the hollow of her throat. His cock was huge with need, throbbing with eager blood, but instead of reaching for the fastening of his trousers he drew his fingers down her body in lazy circles, ignoring the pain as he braced his weight on his stump. Down he went, around her breast and her ribs, finding her navel, exploring the soft skin at the side of her waist and the flawless curve of her hip. He inhaled the scent of her, her clean smell, devoid of flowers or powder or anything but Emily.
He'd be damned if he took her like a beast. If she fled afterward, he wanted no regrets. He wanted to have savored every inch of her, while he had the chance.
He wrapped his hand around her leg, just below the hip. His thumb dipped into the warmth of her inner thigh. "I'm going to touch you now, Emily," he said. "Let me in. Let me touch your sweetness."
"Great God," she whispered. Her head fell back. He swirled his tongue around the fine bones of her clavicle and let his thumb slip lower. Damp heat rose from the notch hidden within. He felt the first springing hair, and another. "Great God," she said again, and his thumb found the round promise of her mound, and he thought he might break.
So close, now. Almost there.
He lifted his head and kissed his way up the line of her throat. She was trembling, shaking visibly. "Steady. Hush. I'll be gentle. I'll be so gentle. Let me in. Ah, that's it."
His thumb slid at last through the crisp golden curls to her center, and he growled in shock. She was slick and hot, fully wet with desire for him, in the final luscious stages of arousal. For him! His fingers covered her mound, while he brushed his reverent thumb along the folds of delicate skin, familiarizing himself with the long-forgotten contours of a woman's body, the sleek and intricate anatomy of her. He inserted the tip of his thumb just inside her. She was murmuring incoherently into his temple, clenching and unclenching against him.
By God, she's going to spend, he thought in awe.
He covered her lips with his mouth and moved his thumb upward to find the hard little nubbin at her apex. Her body jolted again, held in place only by his steadying hand, his arm against hers, his devouring kiss. "Oh God, oh God," she moaned. He caressed her in tender and rhythmic circles, guiding her along, massaging the coil of energy beneath her skin.
"Let go. Spend for me, Emily," he said, and he drew out her tongue and sucked on it.
She spent instantly, in hard and unrelenting pulses, sinking backward on the bed as if her bones had dissolved. He followed her, still sucking at her tongue, still milking her below, while her cries vibrated in his mouth. Her arms strained upward against the prison of his body.
"That's it, darling. That's it. Off you go." He left her mouth and pressed his lips against the mad pulse at her throat. "That's it, you lovely thing. Look at you."
Gradually the quick heave of her chest began to slow. Her body sagged below him, giving itself up to the aftermath. He lifted his head and observed the flush of her skin, the tremble of her chin. The scent of climax filled the air. He brought his hand to his lips and tasted her.
"Mr. Brown." Almost too soft to be heard.
"I'm here." The smell of her, the taste of her, sent a mist through his brain. His skin was hot and covered by a film of dampness. He raised himself and shrugged off his coat, loosened his necktie.
"Sir?" Emily lifted herself on her elbows, gloriously nude, flushed and disordered. Ashland's prick throbbed in his trousers.
"Shh. Lie back, now, darling."
He dropped again to his knees and put his hand on her legs, widening her.
"What . . . ?"
"Let me." He kissed her inner lips, and was rewarded with a sweet jump of her body. God, the response of her! "Hush, now. Let me taste you."
Her breath hissed between her teeth. "You can't . . . It's not . . . My God . . ."
"You're going to spend for me again, Emily. I want to watch you do it again."
Emily's elbows gave way. Ashland touched her swollen nub with an experimental tongue, and she cried out. He swirled lower and dipped his tongue into her cleft, tasted her tanginess, smelled her rich musk. With his fingers he spread her farther and adored the perfect symmetry of her, the light curls and the crimson inner lips, gleaming with lubricity. He kissed her again; he drew his tongue along each precious fold, and then he began in earnest.
She was already excited, already fisting her hands into the bed. When he returned at last to her nub, she began to hum. He licked her in a delicate rhythm. "I can't bear it," she gasped. "I can't bear it!"
But he wouldn't relent. He couldn't. She felt so good, so eager, her passion so unguarded and real, her limbs so open and trusting. No goddamned showy modesty, no artifice. Over and over he flicked his tongue, holding her twisting hips in place, relishing her spiraling tightness under his mouth. He used his tongue to control her, varying the speed and intensity, bringing her to the brink and down again, then starting his torture anew, until she was like a live wire of electricity, humming and twitching and taut-oh God!-so rosy and perfect.
He let her loose at last. Her feral cry rent the air, her body arched in ecstasy, and Ashland inserted the tip of his finger inside her just in time to feel the wet flesh clench in a violent spasm of release.
"Go on, go on. Ah, that's good." He gazed longingly at her pulsing body: the sweet evidence of Emily's ready sensuality, her capability for abandonment. He had sensed that passionate nature, seething with promise beneath her calm skin, and now here it lay before him. No cool-blooded scholar, Emily. No perfectly bred society beauty, either, devoid of imagination and initiative. His Emily would meet him like a tigress; she would devour him as he devoured her.
Ashland rose, quivering with energy, with an unquiet and overpowering urge to mate. She had spent twice; she was slick and soft and ripe for his invasion. She murmured something; he thought for an instant that she said Ashland.
He watched her as he ripped off his waistcoat, as he pulled down his braces and fumbled with the fastening of his trousers. She was still panting, still flushed, drifting down from her second climax. The room was unlit, and her skin gleamed with perspiration in the faint light from the other room. His prick sprang out, huge with anticipation, nearly vertical. He'd never been so aroused, not even on his wedding night. He'd never seen such a sensual sight as Emily, sprawled invitingly before him, blindfolded and trusting, loose-limbed with sexual completion.
She was still lying at the edge of the bed, her legs spread apart. He put his hand beneath her arm, his stump beneath her bottom, and scooted her upward. Her hands scrabbled in surprise at the covers. "I . . . Sir?"
"I'm going to have you now, Emily." He sank his elbows on either side and kissed her.
She made a sound in her throat and reached for his shoulders, and this time he couldn't stop her touch. His need was too urgent. He gritted his teeth against the collision of her palms against his shirt and reached down to position himself. His cock slid against her opening, looking for purchase in the slippery abundance of her arousal.
"Mr. Brown!" She jumped beneath him.
"Steady," he muttered, gripping himself. God, it had been so long. He was fumbling like a boy, trying to lodge himself somewhere in that impossible tightness. "Almost . . . ah God . . . there!"
He dropped his elbow back to the mattress, braced above her, and shoved hard, all in the same instant.
* * *
Thirteen years ago, in the mountains of southeastern Afghanistan, Ashland had been captured by three tribesmen as he rode his frantic horse back toward the British lines. What he remembered most about the exact moment of his ambush was the slowness of time, the elastic way in which the seconds had stretched out, so that the near-simultaneous sequence of details-the horse throwing up his head in the air, the cloud of dust obscuring his vision, the flash of white from his attackers' turbans through that dust, the exotic high-pitched hallooing that shook his eardrums, the blue-flame slice of pain as his jaw shattered under the impact of a lead bullet at close range-each occurred in its own separate eternity.
The instant in which he invaded Emily elongated in exactly the same fashion.
He knew, in the fraction during which his hips swiveled for the thrust, that he had miscalculated her. Emily's flinch of shock, the stiffness of her body, the resistance where he pressed into her entrance rocketed across his senses; but by then he was committed. He was already in motion; the white light of animal need was already blinding his brain. There was no halting the juggernaut force of his journey up her stunned cleft. But he knew the truth, even before a slight stretching pressure wrapped around the head of his cock and then broke free. He heard the truth as Emily made a sharp cry and he surged without further impediment to bury himself to his stones in her slick body.