Page 90 of More or Less a Countess
Broken words formed on his lips. “Beautiful.” He reached out as if in a daze to stroke a tentative hand down her calf. “Softest skin I’ve ever touched.” His gaze darted to her face, and a shadow of doubt lingered in his eyes. “Is this what you want, Violet? Do you…” He swallowed. “Do you want me?”
He even had to ask? His uncertainty made a sob rise in Violet’s throat, but she choked it back and held out her arms to him. “Yes.”
He let out a long, slow breath, then kneeled beside her and lay his hand against her throat. He stroked it down her body, lingering between her breasts and on the gentle curve of her belly, a faint smile appearing at the corner of his lips when she stretched like a lazy cat under his touch.
He never took his eyes off her. His hot gaze followed every arch and twist and shiver of her body as she undulated like a wave across his bed. “Such a pretty flush here.” He dragged a fingertip across the tops of her breasts. “Cup your breasts in your hands, sweet,” he murmured when her nipples grew hard under his gaze.
Violet didn’t think to deny him, but slid her hands up her stomach and cupped her breasts in her palms. Some instinct made her squeeze gently and lift them, as if she were offering them to him, and Nick’s lips parted on a harsh groan. “Stroke your nipples for me.”
Her flush deepened, but the fierce desire in his eyes left no room for embarrassment. She dragged her thumbs over her nipples once, then again, but her touch wasn’t enough—not when she could remember the sensation of his hot mouth against her, licking and teasing.
A soft plea tore from her throat. “Please…”
“What do you want?” Nick’s bare chest heaved with each breath, but he held back, watching her writhe against the bed.
He was waiting for something.
He needs to hear me say it, to say how much I want him.
“Your mouth,” she gasped as she circled her nipples again. “I need your lips on me, your tongue—”
He grasped her wrists and tore her hands away, and then his mouth was there, devouring her. He darted his tongue over the straining peaks again and again, then wrapped his lips around her and sucked, hard. Violet thrust her fingers into his hair with a cry, twisting and pulling with each delicious tug on her nipple, but she couldn’t have said whether she wanted to end his exquisite torment, or urge him on.
Nick didn’t give her time to decide before he slid his hand up the inside of her thigh. “Open your legs, sweet.” He growled when Violet spread her thighs for him. “Put your hand between them.” He bit down gently on her nipple when she hesitated. “Your hand, Violet.” He groaned when she slid her hands between her damp curls. “Now stroke your fingers…yes, just like that. Are you wet for me?”
Violet brushed her fingertips between her legs, just as he’d done when he touched her, and warmth flooded her core. “Yes.”
With that one gasped word, Nick’s control seemed to snap. His hand dropped onto her belly to hold her still and he buried his face between her legs. “Yes, so wet and sweet,” he murmured, stroking his tongue between her slick folds. When Violet arched her hips against his mouth he tightened his fingers around her thighs and opened her wider. He sucked her sensitive bud between his lips and worked it with the tip of his tongue, circling and darting and licking at her until her body drew taut, and with a shuddering sob she came apart against his lips.
Violet was still struggling to catch her breath when Nick kissed his way up her body, but when he lowered himself over her, his hips between her legs, she blinked in surprise. “Are you…” She frowned with confusion at the sensation of buckskin rubbing against her thighs. “My goodness, are you still wearing your breeches?”
“I, ah…I became distracted before I could remove them.”
Nick caught his breath on a groan when she squirmed closer and rubbed her core against his hard length. His hips jerked against her in a restrained thrust that nevertheless brought another desperate groan to his lips. His cheekbones were flushed, his mouth open, his face drawn into harsh lines of need.
He wanted her, desperately. His rigid flesh jerked insistently against her thigh, yet he made no move to discard his breeches. Violet brought her hands to his face, but he refused to meet her eyes, and all at once she saw the next few minutes unfolding as if they’d already happened.
He’s going to leave me again.
He was going to ease away from her, rise from the bed, and leave her alone in his bedchamber, without taking his own pleasure, and without making her his.
Before he could move, Violet turned his face toward hers, and words began to fall from her lips. “I belong to you, Nick. You and no one else, and I want you to make me yours.”
He shook his head, but Violet moved quickly then, before he could pull away. She wrapped her legs around his waist and arched against the tantalizing column of hard flesh nestled between her thighs.
Nick threw his head back and sucked a sharp breath between his teeth. “Violet…”
He reached behind him to untangle her legs, but she locked her ankles behind his waist, wrapped her arms around his neck, and held on.
Nick caught her wrists and pinned her hands over her head with a growl. “You think to play with me? Damn you, Violet, this isn’t a game.”
This isn’t a game, Miss Somerset.
That day they’d gone to the Hunterian Museum, he’d said the same thing. He’d insisted desire wasn’t a game, and warned her not to tempt him…
Right before she’d shamelessly ridden him to release.
A gentleman’s arousal isn’t something to play with…
