Page 53 of What a Lord Wants

Like the siren she was, Eve placed her hand against his chest. Her fingers curled into the soft satin of his waistcoat, seeking out the fierce beat of his heart beneath. She slowly slipped the first gold button through its hole, then another, and another…He couldn’t find enough of the gentleman inside him now to make her stop.

When the last button slid free and his waistcoat fell open, she hesitated. The innocent uncertainty he’d captured in the painting returned to her, striking him with so much force that he bit back a low groan of need and reached to touch her.

Her bare flesh trembled as he caressed his hand along her leg, over the curve of her hip to her slender waist. A faint tracing of apricot-colored paint remained in its wake. He smiled. He was painting her a second time with his hands, turningherinto a work of art.

She held still as he smeared paint over her lower abdomen with his thumb. Her breath hitched, the tiny muscles contracting at the sensation of the warm caress contrasting with the cold wetness of the paint.

Unable to resist, he circled her left nipple with his forefinger, leaving a trail of paint behind. Then the right one, just as deliberately. The streak of color faded as he drew a line down between her breasts, past her bellybutton to the edge of her curls, like an arrow pointing to the secret heart of her that she’d kept hidden from him for so long. Until tonight.

“Dom,” she whispered.

Emboldened, he ran the flat of his palms over her, smearing paint everywhere he touched. From her slender shoulders down her arms, along the sides of her body and over her ribs—one hand slipped beneath to stroke her smooth buttock and drew a gasping shiver from her.

“You made me promise to kiss you when I finished the painting,” he reminded her. He felt like a man bargaining with the devil. His artist’s soul in exchange for the sweet pleasures to be found in her. “I’m claiming that kiss now.”

Then he took her nipple into his mouth.

“Dom!” Her hands went to his head.

“A little kiss,” he cajoled as he teasingly flicked the tip of his tongue against her hard nipple, making it draw up impossibly taut between his lips. “That’s all.”

A ragged sigh of permission poured from her, and the hands that had gripped at his head now relaxed, to sift her fingers through his hair. “If—if that’s all…”

He chuckled against her bare flesh. Only a kiss, yet nothing short of ambrosia. The decadent taste of her was sweet on his tongue, and he suckled at her, drawing her nipple deep into his mouth. A moan fell from her lips, and she arched her back to bring him harder against her.

She filled his senses—the sweet taste of her on his tongue, the warm flesh of her bare breasts beneath his kneading hands, the soft whimperings of her own mounting desire. He drank in the feminine sounds as his mouth captured hers for a languid yet passionate kiss that cajoled her to open to him, so he could slip his tongue inside and thoroughly ravish her mouth.

He tore his mouth away from hers, leaving her trembling and gasping for breath as he lowered his head and nuzzled his face in the soft curls between her legs. He breathed in the musky scent of her that tempted him to his core. He could never enjoy her fully, never bury himself inside her warmth, yet he couldn’t resist taking as much of her as possible.

If tonight was all they had left, then he wanted to imprint on his mind and senses everything about her, right down to that small beauty mark just to the lower left of her bellybutton, which he kissed reverently.

She stiffened, her fingers stilling in his hair.

He tilted back his head to gaze up the length of her body and met her eyes in the shadows of the flickering candlelight. “Only a kiss,” he reminded her.

Then he gently parted her legs, and his mouth slipped down between them.

She gasped with surprise at the contact, all of her tensing. For a single heartbeat he feared she might change her mind, push him away, and deny him this forbidden taste of her.

But his brave little adventuress dared to let him stay right there between her thighs. She didn’t yet relax beneath him, but her gasp faded into a ragged sigh of soft permission to continue.

As he placed gentle kisses to the most intimate part of her, the tension eased from her, and she repeated in a breathless whisper, “Only…a little kiss.”

But the kiss he took now wasn’t at all little. What he did was simply plunder.

His hands on her inner thighs held her legs open wide as he kissed and licked and nibbled, relishing the way her bare bottom squirmed against the velvet cushion as if the pleasure were too much to bear, yet she slipped her hand behind his head to hold his mouth pinned to her. He thrilled in the wanton innocence of her.

“This is…more than…a kiss,” she panted out.

“No, mia bella,” he murmured against her. “This is the best kind of kiss.”

She shuddered as he slipped his tongue beneath the guarding hood of her femininity and found the delicate little nub beneath. He teased at it until she spasmed with pleasure.

A cry rose from her lips, only to grow into a wild moan as his tongue plunged deep to give her all the pleasure his mouth could grant. Her hands fisted in his hair as she arched into him to meet each thrust of his tongue, her body curling around his head in her attempt to take him even deeper, to drive toward the release she’d not yet known in her life.

She broke, coming against his mouth with a shudder that swept into him like a lightning strike. Her hips bucked with her release, and the sound of pleasure on her lips faded into a low, guttural moan of primal satisfaction.

He kept his mouth against her, kissing her reverently as he claimed the decadent dew glistening on her sex and prolonging the bliss that passed over her in waves. He was the first man to give her this joy. To know that the blissful expression on her face belonged to him and him alone…divine.