“Hush.” He kissed her softly on her tightly gritted mouth, and on the freckle just next to her lip. Light, sweet, balming kisses to show her, to teach her. “It’s done, sweet.” And he moved his hand up from where he had pinioned her hipbones to the mattress, so he could frame her face and coax her back into pleasure. “It will be better soon. I’ll make it better. Much better.”
She stared up at him with those wide, dark, trusting eyes and he wanted to fall into her, into her sweetness and her light. He let his body relax into her and let his body weight ease down into her softness as he angled her jaw more to his liking, luring her into opening her mouth to the probe of his tongue.
When she did, he kept kissing her and exploring the honey sweet taste of her, until she joined him in the dance, until her tongue chased and sucked at his in hot, open-mouthed, carnal kisses. When she was gasping with want, he left her lips and slid his teeth down the side of her neck along the sensitive tendon.
She let out an inarticulate groan of encouragement and turned to allow him greater access. He rose above her, on his elbows, so he could look at her and turn his attention to her exquisite breasts. How had he ever thought them small? They were exquisite, perfectly rounded. Made for his touch.
He levered himself fully off her so he could fill his hands with her. But as he did so he brought more weight to bear lower, where their bodies were so intimately joined. She let out a low sound of pleasure.
He ran his thumbs across the tightly furled peaks of her breasts and nudged his cock deep within her at the same time.
“Yes. Please.” Her voice was all needy plea.
“Ah, yes, your pearl. Have I taught you about your pearl? Did I tell you how to find the pearl hidden in your quim? How it likes to be stroked so lightly, how you can bring yourself pleasure with your own touch? But I haven’t taught you what my body can do for you. How you would want me to grind down into you and make you moan with pleasure.” He suited action to words and as he worked to bring her pleasure, a wave of scorching heat crashed over him. “Do you like that, Celia?
“Yes.” Her gasp was full of wonder.
He moved again, angling his pelvis to bring just enough pressure, just enough friction to appease the greedy, clawing need and bring them both wave after wave of pleasure. “Say my name, Celia.”
“Viscount Darling.”
He laughed at the same time he surged into her. “No. My name, Celia. Say my name.” The need was like a live thing crashing about inside him.
“Del.”
“Yes.” He surged again, drenched in heat and pleasure. “Again.”
“Del. Please, Del, please.”
“Yes.” He raised her hips up and tilted her hips just so, and rocked into her core. He felt fused to her, bound to her body and yet, falling away, carried away by the nearly unbearable pleasure. He reached his hand down to her slick quim, fondling and searching, even as his body rocked and surged into hers.
And then he found it—the place within her that would make pleasure explode behind her eyelids. He flicked her ever so gently and she erupted. She twisted up beneath him in one last vault of blissful friction and let out a high keen of surrender.
All he heard, as she flew away, was Celia crooning his name as he took her by the hips one last time and rammed himself home, following her over the edge into oblivion.
C
HAPTER
24
C
elia woke slowly and, little by little, registered her husband’s presence in her bed. Or rather, she was still in his bed. And they had . . . she’d let him . . . so many times she’d lost count. Finally they had fallen asleep from complete and utter exhaustion.
He was stretched across the greater portion of the bed, facedown on the mattress, with his arm thrown over her, hugging her to him, even in his sleep.
Celia wondered vaguely if there was a protocol for waking up with one’s husband. Was she to wake him, or wait until he came awake of his own accord? But if she did not leave the bed soon, and repair to the privacy of her dressing room, she would soon be in some distress.
She eased out of bed, only to rediscover she was achingly sore and entirely naked. There was nothing but the sheet in which she might clothe herself. Her clothes were in heaps on the other side of the bed, and the sheet was tangled under Viscount—under Del’s lovely, sleeping body. Celia dashed on tiptoes through the connecting door, through Del’s dressing room to her own, where Bains was already waiting for her.
“I’ve a hot bath ready for you, miss.” The maid kept her eyes down, but her voice was full of resigned indignation. “I’ve no doubt you’ll need one.”
Celia tried to conceal what felt like a furious blush, by ducking behind the screen to fish out a dressing gown and use the necessary. “Thank you, Bains.”
Bains was a dear, with all her fussing and mixing of jugs of water, but what Celia really wanted was to be alone while she sorted out her feelings and soaked away the newfound aches. And scrubbed the smear of blood from her inner thigh. She hadn’t felt this tender since Lizzie had tried to teach her to ride astride.
“That will be all, Bains. You may go.” He had come so quietly she had not heard him until his voice vibrated through the screen.
“Yes, sir.” Bains quickly excused herself.
“Celia?”
There was that tone, that intent. Celia felt desire and expectation leap in her blood. How quickly and easily she had been trained to his hand.
“Are you hiding?”
“No,” she lied, and stepped cautiously around the screen. “Good morning.” She had almost added Viscount Darling out of habit. Almost. But now there was no thought of anything but her Del.
He was clad only in his small clothes, completely naked from the waist up. Poor Bains—no wonder she’d fled. Celia herself had only marginally more time to become accustomed to it.
But the truth was Celia didn’t want Bains looking at Viscount Darling’s near naked splendor. He was hers now, as she was his. Hers to look at and hers to marvel over. Her great tawny cat to try and train to her hand.
He crouched carefully next to the tub, favoring his ribs, she thought. It made her feel better and less anxious to know, despite his strength and commanding presence, he was as human and as sore from their exertions as she.
He trailed his hands through the water. “Why don’t you get in before it cools?”
“You don’t have to stay. You look tired. I’m sure you’ve better things to—” She broke off at his look—a lazy, heated smile.
“I
don’t
have better things to do.” He smiled. “I haven’t had better things to do than look at you naked for a long time. Come.” He held out his hand to assist her into the small tub.
She climbed carefully in, holding the dressing gown out around the edge of the rim like a curtain, and managed to almost sit down before divesting herself of the protective piece of apparel. It was silly to be so nervous and awkward after all they had done, but he didn’t seem to take notice.
He knelt by the tub, absorbed in giving her an intense, rather proprietary perusal. He reached through the water to the dissipating smear of blood on her thigh. “Are you all right? Are you hurt? Or sore?”
With that small gesture, it came clear to her just how much everything between them had changed. There was nothing about her, about her body that was not his concern. She had become fully his.
Heat chased across her face and down her neck. “A little.” But was he also hers in the same proprietary way? She looked at the green and purplish tinge of the bruises still streaked across his ribs and eye. “What about you?”
“Yes, I’m sore, too. But happily so.” He laughed and took up a soft sponge. “Lie back. Let me.” He took up the bar of soap Bains had left on the stool and put it to his nose. “Yes. Jasmine and roses. But not quite. It needs to be combined with you for the correct effect.”
“And the correct effect is for you to soap me like a nursemaid?” It felt strange to allow him to cosset her so.
“No. I don’t think I shall do it at all like your nursemaid. You see, I want to use it as an excuse to run my hands all over you and get you slick and wet and ready for my touch again. So we can make love again.” He ran the sponge up the length of her inner arm slowly, and then along the line of her collarbone. “I like having you all naked and bare before me. No clothes to strip off. No tantalizing glimpses, no wondering if anything I’m saying to you is having the desired effect. With you so very naked and bare, I can see your nipples are pink and tight and waiting for me.
She was ready for his touch. With only his words and his gaze, she was already aching for him, breathless and wanting. Her breasts felt full and sensitive, nerves skittering and skating under the surface of her skin in anticipation. And lower, between her thighs, in her center, the place he called her quim, she could feel a low throb as awareness and need began to fill her. She arched her back and let her head lean against the lip of the slipper tub, opening her arms to him, letting him look and touch his fill, giving herself over to the warmth radiating from his gaze. She clenched her inner muscles together and felt the stabbing rush of pleasure, the prelude to coming bliss.
Del ran the sponge down and around each breast, moving in slow circles until at last the fibrous material of the sponge dragged across the sensitive peaks. She heard her own exhalation of pleasure.
“Yes,” he encouraged, and she opened her eyes to watch him as he looked at her. His eyes roved over her avidly, heating and touching the skin his hands did not. He turned his wrist and the rough, toughened skin of his knuckles abraded her nipples, sending bursts of blissful heat radiating across her body.
He leaned in and took her breast between his lips and teeth, sucking her and sending her higher and higher with every stroke, while his hand searched lower, over the rising curve of her hips and down, delving between her tightly clenched thighs. He dragged the sponge back and forth across her mound, teasing and arousing her, even as he left to sit back and watch the play of arousal chase across her skin.
He reached his long arm beneath the water to retrieve her foot. He brought it out of the water and crooked it over the edge of the tub, running his hands and the soapy sponge all around the high arch, rubbing and pushing his thumbs into the ball of her foot. It was heavenly torture.
He gave her one of his sleepy smiles, all drowsy satisfied eyes. But he held her gaze as he lifted out the other leg, draping her apart, opening her for his perusal.
He looked at her, his eyes ranging down one leg and then the other slowly. He held her there for a long moment, each of his hands on the inside of her ankles, exerting just enough pressure, drawing out the anticipation just enough so she was breathless with want.
She wanted him breathless as well. “I like looking at you, too. I like looking at your body. I like touching it more.”
He stood at the foot of the tub and in one swift motion, shucked his drawers completely and, stepped out of them. He stood before her in all his erect glory. God, he was beautiful, so golden and strong, so sleekly muscled everywhere. Especially where that curious ridge of muscle separated his hips from the taut line of his belly. She smiled. “It’s so curious and so beautifully strange, your cock.”
“Don’t say that.” He laughed as he reached down for her. “You can’t imagine what it does to me.”
“I don’t need to imagine. I can see.”
He lifted her clear of the tub and pulled her against him, the water from her body cascading down and soaking them both. “How scientific of you, observing and cataloguing.” He kissed her lightly on the mouth. “Perhaps I ought to teach you something new. Something where you can’t observe at all. Something where you can only feel.”
His voice had dipped and darkened, sending chords of awareness strumming through her. He picked her up and kissed her hard and deep, filling her mouth with the taste of him as he carried her back to his bed and eased her down.
“What—”
He lay a finger across her lips. “No questions. No talking. No words at all. Just feelings. All your senses stretching out to understand, all on your own, without me to tell you. Close your eyes.”
He was smiling at her, that lazy, sleepy smile that both aroused and calmed her. She did as he bid. He leaned down and kissed her on her mouth, a lingering kiss full of easy promise, and then rolled her over onto her belly.
“Del?”
“Hush.”
She opened her eyes and turned her head to the side to see, but couldn’t see him behind her. Sunlight poured in through the windows, filling the room with bright, blinding light. She felt the bed dip from his weight, but still he didn’t touch her, coming to sit, she thought, on the side away from where she was facing. He laced his fingers through her hair, drawing it out, letting the tousled curls fall through his fingers, tugging gently at her scalp. The effect was soothing and invigorating at the same time. And redolent with anticipation.
He spread her hair out across her back, then swept it aside to put his hands on her shoulders and began to massage. His strong hands dug deep, easing out each knot of tension, coming around her shoulders and tugging just enough on the skin of her upper chest that she felt the awareness blossom in her breasts even though they were pushed into the mattress by her weight.
And then Del’s big hand skimmed down her back, tracing the line of her spine, down and back up, until his hand came to rest in the small of her back, heavy and possessive.
Celia found herself straining for his voice. She had grown so accustomed to it, she needed it to lead her, to push her higher and higher into her arousal. And there was nothing. Nothing but the muted sound of the shifting sheets as he moved and pressed his hands at her back. Her nerves, all her senses, were straining towards him.
He took a single, long finger and traced the cleft of her bottom, all the way down, and then up, the backs of his fingers dragging along the soft, exposed flesh, sending flashes of exquisite anticipation shafting through her. She wanted to squirm and move, but the weight of his other hand, still pressing her firmly into the mattress, kept her still. She could feel her muscles clench and pulse deep within the place he had been inside her. In the place where she wanted him now.
But it was too much, this need, this void. This emptiness she had carried within her that only he could fill. She crossed her ankles, pressing her thighs tightly together, to ease the tremor within. Though she heard no sound, Del must have laughed at her feeble attempts to close herself to him. She felt the vibration of his amusement echo through her as he ran his palms down the backs of her legs. Then his hands closed upon her ankles and pulled her legs slowly, inexorably, apart, spreading and opening her.
She felt vulnerable and not a little scared, unsure of herself and him. But he did nothing to allay her fears. He didn’t speak or let her see him. She had only the sound of his escalating breath to gauge his arousal. And the possessive, authoritative press of his hands as he arranged her for his pleasure.
He wanted her this way—hot and tense and quaking inside, aroused by the idea he was looking at her even as he held her ankles apart. Looking at her body, and arousing himself with the sight.
She closed her eyes tight, clenching her whole body taut with a need, a yearning so fierce her muscles ached. Even her arms were pulled in tight, fisted up at her sides, holding her together lest she fly into a million pieces.
He shifted behind her, kneeling between her outspread thighs. His hands slid down to the inside of her thighs to knead and arouse, his thumbs pressing inward and circling slowly, moving closer and closer to her core, to the center of her need. She felt her body lifting and arcing towards him, toward the promise of his touch.
Then his touch was on her, at her center, one long finger sliding into her, stroking and playing her, as if she were an instrument tuned to his touch. But as he plucked and played she felt the greedy coil of need spiral tighter, twisting and turning within, until her body began to twist and turn in earnest, reaching and pushing back against his hands.
At that, he left her and she heard her own needy cry of disappointment. But he shifted again, and she felt his weight settle upon her, long and heavy. Dominant. He was everywhere, above and around her, surrounding her with his heat and his intent. She could feel his purpose in the strength of his body, and the caress of his chest as it moved against her back, in the way he nosed aside her hair and kissed her, his teeth scoring the sensitive tendon along the side of her neck. She felt caged and restless, pushing back against him, felt his belly snug against her bottom. Felt the blunt, velvet probe of his body pushing into hers, stretching and filling her, and then, he flexed his hips and sheathed himself to the hilt within her.