The Virtuoso

wanted to work at his other nipple.

And work at him, she did. God, what a mouth…

While her free hand came up to rub at the wet, exposed flesh she’d just abandoned, each caress sending a riot of pleasurable sensation to Val’s groin. He had to slow her down, as much as he didn’t want to disturb what had to be the boldest overtures Ellen had ever made to a man in her bed.

“My turn,” Val warned, wrapping an arm around her shoulders and rolling them both so he was on his back beneath her.

“Valentine.” Ellen blinked at him from her perch straddling him. “I want…”

“I know.” He leaned up and kissed her swiftly, hard, to shut her up before she could finish that thought. “And you’ll have it. Soon. But I get a turn, too.” He hooked his hands under her arms and lifted her bodily, thinking to position her breasts for his mouth. Needing to, in fact.

But her sex dragged along the rigid length of his cock, and they both froze at the contact.

“Oh, yes.” Ellen closed her eyes and let her upper body go limp, hanging on Val’s hands. “Again, please.”

She wasn’t waiting for him to reposition her; she was searching with her hips for him, and he was all too readily in evidence. Slowly, she drew her sex over him again and again.

Distraction, Val admonished himself desperately. If he didn’t distract her, he was going to finish before they’d started; damned if he wouldn’t. He lifted Ellen slightly, so her breasts were closer to his mouth, and captured one rosy nipple between his lips.

“Ah, God…” Ellen’s prayer was hissed through clenched teeth as Val began to play with her.

“Turnabout,” Val murmured against her soft skin. “Put your hands on my shoulders, love.”

She opened her eyes as if to locate these shoulders he’d mentioned, and complied by sliding her hands over his chest, particularly over his nipples, back over his nipples. She might have had every intention of repeating that caress until her fingertips were sizzling with the pleasure of it, but Val’s mouth prevented her.

He made love to her breasts. When she braced her weight above him, he used his hands to capture her breast and position it—by fondling, stroking, petting, and kissing—at his mouth. When he finally drew on her nipple, she groaned relief.

“Ride me,” Val whispered as he shifted to torment her other breast. His hands slipped down to her hips, where he applied enough pressure to show her what he meant. Firmly, he pushed her hips down and held her, so her sex was snugged down to his cock. Val rocked her slowly along the length of him, and Ellen whimpered.

“Make yourself feel better,” Val murmured. “Find relief. Use me.”

She made a few tentative passes over him, and Val sensed she was torn between relief and increased arousal.

“Trust me.” He urged her along him again. “You feel so good to me, Ellen. Just move on me a little.”

He bit her nipple, lightly, then bit and suckled at the same time, and Ellen’s body began to move with its own momentum. She arched, and he nipped her again so her nipple stayed in his mouth as her chest heaved up, and she let out a half groan, half sigh. There was frustration in that sound, and Val heard it.

“Let me help you.” Val anchored her to him, his arm a tight band low on her back to keep her close to him as she moved more and more strongly. And then, just there, where all the sensations of pleasure and torment should focus for her, Val worked a hand between them and brushed a thumb across her wet flesh.

“No.” She tried to shrink away, but Val’s arm trapped her against him, and his hips arched up to increase the pressure against her sex.

“Valentine,” she whispered. “Oh, God, Valentine…”

He could feel her body seizing, and bucked up hard against her, holding her tightly to him and aching with his own need to spend. He stroked over her again and again, until she was shaking and clinging to him, then crying softly against his neck.

“It’s too much,” she finally murmured dazedly. “It’s so much too much, and I never knew…”

It had been too much, Val silently agreed. He hadn’t intended that her orgasm be so… violent, but she’d resisted the pleasure, and he’d forced it on her, and he wanted nothing so much as to do it again and again until they were both sore and spent and mindless with it.

Until she’d been compensated for five years of marital frustration and five years of wasted widowhood.

“Just let me hold you. Take a moment to gather your wits.”

“I will never have wits again,” Ellen muttered, curling up more closely on his chest. “I don’t even believe wits exist at this point. What on earth did you do to me, Valentine Windham? That was different from what happened at the stream. You are an awful, awful man.”

There was such affection in her tone, such pleased, bewildered exasperation, that Val felt the very opposite of awful. “I didn’t mean to be so rough with you. You are a lady.”

“I was rough with you,” Ellen countered. “I became a beast.”

“An awful beast.”

“God above.” Ellen’s sigh breezed over Val’s heart. “I was awful, wasn’t I?”

She sounded so proud, Val hugged her tightly, odd feelings coursing up from his chest. “A tigress pouncing on her prey could not have produced more awe in me than you did.” He nuzzled her neck. “You have got such a mouth on you.”

Her tongue flicked out and Val flinched away.

“For shame,” he scolded. But when she merely nuzzled lazily at his neck, he stroked his hand over the back of her head in an easy rhythm. “Insatiable tigress.”

“Mmm.”

He let her find simple comfort in his arms for long minutes, because it appeased some need he had as well, to hold her, pet her, and stay close even as his own arousal still hummed through his body. He couldn’t go at her like that again, not so soon, and maybe not ever.

No matter she was pleased as punch with herself and he with her. On a sigh, she turned her head so her ear was above his heart.

“Does this mean I’m wicked?” she asked, appallingly serious.

“It means you are passionate,” Val corrected her, tipping her chin up and holding her gaze. “Passionate is a good thing, Ellen. It is the antithesis of being asleep in the midst of life.”

“Asleep.” She sounded as if she understood his use of the term and frowned at him. “I was falling asleep, you know, before you came. It hurt too much to stay awake.”

“And right now,” Val observed with dry humor, “not much of anything hurts, does it? And a nap sounds just the thing?”

“Hmm.” Ellen curled down again so he couldn’t see her face. “Is that why men like swiving so much? It puts one in charity with the universe?”

“Or one’s little corner of it. But there’s much to like about it.”

“Really?” Ellen stacked her hands and rested her chin on the back of them to survey him like the feline he’d compared her to. “Like what?”

“To see you overcome with pleasure. I have never beheld anything as lovely.”

He saw the wind drop abruptly from her sails.

“It felt lovely,” she admitted, closing her eyes. “You made me feel lovely.”

“No,” Val said firmly. “You are lovely, and you allowed yourself to see it and feel it and know it for a few moments.” He believed that with every fiber of his being.

“I want to be under you again,” she announced. “Please.”

She wanted sheltering and comforting, and Val could not have denied her one thing at that moment. If she’d asked for his right hand, he would have passed it along to her without a word.

“Are you going to cry?” Val asked quietly as he rolled them and obligingly crouched over her. She scooted down until her cheek was against his heart and she could wrap both arms and legs around him.

“I might. I don’t understand it.”

He held her tighter without being asked, and she clung to him more closely. “I am your friend, Ellen,” Val murmured, stroking her hair.

“And my lover,” Ellen reminded him, stretching up to kiss his throat. She reached around to stroke his nape,