Ethan: Lord of Scandals

“Like that.” Ethan dipped his head to kiss her mouth. “Now guide me to you.”

Alice left off using her tongue to taste his flesh. “Guide you?”

“Take me in your hand,” he said, holding her gaze steadily, “and guide me home.”

Ethan remained poised above her, his gaze locked with hers. There was both challenge and reassurance in his gaze. He would not subject her to the kind of fumbling she’d known before with another man. He was not going to allow her to passively tolerate intimacy either, but most of all, he was not going to allow her to be disappointed. Not in him, not in herself, not in what they shared.

Alice saw all that before she closed her eyes.

He nuzzled her throat. “Take my cock in your hand and show me where you want me. I’ll wait all night, if you want me to, but that means you wait too.”

Logic, and at such a time. Alice tucked her face against his shoulder and brushed her fingers over the soft skin crowning his member.

He could wait all night, she was sure of that—and equally sure she could not.

* * *

Ethan felt a tentative brush of Alice’s fingers over the head of his cock. He thought of accounts payable and boiled cabbage and the recipe for Miller’s horse liniment, and even tried the Lord’s Prayer in Latin, but Alice closed her grip around him and brought him snug against her damp sex.

He had to kiss her.

“God above.” He exhaled unsteadily, resting his forehead against hers but unable to resist her mouth for long. He sealed his lips over hers in a hot, open-mouthed, needy plea for some kind of immediate joining. Her tongue met his, and it was all he could do not to roar into her body, tongue, cock, fingers, anything.

“Ethan, please…” Alice tried to move against him, to take him into her body on her own initiative, but Ethan feinted with his hips.

“Behave,” he said. “We savor this.” He emphasized his words with the barest hint of forward movement of his hips, and Alice abruptly ceased her attempts to rush their joining.

“Better,” he murmured, then, “relax, my love. We’re not going to hurry this.”

She could not relax. Beneath him, Ethan felt the tension in Alice’s body, felt the tight, shallow breaths she expelled against his neck. He wanted to believe she was simply aroused past bearing, but she was so tight around the tip of his cock, he had to suspect she was simply anxious.

“Breathe, love, and recall your promise.”

She opened eyes that had been tightly shut, and peered at him in the dim light as he brushed his fingertips over her forehead. “My promise?”

“You’ll tell me if you don’t like something or if it’s uncomfortable. If you ask it, I will stop.”

“I don’t want you to stop,” Alice replied, sounding more resolute than aroused.

“And I don’t want to be stopped, but you promised.”

He held himself against her, applying a firm, steady pressure but making no move to advance more deeply into her body. She wanted him, of that he was confident, but she lacked the experience to know her body needed time.

“It isn’t supposed to be this difficult,” Alice muttered.

Ethan pressed more firmly into her.

“Tell me how it’s supposed to be,” he said, laying his cheek against hers.

“Easy,” Alice replied, sounding a little bewildered, “and sweet and pleasant.”

Merciful God. He was about to explode, and she expected a tea party. “This is pleasant,” Ethan said, kissing her lingeringly.

“I feel… discontent.”

“Discontent is good,” Ethan murmured before slipping a hand down and closing it over her breast.

“That is good.”

“Not just good. Lovely, beautiful, dear…” He caressed and stroked and gently kneaded, all the while holding his cock against her, but just shy of real penetration. When Ethan closed his fingers around her nipple, Alice groaned, and using her ankles for leverage, heaved her hips against him.

He allowed it and slipped that first hot, glorious, wet inch inside her body.

“Shame on you, Alexandra. I’ll kiss you silly for that.”

She turned her head to hasten her fate, and Ethan obliged by covering her mouth with his again. She came out not to play, but to tease, entice, coax, and madden with her mouth and tongue and sexy little sighs. “Ethan, I need you.”

He applied a hint of pressure to her nipple and let her have more of his cock when she arched tightly against his hand. This required such concentration of him, he decided it qualified as a form of prayer.

“More,” Alice whispered. “More, now.”

From somewhere, he found the self-restraint to deny her, distracting her with his tongue in her ear, his teeth on her earlobe, then his lips closed around her nipple as she growled low against his temple.

Alice’s fingers tunneled through his hair to hold him to her, then tightened in desperate pleasure as he suckled.

“Damn you,” Alice rasped. “Ethan, I am begging… Ah, God, yes…”

He pushed steadily forward, until he was inside.

Then he paused, knowing they had a distance yet to travel.

Alice raised her head, regarding him with a world of bewilderment. “Why did you stop?”

“I’m not stopping.” Ethan laid his cheek against her temple. “I’m marshaling my reserves.”

“Your reserves?” Alice flopped back against the pillows. “Reserves of what?”

“Passion,” he said softly, easing his cock forward one blessed, beautiful, profoundly pleasurable inch, then easing back the same distance.

“Don’t stop.” Alice closed her eyes at this, the beginning of their real joining. “Don’t you dare stop, Ethan Grey. Not ever.” She let out a mighty not-as-discontented sigh, and some of the tension went out of her as Ethan slowly worked himself more deeply into her body.

“I like this. Ethan, I do like this.”

“With you, I love it,” he replied, his voice equally soft and just a little strained as he struggled to keep his rhythm easy and relaxed, and struggled not to speak words he wasn’t entitled to burden her with.

He would not tell her he loved her, not with words, but he tried to communicate it with his body. He joined them by slow, tantalizing increments, until he was gliding easily into her depths and she was arching up to meet him. Her breathing deepened, and her body became more fluid in its undulations. Beside her head, her fingers opened and closed convulsively on the pillow until Ethan stroked his thumbs over her palms.

“Ethan, I can’t…” She lost the words as he added the first hint of power to his thrusts.

“You can.” He stroked her palms again. “We can.” He laced his fingers with hers, and that gesture provoked a soft moan as Alice buried her face against his throat. Her fingers tightened on his, and she tried to hurry him with her hips and arch up against him.

He untangled one hand and wrapped an arm under her shoulders to hold her tightly to him. With Alice anchored snugly in his embrace, he let her have the deep, solid thrusts she’d been begging for, and in moments, she was shaking and clinging and coming apart in his arms.

He resisted the urge to drive her higher, to glory in her satisfaction as he might when they had more experience with each other. When he felt her body easing, he let himself go just enough to outdistance his own control.

He’d intended to permit himself a gentlemanly measure of satisfaction, but Alice’s passion came roaring back to life, another orgasm heaving her up against him in hard panting demands for more. His arousal crested higher and higher, beyond his control, then beyond his comprehension, until they were a mindless union of striving bodies and entwined souls inundated with unbearably intense pleasure.

“Holy Everlasting God.” Ethan wasn’t aware he’d spoken aloud until Alice responded with a panted “Amen.”

His hand cradled the back of her head while they breathed in rapid counterpoint with each other.

“Don’t move,” Alice said. “I feel like it could happen all over again.”