He accepted that as a confidence, a reluctant one. He leaned forward and slipped his arms around her waist. “You are not meeting a stranger, Hester, but are encountering an aspect of your being you did not previously allow yourself to enjoy.”
This kiss was decorous, because her admissions were telling and deserving of respect. Tye’s usual partners knew better than to make intimate confessions in bed, knew better than to allow even a hint of deeper sentiment to pass beyond the bedroom door.
Hester didn’t know better—she knew very little, in fact, and if she thought Tye was nothing more than a man driven by propriety and duty, she’d failed utterly to note the tenor of their private dealings.
He let the kiss warm up, let her be the first to slip her tongue over his lips, let her be the first to part her lips in invitation. He obliged, tasting delicately while he felt her wedge closer to him. When she ran her hand over his back, then down to clutch at his backside, he reciprocated by tracing her ribs with his fingers.
She half twisted at the waist, so he could palm one full breast. This prompted her to break off the kiss and rest her forehead on his shoulder.
“You can touch yourself like this, you know,” he whispered in her ear. He closed his grip slightly on her nipple. “Bring yourself pleasure.”
“I couldn’t.”
He did not take his hand away, but he leaned back enough to put some space between their bodies. “Undo the bows, Hester. My hands are busy.”
A hint of a smile passed over her features. She started on the top bow while Tye caressed both breasts through the fabric. When she’d undone the lot, he didn’t push the material aside but drew back.
“Will you let me see you, Hester?” He passed his thumbs over her nipples, the feel of them peaking beneath his touch making him want to tear the nightgown from her. He’d seen her breasts before but really hadn’t done them the kind of justice they deserved.
“No rush.” He bent his head and kissed that place where her neck joined her shoulder. She sighed against his neck, and her hand cradled the back of his head.
“I like that.” Her voice was dreamy. “I do like that.”
She must have liked it a very great deal, because when Tye pushed her robe and nightgown off her shoulder, she merely sighed again. Her skin was silky soft, warm, and bore the scent of lavender from her bath.
Perhaps lavender and lemon verbena both belonged on the well-educated young man’s list of aphrodisiacs, because arousal was straining hard against Tye’s good intentions, to say nothing of his grand plans.
He lingered over the pulse in her throat, for his own pleasure as well as hers, switched sides, and bared the second shoulder.
To go by inches, to make no move until he was positive she desired him to make it was different… sweet, and precious in ways Tye did not want to examine too closely. He focused instead on Hester, on the rise and fall of her chest, on her fingers winnowing through his hair when he ran his nose down her sternum.
He’d neglected this before—he’d neglected a great deal having to do with her pleasure and her enjoyment of his attentions. Stupid of him to ignore such a lovely feast, to deny himself such pleasure.
In a single, slow caress, he shifted her clothing aside, baring one lovely, full breast. Hester closed her eyes and let her head fall back. Tye took it for an invitation and closed his mouth over her pink, ruched nipple.
“Oh,
He’d never heard his name spoken in such voluptuous tones. When he drew on her gently with his mouth, she groaned and arched toward him.
She might not have the words to make intimate demands on him, but her body was eloquent with need. Hester sighed, she squirmed, she pulled his hair, and more than once, Tye felt a wool sock stroking over his bare arse. Before she could drive him to utter madness, he rose up and kissed her mouth again.
She’d caught the more languorous rhythm of his lovemaking, caught it and was offering it back to him in slow undulations of her body against his. He kissed her onto her back, and she went easily, cradling his jaw when he rested his cheek against her breastbone.
“I cannot think when you are with me like this, Tiberius. I don’t ever want to think again. My wits—”
He brushed his fingers over her mouth. “Thinking isn’t required of either of us right now.” Thank God. Nor was propriety, nor was proper deportment. What was called for was an impressive display of shamelessness on both of their parts.
He sat back, surveying her where she sprawled on the chaise. Her clothing was frothed around her, her hair fell about her in golden disarray, and firelight gilded her bare skin. She watched him with slumberous eyes, but when he moved her clothing aside, exposing not just her breasts but her sex as well, she did not move.
To resist what was before him, even for a few instants, was excruciating. “What I need from you, Hester, is for you to enjoy yourself.” He’d never said such a thing to any woman, which in hindsight was remiss of him. He reached behind her, grabbed a pillow, and stuffed it under his knees.
Her eyes were going wide as he bent his head and brushed his thumb over her curls. “You may scream if you like. There’s nobody in this wing to hear you, save myself, and I will enjoy the sound of your passion.”
He enjoyed the taste of it as well. She was sweet and clean, bearing the scent of lavender even here, laced with the fragrance of a willing woman. While he nuzzled her curls, he felt her hand land in his hair. When he shifted her legs over his shoulders and drew his tongue up the damp length of her sex, that hand fell away on a sigh.
Earning her trust took time. It took long, lovely minutes while he traced each fold with his tongue and flirted a finger shallowly into her damp heat. It took the occasional stroke of his palms over her breasts, it took listening for what provoked her sighs and what—exactly—tempted her to minutely flex her spine.
He was distracted by the music of her aroused body, almost to the point where he could ignore the pulse throbbing in his cock and the soft brush of wool against his back.
He settled his mouth over the center of her pleasure and built a rhythm based on the undulations of her hips, the sound of her sighs, the feel of her body opening itself to pleasure.
She didn’t scream. When her moment came, Tye sank his fingers into her heat, and she convulsed around him almost silently. Low sounds of pleasure came from her throat, and she bowed up to clutch at him while pleasure wracked her. The spasms of her release reverberated through his body, going on and on until he kept the need to spend at bay by sheer force of will.
When Hester lay back, panting and rosy, Tye brought himself off in a few quick strokes against her mons. His seed jetted onto the pale expanse of her belly, leaving him physically spent and more than a little surprised at his own behavior.
He subsided between her legs, letting himself frankly stare at the lovely, wet, pink flesh of her sex. Time enough later to be shocked at the intimacy of what they’d just done, time enough to wonder where such carnal behavior and the trust it required had come from.
He kissed her knee, nuzzled her sex once, rested his cheek on her thigh, and closed his eyes.
Hester was sure etiquette existed for when a man was going to sleep between a lady’s legs, his seed drying on her belly, and her vocabulary sent begging by intimacies too unimaginable to contemplate.
Tiberius would know the words for what he’d just done to her, probably know them in several languages. She traced the curve of his ear with her fingers.
“What is the Latin term?”
“It’s vulgar and translates to something like ‘he who licks a particular part of a woman’s anatomy.’ Do not move.”
He rose looking disoriented. The sight of him thus—naked, his arousal fading, his hair going in all directions as a result of Hester’s disarrangement of it—was disconcertingly
He reappeared with a cloth in his hand and resumed his place kneeling between her legs. “This is not what I had planned, Hester Daniels.” He swabbed briskly at her belly then more carefully at her sex. “You tempt me
