“Uncover your eyes, love.”
“I don’t want to.”
His sigh reached her ears but she did not relent. How could she face him when she knew her breasts were bared to his sight? One coarse fingertip slid lazily over her nipple and Eliza had to bite her lip to keep from making a sound. After the scandal between her and Harold, when her father tried to convince her marriage wasn’t all that bad, he’d told her that a good wife would just lie still and let her husband do what he must. It would be over before she knew it. She’d clung to those words as she’d shed her underthings in another room before going to Darius.
No one had said anything about the tremors racking her body or the chaotic tumbling of feeling inside of her stomach and lower. She felt as though she was breaking apart. She felt as though she needed to move.
When something warm and hot closed over her breast, Eliza almost jumped off the bed. She fanned the fingers of one hand so she could peek but all she saw was the top of Darius’s head. When he shifted, met her one-eyed gaze, he smiled and licked her. That was his mouth?
“I don’t think this is how it works at all,” she said, her hands covering her breasts, now wet from his tongue as she squeezed her knees together to try to stop all the tingling, to stem the sensation overload.
“Trust me, we’re doing it right.” Darius chuckled and rose back up to kiss her lips, his body heavy against hers.
Deliciously heavy.
No.
She couldn’t think like that. It was all for her brothers and sisters. She was tricking him into bedding her so he couldn’t get an annulment and leave them now that he knew the full truth. She was despicable.
He licked her again. Her neck this time.
She liked it. God, how she liked it.
Wanton was firmly added to her list of terrible traits.
“If you don’t relax, you won’t enjoy this at all.”
“I’m not supposed to enjoy it.”
“Who told you that? Your books?”
“My father.”
“He what? What did he say?”
“That if I stay still enough and don’t make a sound it would be over quickly.”
“Bollocks to that. A man doesn’t want his bed partner to just lie there. He wants her to moan and groan and writhe when he does things like this…” She waited for a moment, all tense and hot and breathy. Then he touched her down there.
Dear God, she writhed.
Darius pried her fingers from her body and held them trapped against the coverlet by her head with his. “Do you like this?” He sucked her breast into his mouth and then nipped her gently with his teeth. He shifted one hand and touched her again down there, his finger sliding over her flesh as tiny explosions rocked her body.
Her hips rose against him though she tried to remain still. He pressed his weight into her, his hardness replacing his hand as he pushed on the place between her legs. More sparks. More fire. More unbearable sensation. Only, she wanted to bear it. The newly awakened wanton within needed more of the wickedness, the pleasure, the anticipation.
“If a wife didn’t enjoy what her husband did between the sheets, the world would have no babies.”
Some sense reached through the fog of her fear. “Do you enjoy it?”
“Only with a willing partner, Eliza. You said you wanted to give yourself to me. Did you mean it? Because if you did, I would take it as a gift to treasure, to savour and yes, to enjoy.”
She nodded and slowly opened her eyes to meet his. “You don’t mind if I like it? If I cannot stay still?”
“I don’t want you to stay still. I want you to press into me, I want you to hold my head in your hands and scrape your nails down my back. I want you to cry out when you need to and beg for more, for less, for whatever you want. Tell me what you like and I will be sure to remember it for next time.”
Next time? She pushed the thought away. “I will try,” she said with a nod as she forced her body to relax, forced her shame and embarrassment back down to the place from where it came. She had to ensure he enjoyed it didn’t she? So he would remember it if he ever discovered her many deceptions.
“Just let it all go, love. Don’t think about anything but your body and what I’m doing to it.”
“Just one more question,” she said, holding her hands between them, the backs of her fingers ghosting against his stomach as though she might hurt him or do something wrong. “Am I allowed to touch you?”
His eyes lit with a glint she couldn’t identify as his lips stretched into a cheeky grin. “You can do anything your heart desires in this bed. It is just you and me and the night.”
*
Darius didn’t remember a time when he had been wound up so tight, like he would snap at any second.
Trying to make it easier on Eliza was going to kill him.
When she reached her hands out to his shoulders and slid her fingers down his arms to his elbows, tracing the muscle beneath the silk as she went, he almost buckled. He had to distract her, he had to take her mind off the thought of the act and just make her feel. He had to make her his.
The next time his lips met hers, he poured everything he had into the kiss. Holding himself up on one arm, he began to undo the rest of the buttons on the gown, inwardly cursing each tiny pearl as he went. Eliza kissed him back with a fervour
