This day had become full of surprises. The more he inhaled Eliza’s scent and tasted her smooth skin, the less he remembered of the torturous previous hours. The more he stared into her eyes, the less he remembered of why he was there. Why they were both there. He even had the surprising impression she explored him much the same as he planned to do to her.
Darius left her mouth and began trailing kisses over her collarbone, her shoulders and breasts, her ribs, whirling his tongue around and around her belly button until she shivered. She had no distinct taste, he could only describe it as feminine and soft and alluring, yet all Eliza.
Stripping her of the gown took only minutes but Darius kept kissing her, kept touching her, tried to keep her pleasantly distracted. For himself, he attempted not to just sit back on his heels and stare like the hungry wolf he was. She was so pale and slim and he was… Well he wasn’t the biggest of men but he was not even close to small. He knew a woman’s body was made for loving and hers would welcome him just the same as any other, but it wasn’t going to be comfortable for her and he was already sorry for that.
Dragging his fingertips over the sensitive flesh of her inner thigh she shivered again. When he looked up, her eyes were closed, her own hands tangled in the bedcovers at her sides as her head thrashed half on the pillow, half off. He kissed her on her hip, on her calf, on her knee as he bent her leg up, open-mouthed kisses meant to drug and excite, meant to pleasure and tease.
He wanted to ask her how she felt, to tell him what he did to her, but he didn’t want to break the spell. He wanted to settle between her milky thighs and see if she tasted the same there as her breasts and stomach and the rest of her skin did but he didn’t want to scare her with his appetites either. Suppressed as they were for so long, he was still afraid of not being able to hold back.
Darius reached his destination and slid a finger through her curls. He half expected her to swat him away but she moaned and rolled her hips slightly towards him.
He couldn’t keep his gaze from dropping to where he toyed with her. “Do you like that, love?”
“Hmm,” she mumbled. He did it again.
He slid his body back up hers, licking and laving as he went, his fingers threading through her curls as he rose. Taking her mouth again, he tried to be gentle; he tried to be patient. She grabbed his head in her hands and deepened the kiss, grinding her sex into his palm. Relief and lust filled him and then overflowed, emerging as a possessive growl.
When he slid his finger all the way into her tightness, she gasped into his mouth, filling him with her breath. Not missing a beat, Darius withdrew and then re-entered again and again until she pressed into him, became wild beneath him. He realised he still wore the bloody robe and that her hands were on the fabric instead of his body where he wanted them. As soon as her breath became little gasps and her body tightened around him, he added a second finger and moved harder, faster, urgency fuelling her unschooled movements. With a sobbing cry, she came apart, fractured and holding on to him for dear life.
Darius didn’t relent; he didn’t hesitate or wait for her to come back down to earth. He disentangled himself from her arms, dropped the robe to the floor and then was back pressing her deep into the mattress.
“Eliza?”
“Hmm,” she replied again, a small smile on her lips. “That was…lovely.”
“That wasn’t it,” he said, his voice rough with need, his touch gentle though he longed to let go of his control.
Her eyes opened, glazed and sated. “It wasn’t?”
A little frown creased her brow so he kissed her again and coaxed her knees apart so he could slide between them. He held his weight on his arms, his hardness nestled against her once again. There was nothing else he could do to prepare his tiny bride so he positioned himself at her entrance and found the nub in her curls. He twirled his fingers, pressed and then retreated, pressed and then retreated and when she was writhing beneath him once again, he slid into her in one swift movement, buried all the way to the hilt, lost in her heat. Her ultimate ruin was the most exquisitely beautiful torture for him.
It took all the effort he could muster to still his entire body, his breath coming fast, his forehead slicked with sweat.
She didn’t make a sound, didn’t cry out, only cringed and stiffened, her hands against his heaving chest as though to push him off. After a few heart-breaking moments where Darius began to convince himself he had indeed broken her, or at the very least, pushed her too far, she wriggled, her ankles moving from his hips to the mattress, moving her own hips up as if testing, perhaps taunting in the most innocent of ways. He twitched inside of her. It was as though he held the reins to a thousand thundering horses, trying to hold them all back at once but at the same time wanting to let them run wild like mighty stallions.
“Was that it?” she asked, peeking up at him through thick lashes.
“That was the worst of it for your first time, but no, still not it.” Darius wanted to roar his triumph, his pleasure, his dominance, but he refrained. As he withdrew almost all the way, her arms tightened around his neck, her forearm over the thick scar at his collarbone.
He slid back home and gritted his
