Why did her mouth not work to tell him to go away? Why did images of his naked chest burn the backs of her eyes? Why did she want more than anything for him to kiss her and touch her?
“You can’t…” she finally managed to whisper.
“Can’t what, my dear?” He raised his other hand and slipped it into her hair, pins only loosely applied hours earlier falling to the timber floor with little pinging sounds. His other arm wrapped around her and pulled her tight, his breath hot now on her face, his touch evoking memories that threatened to swamp her.
She pressed her thighs together against the onslaught of feeling and conjured words meant to reproach, to repel. “You can’t want to…to…here? Now?”
“Was it so awful you wouldn’t care for a repeat performance?” Between syllables, he pressed kisses to her throat and collarbone as he gently nudged the strap of her shift down over her shoulder, exposing the swell of her breasts to his tongue and mouth.
“Awful?” she repeated on a moan of delight. Where had that come from? Her hands drooped to her sides like useless, crippled limbs until she remembered they were there. She raised her arms to push him away but then he worked her shift so low her nipple appeared only to be taken into his mouth with a swirl of his tongue and a nip of his teeth.
Instead of another moan, Eliza cried out and her body arched of its own accord until they were pressed flush together, his hardness digging into her right where she yearned for his touch, her hands in his hair not pushing away but pulling, begging for more.
“Not completely awful then?” He raised his head, a wolfish grin on his slickened lips. His hands moved to the hem of her one petticoat as he swooped in for a kiss to steal her reason once again along with her breath.
Realisation that she was about to become exactly the fisherman’s wife, tumbled upon a sea trunk in the attics where anyone could come upon them, woke her up like a bucket of water had been tossed over her head, tepid though, not ice. Her hand found his chest even though her body had lost the will to put any force behind the action.
“Darius, we can’t do this here.” They shouldn’t do it anywhere. Oh, why did her cheeks have to flame so?
“We can do this anywhere, my love. The children have gone to enjoy the rare sunshine and the men are entertaining them.”
“But what if something happens and they come to look for you?”
He hadn’t met her eyes once since he’d started to draw the linen up her legs, past her knees, higher and higher. Once she was fully exposed and he stopped moving, talking, breathing, she worried he’d suffered an apoplexy and would fall to his knees and die.
“I locked the door,” he said, almost as an afterthought, the distracted mind now completely his.
When Eliza grew too embarrassed beneath his scrutiny, she attempted to push her petticoat back down so she could put some distance between them. No such luck. Darius reached down and lifted her behind her knees. With a squeak of shock, she grabbed him by the shoulders so as not to fall back against the trunk. She needn’t have bothered since that was where he apparently wanted her anyway. As soon as her derriere landed, one large hand pushed gently on her stomach to lay her back but his gaze never left the juncture between her thighs.
“Darius?” Her stomach felt as though thousands of birds were trapped inside and tried to soar free from beneath his fingers but she didn’t make to rise again. He seemed lost in a trance, features that had been so serious for so long relaxed and made way for a younger, more carefree Darius to appear. He even smiled the most genuine smile as he dropped her petticoat over her abdomen, her bottom half still uncovered to his eyes, along with one breast where her shift had drooped.
She should cover herself, she thought vaguely. When he pressed against the insides of her knees to open her even more, she squeezed her eyes shut for shame he would see exactly how she felt. There was only the exhalation of his breath in a whoosh as he finally, finally touched her. For one half-second, mortification threatened to consume her but then pleasure flared and all other sentiment fled.
What was he doing to her? She was hot and cold and wet and…did he pull on her? Opening one eye just a fraction, Eliza could only see the top of Darius’s head as the pulling sensation flooded her again and again. She rose to her elbows just as he slid one long finger into her sheath and her cry became that of both pleasure and outrage. That was his mouth?
Even that barely registered as he gripped her beneath one knee and raised her leg, licking, biting, pushing another finger into her until stars swam in her vision and she fell back with a thunk. A rustle of fabric met her ears but she no longer paid attention to the details, there was only the exquisite friction as he slid two fingers in and then out and then repeated it over and over, faster and faster. When she could take no more, about to beg him to stop the torture, his fingers were replaced by something far bigger and far harder.
*
The next time Darius loved Eliza, he had meant to remember to slow down and be gentle, to savour her and treat her like a princess. He had come to apologise for his parting shot from the night before and beg her forgiveness, perhaps move some furniture for her, not this. As he reared back, sliding almost all of the way from her wetness and heat, her sheath tight and trying to bring him back with muscles she hadn’t yet
