"I want you," she whispered, conspicuous in her need, her fingers twined in the blackness of his hair, her back arching to raise her breasts to his touch, her eyes shut tight against the flaring pleasure.
He didn't answer, only nibbled and bit lightly and sucked the taut hard crests until she felt sensitized with a palpable torrid bliss from her flushed cheeks to the tingling bottoms of her feet.
And when he lifted his head at last, she couldn't move for a moment, the pressure of his raised head solid in her palms.
"Open your eyes," Etienne whispered, his hand sliding between her legs. And when she did languidly, letting her arms drop away, coming back with effort from the paradise of her senses, he added, "Look at this."
He placed a small wrapped package he took from the drawer of the nightstand on her stomach.
While she untied the orchid silk ribbon, the Duc's fingers drifted over the dark triangle of hair between her legs, glided downward over her dewy cleft.
"I can't concentrate when you do that," she breathed, stopping for a moment to absorb the delicious sensations.
"Here, I'll help," the Duc said, ignoring her admonition, opening the silver paper with his free hand. "Do you like them?"
Inside lay a dozen pairs of silk stockings in a rainbow of shades, in stripes and patterns or sheer luxurious hues, all sinfully delicate. "They're gorgeous." Touching them lightly, Daisy felt decadent just looking at them. She wore sheer white stockings normally or ones in a shade of taupe. These were stockings for seduction, for sultry rendezvous, for undressing before one's lover. With the tantalizing incitement of Etienne's fingers heating her brain, she was feeling as though she were meant to wear these vivid colors of wanton desire… forever.
"Put on the black ones—like Bonnard's nudes wear," Etienne said. "With the lilac garters."
"You'll have to move your hand." She spoke in a hushed voice, his directions and the sound of her voice separate somehow from the sensual intoxication centered between her legs.
He shook his head—minutely—his fingers sliding over her slick pouting lips, probing gently, penetrating slightly, then deeply.
She was melting away, she thought.
"Put them on," he urged, low and hushed.
She obeyed because he wanted her to, and she was obsessed with passion and desire and her need to please him. And herself.
When she drew up her knee and stretched down to ease the black stocking over her toes, his fingers slid in deeper, her position further opening her honeyed passage, and she had to catch her breath at the searing pleasure.
Since she seemed momentarily distracted, the Duc helped her slip the frilled lilac garter over her foot, aiding its slow ascent to the soft fullness of her thigh.
"I don't want to feel this slavish," Daisy whispered.
"Do you want me to stop?" His words were soft, polite, knowing.
She didn't answer at first, a tiny thread of obstinancy still operating beneath the flood of pleasure washing over her in heated waves.
"Do you?"
She shook her head because he'd begun sliding his fingers out and she wanted the feeling more than she wanted autonomy.
"Here's the other stocking then."
She thought she'd expire from intemperate ecstasy as she lifted her other leg to pull the stocking on. Could you faint from intensity this powerful? she wondered. And looked up into brilliant green smiling eyes.
"I'm going to make you wait for me," he whispered.
"You can't." How could he? How could he possibly control her arousal?
But he knew somehow exactly when to restrain his stroking fingers or move them more slowly or faster, deeper or less deep. He knew how to keep her suspended just short of climax.
And while one part of her brain was grateful for his virtuosity.
Another part hated the experience required to so finely tune that skill.
Short moments later her eyes opened wide because she was suddenly bereft of his sweet skill and like an addict craved more.
"It's the almond milk too," he softly said. "Don't blame me entirely," he added in a lush whisper.
"I'm insatiable." Daisy's voice was tremulous with discovery and need. "It is you," she said, recall of her weeks in Paris without almond milk vivid. The sheets beneath her were strikingly cool in contrast to the heat of her body, the temperature of the heated air so perfectly balanced she felt it like silk on her skin, even the sound of Etienne's voice seemed overtly three-dimensional.
He didn't disagree with her, he only said, "Feel this sensation." Placing both his hands around her breast, he exerted the smallest pressure so the soft flesh between his hands mounded in distinct display, so her nipple projected erect and flagrant.
It was different, she thought with a whimpering sigh, as though her breasts were swollen and quivering, objects of desire in themselves, autonomous, requiring satisfaction of their own.
"And feel this…" His palms drifted over the warm inner surface of her thighs from the terminus of the black silk stockings to the dew-wet sweetness he'd brought to pulsing flame.
She arched up into the feel of his heated hands, but he held her down, his palms burning into the flesh of her thighs like brands.
"Sensation's more vivid, the throbbing of your heart and racing blood noticeable, your nerve endings sensitized. Almonds are very nutritious," he added with a grin.
"How nice to know," she murmured, "As I expire from ecstasy." The tip of her tongue slowly, wetly traced the fullness of her lips.
"Do you want me to kiss you?"
"Among other things," she replied, her voice sultry with passion, a bewitching siren lying beneath his hands.
"I will if you open a few presents more."
"Must I?" She pouted, contrary and self-willed, but her luscious dark eyes were seducing him, like a concubine would, shameless in their power.
It took a great effort to refuse her eyes, but he knew what was in the
