Page 50 of The Duke of a Thousand Desires

“What would please you?”

Her lips parted. She spread her thighs wider, offering herself to his perusal. “I want you to do things to me that I cannot name. I am in pain with these impulses.”

“Instincts,” he corrected her, studying her nakedness in unabashed fascination. She felt beautiful, mesmerized by his sultry stare.

“I want to please you,” she whispered. “I want you inside me.”

His nostrils flared. “I am the one who cannot wait.”

His knuckles settled between her saturated folds, stroking the bud of her sex in a languid rhythm that inflamed her. His brooding eyes studied her reaction as he pierced her with another finger, intensifying the pressure, taunting her beyond what she could endure. “How does this feel?” he whispered.

“Indescribable. Surely such a thing should not be discussed.”

“Why not?”

“It strikes me as too private a matter to discuss aloud.”

“Perhaps not at a supper party. Other than that, I disagree. A husband should speak honestly to his wife in their bed. Although by the time I put my cock inside you, neither of us will care to converse at all.”

Her small gasp stoked his arousal. He felt her arch her spine, felt the shivers that darted through her lower body.

“Give me mercy,” she whispered.

“Soon enough.”

Simon luxuriated in her invitation, her trust. As long as he could subdue the selfishness that wanted all of her immediately, their wedding night would be made of blissful moments and intimate secrets. Intensely sexual ones, to be sure. He covered her face and throat in proprietary kisses, light and fleeting. A sting of heat here and there, at first.

Then nearly everywhere. He kissed her ears, her nipples, her belly button, and the sensitive hollows behind her knees. He pressed his fingers even deeper inside her. He centered his mind on her pleasure, subdued the need for his own. He would bring her sweet oblivion when she was ready. Neither of them would forget their first joining.

Her full hips lifted from the bed as he played her, stretching her sex. He would punish them both by holding back until she needed him even more than he did her. Of course he might die first. He felt as if he had climbed a cliff in the dark. He was exhilarated. Her excitement mounted, and fed his own. Slow down, he thought. Slow down. Yet he wanted to devour her, drive into her snug warmth, and lose himself.

“No man could hope for a wife sweeter than you,” he said, studying her face. “I shall strive to meet your expectations as a husband.”

She sighed in drugged pleasure.

He spread his fingers inside her cleft. She shuddered in surprise. She might have writhed beneath his reach had he not gently stroked her hip to stillness with his other hand. “Should we rest for a while?” he asked.

“My heart is swinging like a pendulum,” she said in a ravaged whisper. “I’m filled with disgraceful urges. I don’t need rest. I need a … denouement.”

He smiled into her eyes. “I understand. I can’t refuse you.”

“I want everything,” she whispered, edgy and half-delirious.

“Give me another kiss,” he coaxed her.

“More than kisses.” She pushed up on her elbow to offer him her mouth. His kisses intoxicated her, but she wanted to feel the full strength of him. With an overt intent to tease her, he withdrew his fingers from her warmth.

“Don’t stop,” she begged, pulsing to the quick.

He swept his damp fingers across her nipples, pinching each tip in turn. “That feels decadent,” she said with a shiver.

“There is no wrong in a man pleasuring his bride,” he said as he bit lightly at her breast. “Or in her submitting to her husband.”

“Then I must grant you complete power?”

“I’ll do only what you allow. But know that you are not powerless in the least, as my response to you proves. You have resources you’ve not discovered.”

“Yet we aren’t equal,” she said, dropping back on the bed in breathless capitulation. “You could recite Mother Goose and render every rhyme an erotic invitation.”