and cresting in her blood. A fevered tide of longing overtaking her. Where her innocence led, he followed. Where his experience beckoned, she submitted. Pleasure meeting pleasure—and finding more. Finding everything.
He began a protracted slide down her body, finding her nipple and sucking it between his lips. She groaned, her fingers twisting in the counterpane. “Oh, that is…”
“Incredible, you,” he murmured and tugged the taut peak between his teeth, rolled his tongue across it. Soaking it with attention, then moving to the other. Dragging his jaw across them, he put his day-old stubble to work for him. Hand gliding lower, he slid it between her legs. A teasing touch. Circles, strokes. Penetration. A determined manipulation, one finger, then a second.
Then he moved south.
She twisted, pressing her cheek into the mattress, closing her eyes to the sight of his hands, his lips, pillaging. “Too soon, too fast.”
“Oh, no.” He nipped her belly, her hip, her thigh, while desire thickened her thoughts, heated her blood, corrupted her discipline. “Not the same for you. More is better. One orgasm before the real thing is quite perfect.”
She wasn’t sure this was correct. It hadn’t been mentioned in her research, which she’d done more of after their experience in the orangery. Woman having none before or during is what she’d come to find. Surprisingly, however, she didn’t argue. Couldn’t argue. Not with his lips taking the aroused nub holding her pleasure and flicking lightly, fingers working in tandem with his mouth to make her lose her mind.
The sounds she made, the way she writhed against him, would have embarrassed her, had she retained the ability to think clearly.
Which she had not.
Pleasure rippled, like a stone thrown in a still pond, from her core, gushing in both directions. Her body tightened around his fingers, unable to resist, as she raised her hips, seeking. Flashes lit her lids, explosions of gold and pearly-white. His stubble was rough against her thighs, his body, firm muscle and slick skin, laid out before her. His hands, lips and teeth were doing wild, luscious things to her. Moaning, she rocked into his fevered assault.
“That’s it,” he rasped, his gradual strokes building a wall of pleasure, brick by brick and blocking her in. “Go there.”
His timing was impeccable. When she shattered, crying out, shivering and clenching around him, he rose above her, taking her final guttural shout into his mouth. Adjusting himself, he slipped inside her in delicate degrees, the sharp pinprick of pain lessened by the pleasure claiming her body. Reaching over her head, he grabbed a pillow, and lifting her hips, positioned it beneath her.
Which opened up the heavens and rained delight on her.
Delaney’s hand found his shoulder, his back, nails sinking into his skin, scratching to his buttocks.
His hand at her waist tilted her hips, adjusting her leg over his thigh and moving deeper. She was lost, but so was he. His murmurs urgent, meaningless, impassioned. Taking her hand, he pressed it deep into the mattress, imprisoning her, gentle possession when there was no need.
She was his.
The pulse was back between her thighs, another round, as he’d suggested. “I can’t,” she whispered against his jaw, pulling him in for a kiss. “I feel…I’m going. Again. Soon.”
“Then do. Soon.” Mercilessly, he increased his tempo, his movement rocking the bed. His fingers trembled where they held her hand. “I want to watch you. I want you to watch me.”
So she did. Turned her head, opened her eyes, and took him in. The scent of him, of them, hard upon her. His eyes lost in amber and specks of gold. His skin moist, his breath short. The bump of their bodies, a delicious, raw catastrophe. When he bent his head and reclaimed her nipple, she fractured in his arms, having nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.
The ride was endless, her vision stinging, skin hot. Wave after wave of pleasure, with Sebastian surrounding her. The most wondrous thing she could imagine experiencing.
Grinding and stroking deeply, he moaned and thrust, sending the headboard against the wall in a steady rhythm. Prolonging her peak until it was almost painful. Then he stilled, gasping, his groan ragged, undone. Dropping his brow to her shoulder, the shudders flowed from his body to hers and back again as his weight forced her deeper into the mattress. Aroused beyond explanation, she could only follow him into the pleasurable twilight. The scrape of his teeth on her neck, his final, desperate plea as he plunged over the abyss.
When he tried