Haunted by the Earl's Touch - By Ann Lethbridge Page 0,81
she would have to use her wits.
Right now, she had no thought of their struggle. Just the enjoyment of watching this virile male display his beauty. His hands went to the waistband of his pantaloons where they clung to firm, narrow hips and flanks. He paused.
She looked up at his face and realised he was awaiting her permission. Heat rushed through her body. She gave a quick nod and looked away. Looked at the back of the sofa, at the curtains covering the window, listening to the sound of him stripping off every stitch of clothing.
He gave a soft laugh. ‘Coward.’
He picked her up and lay her down in front of the hearth. At her look of surprise, he smiled. ‘I don’t want you getting cold and that bed seems to sit in a draught.’
She glanced over at the bed and realised that beside the headboard was a sconce similar to the one in her room. Did it also open into a tunnel? For a moment, she tried to recall the map in the book, but when he lay down beside her, one heavy thigh across hers, his mouth plying her with kisses, the thought drifted away. Later. She would think about it later. For now, it was his hands and his mouth and the feel of his warm skin against hers that had all her attention.
The man was a master at seduction. He knew where to touch her, how to make her squirm and gasp. In moments, she was lost in a haze of desire, arching her hips into the thigh pressing down on her mons, moaning at the way his tongue toyed with her breast, making them tingle and ache. And all the while, inside her, there was a growing tension. At first it was an ache. Then it felt like the sweetest pain.
There, where his hand stroked her woman’s flesh, delving gently between the hot damp folds. He rubbed and caressed until she cried out in frustration. He slipped one finger inside her, then another.
‘So hot,’ he murmured in her ear. ‘So tight and wet and ready.’
‘Yes,’ she breathed in wonder at the erotic touch on her most secret place that only seemed to make the tension increase to unbearable proportions.
‘Do you like this, Mary?’ he breathed in her ear, swirling his tongue in that sensitive place, nuzzling into her neck, kissing and sucking until she wasn’t sure which touch was driving her more mad. ‘This story between us.’
‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘Yes,’ she said louder when he didn’t respond.
‘Do you want to find out what happens in the end?’
‘Yes.’ Of course she did. How could she not? He started withdrawing his fingers and she closed her legs tight, trapping his hand and felt an astonishing rush of pleasure. She moaned at the deliciousness of it.
He muttered something under his breath. ‘Relax, sweeting. Let me come over you.’
The words made no sense, but he pressed with his knee, pushing her thighs apart, then when she parted her legs he settled his hips between them, his chest rising above her like the torso of a god, bronzed in firelight, his face strained with some sort of effort.
She glanced down between them and saw that the hard ridge of flesh pressing into her mons was his male member, thick and aroused, its head gleaming darkly where the firelight caught it.
She sucked in a breath.
He didn’t move.
The restless inside her, the needs he’d stoked, rose up to claw at her insides.
‘Bane,’ she pleaded. ‘The end of the story.’
‘It comes at a price,’ he whispered harshly. ‘Marriage.’
‘What?’ She shook her head, thinking to clear her hearing.
‘A promise of marriage, or this ends now. I won’t ruin you, Mary.’
‘You can’t ruin a schoolteacher,’ she protested, trying to think.
He rocked his hips and sent another pulse of pleasuring ripping up from her belly. She writhed, trying to bring him closer, to ease the torment.
‘If you want this, you will promise to be my wife,’ he said softly. ‘Agree. Or we are done here.’ He started to move, lifting himself away with a grimace of pain, but there was no doubting the inflexibility of his decision.
‘Yes,’ she breathed. And the rush of happiness was almost as painful as his sensual torture. She would have her children, her home and her husband. She wouldn’t have love. Not from him. But she had never expected love at all. And her children would love her. And she would love them. And cherish them.