The Importance of Being Wanton - Christi Caldwell Page 0,59

couldn’t form a thought coherent enough to string together a single sentence.

And then, he stopped.

Emma cried out at the loss, her hips surging up to call him back.

“Mm. Mm,” he teased, and then those hands massaging her buttocks ceased even that delicious temptation, and her body wept for the loss of him. “I want to hear the words from you, love.” Charles straightened, and she shot out her arms to bring him back, but he was only dragging a trail of kisses higher, to different parts of her body that had previously been neglected, punctuating each word he spoke with a kiss. “Every. Single. Word.”

Emma gasped as he reached the bodice of her gown, the air caught in her lungs, trapped with a breathless anticipation.

Ever so slowly, he lowered her neckline, until her breasts were bared to his gaze and the night air.

“Lovely,” he murmured, and with a reverence that brought her lashes sweeping down, he palmed that flesh, filling each of his large hands with her breasts.

She whimpered.

Charles glanced up. “Do you like that?” he asked as conversationally as if he were inquiring about her preference for tea.

Emma managed a shaky nod before she recalled what he wanted. What he expected to hear. What he demanded to hear.

“V-very much so.” The husky quality of her response was foreign to her own ears.

His brown eyes darkened, passion deepening in those fathomless irises, and holding her gaze, he proceeded to run the pads of his thumbs over her nipples. A delicate circling that sent her hips rising and falling again.

Charles leaned forward, and before she knew what he intended, he closed his mouth over the tip of her right breast.

She cried out as he suckled and teased and worshipped that sensitive flesh. And then he switched his ministrations to the previously neglected peak, laving it with a like attention. Charles swirled his tongue around her nipple, playing with the tip as if it were his for the taking. And in this moment, it was. All of her, any part of her he wished, was his, if he would just assuage the ache pulsing between her legs.

Emma rested a hand on his head, and Charles paused; again, he looked up at her through thick, hooded lashes.

“I want your mouth on me as it was before. I want to feel your tongue there, Charles.”

His breath hitched, and then with another one of those animalistic growls, he fell to his knees and kissed her where she’d urged him.

Closing her eyes, she released a contented little sigh before the pleasure of what he did became too much, and keening cries and moans spilled from her lips and echoed off the high ceilings of his chambers.

Charles suckled at the folds of her flesh. He stroked his tongue within her. Again and again. Those expert glides brought her higher and higher, to that pinnacle she’d been seeking to climb from the moment he’d first begun worshipping that place between her legs.

Emma stiffened; she used her palms to leverage herself in her seat, to get higher to that elusive goal, and closer to Charles and whatever magic he wove. Charles continued a steady pace within her. The pressure built.

Emma stiffened as her body exploded, as she fell from that cliff. And she screamed, capable of just one word: his name.

“Charles!”

Over and over again she screamed it, as she bucked her hips against his mouth, thrusting herself into him, wanting the moment to go on forever and ever. Never wanting to not feel the magic that was making love with this man.

He continued to worship her, not letting up on pleasuring her, coaxing every last drop until she collapsed into the folds of his seat, replete in her surrender.

Her heart racing, Emma lay sprawled there, certain her pulse would never find its way back to any semblance of a normal pace.

Charles fell back on his haunches, and reaching for his nearby shirt, he wiped away the remnants of her pleasure that still glistened upon his mouth.

The sight of it . . . the sight of him, however, cleaning himself, proved starkly sobering.

And with that, the heady magic that had held her ensnared lifted.

Oh, God. Emma briefly closed her eyes. Years ago, between his indifference and the child he’d had with another woman, her heart had been shattered. All she’d had left after her broken betrothal had been . . . her pride. And in so taking this moment for herself, giving herself up to passion in his arms .