against her ear, and his teeth closed lightly over the lobe, and she wanted to moan in pleasure. “What…do…you…want?”
She gave in. She had reached the end of her ability to fight him. “More,” she whispered.
She knew he smiled in triumph. She knew she didn’t care. He pushed up against her, slowly this time, grinding against her, and she lost her breath as sensation danced through her. It was as if they were having sex, she thought dizzily, except that instead of inside her he was outside, rubbing against her with the hard ridge of his erection, a pressure that was making her tremble and dampen in the place where he pressed, and she felt a soft little explosion course through her, leaving her shocked, astonished, as she fell back on the cushioned ground beneath her.
She tried to speak, to say something airy and dismissing, but for the moment she was unable to make a sound. She felt strange, unsettled, anxious, and she knew she should be angry at what he’d done to her, except that she’d asked for more, hadn’t she?
She tried to relax, but her legs were restless, entwined with his. The voices had faded, though there was still just the faintest light emanating from the tunnel outside their pillowed cave. “We…uh…we should go,” she finally managed to say. She could pre tend that unexpected response had never happened. After all, how was he to know?
“Not yet.” His voice was against her ear, tickling her, arousing her. Arousing her? Had she gone mad? “You’re not finished.”
“Not finished? What…?” Just as her voice rose slightly, he clamped his hand over her mouth again. He’d moved, his body lying partly across hers, pinning her there, and she felt his hand on her skirt. Pulling it upward, slowly, his warm, hard hand beneath it, and for a moment she was too shocked to protest.
Then she tried to push at him, but he simply caught her hands in his arms and held them. “Don’t make a sound,” he whispered. “Not if you want to rescue your doves. This won’t take long.”
“What won’t?” she whispered, but then she felt his hand on her thigh, long fingers stroking, caressing, moving upward beneath her loose cotton drawers till he reached the damp, most secret part of her. Vagina, she told herself sternly, remembering Emma’s lessons. Vulva. Clitor…
She slammed her face against his shoulder to muffle her reaction when he touched her, his fingertips sure and practiced. And then his hand cupped her, holding her still by that simple expedient, and he released her wrists. A moment later she felt something thrust in her hands, a soft cloth. “Stuff my handkerchief in your mouth,” he suggested, a note of laughter in his voice. “That will drown out any noise you might make.”
“I don’t want this,” she whispered.
One of his fingers had begun to move, lightly stroking, and that anxious, aching feeling was back, tenfold. “Are you certain?” He was somehow able to speak with only the breath of a sound coming out. His hand slid down farther, and she felt one of his fingers slide inside her, and her hips jerked at the sudden invasion. He moved his mouth to hers, running his tongue along her trembling lower lip. “Do you really want me to stop?”
Of course she did. This was madness; this was pleasure that was oddly painful. She needed him to leave her, she needed…
Her body arched up, almost of its own volition, and without thinking she shoved the cloth into her mouth, smothering her instinctive cry. She felt his laughter against her cheek. “That’s right, my precious. Charity begins at home.” And he slid two fingers inside her, and the slippery dampness would have embarrassed her but she was well past that point.
She could no longer think about how he was causing such sensations to rocket through her body. His fingers thrust inside her, his thumb rubbed against that most sensitive part of her, and she wanted to yank the cloth out of her mouth, to beg him to stop. It was too much, too powerful, she couldn’t stand it, she wanted…
And then all conscious thought vanished in a white haze as her body arched, rigid, as thousands upon thousands of tiny pinpricks shot through her, and she lost herself, the pleasure-pain exploding into a rich darkness she never wanted to leave. It was glorious. It was heaven.
It was disaster.
She came down slowly, brought back to safety with his gentling strokes, and she realized