fingers. Unseemly noises escaped him; his cock swelled to painful dimensions.
“Keep reading if you want anything to happen,” she reminded him, licking her lips slowly to emphasize her point.
God help him. He was going to turn illiterate very soon, at the rate he was losing his mind. “‘My throat tightens. “You make me mindless with lust,” I tell her. She laughs softly. “No, Larkspear, I am going to make you mindless with lust. And the first step is the removal of the rest of your clothes.”’”
Helena unfastened his trousers and pushed them down. “I like the bride of Larkspear—a woman with a plan.”
The next moment Hastings’s underlinen, too, had pooled at his feet, exposing his naked desire. She pressed herself into his side and rubbed one nipple along his arm, while her hand wrapped along his shaft; she gave a soft, throaty laugh as it leaped against the prison of her fingers.
“You are deviating from the story,” Hastings somehow managed to say.
“I know. But in the story you have her on her knees too soon. I can’t do that—I have a reputation to maintain.”
She stroked his length; he groaned with the pleasure of it. Now she sucked on the skin of his shoulder, then bent her head to lick his nipple. He bucked against his restraints.
“Don’t forget to read.”
“I can’t anymore.”
“I am not getting down on my knees unless the story tells me to.”
He growled but acquiesced. “‘In no time at all I was completely naked. She dropped to her knees before me.’”
Helena rounded to his front and knelt, her lips a hairbreadth from his jutting cock, glancing up at him with the tiniest of smirks on her face.
He gave her the next set of instructions. “She extends her tongue and licks the head of my cock.”
“Is that what the story says? I seem to remember differently.”
“That is exactly what the story says,” he lied blatantly.
She smiled, knowing him for the liar he was, and did exactly as he asked, her pink, moist tongue swirling softly where he was most excruciatingly sensitive.
His knees nearly buckled. “Now she opens her mouth wide and takes in as much of my length as she can handle.”
And he was inside her mouth, paradise itself. The sensation alone drove him mad, but there was also the sight of it. She was no longer smiling, but stared up at him with a hunger that almost matched his own. Then she moaned, a sound of such stark need that he lost all control over himself.
He shut his eyes, shuddered, and let her milk every last drop.
As soon as she let him free he pushed her against the bedpost, tied her hands behind her, and returned the favor—several times. Then he untied her, carried her to his bed, and made love to her slowly and properly.
Afterward she giggled against his shoulder. “Ask me again how I like your smutty story.”
He turned his face and kissed her forehead. “So…how do you like my smutty story, my dear?”
“I must confess, sir”—her tone was mock serious—“I still have not read the entire work. But the parts I have read have been a work of staggering genius. Why, the nuanced characterization, the heightened tension, and the deft use of the silken cords of her restraint to represent the bonds of matrimony…I applaud you, sir. I applaud you.”
Now she batted her eyelashes, naughty again. “Not to mention it makes me hornier than a camp full of soldiers.”
“Hmm. Maybe I’ll renege on my word. Maybe instead of working on revisions for you I’ll write another smutty story instead.”
She poked him in the chest. “That is not allowed. You may, however, write a new smutty story after you are finished with my revisions.”
“And will you stage that story, too?”
She turned up her nose. “Only if it is of the highest quality.”
He laughed and kissed her on the lips.
“I have an idea,” she said, pulling back. “Let us not marry in secret. Let’s instead take full advantage of my loss of memory and have a tremendous wedding. After all, what woman can bear to have no recollection of her wedding day?”
He was both startled by her audacity and carried away by her sudden enthusiasm. “I have always wanted a grand wedding for us.”
She wagged her finger. “And no country wedding, either. We will hold it at Westminster Abbey.”
“And we will ransack Millie’s gardens to deck the whole place with flowers—up to the rafters.”
“Indeed we must. And Venetia’s gardens, too. She’d be insulted if we didn’t ransack