The Earl of Christmas Past (Goode Girls Romance #5) - Kerrigan Byrne Page 0,25

to herself in slow increments.

She lay sprawled out for a moment as his hands remained beneath her skirts, soothing and petting her. Cupping her as he crooned soft encouragements into her ear, nuzzling her neck and exploring it in little nips before soothing them with a glide of his tongue.

Vanessa wasn’t certain what she expected from him, then. Perhaps that he would rip her clothing from her, spread her wide and sink inside of her for a few barbaric thrusts. Lord knew he’d earned it.

But no. He reclined away from her, covering her with her skirts.

His eyes glittered with masculine mischief as that cruel mouth spread into a dangerous Cheshire grin.

“What?” she queried with an anxious little gasp.

He gave her one dark command that both startled and stymied her.

“Kneel.”

It occurred to her to explain to him that she wasn’t one to be ordered about…as she obediently scrambled to her knees.

Yes. Just as soon as they finished, she’d certainly tell him so.

Curious anticipation dispelled whatever languor had stolen into her blood after her initial release, and she found that excitement began to build at this new and unique encounter.

In a moment he was behind her, fiddling with her skirts.

She had the idea that she knew where this was going, and the thought rather disappointed her. Not that she minded being taken from behind, especially not by him. She just didn’t think that their first time would be in such a position.

“Would you like—that is—should I bend down?” she ventured.

“Stay as you are until I move you.”

She did. Kneeling straight like a penitent at prayer as he rustled and disturbed the bed a bit.

And then his hands were on the insides of her thighs, prying her knees wider to make room for…

His shoulders?

Her eyes peeled wide as he maneuvered himself on his back beneath her skirts, his hands splaying her thighs wider, charting her bare backside as his breath grazed the intimate flesh splayed open over his face.

Her knees nearly lost their starch.

Thoroughly scandalized, Vanessa leaned to one side, meaning to wriggle away, when his long, unyielding arms clamped around her thighs.

Oh dear God. She blindly grabbed for anything, her fingers grasping the headboard.

“I—I don’t think we—”

“Don’t think for once, Vanessa,” is what she thought he muttered, though the words were a bit muffled by her skirts.

Clearly, he didn’t know her well. Which meant they should not be doing something so astoundingly intimate and immoral. “I just—”

He stole her words with one wicked kiss. One wicked, carnal, wet, and languorous kiss to lips that had never before known the mouth of a man.

Suddenly the entire world was very far away. Anything and anyone she’d ever known might never have existed. She was not herself. He was not a dead Earl. They were not in Scotland on a snowy winter night trapped by a gale and perhaps by fate.

There was only what his mouth did to her sex.

First, he supped and sampled in teasing little tucks and twirls, using only his lips, causing her body to respond with little flinching twitches as the pleasure ebbed and flowed beginning at her core and sparkling through her entire body. She’d have not been able to support herself in such a position if it weren’t for his arms winched around her thighs, taking the crux of her weight.

His tongue joined the fray before too long, eliciting a sharp gasp of delight from her as her knuckles tightened on the headboard. His mouth was relentlessly skilled as he slipped and slid around and through the petals of her flesh with inquisitive delight.

It was an exquisite torture. An excruciating bliss.

She wondered dimly where the distant, pathetic, demanding little mewls and gasps were coming from. Surely not her. She’d never dream of making such sounds.

Then, oh then, merciless monster that he was, he cleaved her with the flat of his tongue. Tasting the entirety of her topography, he laved at the little bud at the aperture of her sex with a relentless pressure that catapulted her into the stars.

Her fingernails scored the wood of the bed frame as he centered all his attentions on her core, his muscles tightening around her thighs as she bucked and writhed, arched and contracted against the onslaught of pulsating pleasure. She rode his magnificent mouth as unadulterated bliss rolled over her like a tide this time, slamming into her with the strength of a rogue wave and drawing her under. Each time she threatened to surface, the wave in the distance was upon