man enveloped her. He dragged his mouth down her throat, all the way to her ear.
“My God,” he murmured. “What are you doing to me?”
She could have asked the same thing of him. Indeed, she ought to have. But all she was capable of was sliding her legs farther apart at his gentle coaxing. His fingers traveled back to her dripping core. Another teasing, shallow dip when she wanted deeper. Yes, to her shame, she wanted him quite desperately.
“Please,” she begged.
“What do you want, Hyacinth?” he asked, licking the whorl of her ear before biting the fleshy lobe. “Tell me.”
“You.” There. That was all she could muster.
She was drowning in need when he sank a finger inside her, giving her what she needed. One long finger. A quick, delicious thrust. She clenched on him. His thumb fluttered over her pearl.
Everything exploded. Mayhap she did. If she had suddenly discovered she was fashioned of flame, she would hardly be surprised. Bliss rocketed through her like a display of fireworks bursting in the night sky.
She buried her face in his throat to stifle the moan that longed to be unleashed. He continued toying with her, a second digit joining the first. A sinful slide deep within her, before a withdrawal that had her gasping, her hips pumping in a search for more. In he went. She was dripping for him. The taunt of his thumb over her bud was enough to send her to the edge again.
Hyacinth kissed his neck, filling her senses with him the way he filled her. Deep inside, he thrust once more, then curled his fingers inward, reaching a place so intensely sensitive, she thought she might be propelled into another realm altogether.
“Hyacinth,” he said her name, over and over again. A litany against her throat, along with kisses. “Hyacinth.”
He withdrew his fingers. His other hand shifted between them, and she realized he was fumbling with the fall of his trousers. That he was going to release himself and slide into her within the next few moments. Servants were just beyond the closed door. What she was doing was wrong. Salacious.
She had no wish to stop.
To the devil with consequences.
To the devil with anything but the way Tom made her feel.
He helped to reposition her so that her legs framed his. So that her knees were bent on the smooth upholstery of the chaise longue, and he was reclined. The thick protrusion of his shaft brushed against her. He sank a hand into her braid, holding her in place while he ravished her mouth with a torrent of kisses. His other hand grasped his cock, brushing the thick tip over her soaked slit, over her throbbing pearl.
She gasped into his kiss, poised to sink down on him, to accept him into her body.
But before she could, a rap at the closed door made her freeze and tear her kiss-swollen lips from Tom’s.
“My lady,” called her long-suffering butler from the other side of the portal, “Please forgive the interruption, but Miss Adelaide is running about the household with a volume of Dickens in her mouth. I thought you would wish to know.”
Her heart was pounding, her body aching with unfulfilled need. Gradually, reality returned to her. She became aware of what she had been about to do—make love with a man she had only met the night before on the chaise longue in her salon in the middle of the afternoon while her servants went about their day. Only a thin barrier of wood and plaster between them.
Dear heavens. What had come over her?
“Thank you, Pennington,” she called in a desperately trembling voice she scarcely recognized as her own. “I shall be there momentarily.”
Hyacinth scrambled from Tom’s lap, shaking out her skirts and doing her best to avert her gaze from the sight of his member, jutting thick and proud from the opened fall of his trousers. It was so lovely. So large and beautiful and masculine. Very large. Difficult to believe it would have fit inside her.
There she went, staring at his anatomy again.
Her cheeks heated and she turned her back upon the sight of him, more than she could bear to face at the moment.
“Hyacinth,” Tom rasped quietly. “This was not my intention.”
Nor had it been hers. What must he think of her? What did she think of herself, for that matter? Despite Lottie’s urgings, she did not want to take a lover. Her desire for freedom seemed dreadfully at odds with it.
Hyacinth frowned, smoothing the wrinkles