For a long time nothing happened. She held him but didn’t shift her hand.
He stopped breathing. His heart stopped beating.
Do it. Do it. For God’s sake, do it.
Hell, how much more could he bear?
The quiet shadowy room with its distant sounds of traffic receded. All he knew was the clasp of her hand and the throbbing need in his cock.
Dear God, why didn’t she…
Wet heat closed around the head, and bright red light exploded behind his eyes. He made a sound deep in his throat, afraid to move unless she stopped. Every muscle in his body tensed.
At first, her mouth was hardly less frustrating than her hand. She exerted no suction. Just let him rest in warmth and moisture.
He was taut as a violin string. Waiting for the bow to strike so the music could flow.
She shifted. Her hair slid across his thighs in a whisper of seduction. He bit back a plea to keep going, not to stop, to give him what he wanted.
Her hand tightened and her mouth flexed. Lightning struck.
Her tongue flickered.
He wouldn’t survive. She’d kill him before she finished. She took him deeper. His hips jerked before he recalled he’d promised not to move.
Her hand closed hard around his shaft and moved up and down. He was in heaven. Angels sang their lungs out. He swore he heard rippling harp glissandos.
His fists clenched as he fought the urge to compel her to more concentrated action. He could show her what to do. Yet something about her determination indicated she wanted to find her own way.
He just hoped he retained enough sanity to celebrate her arrival when she finally got there.
He made another inarticulate sound, and she seemed to take this as a signal. Her mouth started to move, while her hand performed a complex dance of pleasure.
She still didn’t have the rhythm.
Heaven help him when she found the right combination. Her amateurish efforts pushed him close to exploding. The hot pull of her lips made it almost impossible to hold back.
Abruptly, she broke through to another realm. Her hand, her mouth, the sounds she made crescendoed into a tumultuous rhapsody. He teetered on the brink of an endless fiery blaze.
He should stop her. He couldn’t come in her mouth. Not her first time.
Control, Ashcroft, control.
His shaking hands slid down to her shoulders, felt hot skin under that damnable red silk. He meant to drag her up his chest and kiss her. He meant to settle her over him and plunge into her welcoming depths.
His hands curled, ready to lift her up, to make her stop, to end before it was too late.
Her grip firmed. She drew hard. All good intentions shattered.
Chapter Seventeen
Hot, salty liquid spurted into Diana’s mouth. Automatically, she swallowed. Her hand tightened on Ashcroft’s jerking shaft. His long groan of release echoed in her ears.
Her heart swelled with joy, and dazzling triumph streaked through her. What she did held a truth. A truth lacking in everything else between them, no matter how he touched her emotions and made her quake with ecstasy. She’d found something for him alone. Something outside her shabby bargain with Lord Burnley, something outside her own undeserved pleasure.
Although she’d discovered searing pleasure in arousing him until he couldn’t hold back.
His hand drifted down to tangle in the hair at her crown. He was shaking. The rhythmic clenching and unclenching of his fingers against her scalp became an ineluctable part of the wild sensations careering through her.