It took every ounce of control not to spill himself in his breeches. “Say please again, Sybil. Say please in the way that makes me know you crave my touch.”
“Please, Lucius.” She arched her back as his fingers slipped slowly back and forth over her sex, caressing her in the intoxicating rhythm he knew would drive her wild. “Please,” she begged. “Oh, God, please.”
“Touch me,” he whispered. “Touch me. Touch me anywhere.”
Sybil touched him everywhere. Her hands delved under his shirt. She massaged his chest, stroked his nipples. She writhed in his lap, writhed against his hard shaft. Those vibrant copper curls fell about her shoulders as she bent her head, covered his mouth and slipped her warm tongue over his.
Fuck!
He was supposed to be doing the pleasuring, and yet he was on the verge of losing control. She seemed to be everywhere. Consuming. Devouring. Filling his head with her beguiling essence.
His free hand tangled in her hair, fastening her tight to his mouth. He swallowed her hum of pleasure as he pushed his fingers slowly into her heat. It took but a few more strokes with his thumb, a few slick slides of his fingers until her body convulsed.
A cry of satisfaction escaped her.
A cry accompanied by the needy whisper of his name.
Damn, but she was majestic in her release—all wild hair, glazed eyes and breathless pants. A siren determined to lure him to sin with her sensual song. A siren luring him to break his oath, to forget his vow.
Was this betrayal? Surely this wasn’t the protection Atticus had in mind. Still, his mentor was a man who lived for the truth. And the truth was Lucius had fallen in love with Sybil Atwood.
“I want to make love to you, Sybil.” He needed to make love to her else he might end up in Bedlam. “But I understand if that’s a step too far.”
She looked at him through drowsy eyes, eyes heavy with desire. “Make love? Hmm, it sounds divine.”
Divine didn’t even begin to describe what it was like to watch her shudder in his arms. What it would be like to watch her come while he was buried deep inside her.
“While I expect the experience will be transcendent, taking your virtue is not something my conscience will allow.”
She screwed her nose in the pretty way that said she found him confusing. “What if you don’t take my virtue? What if I give it freely, willingly? There’s a vast difference.”
“You can only give it once,” he said, touched that she would choose him as the recipient of such a precious gift. “You might meet someone—”
She kissed him again. He was getting used to these sudden bursts of affection. Perhaps she was still dizzy on the heights of her release, for her tongue drove into his mouth with a fervent hunger. Before he could match the voracious movements, she was tugging at his clothes, pushing her hands through his hair, writhing, panting.
All thoughts of vows and blasted promises left him.
I love her, he said silently as if making his excuses to her father, to the Lord, to anyone who was bloody well listening.
“We should return to your bedchamber,” he said, as the last threads of logic considered her comfort. “You should be in—”
“Next time,” she whispered against his neck. “I like it here on the chaise.”
“I don’t think you have the measure of the situation,” he said for the second time tonight.
She pulled back and looked at him. “You’re going to make love to me, here and now. You’re going to look after me, tell me what to do, how to please you. I’m going to experience those delicious tingles again. And you’re going to mutter curses like you do when you lose control of your senses.”
“Yes,” he said.
“Good. Now, I’m bound to be nervous. From what Cassandra told me, it might hurt a little, but you’re not to think about that. I’m told it soon passes.”
He fell silent.
She amazed him on every level.
Now he had taken ownership of the emotion he could not stop the warm waves of love rippling through his chest. Love for this wildly vivacious woman who raised another smile when she said, “Do you think you might help me out of this dress?”
* * *