She wondered if he had heard, but the question ceased to matter when he caught her rump in his hands, his long fingers digging into the sensitive flesh with almost painful pleasure, and hauled her toward him.
With a growl of pure, unabashed need, he pulled her to his lips. The first touch of his mouth on her, a hesitant buss, warm and silken and yet unbearably gentle, wrung a moan from her. Proceeding slowly, with the greatest of seductive care, he traced her seam with his lips, denying her the loving swipe of his tongue she so desperately craved. She shifted, seeking more, making certain to keep her weight on her knees and to avoid jostling his abdomen. But his only response was to smile against her aching flesh, the barest whisper of a touch.
“You like this, Em?”
He knew she did, the wicked man.
She bit her lip, resisting the urge to roll her hips forward and grind herself against those grinning lips the way she wanted. “Have you any doubt?”
“Tell me. Use those pretty angel’s lips to tell me all the sinful thoughts in your mind.”
His low urging made her moan. “What would you have me say?”
“Wicked things.” He kissed her, another chaste press of his lips to the place where she yearned for so much more. “I need to know you are giving yourself to me because you are as desperate for me as I am for you. I want the words. Give me all of them.”
He kissed her again, and she ceased to care about anything other than this man and the pleasure he promised to bring her.
“I am desperate for you, Hart,” she said, surprised at how easily the admission slid from her lips. “I want your tongue on me. I want you to do whatever you wish to me. I want more of what you promised. Make me yours, Hart. I want to forget everything but you.”
“Floating hell.”
With a growl, he pulled her nearer, dragging her to his mouth. And then his tongue was indeed on her, lashing the bud of her sex until she was quivering and bracing herself on the counterpane at either side of his head, desperate for more and yet terrified the delirious pleasure of it all would send her sprawling atop him.
“Relax, sweetheart,” he whispered against her, flicking his tongue down her folds to her entrance.
She obeyed, trying to tamp down her fear she would further upset his injury and turning her attention instead to his decadent attentions. He fluttered his tongue against her until she writhed over his face, the scratchy abrasion of the whiskers shadowing his rigid jaw an unexpected delight. His fingers dug into her bottom, urging her on, holding her tightly to him. As if he sensed her enjoyment, he rubbed his whiskers over her pearl, further stimulating her until she cried out.
She was a woman consumed, chasing her passion, losing herself in him, in the moment, in the seduction of his lips and tongue and teeth. He feasted on her, alternating between lusty wet sucks and long, delicious licks. Dipping into her cunny, yet leaving the place where she felt empty and most in need of him in a state of perpetual longing for more.
She was at the edge of something glittering and brilliant, her entire body drawn tightly, the center of her every sensation the pulsing place between her legs as he ravished her with his beautiful mouth. The noises fell from her lips in abandon now, low, throaty cries she scarcely recognized as she rode his face, rubbing herself shamelessly over his mouth and jaw.
“Please, Hart.” Words fled her. She was not even certain they made sense, or what she was asking for, but the certainty that he would deliver whatever she wanted was there. “Oh, heavens.”
His knowing lips found her swollen bud, and this time when he sucked, her body finally surrendered. A burst of something miraculous happened there, where his lips and tongue met her aching flesh. Where she was slick and swollen and so very alive in a way she had only begun to glimpse. Her fingers curled into the counterpane and her entire body bowed toward him, like a tree bending beneath the force of a storm’s tumultuous winds. And the pleasure that shot through her, starting at her core and radiating outward…
She gasped his name, her internal muscles clenching, and still he did not stop devouring her as if she were the most decadent, delicious treat he had ever sampled. His tongue lapped her up, his teeth scraping over her painfully sensitive nub. A second release washed over her, as potent as the first, leaving her trembling and braced on her hands and knees above him.
With a final, reverent kiss, his head dropped to the pillow, his breathing as ragged as hers, his lips bearing the sheen of her own dew. She had never seen a more wicked, erotic, wonderful sight in her life. Her beautiful, strong, dangerous East End rogue. How unexpected he was. How unlike anything and everything she had imagined he would be.
“On your back, sweetheart,” he ordered her in that brash, no-nonsense way he possessed.
She did not hesitate, but did as he asked, carefully rolling away from him to lie on her back at his side. She moved slowly, cognizant of his wound, but the force of her pinnacle had also rendered her limbs weak and shaky. She stared up at the shadows dancing on the ceiling in the candlelight, thinking of how impossible it was that she was here, in a gaming hell, sharing a bed with this man. And thinking too of how strange it was that she should not at all be horrified by her fall from grace. But rather, she was reveling in it.
Reveling in him.
And just like that, he shifted, moving over her and settling between her thighs. She had a brief moment to savor the beauty of his masculine form, so different from hers. All harsh planes and muscle and sinew, large and long, and lower, to where his manhood rose in thick prominence. There was the jagged-looking wound, its uneven stitches a reminder of how close he had come to something far more lethal happening to him. And a strange new sensation rose up within her, entwining with the desire.
It hit her as he lowered his body to hers, settling against her as naturally as if he belonged there—how easily they fit together, as perfectly as if it had been pre-ordained—she cared for him. Scarcely any time had passed, and yet she could not deny that Hart Sutton inspired feelings in her she had never felt for any of the gentlemen whose arms she had graced at balls. The lords who had called upon her, the rides in the park, the stolen kisses, the gestures of polite affection…everything paled in comparison to this man’s fierce and frenzied lovemaking. When he looked at her, when he touched her, she felt as if she were finally finding the part of herself that had been lost without her ever having realized.
“Is something amiss?” he asked quietly, his voice strained as he rose over her on braced forearms. His large body pinned hers to the mattress. Not in a caging fashion, but in a possessive way. A way she loved.
“Nothing,” she reassured him, cupping his handsome warrior’s face between her hands. “Nothing is amiss.”
The prickle of his whiskers on her palms was as delightful as it had been elsewhere, but in a different sense. Every part of him was something to be savored, appreciated.
He lowered his head, kissing her collarbone. “You are sure?”
“Yes.” She nodded, meeting and holding his gaze. His tenderness now, in the face of the brutality he must have faced earlier, made her want to weep. “I want you to make me yours.”
Tonight and always.
But she kept the last to herself, for it was impossible and foolish, and she knew that. In the next few days, she would have to part from him; as well it should be. He had made her no promises, and nor did he owe her any. This alteration in her life had not been his fault. If he had not paid for the privilege of taking her innocence, another man would have in his place. And she was grateful, so incredibly grateful, that of all the men in London who could have wandered into The Garden of Flora whilst she was on the dais, he had been the one to win her.