Page 143 of Dukes for Dessert

He hovered for a breathless moment, heart pounding in a rough staccato.

Every muscle knotted with craving.

Sebastian was a man always battling the rule of his fathomless desire, lest he become overwhelmed by them. Tonight…he knelt at the altar and pledged his fealty to a hunger that now demanded his surrender.

Closing his eyes, he drew his tongue up the seam of closed lips, parting them with sinful slowness.

Christ she was, in a word, delectable.

Veronica’s entire body jerked, but she made no sound. Not until he reached that soft bud at the apex of those folds. He thought he might have to coax it out, to play in the little pleats and ruffles of flesh until it revealed her need.

But she came to him ready. Not just once, but twice in a day.

Perhaps her heart had been too broken to know desire, or to identify it, but her body… oh, her delicious body was a conduit for pleasure. She’d been crafted to tempt, to entice, to lure, and to make love.

She’d been wasted on a cruel man, and her real tragedy was that she’d ever lived a life without someone to worship her. To make her sing this throaty melody he’d coaxed from deep within her as he nibbled and supped at the edges of her folds, tickling her with his breath. Teasing her with playful lips and gentle flicks of his tongue. Pressing vibrating moans of encouragement against her wet flesh.

So wet. So sweet. A nectar only rivaled by ambrosia…

And even then.

Between her trembling thighs, he felt like a god. And soon, he’d convert her to belief.

Not in the divine, but in him.

I’ll worship your body, my lady, he thought. But you’ll be praying to me before I’m through.

Apparently, she’d had enough of his teasing, because she slid impatient fingers through his hair. Pausing, she seemed unsure whether to pull him closer or push him away.

Her features contorted into a mask of misery, but the noises she emitted were raw with pleasure.

Taking pity on her, Sebastian splayed her open with his fingers, thoroughly exposing the little peak of her sex. With slow and tender precision, he pressed the flat of his tongue over the pulsating opening of her body, coating it with her slick desire before drawing it up against the quivering bud.

She made a sound that shot straight to his already aching cock. It kicked against the confines of his trousers as she tugged on his hair with just enough strength to cause a delicious sort of pain.

Fuck. He might not survive this.

Drawing upon every ounce of—admittedly underdeveloped—willpower, he let his tongue slide over and around the delicious little hardness amidst all that soft, pliant flesh. Touching it. Flicking away. A languid stroke. A gentle glide.

She shuddered beneath his ministrations. Said things in a language he didn’t recognize. Maybe one that never existed.

His hands had to move to her thighs as he dined, using his strength to keep them plied open so he could work. She bucked and trembled, jerked and moaned, as if he were an inquisitor and the lashing was meted out by a weapon more painful than his tongue.

“Moncrieff,” she finally sobbed. “I—I can’t—Please. Please.”

He lifted his head to look up over her body, glad and also bemoaning that he’d kept them both clothed.

Her lush ass fell back to the bed and her legs splayed in an exhausted collapse.

“Sebastian,” he said, his breath feathering over her core, causing it to visibly throb.

She seemed unable to speak, blinking down at him in obvious, foggy-eyed confusion.

“I want you to say my name when you come,” he ordered in a growl he didn’t recognize as his own. It was everything he wasn’t. Dark. Demanding. Possessive.

She nodded, curling her pelvis forward in a wordless plea for release.

Lifting a finger, he drew wet little circles around the entrance to her body, probing the tight flesh there until she made a plaintive little sound.