Page 114 of A Devilish Element

“Precisely.” She nodded.

“Careful,” he said. “I might start believing in this utopian future.”

“It could be ours, Jem,” she said, laying her hand against his bare chest, and grinning when the smattering of hairs there tickled her palm. “But for tonight, the only thing I want you to believe is that I want you as much as you ever wanted me, and that I don’t mind if you’ve lain with other men, or other women, or both. And I won’t mind if you still look on them and think they’re lovely, because who doesn’t look on lovely things and admire them.”

“Eliza.” He pressed a finger to her lips, quietening her. “You’ve already said all you ever needed to say.” He put his hand over hers where it still lay against his chest. “I’m yours. You enchant me… And I’m very relieved I won’t have to poke out my eyes with a stick, because the world is full of lovely things.”

“Never on my account.”

“I’ll never belittle you, Eliza. You’re the cleverest person I know.”

Now he was making her blush. “I think you’re cleverer.”

He dipped his head and kissed her nose. “I’m really not, you know.”

She kissed his jaw. “I intend to stay tonight.” Then the side of his throat.

“Hm, scandalous. You know, I won’t be clever at all if you keep pressing your lips to me.”

“I don’t want you clever, I want you hard. No. No… Actually, I want you both.” She let her hand fall from where it rested, so that it traversed a line down to the falls of his breeches. “I think I have the essence of how to accomplish the one, which leaves you to handle the other.”

“Proving my cleverness,” he huffed. “You realise it’s rather hard to think when you’re touching me there.”

“I bet you can still conjugate Latin verbs for me. No. No, wait. Explain to me Boyle’s Law.”

“Ah, yes,” he began licking his lips, as Eliza licked something else entirely. “It’s really quite simple. If you take a fixed mass of gas at a constant temperature, then the volume it inhabits is inversely proportional to…”

“Go on.”

“Is inversely proportional to the pressure!” He near squeaked the last as she ran her tongue over the crown of his cock. “And that is quite enough of that. I think we should concentrate on some biological sciences for a while, don’t you?”

Her mouth was too full to reply.

~?~