Page 33 of A Lady of Means (Roses and Rakes #1)

“That so?”

“Would you like a demonstration?” she said, undoing his breeches, freeing him. The tantalizing V of his hips led to dark hair surrounding what she’d been searching for.

“Fuck,” he ground out. “I should say no, but as usual, I’m powerless when it comes to you.”

“You’re larger than I thought you’d be,” she said, wrapping a hand around his erection. His very large erection.

“That’s half mast, sweetheart.”

“Jesus Christ,” she said, eliciting a laugh from him.

Devyn was wiping tears of laughter from his eyes. Then she was kissing him, holding onto her with his mouth while she moved him up and down in her hands. He pulled away to lick her palm with two broad swipes, then set it back to the length of him she held in her grasp. Her core clinched.

She began moving her hand again, kissing him harder. With every stroke of her hand, he was moving with her, kissing her. One large hand cupped her breast, but she wanted more.

Moria took the sheet of her unbound hair and held it in one hand.

She dropped to her knees in front of the settee.

Devyn leaned down, lifting up her knees to place a velvet pillow beneath them.

He was always looking after her; the smallest, most intimate gestures stealing pieces of her heart as much as that piano.

She licked up the groaning length of him.

When she took him inside her mouth, the deep groan that came from his lips made her feel powerful.

She moved him up and down, back and forth, using both her mouth and tongue to taste, to suck, to lick.

A large hand held her hair in his grasp as she moved up and down, she felt his release move closer at her coaxing.

“Fuck,” he ground out, hips moving in the same rhythm as her mouth. “That’s right, angel, fuck me with your mouth.”

His hip and stomach muscles flexed taut as he moved with her.

Fire coiled at the base of her spine at his coarse words.

She’d done this before; but it had been furtive, taboo, elicit, done in the dark.

Having him spread out on her settee, his ring on her finger, his heart in her back pocket, it was different. He was different.

Devyn’s member hit the back of her throat, she kept moving, feeling him flex and move inside her.

“Look at me,” he whispered, pulling her face toward him. “I want you to look in my eyes when I come down your pretty throat.”

She let out a little whimper, taking him deeper still.

She kept her eyes on him as she licked him from root to tip.

His eyes fluttered closed for a moment as he groaned, fisting her hair a little harder.

Her nails dug into the full, muscled ridge of his backside as his hips bucked off the settee, pushing him into her mouth.

Her cheeks hollowed. She moved faster up and down, hollowing her cheeks again.

Devyn spilled into her, not holding back or quieting the groan that accompanied his release. She drank down his sounds, his ecstasy, his dark eyes on hers, and his seed down the back of her throat. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, keeping her eyes on him like he’d asked.

His hands stole her from her perch, dragging her up his length to perch atop him. She placed both hands on his firm chest. The dark hair on his chest somehow made her feel molten again.

“Christ, woman, I was not expecting that,” he said, willing his breath to even out again.

“Which part?” she said, tracing her fingers over his chest.

“The part where you got on your knees for me,” a hand pushed her hair over her shoulder, “the part where you sucked me off,” that hand trailed down her decolletage, “the part where you did what you were told most of all.”

There was teasing laughter in his voice. She hit him playfully in his chest. He pulled her to lay against one of his bare, pectoral muscles.

“I will be promising to love and honor and obey soon.”

His voice was strained above her head. “Not if you don’t want to.”

She turned to look up at him and raised a brow.

He clarified, “The obey part.”

“Devyn Winter, I could get on my knees for you again hearing you say that.”

He answered her with a long, drugging, slow kiss. “Would you like me to get on my knees for you?”

She wanted a release, but his arms were around her, his chest was solid and safe and warm.

There was a fire before them. He’d pulled a plush blanket around them.

Not that it was necessary given how warm his skin was, how warm he made her feel.

His calloused hands were drawing tender little patterns on her back.

His heartbeat beneath her cheek was steady.

She could feel his breath on her temple, in her hair.

This was a brand of intimacy she’d never before been party to… until Devyn.

“I want you to stay just like this.” She wrapped her arms around his bare torso, holding onto him tighter, burrowing into his chest further.

“Whatever you want, Moria,” he said softly, and he held her, drawing patterns on her back, his hands playing in her hair, until her eyelids drifted closed.

* * *

And so here she was now, lit by morning sunlight, in front of Devyn’s door, again.

He pulled it open before she could knock.

“Come here,” he said, pulling her inside.

He’d obviously been dressing. He was in his breeches and boots, but no shirt. The sight of him was like a strike to her senses.

She wrapped her arms about him, burrowing into his warmth and the smell of him. She was home, at Brookevale Park, but he was home to her too.

“I love you,” she said, against his pectoral muscle.

“Say it again.”

She heard the awed smile in his voice, and felt it against her ear. She held him tighter.

“I love you. Like…in a way that scares me so much, but it fills me up so full that I have to let it out. I have to tell you. Devyn Winter, I am so stupid, mad in love with you. And everything you do for me, everything you are, feels too good and too right for me. I don’t know how I’ll breathe when you leave me.

Because I’ve tried to be so in control, but somehow, I’ve completely lost the plot.

And yet it doesn’t matter that I’ve lost control of my head or my heart, because you are the best thing in my life. ”

A tear collided with the top of her head. She craned her neck to look up at him, not slackening her grip on his waist.

“I love you back,” he said, pouring the words back into a fiery, desperate kiss.

It tasted like all the things she’d ever wanted and thought she could never deserve, spearmint, and tears. Hers or his, both, she wasn’t sure. She lost track of her lips, the rest of her body, the rest of time, in his kiss.

She pushed him backwards until his knees backed up against his large bed.

“We have somewhere to be today. We have plenty of time for that later.”

And he threw on his shirt, tucking it into his breeches. Moria let out a gasp, noting the color of his shirt. Tears pricked her eyes. He pulled her hand in his, planting a kiss on her knuckles.

“Lead the way to the church, my lady.”

“Your shirt,” she choked out, “it’s…”

“Pink,” he whispered, planting a kiss to the top of her head. “It’s Wednesday.”

Tears spilled out of her eyes. He wiped them away.

He was walking out of his room, pulling her along behind him.

She followed him to the stables where Challenger, the horse he was meant to be considering buying as pretense for his visit, was saddled along with her mount, Regina.

They rode in mostly companionable silence, hands clasped between their saddles a taut rope holding them together, to the church.

They could have walked. But Moria drew out the short ride, stopping here and there to point things out on her family’s property to him, to share little stories and parts of her life with the man she loved.

Soon, he’d be gone, and they wouldn’t get this.

And then the chapel and its graveyard came into view.

Marcus’ large, ornate, marble mausoleum stood out above the smaller graves.

The large M caught her eye first. The rose she’d planted had bloomed into a large, spilling dark pink rose bush that almost blocked the entrance.

She knelt to run a hand over the rose quartz stone beside it.

Devyn had let her dismount first, then followed after tying his horse to a hitching post. Then he was a wall of sturdy man behind her, his hands at her hips and his mouth close to her hair.

“This isn’t where my mother buried her,” she said.

“She’s…somewhere by the sea. Where I lost her.

But this is where she should have been. Near her…

” she choked out. “Near her father. Something in me felt that they should be together, that some part of her belonged with him, and not all by herself. There was a curl of her hair buried here.”

“Hello, Rose,” Devyn whispered. “I’ll forever feel the loss of knowing you, but that loss is shared by all humanity, I’m sure,” he looked up at the mausoleum in front of them.

“And Your Lordship, I trust you are taking good care of your daughter. I’m sure the two of you won’t mind if I care for her mother for you.

I don’t need your blessing,” he squeezed Moria’s fingers.

“But I’ll love her for the both of you.”

His side profile was even more beautiful then in Moria’s eyes, the wind whisked a strand of dark hair from his eyes like a caress as he turned to the larger mausoleum where her parents had made their final resting place.

“My Lord and Lady Pembrooke,” he inclined his head. “I want you to know, I’ll do my very best,” he looked at Moria, and she fell into the starry depths of those dark eyes. “To give her all that she deserves.”

Moria didn’t collapse like she had the other times at this grave site.

She kissed his fingers entwined with hers.

She didn’t shake or tremble. She held her head high, the love of an extraordinary man who saw all her flaws and cracks making it easier for her to breathe under the weight of it all for the first time.