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“Ian?” she asked confusedly.

Were his hands shaking as he slid her panties down her thighs and over her knees? Her sex clenched tight in rising anticipation.

“I thought I could wait. I can’t,” he muttered, and she heard the harsh regret in his tone. He looked into her face as his hands caressed her thighs and hips, and she felt herself heating the cool marble. “If I don’t taste you now, I think I’ll die. And if I taste you, I won’t be able to stop. I’m going to have to fuck you here and now.”

“Oh, God,” she moaned shakily. She felt the increasingly familiar surge of liquid heat between her thighs. His dark head lowered to her lap. His hands parted her farther for his ravishment. Her eyes sprang wide at the sensation of the tip of his warm, sleek tongue burrowing between her labia, rubbing and stabbing at her clit.

She grasped at his thick, crisp hair and whimpered. Her head fell back. In the hazy midst of her voluptuous ecstasy, she glimpsed Aphrodite watching her initiation with calm, supreme satisfaction.

Part IV

Because You Must Learn

Chapter Seven

She felt herself melting on the cold marble slab, losing all sense of self, living only to experience the next electrical thrust, the next sensual slide of Ian’s tongue on her sex. She tangled her fingers in his hair, loving the texture. How did human beings manage to live and work and sleep and eat when so much distilled pleasure was available to them?

Perhaps he was the answer to her question. Everyone didn’t have such a talented, glorious lover available to them. For surely Ian’s tongue and mouth must be the most skilled on the planet at giving pleasure . . .

He urged her with his hands, and she leaned farther back on the pedestal, bracing herself with her hands, tilting her pelvis to a more accommodating angle. His low growl of satisfaction vibrating into her flesh was her reward. He spread her thighs even wider, burrowing, seeking. Her cry echoed off the high vaulted ceiling when he plunged his tongue deep into her slit.

“Ian!”

He tongue-fucked her, slow and languorous at first, but as the seconds passed, more lustily as her hips began to bob back and forth against him. He groaned, spreading his large hands across her hips, his fingers biting into her buttocks, and held her steady for his consumption. She gasped when he spread his mouth over her entire sex, his tongue lodged deep inside her vagina, and used his upper lip to apply a steady pressure on her clit. He twisted his head sharply, side to side between her thighs, stimulating her precisely. Her eyes sprang wide.

She stared up at the goddess of sex and love, transfixed, as she shuddered in violent orgasm.

* * *

Ian held her to him, his mouth moving with constrained force, his tongue delving, urging every last blast of pleasure out of her sweet, quivering body. When she quieted, he took another moment to lick up the juice of his labor. He’d known she’d be delicious from the taste of her mouth and skin, but he hadn’t been prepared for the sheer decadence of her pussy.

He was full-out drunk on her, and yet he wanted more.

His raging cock had other things in mind, however. He gathered her to him, pressing a damp kiss against the erotic harbor of her taut belly. He stood, wincing at the ache in his cock. Her sublime taste had temporarily sated his lust. It came roaring back as he stared down at her near-naked body sprawled on the pedestal, moonlight shimmering in her dark eyes and glistening on her wet, spread pussy.

He lifted her, liking the way she curled against him. She could be so stubborn at times, willful. It moved him to have her lay her head on his shoulder so trustingly.

It made him want to wholly possess her all the more.

He took her to a low, tufted velvet chaise lounge positioned several feet in front of Aphrodite—a recliner fit for a king, if Ian recalled correctly. Instead of setting her on it, he placed her on her feet. He quickly removed her dress and draped it on the back of a nearby armchair. Next, he removed his jacket. She gave him a puzzled glance when he carefully spread it on the cushion of the chaise.

“Louis XIV once lounged on this piece. Grandmother would strangle me if I ever . . . spilled on it.”

His small smile widened when he heard her low, rich laughter. He put his hands along her jaw and lifted her face for his voracious kiss, eating her mirth hungrily. His cock lurched when she shyly, curiously licked at his lips, tasting herself.

“That’s right. Why shouldn’t you taste something so sweet?” he rasped as he regretfully released her in order to locate a condom. The storm brewing in him was starting to tear at him from the inside out. He couldn’t trust his sanity, couldn’t trust anything if he didn’t get inside Francesca soon . . . very soon. “Lie down on the chaise,” he directed, his voice sounding tight to his own ears.

She reclined on his spread jacket, her legs and belly looking pale in the moonlight and contrasting with the black lining of his jacket. The chaise was armless, long, and wide, with a curved backrest. She lay so that her body was on the flat portion, the top of her head against the back, her calves resting at the end of the piece of furniture. Her loveliness bit at him, making him grind his teeth.

He began to unfasten his pants hastily. He shoved his trousers down his thighs and peeled his boxer briefs down over his erection. He paused while rolling on the condom a moment later when he noticed her huge eyes fixed on his cock.

She was afraid of him.

“It’ll be all right. I’ll go slow,” he assured, whisking the tight rubber down farther over the shaft.

“Let me touch you,” she whispered.

He froze, fisting the base of his cock. It throbbed and twitched in his hand at the unexpected sweetness of her request. He graphically pictured her doing what she requested, the agony of feeling her fingers on him, her lips, her tongue—