Page 17 of Courting the Duchess (Spy Society #1)

S terling didn’t dare believe his ears.

Was it possible for a heart to long for something so greatly that the ears created falsehoods?

He’d heard of men in extreme situations of deprivation or torture so desperate for relief they became delirious from it. Could that be what Sterling was experiencing? Had he pined for Alaina for so long that his mind had attempted the mercy of imagining Alaina’s words?

But no.

There was no mistaking the way Alaina’s glittering sapphire eyes gazed up at him, the caress of her hands on his shoulders, the tantalizing press of her erect, mouthwateringly pink nipples against his bare chest, the teasing graze of her soft abdomen against the throbbing ridge of his straining erection.

“Please, Sterling,” she breathed. He could do nothing but stare down at her in awe, both their souls laid as naked as their bodies.

His heart stuttered when he witnessed a flicker of insecurity and, not willing to allow her even that iota of it, he smoothly swept Alaina into his arms, holding her high against his chest, savoring the feel of her soft skin against him more than he had anything else in his life. He was certain she could feel the heavy pounding of his heart, but he cared not. If anything, he wanted this woman to know what she did to him—what she’d always done to him, and how he’d never stopped wanting her.

Despite their history, despite everything they’d put one another through these past several weeks, all of this had served only to draw them together more powerfully. For his part, Sterling was done fighting, done being held at arm’s length and experiencing the bitterness that came along with it. He wanted to begin his life with this woman in earnest.

While it was tempting to say he wanted to forget the past eight years and start over, this would be a disservice to what they’d both endured and who they’d both become. Sterling had cared deeply for Alaina when they’d married, but this woman in his arms was more mature, more headstrong, and more outspoken in ways that infuriated him and made him step back and appreciate everything about her. He could love her with everything he had, if only she’d let him.

And, as he laid her in the center of his mattress, her long golden locks fanning out like an angel’s halo and her blue eyes heavily lidded with desire, he found he wanted her even more than he had in even his wildest, most desperate, most feverish of dreams. His frame of reference was unfortunately rusty, but he instinctively knew she would surpass everything he’d dared hope. She’d already proven to be that and so, so much more.

He knelt beside her, drinking in every inch of her ivory skin, her long, lean legs and those utterly perfect pebbled nipples, more delectable than he could have imagined. His body trembled with nerves and desire. He needed a moment; he had to fight to regain some of his composure lest he do her a disservice. He took a shuddering breath and scrubbed his hand over his face, muttering her name as both a curse and a benediction. He wanted to spend hours learning everything about her body, practicing ways to drive her as unhinged as he felt inside.

“Sterling?” Alaina’s soft voice cut through his admiring perusal.

“I want to do this moment justice,” he finally said.

“You have already pleased me,” she replied with a shy smile. He could now say with confidence that her blushes swept down her face, her throat, and the perfect flesh of her breasts. It was glorious. She was glorious.

“I want to please you more. I want to commit all of this to memory to revisit again and again. I want it to be the last thing that crosses my mind when I take my final breath.”

“So melodramatic of you.” She smiled, but her humor faded when she read the sincerity in his eyes. Alaina reached up one small hand to him, welcoming him into her arms, and he was undone.

Carefully, he covered her body, fitting them together like two long-lost pieces of the same puzzle. The underside of his arousal glided against the smooth flesh of her stomach and thighs, and he barely bit back a groan. His body was long past finished with waiting and he’d imagined this moment with such vivid intensity for so many years that he could only pray he didn’t make a fool of himself. To spend before he even got inside her would be the worst sort of embarrassment.

Instead, he took his time, dropping languorous kisses to her lips, savoring her sweet flavor, inhaling the scent of her hair and skin, his chest swelling with pride when she tilted her hips for him. Accepted him. She was untutored and eager, both qualities that added another notch to Sterling’s long list of things about his wife that drove him mad with desire.

He reached between them, his fingers seeking and then finding the part of her he most ached to touch, to taste, to possess. She sighed against his lips, her knees falling open as he stroked her. She was so wet for him, so ready from her earlier climax. She felt like the hot, honeyed nectar of the gods. His mouth watered for her; his body trembled. How could she make him feel so weak and so powerful at the same time? He’d never known such a juxtaposition was possible, but there they were. She might have been the one lying prone, but Alaina had him at her mercy.

He wanted this to be good for her—no, better than good. He wanted this to somehow be the beginning of his making up for abandoning her. He wanted this to be transcendent, the true start of how he’d spend the rest of his life worshiping her and making Alaina realize just how much he cared. Though his body screamed for release, his muscles twitching with need and his cock throbbing with desire, weeping with it, he was determined to take his time.

Sterling slid down her body, slowly running his tongue along the virgin flesh on the underside of her breasts, memorizing the flavor of the sweet musk of her skin. His hand dipped lower to caress her folds, pressing the heel of his palm to her pearl. Already sensitized from her first climax at his hands, Alaina quickly responded to the steady rhythm and pressure he applied, making her shake with need. She gasped and undulated against his hand, moving in time with him, tangling her fingers in his hair and holding his mouth to her breast as he laved the puckered tip, kissing and nipping, licking and suckling, strumming her to impossible heights all over again. He loved the sounds she made; he loved how uninhibited she was with him—how she trusted him with her body and her pleasure. Sterling’s cock throbbed painfully with every one of her gasps. His jaw clenched as he clutched futilely at the last shred of his sanity, slipping through his hands like water. Her moans and gasps continued to work him higher until he was forced to grind his pelvis against the bed to try to relieve some of the maelstrom overtaking his every nerve.

Her body gave and gripped his fingers as he slid two, then three inside of her. She was impossibly tight, but her liquid arousal eased the way. God, if she felt this unbelievable on his fingers, he could only imagine how she would feel riding his cock…

Unable to take it any longer, Sterling took his member into his hand, running the head through her slick folds, groaning at how good it felt—how good she felt—and positioned himself at her tight entrance. He looked back up her body to her flushed, elegant face, reveling in her passion-hazed gaze—something primal roaring with triumph from the knowledge that he’d given that to her—and began to flex his hips. Slowly. Gradually. Holding his breath as she allowed his intrusion inch by excruciating inch, he paused only when he felt her body tense. His arms trembled with the restraint he employed and it took everything in him not to give into the tingling at the base of his spine begging for release.

“It’s alright,” he shakily reassured her, placing a kiss upon each of her tightly closed eyelids. His body screamed to thrust home and pound into her, finally claiming his wife as his, but he held it at bay.

“I can’t—” Alaina panted and flinched. She was too tight and he, too large. He’d hoped not to cause her pain, but it was now evident that it was inevitable.

“You can,” Sterling reassured her before he took a deep breath and lowered his chest to hers, bracing his forearms on either side of her head. He began peppering gentle kisses across her face even though his every nerve was wracked with luscious agony. He steadfastly held his hips still to allow her to accommodate his girth. He felt her relax in increments as she returned his kisses, wrapping her arms around his neck, twisting her fingers in his hair, and running her nails across his scalp.

She held him there, meeting his lips and teeth and tongue with her own. They took turns suckling and nibbling, trading erotic sighs and moans. Finally, Alaina’s thighs fell apart, but still, she was too tense. Sterling reached between them once more and caressed where their bodies were joined. He circled her clitoris, working her arousal toward its peak once more with careful strokes and plucks. She whimpered and moaned his name, her body teasing his cock, pulling him deeper, beckoning him home until, finally, Sterling could take it no more and he breached her maidenhead, fully seating him to the hilt. Alaina gasped in surprise, but it quickly melted back into passion as he began to move.

Sterling reveled in the possession, the way they fit together, the way they completed one another. She was so wet for him, slick with the nectar of her arousal, and it eased his way. Every ripple of her inner muscles was the most divine torture, holy and hellish all at once. He ground his hips against hers, trailing his hand along her thighs and encouraging her to wrap those long legs of hers around his hips.

This is what he’d waited for…this night with Alaina in his arms. She was astonishingly gorgeous, brilliant, and his in every way. Just like he was hers.

Nothing could measure up to Alaina.

No one could measure up to her.

The profound relief at finally having her in his bed, of having her welcome him with open arms, of claiming her from the inside out was nearly overwhelming. She overtook every one of his senses—made the rest of the world disappear.

“Yes,” he growled, burying his face in her floral-scented neck. A delighted curse slipped from his lips when she tilted her hips just so. What she lacked in experience, she made up for in pure instinct. “God, Alaina,” he groaned. She felt so good, so right, so safe.

She was his home.

Her nails raked his shoulders in white-hot streaks of need; they plunged into his hair and bit his scalp as she yanked his head down for an open-mouthed kiss. He gladly obliged her, and they traded sighs and cries and groans.

Undulating against her, their sweat-slicked bodies meeting at an increasingly frantic pace, Sterling felt the beginnings of a powerful climax building again at the base of his spine. He needed her to come; he needed to feel her orgasm pulse around him. He needed confirmation that it, too, was more than he ever could have imagined.

Sterling leaned back and adjusted the angle to stroke a new place inside of her. In response, Alaina’s head tossed from side to side, and she muttered incoherently as if she were overcome with fever. Her body fluttered and clenched him most deliciously.

“That’s it,” he ground out. “Let go,” he commanded. Alaina’s body tensed and then trembled as she shattered. She dug her heels into his arching back and released a gasping cry which culminated in his name being torn from her lips in a delighted sob. Her sheath milked every last shred of control from his body and Sterling was lost. A series of deep, jerking thrusts signaled his climax, a guttural roar underscoring his utter and complete surrender. She may have been limp and sated beneath him, but Sterling knew, in that moment, Alaina owned him, everything he was, and everything he would ever be.

Alaina awoke to the caress of large, calloused hands massaging her back in languid strokes. The slow, warm movements seemed to find and lavish just the right amount of attention to each sore muscle. From the base of her skull to the indentation of her lower back, everything was given its due consideration until she was practically molten from it.

She released a little involuntary moan of delight, relishing in the unfamiliar—yet far from unwelcome—treatment. She didn’t open her eyes, instead, savoring the strong fingers and broad palms and the pleasure they wrought. She stretched out on her stomach and allowed herself to be engulfed in Sterling’s scent left there both from sleep and their earlier sweat-slicked lovemaking.

“Do you like that?” her husband asked in a low whisper.

“Mmm…” was the only reply she could manage.

She buried her face in his pillows, inhaling deeply as his hands worked lower to stroke her buttocks and the muscles of the backs of her thighs.

“Do you have any idea how beautiful you are?” Sterling asked though it was clear he didn’t expect a response. “I could simply stare at you for endless hours and never grow bored. I ache to learn every freckle and hollow, every curve and place that makes you sigh.” She felt him trace a triangle on the very center of her back. “Did you know you have a trio of flecks here?” There was a light rasp of midnight beard and the warm press of kisses along her spine. “And do you realize how much I love knowing that I’m the only man who has seen them?” Despite her better sense, the possessive heat in his tone was intoxicating…because she liked the same things about him. It was heady to know that he’d waited for her all this time; that Sterling had wanted only her for all this time. This, coupled with the earth-shattering joy to which he’d introduced her, could be enough to make her lose her mind and her heart.

The last thing she’d expected that evening had been winding up in Sterling’s arms and his bed, but she couldn’t say she was sorry about it in the least. They’d learned together, found the right rhythm, and discovered bliss in one another’s arms. She could hardly believe that it could only get better from there when she was utterly boneless when she was in his arms.

Eventually, Sterling’s caresses became less and less innocent; the circles he drew with his hands grew wider and wider to encompass the curve of her waist, the sides of her breasts, the cleft of her bottom. He nudged her thighs apart and she obliged as his fingers moved slowly, teasingly closer to where she already throbbed and ached for him all over again, but never quite touching her there. She was slick in anticipation; her body preparing for him to fill and overwhelm her. Just the thought of having his thick, hot flesh between her legs once more made her moan.

Still, Sterling continued his patient ministrations for what felt like an eternity until Alaina finally arched her back with a whimper, wordlessly begging him for more.

More of everything.

He paused in his kisses and she felt his wicked smile against her shoulder just before his fingers delved between her thighs, parting her dewy folds to find that pearl of pleasure he’d discovered some hours earlier. He continued to stroke her, the broad head of his sex twitching against her thigh, insisting upon its own desires and exciting her beyond reason. He rubbed her from her clitoris to her entrance again and again, teasing the swollen flesh and spreading her slickness until she rocked back against him. Her nipples grew taut and hard against the mattress, and her entire body overflowed with anticipation, humming with it like a harp string. Each pass of Sterling’s fingers thrummed against that cord, sending tingling vibrations to her fingers and toes, and back again. Fisting the bedclothes, she felt herself climbing dangerously high to where the air thinned, and she had to gasp to pull enough air into her lungs.

Just before she tumbled over that precipice, Sterling removed his hand. Ignoring her whimpering complaint, he grabbed her hips and hauled her back against his front so they both lay on their sides. Curling one large hand around her thigh, he brought her leg over his hip and, with one swift, decisive thrust, he slid home to the hilt. They groaned in unison.

Alaina’s body was sensitive and slightly sore from their earlier exertions, but, when Sterling began to move, it all melted away on a tide of pleasure. She loved the sounds he made, the uncontrolled desirous grunts and moans, the erotic words he whispered into the shell of her ear—how he reveled in her body, how her sharp tongue drove him wild, how much he loved being inside of her. Even the collision and pull of their wet flesh gliding together drove her higher. He wrapped a strong corded arm around her waist to hold her in place and ground against her, pressing his teeth into the curve where her neck met her shoulder with just enough pressure to mix pain and eroticism.

It wasn’t long before Alaina’s climax was upon her. She tensed and trembled, arching back into his thrusts, crying out Sterling’s name as he increased his speed and ferocity. He pounded into her from behind, claiming her, and followed her shortly, filling her with more and more of his hot seed with every pulse of his orgasm.

They lay like that for many minutes, savoring the throbbing aftermath of their lovemaking, the air filled with their heavy breaths and pounding hearts, until Sterling slid from her body and tugged her flush to him. He enveloped her with his limbs and buried his face in her unbound hair. There, cradled safe and close in the arms of her husband, Alaina drifted off to sleep once more.

*

Sterling rose soundlessly and stealthily from the bed early the following morning. The sight of a sated woman— his wife —still lying there sound asleep, buried in a nest of pillows and a rumpled cobalt coverlet was one of the most satisfying sights of his existence.

Waking there with her beside him, curled against his side like a deceptively peaceful cat…he hadn’t felt so warm and content in Lord only knew how long. He committed the curve of her cheek, the fan of her long, tawny lashes to his memory, and went to summon his valet to his dressing room so as not to disturb Alaina’s slumber. He planned on enjoying breakfast while fully savoring the knowledge that she was content and in his bed at last. He made a mental note to ask for a tray to be prepared for her later so she could rest as long as she liked. Nothing was quite so gratifying as having one’s wife as safe and secure as Alaina was in his bed.

His life was finally falling into place, and it was better than he’d ever dared dream.