Page 18 of Duke of Wickedness (Regency Gods #4)

This answer, at least, she could manage.

“Yes,” she gasped. “Yes, yes, please.”

For the barest instant, she felt the bite of his teeth against her skin, not hard enough to injure, or even to hurt, but enough that she really felt it. She bit her own lip to hold back what threatened to be an actual moan.

“Christ, Ariadne,” he murmured into her skin. “Do you know what it does to me when you bite your lip like that? It drives me fucking wild.”

They may have been listening to coarser language than this all evening, but hearing the swear from the duke’s lips made it a thousand times more alluring than did hearing it from some anonymous actor.

Suddenly, it seemed very stupid that she was still sitting here trying to pay attention to the heroine’s performance of pleasure when she could be experiencing real pleasure of her very own.

She pulled away just enough to look the duke in the eye.

His mouth was wet and shiny from where he’d been playing with her throat, and this, combined with the way his light brown hair flopped over his brow and the blown wide look to his eyes, made him look utterly debauched.

Not just a fallen angel, but the one who tempted you down with him, the one who made damnation seem really not so bad.

“Take me somewhere private,” she commanded him. “Now.”

Hunger surged across his face, but he hesitated.

“Don’t you want to watch the show?” he asked, all innocence.

“David,” she said. His name tasted right in her mouth, and he liked it too; she could tell from the way that hunger grew just a touch feral, like he was a man scarcely in control of himself. “Now.”

She didn’t think he would hesitate again after all that, but she wasn’t prepared to take the risk either.

She grasped his hand in hers and stood, dragging him out of the semi-private box and past the other theatergoers, at least half of whom were engaged in their own illicit encounters.

Their presence was almost a surprise. Ariadne had almost forgotten that anyone else was there.

They made it out of their box and into the makeshift hallway, which was even more dimly lit than the theater itself.

As soon as the shabby curtain dropped shut behind him, David—damn it, she even loved the feeling of his name in her mind; David, David, David —wrapped his arms around her from behind, one arm crossing up and between her breasts, the other around her waist, securing her to him.

From this position, she could feel a telltale hardness against her backside, and some instinctive drive within her urged her to press back against it.

“Do you think to drive me to distraction, little bird?” he asked, pressing kisses across the back of her neck, down to the first knobs of her spine. “Does it please you to feel how you have succeeded?”

“Yes,” she whimpered. “David, please.”

For a moment, it was his forehead against her neck instead of his mouth.

“You are a menace,” he muttered. She wasn’t certain that this was meant for her to hear. Before she could decide whether she ought to respond, though, he had stepped out from behind her and grabbed her arm. He tugged her along, moving purposefully through the darkened hallway.

The first secluded corner they came across was occupied. The second—also occupied.

The third, though? The third was all theirs.

David put his hands on Ariadne’s waist and spun her so that her back was nestled into the corner, then pressed in close so that her whole world was him—the feel of him, the smell of him, all fine soap and a hint of the cheap ale they’d been selling at the start of performance. It was entrancing.

They didn’t pause to speak, nor even to breathe, before their mouths were crashing together.

Ariadne threw her arms around his neck, crossing her wrists to pull him closer, to pull herself up and against him.

It was as though they were dancers, executing their synchronous movements with the ease of long practice—and yet, at the same time, it was thrillingly new.

“I underestimated you, little bird,” he admitted between kisses. “I thought this little performance would push you right to your limit. But you’re braver than anyone gives you credit for, aren’t you?”

Ariadne didn’t think it was bravery; this thing inside her was desire, burning bright and true.

“I just want to know ,” she managed, not caring if this was coherent. He would understand her. She just knew it. The words weren’t the point.

“Ari,” he murmured into her mouth, and the familiarity of that nickname made her feel even more intoxicated. “ I want to know. Show me. Show me what you do when you please yourself.”

While she was reeling from the implications of this, he stole another kiss, not that this gave her any time to think.

He pulled back and looked at her. She wondered if she looked as undone as he did, as pink of cheek and as wide of eyes. Surely, she had to look worse, given his experience. For her, this was the most arousing and alluring experience of her life.

For him, it was merely…another day.

The idea stung her pride, but she pushed it aside. Nothing in their bargain had been about David’s—the duke’s—enjoyment. He was her instructor. This was for her .

And yes, she did want to show him the way she’d learned how to give herself pleasure. She wanted him to give her that feeling back . Lord only knew it would be ten times as powerful, coming from his fingers.

So, she echoed the movements of the actor on the stage and slowly, achingly slowly, grasped two handfuls of her skirts and drew them up over her ankles, shins, knees.

“Goddamn,” David murmured, watching this movement with eager eyes. “Yes. Christ. Keep going. Please.”

His praise was nearly as consuming as his touch—except, no, not it wasn’t. She needed him to touch her right now .

“David,” she pleaded, because that had given her spectacular results before. “Please. Touch me.”

He nodded, then put his hand in hers. At first, she didn’t quite understand, and then it all fell into place.

Show me , he had said.

“Hold my skirts,” she commanded, putting a fistful of fabric into her free hand. He tugged them roughly to the side, using his knee to pin the velvet against the wall. This motion brought him even closer against her, and let him reach the place where she guided his hand more easily.

The first touch of his fingers against her sensitive core made her let out a cry so loud that one might have thought she was trying to rival the actress on the stage. David caught her moan in his mouth, swallowing it down as he caressed her tongue with his.

“You must be quiet, my darling,” he chided, even as she guided his fingers in a rough circular motion that glanced around but didn’t quite touch that sensitive spot at the apex of her core. “So, so quiet.”

This second command he punctuated with a firmer press against her, a stutter in his motion that wrenched another noise from her.

He tsk ed. “That’s very naughty,” he chided. “Don’t you want to be good for me, Ariadne?”

“God,” she panted.

“No,” he corrected. “David is just fine.”

He was so irritating. Forget nightingales-he was a nightmare made into a man. And yet…

And yet, everything he did seemed to only serve to make her burn hotter, spiral higher. Because she did want to be good for him. She wanted to bask in his praise. And she wanted to tease him back, giving as good as she took for every barb that came her way.

She wanted all of it.

And so, when he pulled his fingers free from hers and murmured, “Can I?” against her mouth, she didn’t pause to ask what he meant. She didn’t care. She was happy to let him do anything.

She nodded and kept nodding until he moved his hand so that he could keep up the rhythm on that sensitive place—and slip a finger inside her at the same time.

Oh . Oh, she had never thought to do that, not that her explorations had been all that comprehensive. Obviously, they hadn’t been, if she’d missed something as consuming as the feeling of his finger moving inside her.

“Show me, little bird,” he urged, his motions growing quicker, his breath panting against her neck. She let her head drop back against the wall, let her eyes flutter shut. “Show me your pleasure. Please. I’m so selfish for it. Give it to me. I need it.”

He pressed his own hardness against her thigh, and it was that moment, the one where she felt the proof positive evidence that this wasn’t just for her, that it was doing something for him, too, that tipped her right over the edge.

Her whole body seized, and for a moment, she was nothing more than the pleasure of his touch.

“Oh, yes,” he praised, the motions of his hand guiding her through the onslaught of her pleasure. “God, look at you. Oh, Ari, you are so beautiful. I’ll never get enough.”

Ariadne might be innocent, but she knew enough to know that this was just bedroom talk, the kind of thing that people said to one another in the heat of the moment. It wasn’t real .

But her fear, as she came down from her high, as the last waves of ecstasy let her loose from their grasp, was that it was real for her .

She might never get enough.

And that was a problem. Because this?

This could not last.