Page 37 of Duke of Wickedness (Regency Gods #4)

When the stays were entirely unlaced, the halves spread entirely, leaving only the whisper-thin fabric of her chemise between Ariadne and the night air, she lost her patience.

David pressed another kiss above the neckline of the garment.

“Are you never going to—” she started to demand hotly, then broke off with an utterly wanton moan as he closed his mouth over one of her aching buds, the lace still between them.

It was an astonishing contrast, the soft wet heat of his mouth and tongue and the rasp of the thread, which suddenly seemed coarse against her skin, no matter how well-made or expensive it had been.

“Oh,” she said. “Oh. Oh, my. David.”

She felt his lips curve up into a smile the instant before he removed his mouth.

“I’ve imagined doing that, too,” he said. “Well, not precisely—in my imaginings, there was no lace covering you?—”

And with that, he tugged down the other side of the chemise and offered the same treatment to the other breast, this time with nothing between them.

“Which do you prefer?” he asked a few delicious moments later, and he would have sounded conversational except for the way the words rasped in his throat.

Ariadne let out some sort of insensible gurgle.

“Hm,” he said. “Hard to say, really. For my part, I find both rather fucking amazing.”

Why did his coarse language strike something deep inside her, making her insides clench in a way she now recognized as the rising tide of pleasure?

“Your personal satisfaction in your work,” she managed to say, “is evident in the effect.”

He laughed, as she had meant him to, and that lit her up in a different way, knowing that even in this moment, she could entertain him, could push back, could bring him happiness the way he brought to her.

“If you can still make jokes,” he told her, “I’m not doing my job correctly.”

He returned to his previous application of his mouth, which left him unable to speak for some time.

He pulled down the other half of her chemise as well, which Ariadne appreciated; for all her inability to answer his question shortly before, she did crave the direct touch of his skin on hers, wherever she could have it.

This time, however, even as he kissed her and murmured things like, “you have perfect breasts; they deserve a monument” and “I could do this forever” and “God, the sounds you make turn me hard as stone,” he slid one hand down her stomach, over her ribs, and toward the space between her legs.

The first brush of his fingers against her most sensitive flesh didn’t shock her, necessarily—he had made his intentions obvious enough—but it did cause her to jolt. She was so eager for him that she feared she could go off like a firecracker with barely any touch there at all.

He had no mercy on her, however. He kept up his dual attentions—his mouth at her breasts, his hand between her legs—until she was moaning and writhing.

He slipped a finger inside her mere moments before she detonated, waves of warm, glorious heat coursing through her, making her shudder and buck against his mouth and hand.

It felt spectacular—and still, when the waves faded, she pouted.

He laughed. “Did that not meet your needs, pet?” he asked. He hadn’t fully removed his hand; he’d withdrawn from her body, but was still tracing mild, aimless patterns against her upper thighs, something that made her feel warm in a lazy sort of way.

“Well,” she said, not wanting to sound too churlish about the whole thing, “I wouldn’t say that, but…”

He did not look at all offended. Instead, a gleam of pleasure lit in his expression.

“But you still want more? Oh, my sweet girl.” He surged upward in what would have been a frankly impressive feat of athleticism if she were capable of noticing things other than the way his body pressed against hers. “We are just getting started.”

“We…are?”

She was not necessarily opposed to this; she would have to be a madwoman to be opposed to the idea of more of that kind of pleasure on principle.

But she didn’t realize that such a thing was possible .

“Oh, yes,” he said, pressing another kiss to her throat, like he couldn’t bear not touching her, not even for a moment. It felt almost as good as the way he was touching her to realize that.

“One of the marvelous things about women,” he said, continuing his lazy caresses, “is that you are capable of taking as much pleasure as you desire. Gentlemen, alas, have certain physical limitations that prevent such a thing.”

Ariadne didn’t know what that meant, but she planned to find out.

Later, though. All that would wait for later.

For now, she had a far more pressing concern, one that became extremely evident when she felt the cool touch of one of his buttons against her stomach.

“Why are you dressed?” she demanded hotly.

He paused only briefly at this abrupt change of topic, then offered her a dazzling smile.

“Well, that’s actually related, little bird,” he said, resuming the maddening touch of his fingertips—against her hip, now.

“I am still dressed, because you drive me half mad with want, and if you drive me all the way mad—if you make me spill before I am ready to do so—I shall be finished for the evening.”

He tilted his head, as if considering. “Well, I’ll still have fingers and a tongue, but you asked me to show you everything, and I wouldn’t be able to do that. I’m not as young as I once was, alas.”

This information was fascinating, even if Ariadne wasn’t entirely certain that she understood its full import. Nevertheless, her fantasies were starting to veer in the direction of ripping his clothes apart with her bare hands, so she decided it was worth the risk.

“Clothes off,” she demanded. “Now.”

Heat flared in his gaze. “As my lady commands.”

He leaned back so he was hovering above her again, then reached behind himself and pulled his shirt off in a fluid motion. One of his buttons popped off, though he didn’t seem to notice. Nor did she, not really, once he lowered himself again, and she felt the expanse of his bare skin against hers.

“I can feel you,” she said nonsensically, giddily.

“Sweetheart,” he said into the crook of her neck, “if you keep saying things to me in that breathless little voice of yours, we’re going to have that problem I was just talking to you about.” He kissed her neck, her shoulder, her arm.

“Really,” he said between kisses. Elbow, forearm, wrist. “It’s all your own fault for being so goddamned desirable.” A kiss to the palm of her hand, on the muscle at the base of her thumb, against her knuckles.

“Oh, yes,” she said, letting herself sound a little more breathless, just to torment him. “Blame me.”

She traced her nails down the muscles in his back. He bucked against her.

He fixed her with an accusatory look, then stopped kissing her hand to bite gently against her hipbone.

This time, she was the one to jolt.

“You won’t win this game, Ariadne,” he warned just before he pressed his mouth to her center.

She was already primed from her previous crisis; he didn’t need to be gentle or soft with her, and he didn’t try.

He dove upon her, fingers and tongue and ardent desire, and she fought against the impulse to press herself even more firmly against him.

Eventually, though, she lost the willpower to hold herself back, and it took David’s free hand, pressed firmly on her lower abdomen, to keep her in place.

That pressure heightened everything else, and again, she toppled. It was a little different, this second crisis, perhaps not as shocking, perhaps not as sudden.

But good God, did it still feel incredible.

“You look so gorgeous like this,” David praised, running his hands gently up and down her legs, the gesture soothing rather than arousing.

She was, alas, still rather aroused.

She felt as though she had no bones in her body, and her mind had long since turned to that soft, giggly stuff that went into blancmange. She did not feel at all confident that she could raise her head if she tried.

But some primal part of her body remembered that he had promised her something more, and so the languor that had previously affected her after her climax did not take hold. An energy hummed inside her, keeping her ready—eager—for more.

“Gorgeous. Perfect. A dream,” he said, sounding a little dreamy himself. There was a thread of iron beneath his worshipful tone, though, and it reminded Ariadne that though she’d taken her pleasure twice, he hadn’t gotten the same chance.

In all their encounters, he hadn’t taken anything for himself. She thought he would dispute it, but she suddenly felt desperate to give him some facet of the things that he’d given to her.

She was suddenly desperate to see how beautiful he looked when he was completely undone.

That longing gave her enough energy to lift her head toward him.

“David,” she said, not caring that she sounded needy and pleading. “Make love to me.”

For an instant, his expression was entirely naked, and there was so much there. Longing, want. Anticipation. Nerves.

Fear.

It was there and then gone, that mélange of feeling, replaced by his charming exterior, though it seemed rather more fragile than usual. Ariadne might have disliked seeing that mask slide into place, but some instinct told her that he needed it right now.

“Of course, little bird,” he said. “I—yes. Of course I will.”

Ariadne had been content to stay where David had placed her until this point, but now, as he stepped back and let his hand fall to the fastening of his trousers, she summoned strength in her weary muscles to push herself to the head of the bed and propped herself up against the frankly ridiculous number of pillows that David had assembled.