Page 38 of Duke of Wickedness (Regency Gods #4)
His trousers dropped, and Ariadne felt her mouth go dry as she saw all of him for the very first time.
His narrow hips were so different from hers, his legs more heavily furred, visible even with the light color of his hair.
His thighs were strong; if he looked athletic and rangy while dressed, he seemed even more so without his clothing, all ropy muscle and determined strength.
And between his legs…
Well, Ariadne felt silly about it, but she blushed to look at him, at the main difference between them. She admired him, shameless, amazed, impressed.
“You are beautiful,” she told him. “I?—”
She lost track of what she’d been meaning to say because the smile he had given her was so blinding, so happy, that it nearly caused her heart to stop in her chest.
“Just… come here, would you?” she asked, reaching up for him. “I need you.”
He came. He crawled across the bed to her, leonine and dangerous, but she wasn’t afraid, because how could she ever be afraid of him? It didn’t matter that this was new, and it didn’t matter that it was the distant, mysterious thing that young ladies were told they should fear.
This was David. He wouldn’t hurt her. She knew it like she knew her own name, like she knew her own heartbeat.
She grasped his face in her hands and pulled his lips toward hers, absolutely starving for another taste of him.
She hiked up a knee so that he could settle more comfortably against her, his arms going around her neck, one of her hands reaching over his shoulder to stroke up and down his back.
She relished every inch of him, from the bony protrusion of his spine to the curve of his muscles to the small, rough patch of some kind of scar.
The hair on his legs prickled her skin slightly, but she found that it was not at all unpleasant. The place between his legs seemed to burn twice as hot as the rest of him; it was a brand where he leaned his weight against her thigh.
Maybe it was the two climaxes she’d already enjoyed, but Ariadne found that she was in no rush to move ahead, not when this—this press of him against all of her—was so goddamn perfect.
“I could do this forever,” she murmured.
He seemed to go a little rigid, and she worried that she’d said the wrong thing, that she’d crossed that line between them that she always tried to tend to so carefully. But then he relaxed, leaning back against her.
“Me, too,” he said, the words scarcely more than a breath.
She wrapped both arms tight around him, like she could hold him close enough that it would make time stop entirely. He allowed no more than a hairsbreadth of space between them when he reached his hand down to guide himself inside her.
It was a slow stretch, the way he pressed into her.
It didn’t hurt, no matter what she’d been taught to fear; she could only attribute this to the way she was relaxed to the point of being boneless after David’s earlier ministrations.
She could feel every inch of him, however, pressing closer and closer until they were pressed together entirely, until she could feel him, inside and out.
“David,” she said as they clung to one another, their brows pressed together, just breathing. Just being together.
“My Ari,” he said back to her. “I—I have to move. Please.”
Once he said it, she also needed it.
“Yes,” she said. “Yes. Now.”
His movements were minute at first, then slightly more emphatic, but throughout it all, he kept as much of himself pressed to her as he could. She pressed her hips up to meet him as their skin grew slick with their exertions, and she thought, Oh, yes. Oh, no. How will I give him up after this ?
He jolted a little harder against her, and she was so goddamn grateful, because she couldn’t afford to be having those kinds of thoughts. She focused on the building heat within her.
It grew more slowly than it had before, but it burned higher, until she couldn’t gentle the way she grasped at him, couldn’t stop herself from digging her fingertips into his back.
She might have feared that she was hurting him, except the moment her fingers clenched into him, his movements grew faster, more frantic, more erratic.
“Ariadne,” he said, his voice catching on the word. “Ari. Sweetheart. Oh, Ari. I?—”
He gritted his teeth, then slammed into her with the hardest stroke yet.
The way it pressed against her sent her tumbling over the edge; she arched her back with a cry.
He stayed with her just long enough for her vision to go white with pleasure, then tore himself from her with his own shout, frantically clutching at a fistful of blankets as he spilled.
Ariadne panted for a few moments, waiting for the tingling in her limbs to subside. Beside her, she heard David’s heavy breaths in the air, as well.
Slowly, a smile spread across her face.
And when he finally moved, just enough to lay a gentle hand across her belly as her body cooled, all she could think was that doing this was the best decision she’d ever made.