Page 32 of Goodbye, Earl (Ladies’ Revenge Club #4)

She pulled his hand lower, letting him feel the source of that pulse, the slamming of her heart against her chest, right between the swell of her perfect breasts, still hidden beneath the dressing gown.

“Ah, but that is wrong,” she said suddenly, and flung his hand away, making him practically whimper in protest.

She smiled at him, reaching to her waist and loosening the belt that held her dressing gown in place, letting it sink off both shoulders, easing down over the swell of her bosom, just short of revealing those rosy nipples to him.

“You actually are killing me,” he told her desperately. “You actually are a murderer.”

“Yes, good,” she said, dropping the fabric the rest of the way and letting him look. Letting him ogle. She took his hand back up and slid it under the skirt of her robe, along the inside of her thigh. “I thought perhaps the pirate king should be more … direct.”

He watched in abject awe as she lifted her hips and positioned his hand the way she wanted it, sinking back down onto his fingers, taking them into her like they were always hers for purposes of pleasure.

They both gasped then; they both pulled in the same sharp air.

He didn’t remember doing it, leaning forward and wrapping that arm back around her waist, holding her still while he took advantage of where she’d put his hand, of what she was letting him do.

He pressed his lips into the delicate detail of her collarbone, scraped his teeth against it as he found a pace for touching her this way, as he found a rhythm.

He throbbed beneath it all, rigid against her backside while he played with her, while he kissed his way lower down her body and caught one of those tempting little nipples between his lips.

“Oh,” she sighed, rocking into the motion. “Yes. Yes, this is correct.”

“Not quite,” he grumbled, flicking his tongue in a way he knew she would love, losing himself in the memory of motions he thought he had forgotten. “Not yet.”

She did not immediately answer, choosing instead to take what she wished from his hand at her leisure, without apology or pause. She arched her back, allowing him to enhance the experience with his mouth at her breasts. She touched his wet hair, twisting it between her fingertips.

“So close,” she breathed, gripping his hair and pulling his head back, tilting it up so she could lean down and claim his mouth, so she could taste his tongue as she came unspooled on his hand, as she crashed over the satisfaction that she was owed.

It nearly snapped his sanity in half. It nearly broke him.

She quivered and gasped and gripped at him, writhing and rolling until the sensation had passed. Until she was sated. And then she eased her hold on him, her lips curving as she looked down into his face.

“Claire …” he began.

“Take your robe off,” she whispered. “I want to see you.”

He watched helplessly as she rolled off him, leaving that dark red velvet in his lap like evidence of what had just occurred.

She fell onto her side on the pillow next to him, watching him through her lashes as he pushed himself up onto his knees.

She watched as he tugged at the knot at his waist. She watched as he dragged his own dressing gown over his shoulders, down the path of his ribs.

He gritted his teeth at the way her eyes consumed him, at how they followed the path of his flesh in the same hungry necessity he had felt when she revealed her own.

It seemed impossible to him that she could crave him the way he craved her. It seemed like more of a fiction than the damned pirate king and all his booty.

She reached out, running her fingernails down the center of his chest, past his navel, over his cock. She watched the progress of her own touch like she was committing it to memory. “Yes,” she breathed. “God, you are so beautiful.”

He didn’t move. He presented himself to her for her inspection, for her enjoyment, for her love. He swallowed his own heartbeat in the name of patience, in the name of devotion. He wouldn’t move, not until she looked back to his eyes and raised her arms up, inviting him into them.

“Freddy,” she said softly. “My love.”

He crawled over her, staring down at her, breathing her in.

He let her touch him, let her guide him into her, let her set the pace.

He did not know how he managed it, how he resisted the most primal and roaring impulses in his blood, only that he did, and because of it, he was now engulfed in abject pleasure.

They moved together, her silky thighs sliding over the thrusting motion of his hips. She kissed him, mirrored the tasting of his clavicle, and found her pleasure again in stuttering breaths and gentle rippling of the air.

And when she went still, he found his as well. He collected it, as though it were sitting just in reach this entire time and all he had to do was decide to claim it. He felt it gather and then ignite, shooting through his body like white-hot absolution, echoing through his bones and his breath.

He collapsed.

For a long time, he lay there, stunned. Undone. In bliss.

They both languished in it, catching their breath, returning to Earth.

When at long last she turned her face on the pillow and opened her mouth to speak to him, she was interrupted by the violence of her own fatigue. She yawned like it had speared her from across the room in a violent assault.

She yawned bone deep, her fingers finding their way back up over the bottom half of her face, like she’d used the last of what she had today in this encounter and the lights were now being doused in the manorhouse that was her body, whether she liked it or not.

It made him feel like everything inside him had gone soft and melty.

“Ah, my girl,” he said, reaching out to touch her face. “My beloved.”

The first rays of dawn had started to stick their fingers through the seam of his curtains, dancing in pink prisms along his wall. “Sleep. You can say whatever you need to say tomorrow.”

“No! I want to—” She yawned again, her hands fully covering her face now, her shoulders going up with the force of it, with the demand. “Oh, bother.”

He chuckled, brushing the hair from her face and shaking his head.

“I’ll take you back to your bed,” he said, pushing himself up and coming around to gather her into his arms, hoisting her up into them like a bride at the threshold.

He grabbed their dressing gowns and draped them over her for the journey.

“Oh, but Freddy,” she protested, burrowing into his chest in a groggy, clinging warmth.

She didn’t say anything else.

She let him carry her to the master room. She let him lay her out on her sheets and pull the coverlet over her. She let him step away to douse the last of the flames in the little cottage. She let him climb in beside her.

And with the very final motion she had left, she reached for his fingers and held them, falling below the horizon just as the sun began to crest it.