Page 49 of My Darling Mr. Darling
The pressure eased; his jaw slacked. “Getonwith it?”
She breathed a sigh at the minor relief, though the severe cast of his brown eyes as he stared down at her in abject shock hardly made her feel anylessawkward. “Yes. I mean to say—I don’t believe this is supposed to take quite so long. Are you certain you’re doing it right?”
“Am I certain—” A bark of a laugh cut straight through his incredulous inquiry. “Yes; I’m certain. Oh, Vi, you have so much to learn.”
“Don’tpatronizeme,” Violet snapped, shoving at his shoulders in aggravation—even though all that it accomplished was to make her slip along the wall and provoke a rough groan from deep in his throat as he readjusted his grip to keep hold of her. His arm slipped beneath her, somehow effortlessly supporting her weight, and he made a strange sound that was probably yet another laugh he’d tried to mask, damn him.
“I can’t believe we are arguing when we’re—no, I take it back. I certainlycanbelieve it.” His lips touched high on her cheek; an absent, affectionate gesture that, for reasons unknown, blunted the sharp edge of her ire. “Your class has concluded, Vi. It’s my turn to instructyou.” He tugged one glove off of his hand with his teeth, and then that hand slid beneath the crumpled skirt of her dress, fishing through the linen of her chemise until at last they splayed over her hip. His thumb coasted over tight, sparse curls, until it found that tiny bud of flesh hidden beneath them, and rubbed in a slow circle that made her clench her teeth against a vicious wave of heat that seared her straight through to her bones.
She made a noise she had never heard herself make before: agonized, needy—embarrassing. Her inner muscles clenched, dragging a deep, rough sound from him as he renewed that pressure that moments ago she had found almost burdensome, and somehow—somehow—this time, her body ceased resisting the invasion, and he gained that last, crucial inch, releasing a low hum of satisfaction near her ear.
“I know what I’m doing,” he said, his thumb still moving in those maddening circles that made her thoughts threaten to scatter like so many dandelion seeds to the wind. “I’ll take care of you.”
Why in the world had he saidthat? And worse—why had it made her eyes sting like she’d been chopping onions?
“I don’t need you to take care of me,” she snarled, gripping fistfuls of his hair. “I only needthis.” She squeezed her thighs around him, rolling her hips as far as she was able, gratified when his brown eyes darkened and a shudder tripped down his spine. His chest rose and fell like a bellows with each frenetic breath, and somehow she knew she had pushed him past the threshold of what he was able to bear, understood that every measure of civility that he had displayed had been forherbenefit.
What manner of man had she unleashed?
John gritted out a foul word—one gentlemen simply didnotuse in a lady’s hearing—and muttered, “Next time will be better. I promise.”
How like a man, to be so presumptuous as to plan anexttime already.
His mouth crashed over hers, stealing the last of her breath as he moved in strong lunges, fast, rough, coarse—but his thumb played still between her thighs, and she couldn’t quite stifle the odd little whimper that rose in her throat.
She’d expected it to be the same. The same awkward, brief encounter—satisfying enough, but not so personal that she would be overly affected. Just two people taking their pleasure of one another. Nothing messy.
Thiswas messy, and personal, and—and she was involved in it in a way she never had been with Edward.Shewas the one making all of those humiliating, desperate sounds.Sheclutched at his shoulders, nails raking the surface of his coat as if she would pull it apart at the seams.Shethrew her head back when he movedjust soand touched some place inside her that sent a little zip of bliss coursing through her blood.
Her hair was falling down from its neat coif, pins clicking to the floor, but she couldn’t find it in herself to care about anything more than the heat of his breath mingling with hers, the frenzied motion of his hips that seemed to force the air from her lungs on every furious plunge, the dedicated circles he made with his thumb, driving her closer—closer—
And then he stopped. As if he knew she hovered right at the precipice of something amazing, hestopped. She let out a little whine of frustration, scowling as he let her hover there, unfulfilled.
“Why?” she cried, exasperated, infuriated.
“You ignored me,” John said, the rasp of his voice slicing across her frayed nerves. “You’ve ignored me for day after day. I won’t have it, Vi. What have I done to merit it? Have I been so very cruel to you?”
Justnow, he was. But she flinched, because the accusation had been true—even if it hadn’t quite been her intent. And then flinched again, as his thumb once more took up that gentle caress—only too soft, too slow, to be anything but agonizing. “Couldn’t we speak of this later?”
“No,” he said, and she gathered from the clipped tone of his voice that he intended to proceed with his torture until she ceded to his wishes.
“I wasn’t ignoring you,” she gasped. “I already said so.”
“Then why?” He gave her a bit of his weight, the barest hint of a thrust, and she bit back a moan, her sensitive private flesh clutching at him. “Why? I thought—”
“Because I knew this would happen!” she admitted in a tinny whimper. “I knew it, and I tried not to let it.”
He stilled so abruptly she could have cried. “You didn’t want this?”
Violet choked on a wry laugh. “I wanted ittoo much.”
“Good,” he said, his breath sighing out in relief. “You won’t ignore me again?”
She shook her head, the movement jerky and imprecise. As if to reward her for her agreement, he began all over again, building the intensity slowly, inch by devious inch, as if he refused to surrender his hard-won control.
“Next time, you’ll come to me. You’ll let me make love to you properly, in a bed,” he said fiercely, his voice filled with inflexible command.
“Yes. Yes! Please, just—don’t stop.” Her range of motion was too limited to show him what she wanted from him, but she scraped at the nape of his neck with her nails and watched the heat grow in his eyes, and that was almost as satisfying.