Page 6 of Sloth: The Fallen Earl (Seven Deadly Sins #4)

C ressida’s heart raced.

What did men and women do after such an outrageously intimate act? She expected him to roll to the other side of the bed and sleep, but he merely drew her against his side. Cressida’s breath continued to come in ragged spurts.

While she came slowly back down to earth, she draped a hand over her brow. She’d never felt anything like this; as though her body had awakened from a dormant slumber she’d not been aware of, only to come to life in an explosion of lights, colors, and sounds. Her friends had spoken of this moment at their meetings over on Waverton Street. With the detail they’d gone into about relations between men and women, Cressida had been horrified at most and dubious at best as to how any of that could be the otherworldly experience they made it out to be.

In fairness to her friends, there hadn’t been any words they could have used to describe lovemaking that would have done the magic that’d taken place here with Benedict justice.

Cressida turned her head and found his eyes tightly shut. She used the moment to study him. His body glistened with a faint sheen of sweat, transforming each expertly crafted sinew of his muscular body into an exquisite work of art. The chiseled plains of his chest muscles tapered to reveal abdominal muscles so defined as to be divided into six parts.

It was as though he felt her stare upon him. Benedict pulled her closer into his muscular frame, slick with sweat.

Burrowing into him, Cressida wrapped her right arm around his waist.

He touched his lips to the top of her head. “Have you ever touched a man, sweetheart, the way I touched you?” he asked huskily.

Despite all the ways he’d touched, caressed, and licked her, Cressida, timidly shook her head.

Another one of those desire-filled chuckles shook his frame. His thickly hooded lashes dipped. “Do you want to, my lady?”

When she realized she was, in fact, the lady he addressed, Cressida nodded with a shameful exuberance.

Where did that eager bobbing of her head come from? What manner of wanton had she become?

Benedict took her hand lightly in his and guided it between their bodies—his hard and contoured and chiseled muscle, and hers dainty, soft, and so much smaller than his broad, powerful strength.

He placed her palm over his rampant member.

With her previous embarrassment forgotten, Cressida stared in transfixed awe at his member. He was gloriously endowed—long, thick, slick as satin but as hot and hard as steel.

“Like this,” he murmured, closing her fingers in a fist around him. With an intuition as old as Eve, Cressida gripped him firmly. She would have worried she’d hurt him, but given the rock-like hardness of him, she believed that an impossible feat.

Tentatively, she took her time to learn the feel of him. The air grew more charged, her body thrummed, and then she held perfectly still as reality came rearing its big, ugly head. She knew very well how this ended—with him putting this ridiculously huge instrument inside her.

Suddenly dubious, Cressida lifted her concerned eyes to his lust-filled ones. “You are so….” She tried to find the way to say it without making a complete embarrassment of herself.

He pressed a tender kiss along her temple. “Yes?”

“Big,” she whispered. “ Too big. Are you certain this will fit inside me?” In her opinion, the odds were doubtful to impossible.

With a strained, pained-sounding laugh, Benedict rested his brow upon hers.

“I’m glad I’ve amused you,” she mumbled, making to remove her hand.

“On the contrary, ma petite. You are a treasure.”

His silky praise was too raw and real to be feigned, and it sent heat spiraling inside her.

It did not, however, erase Cressida’s worry.

“It occurs to me you’ve still not said whether it will work,” she muttered. “Which gives me reason to doubt your…”

Benedict slid his hand between her legs and slipped his fingers into her damp curls. The moment he glided them through the slight nest, he eased them inside her soaked channel, and Cressida’s body responded.

“It will work,” he said, his voice strained and primally raw. “It will work because your body was made for my cock. It craves it. You crave it.”

His words combined with the mastery with which he worked his long fingers sucked her away in an eddy of desire. For even though she remained a virgin—for now— she knew he spoke the truth.

With his spare hand, Benedict guided her palm back around his velvety member.

He leaned in and whispered against her ear. “Now, touch me while I touch you.” Like a skilled instructor schooling her on the art of lovemaking, Benedict guided her with the naughtiest of instructions. “Then tug on me. No, no, more of a stroke. Stroke me.” He showed her the motion. “Slow at first. Yes, just like that.” He kissed her temple. “You learn quick, little love.”

Even as Benedict teased her aching center, Cressida remained centered in the effect she was clearly having on him: his countenance turned pained. His beautifully hard mouth tautened.

It became too much.

Frantic, she pulled harder and faster at his length.

“You’ve got it.” He heaped praise upon her, his baritone gruff and low, hinted at a man whose desire for her was as great as hers was for him, and something in that brought her defenses down. “Slower,” he coached. “Yes, that’s it. Grip me harder.”

Panting, she drove her hips into his hands and stroked him while he stroked her.

Benedict opened his eyes. Through the heavy desire in those blue depths, they glinted with a strained amusement. “Ah, my beautiful kitten likes touching me too.”

As forbidden as his prediction proved to be, the truth within them was greater. Cressida couldn’t meet his knowing and faintly gloating expression. She hid her face against his side and stroked him in the way he tutored her.

Pride be damned, Cressida remained powerless to the need within her that sent her hips bucking against his palm. “B-Benedict?” Something was happening to her. Some overwhelming feeling she’d never experienced, let alone identify or name, came over her. Surely, she was on the cusp of death.

“Ma petite is ready to go again, is she?” His teasing voice emerged low and husky.

When she stole a peek at him, she caught the unforgivingly hard grin on his beautifully formed mouth. His smile hadn’t always been so empty. There’d been a time when it’d been full and sincere and almost shy. From afar, she’d witnessed him bestow that gift upon so many others, once even Cressida, back when they’d first been introduced. She’d mourned its eventual transformation and remained painfully aware of the reason for the death of his beautiful smile. Never had she missed it more than she did in this moment.

And here she’d believed there could be no emotion she felt more painfully this night than horror, terror, and desire. But here it was.

Humiliation—deep, soul-crushing humiliation.

She jerked her attention back to his shoulder. She couldn’t look at him, but neither could she stop driving herself against his masterful fingers.

“Look at me.” His voice, low and faintly feral, commanded, leaving Cressida with no other choice but to obey. “You’ll feel no shame in what we do here. Is that clear?”

Somehow, she managed to nod.

Intuitively, the speed with which she stroked him grew more urgent; her grip upon him tightened.

His eyes clenched shut, Benedict groaned and rocked his hips into her hand. “Yes, just like that,” he urged, faintly pleading. “God, you are so good.”

The hungering that’d turned her into an animal, now easily identifiable, threatened to break her apart. Moaning and crying, she moved wildly against his hand, desperate for another release.

All she knew was that only Benedict could help save her. “Please,” she sobbed, grinding herself against his fingers. “I’m on fire, Benedict.”

Just as she knew, if he didn’t help her and soon, she’d surely die in his arms.

This had gone on long enough.

When it came to bedsport, he was as much a master of restraint and self-control as he was in his business dealings.

But this libidinous bit had pushed Wakefield to his limit.

His breath coming in savage spurts, he climbed astride her. Wedging a knee between hers, he parted her and lay between her sweet thighs to worship at the altar of her womanhood.

All the while, the wanton beauty gazed adoringly up at him with a warring trust and hunger.

“My cock is the first you’ve ever taken inside you,” he said throatily, sliding himself gradually inside her, inch by bloody agonizing inch.

As gone as Wakefield himself, she closed her eyes and made some incoherent reply as she took him.

Sweat beaded at his brow. His muscles strained. “You are so bloody tight,” he marveled and praised. “I’ve never felt one tight as yours. I want you—”

“Cressida,” she supplied like he’d been actually looking for that personal form of address, which he hadn’t.

Cressida.

Not: Lady Aurum.

Now, his burning lover had an actual name. It added a layer of intimacy to an act that was purely primitive and primal in nature. A layer that he didn’t want.

Wakefield took her mouth in a quick, hard, punishing kiss and ended it just as she opened her lips to receive him. “I was going to say, mon mimi,” he breathed, shifting his attention to more hedonistic grounds.

Filling a palm with one of her small, pert breasts, he guided the gentle swell to his mouth. “You have beautiful nipples,” he praised.

All the while, he kept sliding deeper and deeper into her folds, sinking himself.

With a herculean effort, she lifted her long lashes. “Do I?” she asked languorously.

He gently kissed one erect point and then the other. “Oh, yes.”

Dreamily, she sighed. “I never knew nipples could be beautiful.”

A low laugh shook his frame. She played the part of sweet, young virgin to a tee.

Wakefield committed himself more deeply into their charade.

“Yours are the most handsome ones I’ve ever seen, mon mimi.”

“Indee…ahhh.” Her query climbed as he sucked the pretty pink peak deeply.

He came off her with a little pop. “Indeed,” he finished for her.

Wakefield alternately swirled the tip of his tongue around the pebbled flesh and then blew upon her satiny soft skin.

She sighed.

He felt her arms come up.

His brilliant lover tangled her fingers in his hair and held him at her breast, keeping his mouth where she wanted it.

“This is everything I dreamed it would be with you,” she confided huskily. “No, it’s…that and even more.”

His blood burned hot. “You’ve dreamt of this, then?”

“Y-Yes.” Shy-like, she nodded. “Well, of you.”

“When?” he demanded, lost in their production. “In ballrooms?”

“Yes,” she said, demurely lowering her eyes. “And in parlors and receiving rooms.”

Wakefield raked his hungry gaze over her person.

A hiss exploded from between his lips. “God, you are remarkable. What an actress you are.”

Confusion creased the space between her arched, imperious eyebrows. “I’m not an actress,” she protested.

“That’s right,” he soothed. “You’re an innocent lady who longs to have me inside her.”

“Yes. Only you.” Her luminous eyes glowed with such truth, it terrified the hell out of him—for only a moment. “I want you to be the one, Benedict.”

His pulse thundered in his ears.

He was lost.

Tossing his head back, he buried himself to the hilt inside her.

She—Cressida—cried out.

Surprise and pain wreathed her features.

Wakefield tensed. This added too much to their performance.

Wakefield fastened his hands upon her slim hips. “I don’t want to pretend anymore.” He dug his fingers into her pliable, silken flesh.

She lifted hungry eyes to his. “M-Me neither.”

Good, they were alike on that score. “I’m going to fuck you,” he purred. “I’m going to bury my big cock so deep inside you, sweet, you won’t be able to tell where I end and you begin.”

To give a taste of what he promised, Wakefield withdrew and then guided the tip of his shaft inside, this time more slowly. She may not be a virgin, but he was a big man, and her sheath, though dripping wet, was narrow.

Despite their mutual vow to end the act, she blinked wildly and her lips quivered.

Lust sent his nostrils into a full flare.

Perhaps he’d allow the pretense to go on a bit longer.

“You haven’t felt anything like this before, have you, mon mignon?”

His lover moaned. Using her body to urge him on, she shifted her hips back and forth.

He chuckled. “You have, then.”

“Never,” she whispered shyly.

“Shall I stop?” He withdrew again.

As anticipated, she held him more tightly. “I’ll die if you do!”

His droll amusement proved entirely short-lived.

Wakefield exhaled sharply. “Like a bloody glove you are.” He could very nearly believe her maiden-like avowal.

Her wet, molten heat, however, eased his way and bespoke a woman well-accustomed to making love and luxuriating in the pleasure it brought her.

“It’s like your body was made for mine,” he said, his breath coming in hard, fast spurts. “Do you want this?” he demanded, fully committed to their performance. “Tell me now or I will stop forever.”

“Please, don’t stop,” she wept. “I want you. I need you, Bene—”

With his mouth, Wakefield swallowed the rest of his name on her lips. Then, in one smooth glide, he buried himself ballocks deep inside his lusty bed partner.

Tossing her head back, she cried out.

Wakefield went still inside her.

God, had it ever felt as good being inside a woman as it did being inside this one?

He placed a conciliatory kiss upon her lips and then trailed his lips in slow worship along her neck, then continued his path to her quivering breasts.

“I’m sorry,” he said soothingly.

The enchantress glided her fingers through his hair. “No,” she said timidly. “I wanted you to. It feels so very good. You feel good inside me.”

To reward both her act and her honesty, Wakefield took her right nipple deep into his mouth and sucked.

He let their game continue on until he could no longer skillfully do so.

“Hold on tight, love,” he whispered. “I’m going to give you the ride of your life.”

In a move as old as Eve, and in the ways of all skilled courtesans, she wrapped her legs about his waist.

His breath hitched.

How had he failed to appreciate a pair of trim, athletic thighs before this moment?

Sinking his fingers sharply into her narrow hips, he began to move.

After some hesitancy, she easily took up the rhythm.

Wakefield eased himself inside his lover’s sweet channel over and over again, wanting the moment to last forever, but he was too hungry, too desperate to spend.

His climax beckoned, but still he fought it.

He gritted his teeth. “Come for me again,” he ordered.

And she did, wailing and moaning like nothing more than his command could bring her to ecstasy, and as her exquisite channel gripped at him, spasming around him, Wakefield could fight no longer.

Bellowing his lust to the Roman god and goddess of love overhead, he came on a violent explosion, spurting within the sweet folds of his lover’s body.