Willing herself not to cross her arms again, Ariel did as she was told. She earned a guttural groan of appreciation when Charles spied the waterfall of her rose-gold curls tumbling down her back, ending just before the voluptuous mounds of her bottom. She would have completed her spin had Charles not stalled her with the whisper of a finger on the swell of her hip. Just that small touch was enough to send ripples of anticipation from her body. She stood still as a statue.
Waiting.
The pounding of her heart filled the stretching silence until she thought she would burst.
“Lean forward,” Charles finally instructed, his voice balancing the sharp line between pain and composure.
She did so, canting her hips back until she was at a seventy-degree angle. It wasn’t enough because he murmured a few reassuring, complimentary words as he used a palm to urge her forward until her palms were flat upon the mattress, her rear jutting out behind her shamelessly.
His large palms cupped the rounded swells of her bottom. His strong hands kneaded her, massaging the flesh and muscles. He nudged her feet apart and spread her wide and growled his pleasure at the sight, as deep and penetrating as thunder. She experienced another rush of liquid heat between her legs at the sound, the dampness increasing with shameless abandon.
“What a sight…” Charles rasped, his voice barely above a whisper. “May I touch you here?” His fingers slid incrementally toward the crevasse between her legs, the deep cleft of her bottom. Ariel swallowed and nodded wordlessly. Immediately, his hands came together, spreading her wider for his perusal. Two of his fingers dipped lower and he moaned at what he discovered.
“Just as I thought; so wet already.” His touch was torturously gentle against her slick, swollen flesh. He traced her nether lips, caressed the damp curls at the crux of her sex, and swirled around her entrance, making her arch her spine and press back into his touch.
Charles inhaled sharply and released it on one drawn out, “Fuck…” The word was shockingly crude—made even more so on his blunt American tongue, but she was far from offended. Her heart tripped with excitement. His hand stilled, cupping her tightly, his fingers curling to enter her ever so slightly. “If only you knew how delicious you look, Ariel; what this view does to me.”
Her heart pounded at the raw words, his haggard voice. She could believe him when he sounded like that—she gasped as hebegan to stroke her once more—and especially when he touched her like that.
One of his large palms pressed gently between her shoulder blades until she rested her cheek on her forearms. His knees nudged her thighs open wider as his hand trailed back up her spine, tracing the concave arch created by his manipulation. “That’s it,” he purred. “Such a good girl.” It should have felt demeaning, but it only made her inner thighs quiver in anticipation. She felt both powerful and at his mercy… And when his hand dipped lower between her legs, his longest fingers discovered the most magical thing of all.
The firm, slick pressure against that sensitive bundle of nervesboth melted her and made her clench. She gasped until her breath died in her throat.Thatwas new. And thrilling. And wonderful. Despite the wave of delicious sensations, her thighs flexed in an attempt to close and protect her most secret of places, but Charles didn’t allow it. His chuckle danced across her spine and his large palm kneaded the soft globe of her buttocks, the long fingers sinking into her flesh. He tsked at her. “I know you like it. I can feel how wet you are.” Ariel felt her flush spread rapidly from her face to her throat and chest at his words.
And then he began to move those knowledgeable fingers of his, swirling and plucking and caressing and stroking her in ways she hadn’t considered and unleashing sensations she hadn’t known possible. Her body began to undulate; her hips pressed back into Charles until she made contact with the hard bulge in the front of his breeches. An appreciative sound rumbled behind her. “Almost, pet. You’re nearly ready.”
“Ready? For—oh!” She cried out in shocked pleasure when his thick thumb pressed inside of her while his nimble fingers continued teasing the pearl at the crux of her sex. She screwed her eyes closed and every one of her senses focused on what Charles was doing to her and how he made her feel. Her skintingled, her muscles clenched and trembled, her toes curled, and her nails gripped the sheets so tightly she feared they would be shredded. The pressure was building uncontrollably in her core with every slick glide of Charles’ fingers on her and in her. Her body clenched around him with every dragging stroke. She panted and rocked against his onslaught.
“Please,” she whimpered desperately.
“Please, what?” Charles leaned over her and purred. She could only toss her head from side to side, unable to put words to her needs. Charles, however, seemed to know exactly what she craved. “This?” he growled, applying just the right pressure and rhythm to make her arch her back and sob as the world shattered around her. She buried her face in the coverlet, letting it absorb her cresting pleasure. Her body was wracked by the blinding, consuming fire Charles had unleashed within her. It was glorious and terrifying and life-altering.
She floated down slowly from the rapture, the feeling gradually returning to her quaking limbs, when the sound of rustling cloth reached her ears. She barely registered it before Charles’ warm hands returned to her bottom. The unfamiliar tickle of crisp masculine hair on strong, muscular thighs grazed her skin and she vaguely recog- nized he’d shucked the remainder of his clothing so he was finally as bare as she.
“Tell me you still want this, Ariel,” Charles demanded, gripping her flesh with desperate fingers.“Or tell me to stop now because, by God, I can’t guarantee I have much self-control left in me.” She was still too fuzzy to register the oddity of those words. “Say it now.” Something thick and hard prodded the wet folds of her sex.
She moaned and pressed her hips back, eliciting a guttural groan from deep within Charles’ chest when the tip of him inadvertently slipped ever so slightly into the entrance of her tight sheath.
“Say it,” he hissed painfully, Ariel gasping in response to the sound and the stretching sensation. “Say it,” Charles repeated even more forcefully.
“Yes, yes, yes…” she breathed again and again, her voice growing louder as Charles began to slowly push into her body, joining them, claiming her, changing her. The dew he’d coaxed from her body helped the way, but she was still impossibly tight, and he, impossibly large. Her body stretched around him and Ariel silently repeated to herself that her body had been made for this, but the insistent sting was growing ever more uncomfortable.
Then, Charles stopped.
She nearly lifted her head to ask him why, when she felt his large palms and strong fingers drawing languid designs upon the skin of her back, between her shoulder blades, down the channel of her spine, cupping and caressing the round globes of her rear. He began to knead her muscles, the only part of him moving were his hands as they danced across her muscles, massaging and melting her tension away like wax beneath a candle’s relentless flame. Only when she was a pliable puddle once more did Charles resume pressing forward into her. There was a small, sharp rip of pain and then, he was seated fully within her.
“Are you well?” Charles panted, his warm hands gripping her hips tightly, the fingers digging into her flesh in a not-unpleasant way. She nodded her head, her curls obscuring her vision like a veil. It was all the encouragement Charles needed to begin moving.
The retreat and thrust began as a slow, insistent rhythm of deep strokes which somehow managed to remain gentle and ever careful of her tender flesh.
Ariel closed her eyes and, with a deep sigh, she let go. She gave herself over to the physical sensations of Charles behindher, touching her, deep inside her, rubbing some heretofore unknown place that made her vibrate from the inside out. Her ears were deaf to all except the soft sounds of the collision of slick flesh and Charles’ erotic gasps and groans and murmurs of praise. Some of the words from his lips were unbearably naughty, others, unexpectedly sweet. He called her a goddess, perfection personified; he also told her he loved how wet she was for him, how it drove him mad with need.
She fisted her hands in the rumpled coverlet when he leaned forward to reach around her thigh, dipping his fingers between her dripping folds and caressing that secret pearl. A breath hissed between her teeth as he touched her hypersensitive flesh to begin once again the trembling climb toward that pinnacle of perfection where the stars shattered behind her eyes in blinding flashes of white ecstasy and her body simultaneously clenched and melted. Each pass of his fingers lifted her higher and higher, tearing gasps and cries of joy she didn’t bother to smother against her arm or the mattress.
“Yes,” Charles growled. “Let me hear you, Ariel.” His words loosed a bolt of joy from her stomach to her limbs and back and, with it, a tremulous sob of pleasure. Something seemed to snap inside of Charles. His hands moved to clasp her hips in a deliciously bruising grip as he pounded into her from behind. Flesh smacked on flesh, the pendulous weight of the sac beneath his member striking her clitoris with every powerful thrust. She braced her forearms and arched back into him, meeting him thrust for thrust as he drove deeply, mercilessly into her tight sheath. “That’s it. I knew you could take all of me. I knew it the moment I saw you.” He pounded into her from behind.
His power and strength should have been painful, but it made her feel both weak and powerful and brought her only pleasure so incredulous it was blinding. Charles was unleashed and it was glorious. His body and his presence seemed to devour her; he sether nerves, her senses, her body on fire. “Let me feel you come,” Charles commanded. “I want to feel you clench around my—”
Ariel never heard the end because she was tipped over that precipice. She was falling head over heels, tumbling harder, farther, faster than she ever thought possible as Charles continued his brutal, relentless pace. Her body trembled and quaked and then, suddenly, she was tragically empty. There was a gravelly roar behind her and splashes of something hot and forbidden on her lower back, dripping down the curve of her bottom.
