And where his finger goes, his lips soon follow, kissing me softly along the just-healed cut until he’s dangerously close to the edge of my knickers.
“Gwendolynne.” Resting his cheek on my inner thigh for a moment, he closes his eyes, just briefly. “Gwendolynne.”
It’s like he can’t get enough of my name. His voice is so soft, it makes me weep harder. He looks up at me, blue-and-brown gaze penetrating. “Why are you crying?”
I don’t know how to explain it. I don’t really know how to explain that the cutting started out as a necessity, but now it’s also something like…security. So instead I just sob out, “Because I’m hideous.”
“Gwendolynne,” he says, murmuring my name for the third time in just as many minutes. He shakes his head. “You’re not hideous.” He plants another kiss, gently, on my scars. “You’re perfect.”
I squeeze my eyes shut, willing my tears to stop. This scene is a fantasy that’s played on loop in my head forages—and here I am ruining it by sniveling like a baby.
“No, I’m not.”
“Yes. You are. See?” He bends his head and drops another kiss on my other, equally scarred thigh. “Thisis perfect.”
He shifts a little, kissing me softly on my lower belly. “Andthis…is perfect.”
I squirm, my eyes squeezed shut, the stillness only fractured by my broken breaths.
“And this?” Harrisford whispers, running his lips gently across my underwear until his mouth is positioned right at the apex of my thighs. I feel the scorching heat of his breath as he leans down and kisses me—rightthere. “Perfect.” It sounds like a prayer. A confession.
A…question.
All I can manage in response is “Please…” I breathe the word out on an exhale.
And with that, Harrisford reaches up, and I lift my hips reflexively as he eases my already sodden underwear down and down, until they’re completely off.
Throwing them to one side, he settles himself back between my legs, his large hands wrapped around each of my thighs.
“I think, Gwendolynne,” he says, his voice dropping low. “That perhaps you need a distraction.”
“What…sort of distraction?”
He looks at me very seriously. “I’m going to make you come, now.”
A small whimper escapes from my lips. I’ve never had a man tell me that, so simply and directly…and it’s hot.
I’m a failure. A disappointment. My whole life is falling apart. But this?
Yes—this is exactly the sort of distraction I need.
“You seem…very confident about that.” I’m speaking with bravado, but with the way he’s looking at me, I’m already teetering right on the edge. Every inch of my skin is thrumming with unspent need, and I’m weak and shivery, mere putty beneath his hands.
He gives a low chuckle and says, his voice rough, “It’s a challenge I’m willing to accept.” And then he lowers his head again, and gives me a long and languorous lick.
I react instantly, my legs clamping around his ears. Any residual rational thoughts I might’ve had are immediately chased from mybrain. I’m writhing, moaning, twisting my hands through his hair to keep him pinned in place; he keeps going, relentless, even as my body does its best to buck him off. At some point, he lets go of my thigh and pushes a finger inside me, quickly followed by a second. And the sensation—of his mouth on me, his fingers in me—is so overwhelming, the pleasure so heated, that I immediately go over the edge, screaming out his name.
He continues working on me as I come, riding me through my release, and it’s only when I’m sated, legs shivering with the aftershocks, that he crawls back up my body and kisses me deeply. I can taste myself on his tongue, and it nearly makes me come apart once more.
“Say it again,” he says huskily, his lips grazing the curve of my ear. His breath fans my skin, and I shiver.
I’m still panting. “Say what?”
“My name, Gwendolynne.” He nips me on the earlobe. “Say my name.”
I wind my arms around his shoulders, letting out a little moan as he sucks on my neck. “Harrisford,” I breathe out, wrapping my legs around his waist. “Harrisford. Harrisford. Harrisford.”
He shudders and kisses his way back up my throat until our lips find each other again. This time, when we kiss, it’s no longer feverish—it’s tender, like the sweetest-tasting honey; like the warmth of a setting sun; like the first scent of spring dissolving a frozen winter.
