Libba let out a little sigh and squirmed against him, bracing her hands over his ribs, all her soft, lovely skin gliding against his.
He blinked rapidly, shocked for the second time in quick order. “Lib,” he said. “Stop moving or I’m going to do it again.”
“Do what?” she murmured into his shoulder, dissolving into a throaty, little chuckle at his returned sound of distress. “Oh. Already?”
“Already,” he confirmed miserably.
“Hmm,” she purred. “I don’t think I would mind that, but I probably need a moment, to be honest with you. I am… well, something.”
“That you are,” he agreed, tilting his frowning mouth down into the crown of her hair. “You are something.”
“Sometimes,” she said. “Other times, I am nothing. Nobody. Remember how Malcolm used to tease me for being Bess and Lizzie and Elle day to day? Little Miss Nobody. Madam No One At All. He was right.”
He shook his head. “Don’t lie to me, Liberty Lennox.”
“Oh, but I am very good at it,” she said with another little laugh. Then she stretched, her muscles tensing and arching as she rolled her limbs to and fro. “Christ. Oh, I feel so much better.”
Jasper considered that perhaps he had not yet experienced that wave of clarity because he was still, somehow, unsatisfied. Maybe he’d experience it next time. Or the time after that.
His body twitched at the thought of multiple encounters, of more of her body on him. Around him.
“How long,” she asked softly, “have you wanted to do that?”
He groaned, dropping his head back onto the pillow with his eyes shut for the briefest moment, just long enough to take a gasp of air, and then he rolled over atop her, pinning her to the mattress with a press of his hips, his hands braced on either side of her wild, loose hair.
“I don’t know,” he confessed, taking her lips in a languid kiss, trailing his mouth down the line of her jaw, the hollow of her throat. “I don’t know.”
She wriggled under him, her long, manicured fingers coming up to thread into his hair as he kissed lower, his tongue flicking over her clavicles. “Since this morning?” she guessed. “Since last night?”
“I don’t know,” he breathed, running his hands down to her waist, working his way over the soft swell of her breasts. “No. Yes.”
“Since I returned from London?” she suggested, pausing only to gasp and sigh as his tongue dragged over one of her pert nipples. “Oh, God.”
He almost collapsed from the feel of it, from the taste, from the sound that tore from her throat, mid-thought. He wrapped his fingers around her thigh, pulling it higher, up around his hips as he buried himself in her breasts, the ones she’d teasedhim with over the charades card, bending low enough to create an insatiable craving.
He would try to satisfy it, anyway, he told himself, sucking her hardening nipple into the heat of his mouth, tormenting with his lips and tongue.
“Since the night in the parlor?” she suggested thinly. “Did you want to pull my tatty, pink robe open that night?”
He didn’t answer this time. He couldn’t. It was just a helpless growl from his throat as he continued to touch her, to taste her.
He slid his hand between her legs, sinking his fingers into the leavings of their joining, his mind blowing white hot and static at the sound she made in response.
“Longer?” she continued, breathless and moving against him, rolling her hips against his fingers, pressing her chest into his hungry mouth. “Did you think about doing this when we were younger? Did you dream about putting your fingers in me, Jasper?”
He cursed, using those fingers rougher, stroking the parts of her he knew were weakest. The sound of his name in her mouth, surrounded by this taunting, this torment, was enough to break him, and by God, she was going to break too, if that was the case.
He curled his fingers, he smeared their combined juices over her, he used them to heighten the slickness of his motions.
She only moaned in approval, her legs spreading further. “That was very naughty of you,” she murmured, rocking her hips, tugging at his hair. “Did it go further in those youthful dreams? What else did you imagine?”
If he’d had the capability of leaving his feast of her breasts, he might have kissed her to shut her up, to stop stoking an already dangerously hot flame. As it was, he could not. He could not stop licking and kissing them, stroking their soft perfection with his tongue.
“Did you ever think you’d actually do it?” she continued. “Did you imagine sliding your cock into me?”
That was it. That was all he could take.
He dragged his hand out of her and used it, wet and dripping, to grip his arousal, to coat it as he reared up over her, tormenting her with the promise of penetration. He dragged himself against her entrance, his teeth raking against her nipples.
