He kissed away from her mouth, his tongue tasting the skin of her throat, leaving tingling spots for the night air to cool like a second kiss.
Moving down the valley between her breasts, he paused to flick his tongue against an erect nipple before continuing his slow exploration. His mouth grazed her skin—a most intoxicating, bewildering feeling.
When a maid touched her to help her dress, her skin did not respond like this. When sheapplied oils after her bath or brushed something off her skin, there was no lightning-bolt sensation awakening every nerve, connecting every part of her to a deep, pulsing center of pleasure.
That ought to be studied.
She almost laughed, imagining society’s outrage at the mere suggestion.
Philip crawled backward, removing that delicious weight from her and positioning himself on his knees at the end of the bench. Not once did his kisses falter, moving ever downward.
Selina yelped as he eased his arms under her thighs, curved them back over the swell of her hips, and pulled her closer to him.
She was about to ask what he was doing, about to urge him to come back to her so she could feel his body above her, when he kissed the sensitive flesh of her inner thigh.
“Oh… oh, goodness…” she panted, a glorious shiver running up the center of her.
She held her breath as he kissed his way up her inner thigh… and she felt the first brush of his tongue against a part of her that she had only vaguely known existed. An awareness that puzzled her whenever she rode a horse, that she had been too shy to explore in the privacy of her bedchamber.
Her hands gripped the edge of the bench, rocked by the potent rush of bliss that crackled through her. It really was like her personal lightning, forking through her, igniting her very soul.
He tasted her again, a slow roll of his tongue over a throbbing bundle of nerves.
“Oh, God… Oh…” she moaned, her neck arching.
She had never felt anything like it. Never read about anything like it. Not that words on a page could ever have lived up to this, the flesh and blood reality of his touch and his tongue stirring a world of pleasure within her.
His tongue curled around that secret bud, and he sucked gently. She bucked as if she had no control over her own body, thrashing at the intensity. When he rolled his tongue again, the sensationwas tenfold, her head swimming, her lungs burning, her limbs trembling.
But he was not finished showing her how much he wanted her.
Just as she was settling into the stirring rhythm of his tongue, he eased one arm out from underneath her thigh. For a moment, his fingertips skimmed her inner thigh and came to circle her slick, eager entrance.
Her breath caught in her throat as he eased a finger inside her, paused for a second, then pushed another into her hot depths.
“Oh!” she cried out, overwhelmed in the best possible way.
After a moment or two, he slowly began to move his fingers in a steady pulse, curling them in such a way that a fresh surge of crackling pleasure pooled with the rest. She did not know what it was building toward, but therewasa feeling of something rising inside her.
All the while, his tongue tended to her swollen bud in measured strokes, stoking her up into a frenzy.
She gripped the edge of the bench harder, panting as that unknown sensation grew and grew, soaring toward a peak. There was no way it could go on forever; she would not be able to endure so many sensations indefinitely.
Then, it struck her. A ferocious wave of absolute ecstasy, cresting within the core of her being and hurtling outward through her every limb and nerve, until she lay shaking on the bench.
“Oh God… Oh, Philip… Oh… Oh!”
Her muscles tensed, and her back arched up, her eyes closing as that powerful sensation swept back and forth. The most incredible feeling in all the world. Something she might never have known about if she had continued to stubbornly avoid the man who was to be her husband.
Gradually, the stroke of his tongue slowed, and the pulse of his fingers eased, while the force of her conclusion ebbed.
She collapsed back onto the bench and let go of the stone edges, draping her arm over her stomach while her other hand moved to rest on her racing heart. Her eyes opened, and she stared up at the starry sky, the moon peeking out.
She smiled.
With care, Philip withdrew his fingers. He tasted her one last time, then turned his head to kiss along her inner thigh. From there, he took his time to kiss his way back up to her mouth, allowing her the bliss of feeling his weight on her once more.
He kissed her lips in a sensual, almost lazy brush. She smiled against his mouth as she kissed him back, her arms loosely looped around his neck.
