He pressed the gentlest of kisses to the hollow beneath her ear. “Here,” he murmured, as though naming each place for her education. His mouth moved to the slender column of her throat. “And here.”
Hetty made a strangled sound. “I had thought… kissing my mouth would be quite enough.”
“Then you are doomed,” he replied, tightening his hands about her waist. “For I am the greediest of men, and there is no part of you I do not long to taste.”
His lips wandered down, tracing the line of her collarbone with open-mouthed kisses, then the soft swell of her breast until she arched into him. He lingered there, savouring the gasp she sought in vain to suppress. Lower still he travelled, kissing along her ribcageand pressing his mouth to the smooth plane of her belly, where her breath caught and her hands clutched at the linen sheets. When at last his lips reached the tender insides of her thighs, he paused, lifting his eyes to her own. “Shall I go on?”
“If you stop now, I shall fling you bodily from this bed.”
Theo laughed low in his throat, though he suspected she meant every word. He slid his hands beneath her knees, guiding her thighs apart until she lay open to him in the soft fall of candlelight, so unguarded he almost felt unworthy to look upon her… almost. He bent his head and pressed a gentle kiss to the tenderest part of her.
She startled and then gasped aloud as he – quite shamelessly – set his mouth to her. “Theo – what – ” Her voice broke upon the syllable. “I did not conceive you meant to – ”
“Trust me,” he murmured against her, glancing up with a wicked gleam in his eyes. “You shall not find the experience unpleasant.”
With that, he returned his attentions to her, slowly and deliberately, as though she were some divine confection set before him to be savoured at leisure. Good God – he would never be the same again, for he had never in all his life tasted such perilous sweetness, nor heard anything so beautiful as the sound of Hetty Tolliver’s strangled gasp when his mouth moved against her. Or rather, Henrietta Langley… his wife; the Countess of Langley; the woman to whom he had bound himself before God and law. Surely, she must know – must feel – that this was no careless rake’s amusement. He desired her with all the reckless hunger of a man who had suddenly realised he had been in love for half his life without the least sense of it.
Then – sweet mercy – she began to quiver beneath him. A cry escaped her, ungoverned and unladylike, as her back arched from the mattress and her hands flew to his hair. He held her fast by the thighs, his mouth merciless in its devotion. When she might have turned from the onslaught, he drew her back with a low sound that brooked no retreat. He would have her feel it all; he would allow no half-measures where she was concerned.
“Theo,” she gasped, almost reproachful, and he thought, with a madness he scarce dared own, that he would die content if only he might wring from her such a sound again. “I do not – I cannot – ”
“Yes,” he answered against her. “Yes, you can. Trust me, dearest heart. Yield to it.”
And she did – Heaven preserve him, she did. She broke upon him in a rush of abandon, her body tightening and loosing with wild grace. Her cries were unpractised, and all the more ravishing for it. Theo was undone. To taste her, to hear her, to know it was he who had wrought such ungovernable delight – it very nearly robbed him of breath, of reason, of all pretence of composure.
At last she fell back, trembling, her bosom rising and falling as though she had outrun her very self. He lifted his head, his lips wet with proof of her surrender, before sliding up the length of her body until he loomed above her. “You see, my love – I spoke truly. Not unpleasant in the least.”
Chapter 23
Hetty lay back against the pillows, still catching her breath, her hair tangled and her shift abandoned entirely somewhere upon the floor. A lady of breeding ought, she supposed, to feel mortified to be lying naked in a man’s bed. Certainly no maiden of sense would lie flushed pink and undone, as though she had just been – well, as though she had just been what she most assuredly was.
In truth, she could not have named precisely what had overtaken her. One moment she had been protesting, or at the very least attempting to preserve some small dignity, and the next – sweet heavens – her body had betrayed her with sensations she had neither anticipated nor understood. Most treacherously, she had liked it – liked it very much indeed. Worse still, she suspected she liked Theo rather more than was at all prudent.
But what, pray, was to be the consequence of such a discovery, when he would not – nay, could not – return such affections? He had never sought marriage; he had made no secret of his disdain for that particular institution. He had tumbled into matrimony through her most dreadful plan for ruin – and a series of absurdities and accidents –and had met their fate with good grace. Could she truly imagine that such a man – who had laughed away the very notion of fidelity – would now be content with one woman? With her?
It was one thing to know, in the abstract, that Theo was a rake of the first order. It was quite another to have the rake himself devote all his charm and sensuality upon her person and feel his wicked mouth worship her until she scarcely knew her own name. If he could unmake her so completely, what havoc must he have wrought elsewhere? And more terrifying still – what havoc might he yet wreak, once he grew weary of his countess and went seeking fresh amusement elsewhere?
Theo had shifted onto his side, one arm propped lazily beneath his head, the other reaching to draw the rumpled sheet over them both in a gesture at once protective and possessive. The effort did little to disguise the unmistakable ridge that still pressed against the linen.
Hetty, for her part, tried very hard not to look, which meant of course, that she saw it at once. The notion that she – plain Hetty Tolliver, now Lady Langley – had been the cause of such a state was enough to send another blush racing up her throat. She shifted against the pillows, affecting nonchalance. “Well… you might at least refrain from looking so very pleased with yourself.”
“I have just had the exquisite pleasure of watching my wife discover her first climax,” he drawled, “and you would have me scowl?”
Her lips parted, colour rising higher still. “Climax?”
His grin deepened at her bewilderment. “Oh, yes. That moment when your body forgot itself entirely and you melted in my arms. Pray do not tell me you were unaware?”
“Unaware? I hardly knew what was happening, save that I could not prevent it.”
Theo’s gaze lingered upon her, indulgent and amused. “The French, in their usual fashion, have a term for it…la petite mort.The little death. Not so fatal as it sounds, I assure you. Though judging by the look upon your face, you might think I had murdered you most sweetly.”
“The little death? Trust the French to christen something so indecent with such poetry. And tell me, do you make all your conquests expire so dramatically?”
“Not always,” he returned with a smile of infuriating confidence. “But in your case, I rather think it shall be often, if I have any say in the matter.”
“Well then,” she said, tugging the sheet higher with mock-primness. “One cannot account for such skill without practice. I daresay there were any number of willing ladies eager to assist you in your mastery.”
Theo tilted his head, but the grin faltered; there was, unmistakably, the beginning of a flush rising at his throat. “You know very well I have not lived as a monk, Hetty.”
