Page 60 of Again, Scoundrel

Alistair reached for her clenched fist and brought it to his mouth. He let his tongue nudge gently into the tightness of her closed fingers.

“Pleasure,” he said and blew a cool stream of air over the place his tongue had just lathed. “Your hands are beautiful. Don’t deny them their pleasure. Show them to me.”

She shook her head no. “They’re not beautiful. They’re hard and callused and ugly.”

He nipped at her closed fingers. “I beg to differ,” he said. “Give me a finger. Just one poor, neglected finger.”

Her fist unclenched as if her fingers themselves had heard his words and wanted what he was offering them. He gently took her index finger and placed its tip in his mouth. And then the man began to suck.

Good God, she’d never felt anything like it.

It was as if every nerve ending in her whole body was concentrated in that single fingertip. He flicked his tongue across the nail bed, and she shivered. And then he gently, methodically, lathed the entirety of her digit with his tongue and scraped his teeth gently across the flesh until she moaned with pleasure.

When he had thoroughly debauched that finger, he took it out of his mouth and held it in his hand.

“Every part of you is perfect, Violet. So perfect I hardly know what to do with it. Give me another.”

He worked his way through her ten digits until she was vibrating. “I had no idea,” she whispered, “that fingers could feel this way.”

He glanced up at her with that wicked, boyish grin. “I believe you have some idea of what fingers can do,” he said and moved his own digits down to the inside of her thigh and then up, up to the place within her that was throbbing with need and want and desire.

He knew how to pleasure her now, and he worked quickly, one finger slipped inside her, his palm cupping the sensitive mound and pressing into it. It took only moments for Violet to begin shuddering as wave after wave of exhilaration shook her body.

And then he removed his finger from inside her, put it to his mouth and sucked it again, groaning as he did.

“You taste magnificent,” he said. “Better than anything else I’ve ever had in my mouth.”

Good god.

“I’d give every pound I have,” he said as he finished licking every last drop of her from his hand, “to know what that look on your face means.”

“Copulation,” she whispered, thinking of the horses mating and her scientific understanding of sexual congress, “is entirely different from pleasure.”

His laugh was low and hungry. “Not if you’re doing it right, love.”

Violet sighed against the soft, downy pillow. “I like pleasure,” she said. “I didn’t know I would.”

“I knew you would.” He moved his body down the length of hers. “You only deny yourself what you really want. Don’t deny yourself this.”

He put his tongue inside her where his finger had just been. Gently at first, as her nerves were still raw, but then pressing and licking and sucking and lathing harder as her excitement once again mounted.

When she was writhing and moaning below him, he laid his body down on top of her and pressed his hard cock into her opening. It felt delicious there. Exactly what she wanted.

Until…she panicked.

She couldn’t end up pregnant and alone like Jess. She knew their differences, of course. Her life was from a world apart from Jess’s, so much so that even if she ended her days in disgrace with an illegitimate child, the chances of Violet Goodwin ever going hungry were slim to none.

But she wouldn’t take risks with her body either, no matter her advantages in life. She understood only too well how a woman became pregnant.

“What’s wrong,” Alistair asked as he felt her jolt beneath him.

Hell’s teeth.

He’d gone too fast. He’d rushed her.

He removed his weight from her so she could sit, leaning back to give her space.

“We don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do, Violet.”