Her sex pulsed at that thought. If it had been him. “Are you offering to make it good for me now?” she whispered. “Out of some kind of pity?”
“Not out of pity.” His voice was rough. “And if you asked me to, I could most definitely make it good for you now.”
She stared at him, unable to blink, unable to move in shock. “You—you’re talking about taking me?” She shook her head. “No. No I can’t. I can’t make that mistake again.”
“Not everything is about taking you. Though God knows I will only think of that for the rest of the night.” He squeezed his eyes shut. “I shouldn’t have said anything. No matter how unfair what he did to you is, I shouldn’t have said anything. I’m sorry.”
She watched his mouth move and her head spun. When he touched her, it was everything. When he kissed her it was earthshaking. But what he was suggesting was something…more. Would it erase the past? No. She wasn’t fool enough to believe it could. But she still felt a longing for what he could give. A need that she hated herself for, but couldn’t deny. Didn’t want to deny when she was so close to him in this small parlor.
She was shaking like a leaf ready to fall from a tree in an autumn breeze. “Y-You said not everything is about taking me. So how would you make it good for me if you…if you didn’t?”
His eyes went wide. “Are you asking me to?”
“Tell me how,” she repeated. “Sh-show me how.”
Now he swallowed, and there was an almost pained expression on his face. A war he was battling. A war she saw him lose as he bent his head, shook it slowly and then sighed. “I would…lock the door.”
She watched as he backed toward the door, his gaze never leaving her. He reached back and turned the key in the lock with a quiet click. Her breath hitched, but she didn’t tell him to stop.
“Then I’d come back to you,” he whispered, and he moved toward her. “And I’d kiss you again. Because I know you like it when I kiss you. Don’t you?”
She nodded, unable to speak. What were words when his mouth was coming toward hers? He did deepen the kiss then, as he hadn’t earlier, and she wrapped her arms around his neck with a shuddering sigh of pleasure.
He pulled away from her mouth just as she was lost, but he didn’t release her from his embrace this time. He backed her toward the settee in front of the fire and lowered her back across it gently. Then he knelt before her, his mouth seeking hers once more.
“Then,” he said against her lips. “I would touch you. Not take you, Elizabeth. Touch you.” He drew away and met her gaze. “But only if you want it. I’m not like him. I won’t be angry if you say no. I’ll stop if you’ve changed your mind.”
Her lips parted. This was her chance to refuse him. Her chance to forget this had happened, walk away from it and from him and from all the confusing, maddening, terrifying things this exchange made her feel and want.
Instead she whispered, “Where would you touch me?”
He didn’t speak again. He just rested a hand on her right breast. Gently, with almost no pressure, but it was there and she flashed briefly to a night long ago with a very different man. His fingers had dragged against her skin. Almost rough. She’d been too embarrassed to enjoy that touch. But this…this was different. Morgan kissed her as he stroked his fingertips so gently against her breast, plucking at her nipple beneath her gown. It hardened beneath his attention, rising against the fabric, and causing a friction that made her sigh with the echo of pleasure she felt deep inside of her.
His mouth broke from hers and she heard the desperate rasp of his breath. He kept his gaze locked on hers as he slid his hand lower. She braced as his fingers glided over her stomach, across her hip, and then he placed his hand between her legs.
“Then I’d touch you here,” he whispered. “First through your dress to let you grow accustomed to it.” As he spoke, he moved his fingers lightly, grinding between her thighs, gentle but insistent on her sex.
Aaron hadn’t touched her here. Not with his hand. He’d kissed her, stripped her, squeezed and plucked her breasts a bit, and then he’d just…taken. Pain and humiliation had been her strongest emotions that night.
She didn’t feel either now. She felt waves of sensation, tingling and heated and oh, so very pleasurable, that seemed to spiral out from wherever his hands touched her. Right now she throbbed between her legs and he added just the right among of pressure with his touch to make that throb all the better.
“Please,” she whispered, uncertain what it was she was asking for, but needing it more than she’d ever needed anything. Oh, she knew what she was doing was imprudent. She should step away and step back and tell him to leave.
But she didn’t want him to leave. She wanted to him erase the past, or at least dull it a fraction with his touch. So prudence be damned.
He licked his lips and she shivered at the heated focus of his stare. “I’m going to lift your skirts, Elizabeth,” he whispered. “It will be better if you’re…bared to me. I can make it so much better.”
She swallowed. This felt like another point of no return. And yet she nodded and he seemed relieved as he caught the hem of her pretty dress and pushed it up gently. His hands stroked her calves through her stitched stockings, her knee, her thigh. She writhed beneath those gentle touches, shocked by how much they moved her. He moved her.
At last he bunched her dress against her stomach. She was wearing drawers, so he untied the little ribbon at her waist and tugged them away. She was bared to him. Shockingly naked to his gaze.
And gaze he did, those dark eyes trailing over her in a way no other man’s ever had. Probably ever would, considering her criteria for a future marriage was one that didn’t include these pleasures.
“Good God, Elizabeth.” His voice shook. “You are so gorgeous.”
She blinked at the raw tone of his voice, how rough it was. Almost as if he were trying to keep himself under control, in check. But that couldn’t be, could it? Men didn’t lose themselves around her, especially men with an untamed past like Morgan Banfield.
And yet as he leaned in and brushed his fingers inside her inner thighs, he looked restrained, his expression taut. Like a coiled spring ready to pop free. She wanted to know what would happen if that occurred.
But she couldn’t ponder it long, because her mind emptied of all thought when his fingers brushed the apex of her thighs. It was gentle, hardly more than a graze, but the stroke of it had her catching her breath, arching her back, as heat arced through her.
“Morgan,” she murmured.
He nodded, as if she’d asked a question. As if he had the answer. Perhaps both were true. In this unspoken language of desire, he was the master, she the student, even if that had never been her intention this night.
He touched her again, this time settling the palm of his hand flush against her. He was warm, his touch firm. She felt a strong urge to move against him, but no ability to know how. He didn’t make her find out. He moved instead, grinding up against her with the heel of his palm.
She dipped her head back. What was that sensation? Great God, but it was intense. Like someone had jolted all the nerves between her legs to life at once and now they crackled with pleasure. He pushed against her again, murmuring encouragement as she gripped her hands into the settee cushion.
“Just a little more,” he whispered as he leaned in to kiss her.
She wrapped a hand around the back of his neck, deepening the kiss. His fingers stroked along her entrance, tracing her, then he was parting her folds and sliding inside her trembling sheath as if he were taking her.
Her eyes flew open, and she gasped out pleasure and surprise mixed. He remained still a moment, letting her grow accustomed to the feel of his thick finger inside of her, stretching her. When she squeezed around him, testing what it would feel like, he groaned and thrust gently. She arched at the thrilling increase of pleasure, rising to meet him as her head dipped back against the pillows.
He kept thrusting,
gently taking, exploring, drowning her in sensation she’d never felt before. It was like what she’d experienced all those years ago, but different. More focused. More powerful. Less frightening and wrong.
This was not wrong. Or at least she couldn’t see it as wrong in that charged moment where every movement gave her such intense pleasure. She gripped hard against him, gasping out his name in the quiet.
She couldn’t believe anything could ever be better than this. Until she felt the sweep of his tongue against her. She jerked her head from the pillow and gazed down at him. His dark head was between her legs now, his soft beard stroking her sensitive thighs as his tongue traced her entrance.
Was this what people did? This magical, wicked thing? Or was this just special sorcery that Morgan knew and chose to share with her? She didn’t know.
To be honest, she didn’t care. She just wanted this. Her fingers dug into his hair and she clung to him, rising to meet him as his licks grew more forceful and focused on just one area of her sex, a hidden little nub of pleasure. His finger thrust in time to the licking, building her higher and higher, dragging her toward something she couldn’t name. Couldn’t express. Couldn’t understand.
But she wanted more. She reached for it ceaselessly, crying out softly in the dim parlor until at last the dam he’d built between her legs burst. Sensation jerked through her and she trembled helplessly against it. Her hips thrust, she had to cover her mouth to muffle her screams. The pleasure went on and on and on, seemingly endless as he licked her through it all.
Only when she panted, spent and weightless on the settee pillows, did he press one chaste kiss between her legs, withdraw his fingers and smooth her skirts back down over her. And she knew nothing in her world could ever be the same again.
Chapter 14
Lizzie’s world was still spinning when Morgan leaned up her body and nuzzled her neck with his mouth. His beard tickled, and she smiled as she lifted her heavy head, pulling him in to kiss her. She tasted herself on his slick lips. Sweet and heady. The taste of pleasure, and her body rippled with renewed need.
He was going to take her now. She knew that had to be next. Men didn’t give unless they were going to receive. That was based both on rumor and her own experience.
Except he withdrew from her. He smiled down at her and then helped her to her feet. She stared at him, wobbling a little as he stepped away. She blinked at him in surprise.
“Did I—did I do something wrong?” she asked.
He shook his head and appeared genuinely confused by the question. “Great God, no. That was quite something. I enjoyed every moment of that, I assure you.”
She shifted. Perhaps she should just leave this alone, but her mind raced with questions. “But, er, you aren’t trying to…that is, you haven’t…I mean, you must be…”
“Hard as steel?” he said with a bright smile. “Oh yes. But just because I want something doesn’t mean I don’t have the ability not to take it. I didn’t put my hands and my mouth on you so that I could have my own pleasure, Elizabeth. I did it because I wanted you to see and feel what you should have experienced before. What a man should have done when he touched you.”
“Oh,” she whispered.
He leaned in and kissed her once again. Gently. Briefly. “You deserve all the pleasure in the world and more. Don’t tell yourself that it isn’t something you need. It’s something you were made for.”
She blinked again, trying to let that selfless offering sink in. What was this man about? She had judged him as so much and yet he was…different. Not exactly the rake he pretended to be.
“Well, I…thank you for it. And for not expecting anything else in return.” Though when she said the words, they felt hollow. She rather wanted something more.
But he was being stronger than she could be, it seemed. And she should thank him for that, as well, though she didn’t.
He glanced over his shoulder. “We’ve been missing from the ball for a while now,” he said. “We probably ought to return, though not together.”
She stepped up to the mirror mounted above the sideboard across the room. It was amazing how she could look so unchanged in the reflection when she felt utterly different from head to toe thanks to the man standing behind her. She smoothed her hair and fought with all her might to regain a little purchase. A little dignity.
“You are probably right,” she said, forcing a smile, as if she were as unmoved by what had just transpired as he appeared to be. “I’ll go back first.”
“Probably best,” he said with a chuckle. “I need a few moments to become, er, presentable.”
He glanced downward and she followed his gaze. His breeches strained against what appeared to be a sizeable bulge. She knew what that was, what it meant, and her stomach fluttered at the sight of his arousal. Well, he’d said he did want her. There was the proof.
Even if he wouldn’t take her.
Her cheeks felt like fire as she backed a step away. “I’ll see you back in the ballroom, then,” she whispered.
His brow wrinkled, and suddenly he moved toward her in three long steps. He leaned in, pressing her back against the door to kiss her one last time. Although the kiss started as a passionate exploration of her mouth, it changed as she wrapped her arms around him. He gentled his tongue, his lips, he tilted his head for different access. He made love to her mouth as he had with her sex a short time before.
And just as then, she felt lost to him when he did.
But finally he broke away and leaned around her to unlock the parlor door. They didn’t move, although she could leave now.
“Why—why did you do that?” she asked.
He caught her hand as he stepped away, allowing her space. As he kept eye contact with her, he lifted her hand and kissed her knuckles. “Because I know it might be the last time,” he admitted. “And I wanted it to be memorable.”
She smiled even though the idea that tonight was the last time they would allow this connection between them to take over was painful. “You have succeeded in that, Morgan, in spades. I will be thinking of tonight for a long time to come. Now, goodnight.”
She forced herself to slide her hand from his, forced herself to turn and exit the room. But as she walked away, his gaze hot on her back, her entire body began to shake. She’d spent years telling herself that the pleasure her friends seemed to take in physical intimacy was not something she would ever want or find.
And in a few short moments, this man had torn away her expectations and changed everything in her world. Now she had to decide what to do with that knowledge.
As Elizabeth disappeared around the corner back toward the ballroom, Morgan shut the parlor door and relocked it. He sagged against the surface of the door, the full ramifications of what had happened tonight hitting him in a great wave.
He’d lost control. That was the only way to put it. Hearing Elizabeth talk about her past, about the bastard who had hurt and used her, had stoked a fire in him unlike any that had ever burned before. He’d wanted to ride across the country, her flag flying above him, and strike a deathblow to her enemy.
And when it had become clear that wasn’t possible, the other thing he’d wanted to do had become stronger, more undeniable. Touching her, giving her pleasure the other man had denied in his cruelty…it was all Morgan had been able to think about.
“Oh, yes,” he muttered out loud as he flopped down in a chair before the fire. His still-hard cock throbbed, and he shifted. “You’re so fucking noble.”
It was easy to pretend all that had been for her. But that wasn’t it, was it? He’d wanted to kiss her, even though they’d said they’d never do that again. He’d wanted to touch her. He’d wanted to lift her skirts and scent her desire and make her shake around him as she moaned his name.
He’d done it for himself as much as for her. And the more he thought about it, the harder he got.
“Bloody hell,” he gasped out, and flicked the placard of his trousers down. His coc
k, hard as steel, bobbed away from the confines and to full attention.
He didn’t deserve the pleasure he was about to give himself, but it didn’t matter. He spit on his palm and stroked himself from base to head. Pleasure ricocheted through his entire body, bordering on pain, and he let his breath slide out in a long groan.
He thought of many things when he pleasured himself. Scenarios, mostly, situations where he could take what he wanted. It was rarely a specific person who stoked the fire of his pleasure.
But tonight there was only one thing that entered his mind. Elizabeth spread out before him, her sex glistening as he leaned in to taste her remarkable essence. Elizabeth as she arched under his mouth and fingers. Elizabeth as she writhed and pleaded for more and less and everything while she came and came and came.
He stroked himself harder, faster, reaching for the pleasure he would have found if he’d leaned up over her and slid home deep in her tight channel. If he’d thrust into her while her fingers dug into his hair and her mouth collided with his so he could swallow her moans.
He came so hard and so fast that stars exploded before his vision. He jerked against his fingers, murmuring her name as the world swirled down to this primal need she stoked in him. For a few minutes he slouched against the cushion, panting as his heart rate slowly returned to normal.
He was slaked, but strangely unsatisfied. Visions of Elizabeth still danced across his mind. He pushed them aside and got up, reaching into his pocket to find a handkerchief to clean himself up. But his mind kept spinning as he did it, always back to her. Touching her, fucking her…talking to her.
He tucked himself in place and fastened his trousers. He couldn’t go back to the ballroom in his present state. That was obvious.
His best course of action was to go take a long walk in the cool night and allow everything to calm down a little. Elizabeth would get to regain her footing without having to look at the man who had ravished her. He could try to get himself together before he was forced to smile at her like they were nothing more than acquaintances.
The Love of a Libertine: The Duke’s Bastards Book 1 Page 15
