The Virgin Huntress (The Devil DeVere #2)

by Victoria Vane

  He slid his sex into her wetness with a groan. She felt the head of his phallus seeking and probing her entrance. Instinctively, she raised her hips to meet his thrust, and swallowed her gasp as he plunged into her, breaching the maidenhead that barred the entrance to her womb. At first, Vesta recoiled from the burning sensation that ensued, expecting more pain to follow, but then he didn’t move. His eyes were closed, and his face was drawn taught as if in intense pain. His entire body trembled, and his chest heaved as if he were short of breath.

  “Did it hurt you?” she whispered.

  He opened his eyes with a look of surprise, and then she felt a low rumble of mirth emanating from his belly to his chest. “I believe that was supposed to be my question.”

  “But you look...”

  “Just give me just a moment,” he begged. “And please, Vesta, for God’s sake, be very still.”

  His face was strained with concentration, and then realization struck. Hew was inside her. The burning had ceased, now replaced by an ineffable feeling of fullness that suffused her entire being. They were joined together in as intimate a fashion as man and woman can be, and it was breathtaking.

  ***

  Hew had imagined this moment, had fantasized about it and played it out in a surprising amount of variations, in both his waking and unconscious thoughts thousands of times over the years, but no amount of imagery and manual stimulation could ever have prepared him for the mind-altering reality of being buried to the bollocks in warm, wet woman.

  When he finally thrust into her hot, tight sheath, his eyes nearly rolled back in his head in pure, agonizing rapture. It felt like all the blood had drained from his body to engorge his pulsing staff. The moment he’d breached her maidenhead, his bollocks had tightened fiercely, and he feared that brief moment of initial penetration would be the end of him. Dear God, he prayed, don’t let me embarrass myself now.

  For once Vesta obeyed, lying still beneath him while his breathing regulated and her body relaxed around him. He braced himself on his elbows, holding himself at a slight distance for fear that even an inch more exposure to her sweet, welcoming flesh would put him over the edge. Hew closed his eyes, sweat beading his brow, as he forced his mind to master his body, concentrating on breathing and trying to recite Latin conjugations through his clenched teeth, but the only verbs that sprung to mind were unhelpful variations of coitus. Somehow, he still managed to keep his impending release at bay.

  Another moment passed, and he had himself back in check. With a last ragged breath, he allowed his mouth to descend upon hers. He focused on the kiss, rather than on his cock, as he withdrew slightly and then flexed his hips, thrusting back in again, and then once more, beginning a slow, rhythmic repetition of the movement. He continued kissing her deeply, probing with his tongue in synchrony with the action of his hips, slow and languorous, creating a blessed, slick friction, the most sublime sensation he had ever known.

  She undulated beneath him, and he drove into her harder, deeper, and with greater urgency, which she met and matched with her own. The air about them grew thicker still with a heady and musky mix of sex and sounds of mutual pleasure. She moaned into his mouth and without coaxing, wrapped her legs about his flanks, urging him deeper into her wetness. He lost himself in silky, sultry heat, and the white-hot jolts of sensation that fired every nerve fiber, until his release came upon him, hitting him with a blinding fury. Hew emptied his lungs in a ferocious cry as hot spurts of his seed pumped from his body.

  He hovered over her, spent and quivering, until Vesta pulled his head back down to hers, seeking his lips with a misty smile and a sigh. “My own magnificent Hew. Now you are mine, and I am yours utterly and completely.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Vesta had never known such a powerful connection could exist between two human beings as that forged during the act of love. Hew had been gentle, tender, and passionate too, everything she had imagined and so very much more. She thought her heart would burst with the joy and adulation she felt during their lovemaking. Now she lay dreamily encircled in his arms, her cheek resting on his chest, listening to the low and mesmerizing drumbeat of his heart as he slept. She gazed lovingly at his face, high cheekbones shadowed by thick lashes, a strong, masculine nose, lovely, sensuous lips parted softly in slumber, a small dimple punctuating his chin. An altogether beautiful face. She studied the scar that blemished him but decided it wasn’t really a blemish at all, but a mark of distinction that only made him look manlier.

  Not satisfied with only a lengthy survey of his face, she decided to continue her detailed inventory of Hew, the man she vowed to love passionately and faithfully for the rest of her days. Stealing another peek to ensure he slept, she peeled the covers back to his waist for her first good, long look at him, and her mouth went dry; for Hew, even in repose, was a sculpture of lean, hard muscle. Worshipping his body would be no hardship at all. Indeed, she was already filled with the compulsive desire to lick and kiss every magnificent inch of him.

  Having never practiced much self-restraint, Vesta saw no reason to start now.

  She kissed, first the puckered scar at his right shoulder and then ran her palms over the pectoral muscles of his chest, relishing the slightly abrasive feeling of the little swirls of hair. She dipped her head and kissed his nipples. When he didn’t stir, she darted out her tongue. He tasted slightly salty. She tried to suckle him as he had her but to little effect. Hew slept on.

  Growing frustrated with his lack of response to her efforts to rouse him, she grew bolder yet. With her mouth and tongue, she kissed his neck and chest and then worked her way lower, following the erotic trail of dark hair to where it disappeared beneath the bed linens, the slightly tented bed linens, she observed with a smile. Although she had earlier held him briefly in her hand, she had not had a good look before. Vesta moved lower yet, exposing him to the knees and looked her fill at the wondrous instrument that had wrought so much pleasure. Her efforts had not been in vain after all, for he was aroused now. The sight of him, large and thick and erect, sent a flood of liquid heat straight to her sex. Utterly fascinated, she itched to hold it in her hand. She reached out a finger and tentatively stroked the underside. The skin was smooth and surprisingly soft to the touch.

  “I thought you weren’t afraid of it.” Hew looked down at her with a mocking smile.

  She startled and regarded him guiltily, as if she’d been caught doing something she oughtn’t. “I’m not afraid, but you said you didn’t like to be touched.”

  “On the contrary.” He took her hand in his. “I said I was unaccustomed to another’s touch, but that does not mean I don’t desire it,” he said. “I have given myself to you, Vesta. My body is now yours, to do with as you will.”

  “Is it really?” By way of answer, he wrapped her hand around his staff. She closed her eyes to relish the sensation. Vesta felt a faint quivering of anticipation now that she understood precisely what he meant. He was made just for her.

  She tightened her grip and slid her hand slowly along his length and glanced up at his sharp intake of breath. She continued to stroke him, loving the feel of him, hot and pulsing and altogether wonderful. She bit her lips with a mischievous look. “Hew,” she asked in a deceptively casual tone. “Are there other scriptures you have meditated on?”

  “I’m not a particularly religious man, if that is what you ask.”

  “No, I don’t speak of the Ten Commandments, for surely we have just broken one of them—”

  “A circumstance I wish to rectify with all dispatch,” Hew said, sober faced.

  “But that’s not what I ask,” she said. “I refer to the poetic ones. You know, like you quoted earlier. Are there others like that? Ones that speak of love?”

  “Well, yes...” he said with hesitation. “I know of one other at least.” She noted the high color in his cheeks and at the tips of his ears.

  “Might I hear it?”

  His color deepened, and the pulse jumped in his
neck. “’Like an apple tree among the trees of the forest, so is my beloved among the young men. In his shade, I took great delight and sat down, and his fruit was sweet to my taste.’”

  “That’s lovely,” she said. “But I would best describe you as an oak, although oaks don’t have fruit, do they? Might I taste you?” she asked, and felt his member surge in her hand. “When you tasted me, it was truly rhapsodic,” she said. “Might a man also receive pleasure thusly?”

  He exhaled a long hiss, a reaction that made her stomach flutter. “Immense pleasure...I am given to understand,” he said.

  She digested this only for a moment. “Then would you like me to do so?”

  “Dear God, what a question.”

  ***

  Hew was incredulous. When he had thought to take a wife, he had hoped to find a woman who would do more than simply tolerate her conjugal duty, but never could he have conceived finding one who would embrace the notion of the marital bed, let alone in all its variations, with such fervor. Vesta’s sexual curiosity and boldness excited the hell out of him.

  Hew couldn’t suppress his shudder when she circled her index finger around the sensitive head of his cock and then ran her thumb lightly over the surface. “Would you like that, Hew?” she asked again. “I truly wish to please you.”

  Her decadent suggestion instantly hardened his bollocks into stone and sent his heart galloping madly in his chest. She regarded him with both hesitation and desire evident in her luminous, green-gold eyes.

  “If it is truly your wish, Vesta, I think I would enjoy it excessively.”

  She smiled back at him. Her pink tongue darted over her lips, and Hew’s stomach lurched. Although he desperately wanted to watch, Hew knew he couldn’t, for it would just be too much, the surfeit to his senses above and beyond what he could bear. When she lowered her head, he closed his eyes, marshaling all his defenses for her sensual onslaught.

  He felt the soft brush of her lush lips and her warm breath caressing his bollocks as she worked her mouth from his base to tip with feathery kisses. The tentative flicks and delicate rasp of her tongue along his length fired a jolt of sensation that tore through his body. He groaned with rapt agony.

  With her breast pillowed on his thigh, she kissed his crown and began probing more boldly with her tongue. He tangled his hands in her hair. He ached to feel her lips surround him, yet held back the almost overwhelming urge to prod her mouth. Dear God, please.

  The hot, wet heat that suddenly enveloped him was an answer to his prayer. She took him slowly into her mouth, and he thought he would expire on the spot. She caressed him with her slick, swirling tongue, while her hands stroked his staff. It was exquisite and utterly unbearable. The blood roared in his ears. His breathing became short. He knew he couldn’t hold back much longer. “Enough.” He moaned and withdrew from her mouth.

  “But you didn’t—” she protested with a hurt look.

  “No, thank God.” He exhaled on a ragged breath.

  “Did I not please you?” she asked.

  He reached for her then, pulling her against his chest, kissing her long and deep. “Indeed, you did. Immensely. I feared perhaps too much.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Because men and women are designed differently. A woman may experience her release and still go on, whereas once a man has spent... I did not please you before in our lovemaking as I ought to have,” he finished ruefully.

  “That’s not true!” Vesta cried. “It was beautiful!”

  “But you did not find your release with me inside you.”

  “Was I supposed to have?” she asked with a look of disappointment. “I’m so sorry, Hew. I didn’t know.”

  “No, love.” He couldn’t help a chuckle. “It’s for me to apologize to you. In order to please you as I ought, I must be able to withhold my own release. Yet it is not at all an easy thing for me,” he explained, caressing her cheek. “But I sincerely hope to improve greatly with practice.”

  “May we then?” She regarded him with pure devilment. “Practice?”

  ***

  Held against him, Vesta noted Hew’s erection still reared imperious and unsatisfied between them, and she ached to receive it, to feel the slide of it deep inside her, the glorious sensation of being filled by him. The sights and sounds of his pleasure had not only filled her spirit with euphoria but had awakened her own desire with a ferocity.

  “Are you not tender from before?” he asked.

  “Not unbearably,” she said with another mischievous look. “In fact, I am quite certain I could tolerate much more.”

  “Are you now?” His caresses moved to her bare bottom. She winced. “You are still tender there, however?”

  “Just a bit,” she replied with a sulky look.

  “Oh no! Your breath and pout are wasted if you think to make me feel guilty, for I don’t in the least.” He gave her a look of reproof. “I refuse to apologize, for you thoroughly deserved it, my dear. However, I am quite willing to administer some tender mercy to your injured flesh, if you think it would feel better.”

  “I suppose it might help,” she agreed.

  When he turned her onto her belly and straddled her lower legs, Vesta felt breathless with excitement. Hot, open-mouthed kisses on the back of her neck sent rapturous ripples to her throbbing sex. He worked his way over shoulders and back, sending her pulse skittering wildly out of control at the feel of his mouth and tongue paying homage to her bottom. When his hand slid between her thighs, already slick with arousal, a searing wave of want washed over her. “Can it not be done this way as well?” She looked over her shoulder and saw his blue eyes go black with reciprocal desire. With a taunting look, she raised her hips in invitation.

  “More lessons from the breeding sheds?” he asked in a husky voice.

  “Well, yes,” she said, breathless and unapologetic. “I thought the stallions seemed to thoroughly enjoy themselves.”

  “Then far be it for me to question them.” He placed a supportive hand under her pelvis and guided himself into position. He poised thus for an endless heartbeat and plunged into her with a soft moan of pleasure. She met his second heavenly thrust with one of her own, and they soon found a mutual cadence, settling into a languorous tempo, each repetition of plunge and drag heating her body and intensifying the throbbing tension. It was too much but still not enough. She arched her back, offering more of herself, and their tempo and urgency increased. Sweat slickened, they filled the air with the sultry sounds of slapping flesh punctuated by ragged gasps.

  Her orgasm came upon her stealthily, the heat smoldering and flickering deep in her belly, curling and flaring into passionate flames that suddenly erupted into a full conflagration that ripped over her with a violence.

  ***

  When she bucked under him in the first throes of orgasm, Hew threw his head back and drove into her with a wild abandon. When she exploded, her climax tore through him with an unholy vengeance, her sweet sheath squeezing and milking his manhood, reducing him body, mind, and soul to total depletion.

  With every remaining ounce of fortitude spent with his climax, Hew collapsed, rolling her into his arms and nuzzling her neck. “I once wondered, Vesta, if you would be the death of me. Now I know it for a certainty. Truly a sad end, after having charged into battle, roaring ‘death or glory.’ But then again...” He paused with a grin. “I can’t imagine a more glorious way to go.”

  “Nor, I.” She sighed. “Hew, that was...that was...I can find no words.”

  Neither could he, he realized. He felt an unfamiliar and otherworldly sense of well-being, a contentment he’d never dared hope for. And he had found it in the most unlikely of places—with a tiny hellion named Vesta. She had awakened passions he hadn’t known existed, and now he never wanted to let go.

  “Hew,” she asked. “There is something I must know.”

  “What is that?” He was growing drowsier by the moment.

  “Why did you wait? I mean,
it’s not customary for a man, is it?”

  “No, it is not,” he replied. “And I suffered greatly as a youth for my puritanical ideals.”

  “But your brother—”

  Hew laughed. “My brother is an unquestionable reprobate, but even he has his idiosyncratic code when it comes to physical relationships. We are both the victim of our upbringing in that respect, and it is a very ugly thing.”

  “In what way?”

  “Not unlike many aristocratic marriages, our parents were notoriously unfaithful to one another. Our mother ran off with her lover when I was five. I was really too young to understand, but Ludovic took it very badly and developed a deep distrust of women. It’s why he refuses ever to wed. Our father threw himself deep into a life of dissipation after that, but his sins caught up with him.”

  “How so?”

  “He went mad from the pox.”

  “Smallpox causes madness?”

  “No, love, the French pox. Syphilis.”

  “Syphilis?” She frowned. “I don’t know of this.”

  “Nor should you. It’s a horrid disease, afflicting body and mind, causing a slow, lingering death. Vic has always been protective of me and isn’t aware that I know the true condition of our father. So you see, my brother has dealt with the past in his way and I in mine, by vowing to abstain until I found the woman I would spend my life with.”

  “And you would have chosen Diana, had I not abducted you,” she said sadly.

  He lifted her chin and kissed her softly. “And I would have made a grave mistake. You, indeed, saved me from my folly.”

  “Do you truly believe that?” Her eyes glittered with emotion.

  “Yes. Although I still respect and admire Diana, she did not incite the deeper feelings I have experienced with you, Vesta, feelings I would not have known existed had you not intervened.” He gave her a rueful smile. “To my chagrin, I think that grizzled, old jockey was right all along.”