Page 51 of Bound By her Earl

And the look on her husband’s face suggested, in no uncertain terms, that she’d regret it if she did. And as much as she, as a general rule, liked to annoy him, the roiling want inside her told her that now was really not the time.

So, she swallowed her protests, pushed back any sense of propriety that threatened to reveal itself, and said the honest thing.

“Please, Benedict.”

It wasn’t clear in the slightest as far as requests went, but he—not that she’d ever admit it—was some sort of genius because he seemed to understand her perfectly.

His gaze didn’t leave hers as he bent just enough, so he could grasp a handful of her skirts, raising them slowly.

“Do you know what I think, Emily?” he asked, sly as the devil. “I think that you are a lie, wrapped up in a prim little package.”

She sucked in a breath. She didn’t even know what thatmeant, but goodness, it had to be criticism, didn’t it?

But his smirk suggested otherwise.

“Oh, yes,” he said, almost to himself. “You pretend to be oh so proper. A wallflower. Miss Rutley, who never causes a scandal.” Her skirts were past the edges of her stockings now, the hem grazing against her thighs. The gentle rasp was loud as gunfire.

“But that’s just a mask, isn’t it?” he teased. His fingers were trailing up her skin now, too, the sensation obliterating the lingering feeling of her skirts. “Beneath all that, you are the most tempting woman in the world, and I am merely the only one lucky enough to see it.”

Lucky?Her mind caught on the word, uncomprehending. He couldn’t possibly look at everything between them and still call himselflucky, could he?

But he didn’t look like he was lying. He looked like he was…

Well, she might have said happy if he didn’t also look like he planned to devour her whole, a prospect she greeted with an entirely inappropriate sense of excitement. He pulled her skirts up those last inches, until all of her was bared to him and her frock puddled awkwardly around her waist.

Except even that sense of awkwardness was so fleeting that she scarcely noticed it. Because he was looking down at her like shewasbeautiful. Like hewaslucky.

Just then, it felt like possibility and hope.

His eyes flicked up from where they’d been focused on her bare flesh—which should have mortified her but very much did not—to meet her gaze.

“Would you like me to give in to that temptation, Emily?” he asked, the curving twist of his smirk leaving her breathless.

“Benedict,yes.”

She wasn’t certain what she was agreeing to, but she didn’t care—Lord, how good it felt to not care, to know that she could be reckless, that she could justbe.

Because he would be there, firm and steady as her weight upon her.

“Yes,” he echoed, his hands dropping to clasp her, right above her knees. He pried her legs further apart, his firm grip brooking no argument until the stretch was a glorious ache. He dropped to his knees before her, and if there was a moment where she ought to have been embarrassed, it truly was now when she was laid out before him for his leisurely perusal.

The feeling did not come. In fact, the only shift in the happy, hungry mood that tumbled inside her came when Benedict cursed soundly and pulled his hands from her so he could shuck off his jacket and chuck it carelessly across the room. She could see him just well enough to register the movement and was able to get out one breathless laugh before he grasped her again, spreading her legs just the tiniest bit wider, and pressed his mouth to her.

The laughter died in her throat as ever particle of her being focused his feeling of his mouth against her. His lips and, oh, God, his tongue. Her breaths came out in panicked gasps, so many in a row that she felt nearly lightheaded or maybe that was just the effect of that wicked, irritating, talented mouth on her too hot flesh.

“Oh my,” she heard herself say. “Oh my, oh my.”

She thought it was possible—maybe even likely—that Benedict was smiling. But she decided not to care about that, either. Not just then.

How could she care about whatever inane nonsense coming out of her own mouth when her husband released one of her legs, wedging his shoulder against her so that she couldn’t close her legs even an iota, and trailed his fingers closer and closer to her center? Closer and closer until he wasn’t approaching, he wasthereand theninside, pressing against her in a place she hadn’t ever imagined existed.

Still pinned beneath her body, her fingers clenched in the soft fabric of the duvet, squeezing so tightly that she would have worried about tearing the clearly expensive spread were she not so thoroughly distracted by other things.

Heat spiraled within her, winding her up like a spring, tighter and tighter even as, no matter how contradictory it seemed, lazy heat floated through her. And then he moved just right, touched her so perfectly. She ruptured, shattered, detonated. Her back arched, her whole body focused in on her pleasure, waves wracking through her until she was left as nothing more than an exhausted, wrung out puddle of bliss.

Oh,she thought. It was the best she could manage.

“That,” she said, her voice sounding slurred like she’d overindulged in spirits. “Nice.”

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