Page 17 of Bride of the Fae Duke

A ludicrous promise. How could she trust him to keep it, she wanted to say, when she had not even been able to trust her own bloody father to do the same? But then his fingers traced a line up the inside of her thigh, and she abruptly forgot about every bitter rejoinder on her lips.

He wastouching her.

Sweet divines, the duke of Locke was holding her andtouchingher – strong fingers brushing over soft, sensitive skin, not even her shift between them to dull the intimacy of his caresses. Which shouldn’t make her feel so much. This marriage was not a place for feelings – he had been more than clear on that – and yet …

That gossamer touch was dancing up her thigh, creeping closer and closer to parts of her she’d barely ever touched herself, and she couldn’t help but feeleverything.

‘That’s more like it,’ he muttered, and only then did she realise that she’d slumped against the solid wall of his chest, that her legs had unclenched around his hand. His shoulders and biceps shifted as he adjusted his hold. ‘Open your eyes, Eleanor. There’s nothing here you need to hide from.’

His voice was a low rumble in his chest, deep and mesmerising. She obeyed before she could think, blinking against the candlelight, against the sight of her own shift bunched around her hips. His wiry forearm lay between her thighs, the silver-blue scales even more alien next to the pale softness of her own body, and his hand …

His hand shifted.

A finger slid beneath her drawers.

Shesawhim move, shesawhis wrist and forearm bulge as he slipped past the last of her defences, and yet nothing could possibly have prepared her for the feeling of it – the first firm stroke of his finger over her own slick flesh below, the flurry of sensation sparking into every nerve and fibre of her body. She gasped, words evaporating. He repeated the motion in response, slow and deliberate, and a shudder wracked through her, pleasure fizzing up her spine and all the way down into her curling toes.

Again she gasped, more urgently now.

‘That’s it.’ There was a strange encouragement in his voice, calm and unaffected but soothing all the same. ‘That’s what I need from you. Do you want more, Eleanor?’

Did he expect her totalknow?

She jerked back her head before she could think twice, meeting his gaze – grey eyes watching her with unruffled interest as his finger continued to explore her most intimate places in methodical, unhurried circles. No glimpse of a blush on his tanned cheeks. No sign of glassy arousal in his eyes. As if this was nothing but mundane routine, and yet his touch didn’t falter, winding her tighter, coiling something terrifying yet glorious in her lower belly …

This should have been mortifying. She didn’t evenknowthis man. Yet all she felt, all she could possibly feel, was the buildingache under his fingertips, rippling outward at his every stroke, his every brush.

It left no room for shame or fear.

It left room only for him.

‘More, Eleanor?’ The words were conversational, almost detached. She struggled for air, light-headed with the effort to focus, and still he barely even blinked, his eyes intent upon her face as if to read the words her gasps were hiding. ‘Do you want me to go on?’

‘Yes,’ she whimpered. ‘Yes,please—’

A finger slid into her.

She almost came apart around it.

She hadn’t known she’d been empty all her life, not until now, not until this moment in which she learned what fullness felt like – the blissful, deliciouspresenceof him in the hollow tightness of her body. A moan slipped over her lips. and then there was asecondfinger pressing into her, stretching her open, and somehow that felt even better than the first had done …

Locke drew halfway out of her.

Then thrust back in, andoh, the ecstasy tightening within her at the roughness of that touch. Her eyes fluttered shut. His free hand clamped around her hip to steady her, and once more his fingers drove deep, drawing an unthinking cry from her lips. A tension was building in her body, and she knew it instinctively, knew without words that she needed the release of it in every desperate fibre of her.

Just not when.

Just nothow.

‘Please,’ she panted, words slurring. ‘Please, more …’

‘Even more?’ he muttered, and in that moment, she would have given her soul for more of the approval brimming in his voice. ‘As you wish …’

A third finger pressed into her, and she imploded.

She was all breathless surrender, all tangled limbs, as release tore through her and had her clenching up to the tips of her fingers, sending her collapsing against him. Strong arms wrapped around her. And then she lay slumped against his chest, out of air and out of strength, as her body pulsed and trembled and her heart echoedmore, more, more …

‘There.’ Gone was that sliver of softness in his voice above her – as if he’d remembered just in time that her pleasure did not mean a blasted thing to him. ‘That should get us started.’

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