Page 67 of To Catch an Earl

He planted a trail of kisses down the center of her body.

Roses and peonies. Madness and sin.

She arched as he took her nipple into his mouth andsucked hard, but he didn’t allow himself to dwell too long. He kissed lower, shifting down her body, and she tensed as he swirled his tongue into her belly button then kissed lower still. He wedged his shoulders between her thighs, spreading her open to his gaze, and she instinctively covered herself with her hands.

“Wait—!” she gasped. “What—?”

“We didn’t get to this last time,” he said, gazing up her body. Her cheeks were pink with embarrassment, and he sent her a teasing, confident smile. “Trust me, Emmy. You’ll like it. I promise.”

Emmy lay back against the sheets as Harland placed a soft kiss on the inside of her thigh. She trusted him completely. If he said she would enjoy it, who was she to argue? He clearly had the greater experience. Even so, she squirmed as his hot breath laved her feminine core.

He chuckled and lifted one brow in amused inquiry. “May I?”

She managed a dazed nod and gave an incoherent groan of pleasure when his tongue swept over her sensitive flesh. His eyes were closed, his lashes lowered as if he were tasting something infinitely sweet, to be savored.

He licked her again, a lazy swirl, and she shuddered. It was different to the touch of his fingers, but equally maddening. Sensation flickered hot and cold over her skin, little tongues of ice and flame. She arced off the bed, grabbing hold of his hair as pleasure swelled, a throbbing ache that built like a wall of water pressing against a dam.

She reveled in his strength, his skill. He had such mastery over her body, and yet it didn’t feel like restraint.It felt like freedom. Like soaring, infinite power. Emmy dug her heels into the bed as he worshipped her with his mouth. No mercy—only surrender. She’d never expected anything else from him.

She climbed higher and higher, teetering on the edge of the abyss, desperate to take the leap into soaring oblivion.

L’appel du vide.

She so wanted to jump.

“Harland. Oh. God. Pleeease.”

Alex wanted her lost, as mindless as himself, begging for what he burned to give.

She groaned in frustration when he pulled away and rose over her and he sucked in a steadying breath, fighting the need to spread her open and simply thrust into her. She incited him to mayhem, to madness. Instead, he slid into her so slowly, they both gasped. He ground his teeth until his jaw ached.

So good. So good. So good.She fit him like a glove.

He was dangerously close. He closed his eyes, determined to bring her to completion before reaching it himself, and was rewarded with a breathless cry as he rocked his hips. He repeated the move, building a rhythm that had her clawing at his back.

“Yes. That. More,” she cried.

Suddenly desperate, he cupped her face and kissed her deeply, his tongue probing in harmony with his thrusts.Sublime.She was with him, all around him, and he felt his climax building as she flung her head back and reached her own peak with a hoarse little cry.

The feel of her convulsing around him was enough to set him off. He pulled out of her at the very last secondas stars exploded behind his closed eyelids and he was hit with a punch of pleasure so strong it almost knocked him senseless.

He collapsed against her in blissful, panting exhaustion and buried his face in her neck, his heart hammering against his ribs.

Bloody hell. What a woman.

Chapter 36.

Emmy held Alex against her as they both struggled to catch their breath. She stroked his back and broad shoulders and stared up at the canopy above her with a kind of dazed wonder.

Blissful lethargy suffused her body. She was boneless, and yet she hummed with a purring, contented energy. She felt invincible. As if she’d stolen fire from the heavens or conquered some impossible mountain peak.

Her heart turned over in her chest as the world came back into focus. Despite that final, frenzied climax, it hadn’t felt like mindless coupling.It had felt like making love.The teasing expression on Alex’s face, the gentle way he’d coaxed her toward pleasure, the ardency of his kisses all spoke of something deeper and more complicated than mere lust.

Or was it just wishful thinking on her part? Maybe he looked at every woman he bedded with that same tender, exasperated expression. Maybe he kissed all his lovers as if they were the only woman in the world.

And when had she started thinking of him as Alex, instead of Harland?

Emmy closed her eyes in despair at her own foolishness. She was in love, but she had no idea how to define their relationship. Theirs had been such a strange courtship. A wicked, flirtatious game of cat and mouse brimming with mistrust and reluctant admiration. Some wishful, stubborn part of her insisted they were becoming friends, as well as lovers, but the pragmatic side of her knew how ridiculous that was.

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