Page 86 of Duke of Wickedness
In all their encounters, he hadn’t takenanythingfor himself. She thought he would dispute it, but she suddenly felt desperate to give him some facet of the things that he’d given to her.
She was suddenly desperate to see how beautifulhelooked when he was completely undone.
That longing gave her enough energy to lift her head toward him.
“David,” she said, not caring that she sounded needy and pleading. “Make love to me.”
For an instant, his expression was entirely naked, and there was so much there. Longing, want. Anticipation. Nerves.
Fear.
It was there and then gone, that mélange of feeling, replaced by his charming exterior, though it seemed rather more fragile than usual. Ariadne might have disliked seeing that mask slide into place, but some instinct told her that he needed it right now.
“Of course, little bird,” he said. “I—yes. Of course I will.”
Ariadne had been content to stay where David had placed her until this point, but now, as he stepped back and let his hand fall to the fastening of his trousers, she summoned strength in her weary muscles to push herself to the head of the bed and propped herself up against the frankly ridiculous number of pillows that David had assembled.
His trousers dropped, and Ariadne felt her mouth go dry as she saw all of him for the very first time. His narrow hips were so different from hers, his legs more heavily furred, visible even with the light color of his hair. His thighs were strong; if he looked athletic and rangy while dressed, he seemed even more so without his clothing, all ropy muscle and determined strength.
And between his legs…
Well, Ariadne felt silly about it, but she blushed to look at him, at the main difference between them. She admired him, shameless, amazed, impressed.
“You are beautiful,” she told him. “I?—”
She lost track of what she’d been meaning to say because the smile he had given her was so blinding, so happy, that it nearly caused her heart to stop in her chest.
“Just… come here, would you?” she asked, reaching up for him. “I need you.”
He came. He crawled across the bed to her, leonine and dangerous, but she wasn’t afraid, because how could she ever be afraid of him? It didn’t matter that this was new, and it didn’t matter that it was the distant, mysterious thing that young ladies were told theyshouldfear.
This was David. He wouldn’t hurt her. She knew it like she knew her own name, like she knew her own heartbeat.
She grasped his face in her hands and pulled his lips toward hers, absolutely starving for another taste of him. She hiked up a knee so that he could settle more comfortably against her, his arms going around her neck, one of her hands reaching over his shoulder to stroke up and down his back. She relished every inchof him, from the bony protrusion of his spine to the curve of his muscles to the small, rough patch of some kind of scar.
The hair on his legs prickled her skin slightly, but she found that it was not at all unpleasant. The place between his legs seemed to burn twice as hot as the rest of him; it was a brand where he leaned his weight against her thigh.
Maybe it was the two climaxes she’d already enjoyed, but Ariadne found that she was in no rush to move ahead, not when this—this press of him against all of her—was so goddamn perfect.
“I could do this forever,” she murmured.
He seemed to go a little rigid, and she worried that she’d said the wrong thing, that she’d crossed that line between them that she always tried to tend to so carefully. But then he relaxed, leaning back against her.
“Me, too,” he said, the words scarcely more than a breath.
She wrapped both arms tight around him, like she could hold him close enough that it would make time stop entirely. He allowed no more than a hairsbreadth of space between them when he reached his hand down to guide himself inside her.
It was a slow stretch, the way he pressed into her. It didn’t hurt, no matter what she’d been taught to fear; she could only attribute this to the way she was relaxed to the point of beingboneless after David’s earlier ministrations. She could feel every inch of him, however, pressing closer and closer until they were pressed together entirely, until she could feel him, inside and out.
“David,” she said as they clung to one another, their brows pressed together, just breathing. Justbeingtogether.
“My Ari,” he said back to her. “I—I have to move. Please.”
Once he said it, she also needed it.
“Yes,” she said. “Yes. Now.”
His movements were minute at first, then slightly more emphatic, but throughout it all, he kept as much of himself pressed to her as he could. She pressed her hips up to meet him as their skin grew slick with their exertions, and she thought,Oh, yes. Oh, no. How will I give him up after this?
