Page 14 of A Dark and Stormy Knight
She might have been a sea goddess commanding the stone deities behind her to spout her element into the night, anointing her wealth of carefully arranged dark hair with little gems of mist.
“I’m… I don’t know if I can bring myself to disrobe,” she said in a small voice.
“I’ll do it.” He lifted onto his knees and reached for her, but she intercepted his hands with hers, lacing thin fingers with his own.
“I mean to say, I’m too reticent to do this in the altogether.”
She wanted to keep her fine silk dress on… and he’d be goddamned if he didn’t find that oddly arousing.
And helpful. His lust had teeth, and something told him that if he were to unwrap this woman, he wouldn’t last long enough to fuck her well.
She was too beautiful, her scent too alluring, and that look on her face. That coy mix of vulnerable vixen was going to drive him beyond all control.
God help him, he was doing this. With her.Toher. A part of him knew he’d live to regret it, and he couldn’t bring himself to care.
A hard life had turned him into a hard man. Harder and colder with every lonely year that passed. And all he did was work and fight. Work to keep the hard man from becoming an evil one, and fight the evil he recognized in others. Fight to keep it from devouring his city, as it had his family.
And here was someone soft. Soft and…beleaguered by a familiar loneliness. Asking for him to share a few moments of pleasure.
He was too soul-weary to resist such an enticing bargain.
Releasing his hands, she curled her fingers in her lap, bunching her skirts and lifting the powder blue hem to uncover lace boots and stark white stockings.
It was an invitation not to be denied.
Morley plunged his hands beneath the folds and frills, drawing them up shapely, silk-covered calves until he reached her knees. He parted them, filling the space he made with his body.
With her sitting up on the ledge, and him on his knees, their faces aligned. He claimed her lips once again, marveling that there was a mouth on this earth that tasted like hers.
He delved into the warmth, a velvet intrusion. A parody of what he would do to her elsewhere. Her little, warm tongue made gentle slides against his, tentatively testing his restraint.
Finding the edge of it.
A fire of anticipation immolated in his loins, and he suddenly ached to taste every part of her. To rip her dress open and see if she was as pale as the night suggested. If iridescent veins adorned her breasts and the thin, tender skin on the inside of her thighs. He wanted to mark her with little bites of his teeth, to show the man who had never pleased her that someone was able and oh so willing.
He hitched her skirts higher, hands venturing from her knees up her thighs, finding curious frills, silk garters bedecked with lace and little bows attached with delicate stitches.
His hands played there, plucking at things and testing textures while he savored her mouth for as long as his inflamed body would allow.
Her hands didn’t remain idle.
They rested on the buttons of his coat, releasing them with jerky, uncertain motions until she could wrench it open and slide her hands inside. She explored the width and breadth of him until her arms locked around him.
The uncertain tenderness in the embrace was too much for him to bear.
Morley broke the kiss, pulling back to assess her. To watch her widening eyes as his fingers threaded higher, following the silken expanse of flesh until he met the barrier of her thin cotton drawers.
She tucked her lips between her teeth and trembled, but didn’t look away.
“Tell me again what you want.” He hardly recognized his voice, the dark, growling street accent, the insolence and lust.
She gave a delicate swallow before answering. “I-I can’t say it.”
“You want me to kiss you?” he prodded, covering her mound. “Here?”
She gave a little jump, and her knees clamped his hips, as if they might have closed had his body not impeded it.
“Yes,” she replied with a bashful whisper.
