Page 74 of Coronation
It’s so easy to let it all go with him.
“I’ve missed you so goddamn much, darling,” Ben hisses, claiming my lips in another feverish kiss. His hand shoves beneath the bunched-up hem of my dress to find my ass, gripping each cheek roughly to guide the pace of my shameless grinding.
I hear myself moan as, beneath us, the car turns slowly into late-night Wyngate traffic.
The palace is at least thirty minutes away. We have time.
“Ben,” I whimper as the back seat fills with the sound of our panting, “I missed you too,oh my god?—”
The admission seems to do something to him. Ben’s hands tighten on my ass as he groans, leaning forward to claim my lips in another frantic kiss. My pussy is throbbing and slick with arousal, and I feel my inner walls contracting, aching to be filled in a way that only this man ever has. I want to feel my body stretching to fit his, and the impossible pleasure that comes from him fucking me.
Without warning, his hand comes down hard on my ass, spanking me through my panties. I cry out at the sharp jolt of pain, and my back arches, wordlessly begging for more. Ben doesn’t hesitate to oblige, bringing his palm down four more times, as I cry out with each.
Through our clothes, I feel his cock twitch. “I can’t fucking control myself with you,” he grunts. “Everything I give you, you like, isn’t that right? If I wonder whether I’m pushing it, you come back asking for more.”
He’s right. “Wouldn’t you like to know what else you can do to me?” I ask, my voice a breathless invitation that makes Ben’s jaw tighten as he drags me closer for another searing, open-mouthed kiss.
I’ll take that as a yes.
My teeth graze his bottom lip, and the groan that rumbles in his chest is probably the last straw for my panties. I’m soaked, and every little movement over the hard ridge of Ben’s cock only makes the situation more dire. Waiting until we’re back at the palace isn’t an option, but as I reach between us to free him, fully intending on riding him here and now, Ben stops me.
“We’re not doing this until you’re sure about me,” hepants, and though his face is mostly shrouded in shadow, I can see how deathly serious it is.
I swallow, struggling to understand what he means with my mind still clouded with lust. “What-what do you mean?”
Ben winces, lifting his hands to frame my face, staring into my eyes through the semi-darkness. “Never in my life have I hated myself more than I did after we met in the maze. You deserve so much better, darling.” He pauses, gathering his thoughts as his thumb traces the line of my cheekbone. “I won’t have you feeling any sort of shame at my hand. Never again. Until you’re sure, I don’t deserve to take any pleasure from your body.”
He’s telling me that he doesn’t want to have sex until I totally believe this is more to him than just that. This is about more than just fucking me. Never have any words been more healing and more painful, and I feel simultaneously torn apart and put back together as we look at each other, still intertwined
God, he really means it.
He really wants this—me.
He really wants me, and what’s more, I believe him.
For weeks, Benedict Ashwell has dedicated himself to piecing together all my fragmented worries and fears, healing them in the same quiet, pragmatic way he does all things. Over and over again, he’s pushed himself beyond where he’s comfortable, sharing pieces of himself that I don’t think have ever seen the light of day, because he knew that was what I needed to feel safe with him again,and it worked.
It worked so well that I fell in love with him, too.
My fears of him being a bad father to the secret inside me are gone, replaced somewhere along the way by my fear of losing him.I don’t want to lose him.
Ben brushes a few fallen strands from my face, and I suck in an unsteady breath, rocked by the tenderness of thegesture. “If I could go back, I would do it all differently,” he murmurs, leaning forward to press his lips to my cheek, my jaw, my neck.
He’s still hard, his cock pressed right against the soaked strip of fabric between my thighs, and the sway of our bodies as the car turns makes me gasp at the friction against my swollen clit.
Every noise sounds loud in the stillness of the back seat as Ben presses a hand between us, pausing as his fingers brush the waistband of my panties. “May I?”
I agree before he’s finished the question, so hopelessly rocked by the power of my realization that getting closer to him is more need than want. “Yes.” My voice breaks. “Please.”
So, he does.
I fall forward into him, my hands tangling in his hair, and our foreheads pressed together as he finds his way beneath the lacy material. We both hiss when he drags two fingers through my slit, from my clit to my entrance and back again, circling the little nub so gently it makes me pant.
“I would have woken you up.”
As absorbed in this moment as I am, it takes me a second to realize he’s talking about the morning he left Fernmoor House. My throat grows tight as he continues, still rubbing my clit.
“I would have touched you, just as I am now”—his fingers move lower, slipping inside my drenched channel and curving to brush a spot that tears a broken cry from my lips—“and told you that you are the most beautiful, soft, good thing I’ve ever known.”
