Page 57 of To Woo and to Wed
“Wait,” she said slowly, a smile playing at her lips, and there was nothing in her expression but open appreciation, and lust, andneed.
She made a slow circuit around him, and he grew, if possible, even harder under this scrutiny. She came to a halt directly before him, so close that he could have reached out and seized her with the slightest movement of his arm, but he remained still, allowing her to look her fill. There was color in her cheeks, and her chest was rising and falling more rapidly than usual. Her gaze dropped to his leg, and he instinctively reached out a hand to cover the ugly scar that crisscrossed one thigh, where a jagged piece of wood had gouged him badly in the crash, then froze mid-motion, and allowed his hand to drop.
She reached out a hand instead, her fingers tracing the angry scars on his thigh; they had faded with time, but would never vanish.
Her gaze flicked up to his. “Does this hurt?”
His mouth twisted into a wry smile. “No more than usual.”
A lie, in some sense; his pain today was certainly worse thannormal. But her cool hand on his skin eased him somehow, even though all she’d done was trace a gentle line along the map of his pain.
Her gaze lowered again, down to his shin, where the break had healed poorly, causing the limp that plagued him to this day, and her hand continued its progress, down nearly to his knee and then back up again—and then farther up, and farther. Her finger reached his inner thigh, and he closed his eyes.
“Sophie—”
Her hand curled around him, and he bit off her name on a groan. Her grip tightened, and he inhaled sharply; a moment later, it was gone, and he opened his eyes to protest—
In time to see her, gazing directly at him, lick across her palm with slow deliberation, and then return that hand to his length, giving him a slow, agonizing stroke.
“Jesus Christ.”
“Mmm,” she said, her eyes following the motion of her hand. “I do love when youtalk.”
“I talk all—bloodyhell—all the time,” he managed.
Her smile, smug as a cat who got the cream, widened. “Not like this.” Another deliberate stroke. Her hand loosened and she stepped back, then sank to her knees. He reached out and gripped the bedpost just before she engulfed him in her mouth.
It was warmth, and heat, and gentle suction, but also there was a growing pain in his leg, an agony mixing with the pleasure in ways that at first almost heightened it, then slowly, surely became more of a distraction.
“Sophie—wait,” he said, the words more of a gasp than anything else. She drew back, looking up at him in question.
“It’s—I need to sit down. I don’t think my leg can take this.”
He’d long since stopped feeling much in the way of regret when it came to his bad leg; if occasionally he longed for the days when he could race his brother or friends across a field and beat whoever was foolish enough to agree to his challenge, he didn’t dwell on this feeling, as it did little to serve him in the moment.
Now, however, he felt frustration bubbling up as Sophie shuffled backward on her knees, allowing him to gingerly sit on the edge of the bed. He so desperately wanted her, of all people, to see him as whole, unbroken. Not someone to be gentle with. Some of what he was feeling must have shown on his face—itself an alarming notion, given how he prided himself on never allowing any such thing to occur—because a frown creased hers.
“What’s wrong?”
He shook his head. “Nothing—obviously,” he added, gesturing at his lap, where his cock was making it quite plain that it objected to this interruption in the evening’s entertainment. Her frown did not ease at this attempt at levity, however, and he sighed.
“I’m annoyed about my leg,” he said honestly. “And I do not wish it to make things… that is, I do not wish you to worry about it, while we…”
“I can promise you, West, if you’d let me get back to what I was doing, I will not be thinking of anything except trying to make you spend, and how much I like doing so.”
“Do you?” he asked, his voice hoarse but coherent, which he thought quite a feat after nearly swallowing his tongue.
“Shall I show you?” she asked, her voice coy, and he swallowed, a curt nod all that he could manage under the circumstances. And then she was on her feet again, turning her back and casting him a flirtatious look over her shoulder. “If you could just help me, perhaps…?”
She lifted her arms and a moment later he was tugging the dress over her head. Then his fingers were on the laces of her corset, loosening them until that, too, was cast aside.
She turned then, revealing a chemise made of whisper-thin linen, nearly transparent in the lamplight, the silhouetted curves of breast and waist and hip a tantalizing promise through the fabric. A moment later, however, that barrier was gone, too, and she was standing before him, entirely naked, and if he’d thought his memories of her were accurate, he realized that he’d still, somehow, forgotten the absolute glory that was Sophie, all bare skin and golden hair—which, even now, she was removing the pins from, shaking out around her shoulders—and saucy gleam in her eyes.
He braced his hands behind him on the counterpane to disguise their trembling. “You are beautiful.” It was not the most elegant or smooth of compliments, merely three simple words that felt as though they’d been wrenched from deep within him, but it was what he had thought every single time he had laid eyes on her for the past seven years, and he’d never been able to say it. Had gone out of his way to avoid saying much of anything at all to her. To speak those words now felt like a privilege he had not earned.
The rosiness in her cheeks deepened. “Thank you.”
“Come here,” he said, and she walked toward him slowly, her hips swaying, just enough for it to seem seductive rather than exaggerated.
