Page 48 of A Bride for the Icy Duke
Urgency replaced patience, and she dug her fingernails into his skin as she slid up his body, knowing now, instinctively, what she needed to do. She needed him to fill her, and then, when she would be whole, a question she hadn’t even known she had been asking would have an answer…
Hewas the answer to the question she had been asking since she was thirteen years old.
“Lydia.” He grasped her face between his hands, looking straight up at her. “This is not the time and place for—for what you’re asking.”
“What do you mean?”
He hesitated, and she had the sense he was choosing between reasons, selecting the one he thought she would accept the best. “Water will make it uncomfortable if we were to try… that.”
“What?”
He half laughed, and his staff scraped against her again. She both saw and felt the rush of pleasure that passed through him at this simple contact. “Are you going to make me say it?”
She delighted in his laugh. When he was here, like this, he seemed to have forgotten all the things that plagued him the rest of the time.
Unfamiliar—yet, in truth,familiar—fondness suffused her.
They were here, limbs sliding together in the water, bared to one another, and he was laughing. It felt as though there could be nothing more intimate than this.
“Say it,” she insisted.
“Sex.”
She shivered, the word doing delicious things to her. How coarse, and how fun! Who would have thought that staid, sensible, stern Alexander could be fun? This was the boy she had seen at the lake, the man he would have become if he hadn’t forgotten how to smile.
“Sex,” she repeated.
He groaned, thrusting up against her again. “If you are not careful, you’ll make me over-eager…”
“Is beingeagernot the point?”
“Mm, I’d rather ensure you are fully pleased first.” He readjusted them, so that when he next thrust up, his shaft slid straight through that precious bundle of nerves that so ached with desire. “Does this please you, Lydia?”
Light exploded behind her eyelids. This wasn’t everything, and yet it was already so much. She made a little mewling noise which he caught with his mouth, absorbing the sound. Her knees pressed against the side of the tub, and her fingers dug into his skin, and she urged him on, because there was nothing she wanted more than this.
In this, she had forgotten her aims, all the things she had hoped this intimacy would achieve. All she knew was the pressure of his erection sliding through her folds, the friction delicious. All she knew was his hands on her—her breasts, her sides, her hips, her backside. The water sloshed as they moved together, and she gave herself over to the sensations in her body.
This wasn’t about victory; this wasn’t about ulterior motives. All she could think about was pleasure…
That same pleasure ran up and down her limbs as he thrust up against her, his head tilted back against the lip of the bath. There were no masks on now. His expression was raw with desire, and she knew she would carry this scene with her for the rest of her life.
The heat from the fire against her damp skin. The press of his mouth against her jaw. The hardness of him as he rubbed against her, the pleasure blinding enough that she wondered if anything could be better than this, this mockery of sex. They were in an erotic dance, and with every controlled movement, he brought her closer and closer to her peak…
Alexander’s face tightened, and he gripped her bottom, holding her in place as he rolled his hips against her. She wrapped her fingers around the edge of the tub.
“I can’t believe this alone is enough…” he breathed, almost grunting the words. “How are you doing this to me?”
She stared into his face as though she could memorize it. But all she could say was his name. “Alexander.”
“Are you close?”
“Close?”
“Climax.”
She dragged in a breath as he slid against the very point she needed. Her entire body was tight, hovering on the very brink. She felt as though her insides were all converging on that one spot inside her—that spot which felt as though it was made of heat and light and everything wonderful.
“Yes…” she whispered.
