Page 77 of Passions of a Wicked Earl
Beth’s reaction had put him in a foul temper. He’d retired to his library for a brandy. He’d only just finished it off when Claire had joined him.
“Have you a moment? I need you to help me find something.”
The something she was searching for, as it turned out, was his ticklish spot.
“I’m telling you that I don’t have one,” he told her now.
“Shall I stop searching then?” She looked up questioningly from where she’d been running her tongue along his thigh.
He shook his head and grinned. “No, you should probably continue exploring.”
She lowered her head to the soft flesh at his hip, and her hair trailed over his arousal. The touch was so light, like a cloud come to earth, that he thought it should have tickled, but all it did was make him harden even more, make his breath hitch, cause his body to feel as though he were suddenly surrounded by flames.
She was such a willing partner in bed, ready to try anything he might suggest, on occasion even suggesting something wicked, like drinking his brandy from her navel. He’d also sipped it from between her breasts, licked it from her nipples. She’d squirmed, protested faintly, and when he was done, she’d had her own brandy on his skin.
She toured his body as though someone had given her a map, but she took her sweet time arriving at her destination.
Slipping her hands beneath his buttocks, she dug her fingernails into his skin. He issued a low growl of satisfaction as her mouth closed over him, her tongue flicked—
Bucking, he threaded his fingers into her hair as his back arched off the bed, and he emitted an animalistic sound that he’d barely recognized as coming from him. Whenever he’d thought of bedding a wife, he’d never considered that she might have an adventuresome streak. He’d sought to pleasure her and experience his own gratification in the process, but he’d never expected that she would take such delight in pleasuring him.
“You’re driving me mad,” he ground out.
“Laugh for me,” she said, before gliding her tongue up, then down.
Laugh? He could barely form coherent words. Every muscle was taut. Every inch of him begged for release. He thought he was skilled in the bedchamber, but she rivaled him with her wickedness. Here at last there was complete honesty between them, trust.
What surprised him the most was how desperately he wanted her. She was not forbidden, she was not illicit, she was not prohibited. The scandalous aspects of relationships he’d had with other women that had excited him before were absent with her.
She was legal. She was his wife. She was duty-bound to warm his bed.
Bedding her should have been dull, unexciting. It should have been predictable.
But inexplicably, each time was more amazing than the time that had come before it. Each passing day he learned more about her, so he enjoyed taking her to bed that much more. Each encounter was a discovery, each had him anticipating the next.
He watched her mouth, watched the swaying of her breasts …
God help him, he’d had enough.
Rising, he reached down and grabbed her beneath her arms. She laughed as he tossed her onto her back and pounced on her.
“You shall have to finish your exploring later.” Hungrily, greedily, he kissed her, relishing the saltiness of his skin coating her lips.
She drew up her legs, wrapping them around his hips. He could feel her moist entrance and heat pressed against him. She was ready, but it was his turn to torment. He kissed, caressed, taunted, and teased until she was writhing beneath him. Then he rose and plunged into the velvety hot depths of her.
She cried out, her release immediate and swift, the spasms drawing him deeper as he hammered into her. She was no delicate miss, his wife. She was fire and passion.
He roared out as the cataclysm hit him, and he slammed into her one last time, his seed scalding, his body replete.
Collapsing on top of her, burying his face in the curve of her neck, he fought to catch his breath. Another spasm, another tremor.
He wasn’t certain he’d ever experienced a moment as intense. He felt the lethargy rushing in and barely managed to roll off her before sleep claimed him.
He awoke to find her sprawled on her stomach, her face turned away from him. Not the direction he fancied. He’d spent hours watching her dream. It had become one of his favorite things to do. He lightly tickled the now-familiar spot on her side.
With a low laugh, she turned her head to gaze at him. He loved the sleepy look of her, the way her eyes only opened halfway, the way her lips curled up as though she’d had pleasant dreams. And there was something about the scent of sleep on her skin that aroused him.
It was strange that when she was in his bed, he found it difficult to remember any woman who had come before, didn’t want to contemplate any other woman.
