Page 36 of A Virgin to Tame the Duke
“Here?” He trailed a finger down her knee. “Or perhaps here.” He brought his other hand up to caress her face in a gesture so tender she caught her breath. “Or perhaps you desire to be touched here.” He cupped her breast, and the breath she held came out in a short, sharp exhalation.
“Aaron!” she said in both amusement and exasperation.
“Very well,” he said, pressing a kiss to her neck that sent her head leaning back once more. Everything about this situation was wanton, but she adored its wantonness even as distant future shame threatened to curdle her desire. “I shall interpret your instruction as wanting to be touched here.” And he pressed his finger into the slickness at the apex of her legs. Sensation burst from the contact, and she gasped. Although she’d desperately wanted him to touch there, she hadn’t known how it would feel.
It felt good. She never wanted him to stop.
Fireworks of pleasure exploded with each tiny crook of his finger, and the circling motions quickened the unraveling feeling inside her. Heat pooled in her core, growing and growing and tightening until her world centered on his fingers against her, his hand on her breast, his hot mouth against hers.
“Aaron,” she gasped, gripping at his arm with both hands—a plea and a warning. She needed the sensation to continue to its peak yet feared the uncertainty that was coming. “Aaron, I don’t know…” her voice trailed away, breathless. “You are doing something to me I don’t understand.”
His eyes reminded her of the sky she knew lay above the heavy clouds. “Trust me, Lottie. Trust me.”
It was her mother’s pet name on his tongue, but when he said it, it took on an entirely different meaning.
“What are you doing to me?”
He nuzzled his nose against hers. Such tenderness from a man she had once thought had no scope for softness. “I’m teaching you the meaning of pleasure,” he said. “Consider me the tutor you never knew you needed.”
She ground against his hand, her body behaving in a way she might not have condoned if her mind were not so hazy with pleasure. “Is that all you are? A tutor?”
“Why, do you wish me to be more?”
She hardly knew what she wished—aside from completion—but the idea that he was nothing more than a tutor rankled, and she withdrew from his caresses as much as she could. “We are not playing the roles of teacher and student,” she said.
“Then content yourself, Lottie,” he said into her ear, and at the sensation of his breath against the delicate skin that lay there, she shuddered. “You are not merely a student to me. Consider just what you are doing to me here. Consider how much I want you.” He nipped the skin of her neck, and she made a sound that felt embarrassingly like a moan. “Consider the desperation that has me pinning you in a way, so I may awaken your body in a way I have wanted to since almost we first met.” His other hand crept toward the apex of her legs once again, and she merely opened her legs to allow him access. “I have wanted to feel you, kiss you, taste you, bring you to the brink and watch your face as you cross it for the first time.” He paused, almost as though he couldn’t say more, and the expression in his eyes darkened with desire so vivid she felt echoes of it in her body.
This time when that now-familiar heat returned to the place his fingers busied themselves, she didn’t protest, but he read her gasps with expert precision, and when she felt as though she should shatter, he stilled his fingers, and the sensation passed.
“What are you doing?”
He kissed her, long and deep. “This is the sweetest moment.”
She ran her hands over him. “Can I not return the favor?”
He laughed, though the sound was edged. “I suspect the second you touched me, I should explode.”
With daring she hardly knew she possessed, she stroked a hand along the hard length in his pantaloons, and he hissed a breath. “Careful,” he said, resuming his attentions even as she repeated the gesture. “I am but human, and you are every kind of temptress.”
“So, let me tempt you.”
“You are wicked.” He laughed again and rubbed himself against his hand with the same almost helpless gesture with which she had ground against his hand. “I do not have the self-control you think I possess.”
Charlotte knew nothing about self-control; if she had, she would not be here now with Aaron in this way. She would not be now fumbling with the buttons holding the flap of his breeches down so she could better access the part of him she knew she wanted even if she didn’t knowwhy.
With a muttered curse, Aaron removed a hand from her breast and undid the buttons, so she could finally admire the length of him. He sprung free, oddly hot and silky against her hands.
Aaron closed his eyes and groaned. “Damn it, Charlotte, you will be my undoing.”
His every moan spurred on her on still further, bringing her closer to the edge, and when, in a sudden motion that sent hot spikes of pleasure through her, he slipped a finger inside her, she fractured. He held her close as she shuddered and gasped, and seconds later, with a groan, he pulled out of her hands and away.
Charlotte hung her head and stared at her skirts, pushed back over her legs to allow Aaron better access. She wasn’t certain what had just happened, but when Aaron turned back to her, tucking himself back into his breeches as though nothing happened, she felt suddenly embarrassed.
“Charlotte,” he said softly, tilting her chin so she met his gaze. “This was… it was a beautiful thing to share.”
“And you…” she swallowed, “you enjoyed it?”
“I did,” he assured her. “I enjoyed it a great deal.” That was something, at least, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that, now she had drifted back to earth and landed in her newly awoken body, she had done something shameful.
