I slide my palm across her nipple. Her lips part and quiver, her face the exquisite grimace of a woman trying not to moan aloud. My cock is as hard as a cricket bat, my heart aflutter with a nervous thrill: When I touch her, she cannot ignore me.
I lift her breast and bend close. “‘With my body I thee worship’—did not my vows thus command me?”
She trembles at the sensations caused by my breath. I lick her nipple, sweet and satiny upon my tongue, erect with her body’s interest in mine.
I look back at her face, even as I slide my tongue over her nipple. Her eyes are shut tight, her teeth gritted. But as soon as she senses my attention on her, she opens her eyes and stares back at me, refusing to acknowledge that anything I do can possibly have a significant effect on her.
I insert my hand between her thighs. She jerks but holds my gaze.
“You have beautiful eyes,” I tell her, intoxicated with my new powers. “It’s like looking into the heart of a galaxy.”
I regret my words immediately—they are too much those of a besotted man. A besotted man I am—and have long been—but I refuse to let it be known until her heart is mine. My pride cannot allow any other course of action.
Her reaction is one of suspicion: She fully anticipates that I will follow my compliment with something snide, possibly nasty. I have only myself to blame for her distrust: Instead of confessing the contents of my heart, at every turn I have insulted and slighted her, believing that any reaction from her was better than none at all.
“Are you drunk, Larkspear?” she demands.
“Yes,” I answer with the sort of dirty look she expects from me. “Intoxicated by you, my dear.”
I slide one finger along the delicate folds at the junction of her legs. Her softness is indescribable. My heart pounds, then pounds twice as hard as I encounter a warm, slippery moisture.
“You are wet,” I inform her. “Quite wet.”
Her gaze turns violent, as if she would love to take a bludgeon to my person. I, on the other hand, am overjoyed. Her heart might be aloof, but her body is far from indifferent to me.
“Yes, keep looking at me, darling. I will enjoy studying your face when you come.”
“You think it so easy to—”
Her next word disappears into a whimper as I slip my finger inside her.
She is hot and tight—incredibly hot, incredibly tight. I force myself to speak normally. “Nice. I will relish fucking you.”
She grits her teeth. “Why don’t you do just that?”
“And forgo all the fun and games? I think not. Such pleasures should be finely drawn out, every second slowly and purposefully savored.”
Something that is almost fear shadows her eyes. The urge comes upon me to tell her that she needs to dread nothing, that I will perish before I will allow anything to mar her happiness or her spirits. But I hold back, reminding myself that there is a larger war to be fought.
And because I know that should I hold out my heart before her, she would smile and stab it with a dagger of disdain.
I play with her slowly and purposefully, as I’ve promised, arousing her sensitive flesh with measured strokes, with an occasional pinch thrown in for variety and interest—and to feed her antagonism, because old habits die hard and I am, alas, as much a creature of habit as the next man.
“Tell me how much you hate my touch,” I order her. “Tell me how you shrink from it. Tell me how you are absolutely, absolutely not getting wetter by the second.”
Her reply is a low growl. “And you think I will give you that satisfaction?”
“Someone should,” I counter, my voice losing some of its steadiness.
For in arousing her I have also aroused myself to a fever pitch. Her readiness drenches my hand. I am desperate to plunge into her, to claim her body as mine and mine alone.
I do not permit myself easy gratification. My aim is not simply to ejaculate deep inside her, however much I want it, but to possess the entirety of her. Her body, yes, but also her mind, and ultimately her heart.
And to achieve that, tonight I am interested only in her pleasure, her satisfaction.
I wedge another finger inside her and watch hungrily for all the signs of enjoyment she cannot suppress. The small writhing motions of her lower body, the further dilation of her pupils, the little whimpers that escape her clenched teeth from time to time. Inside my still perfectly pressed trousers, my cock flexes—and engorges almost beyond what I can endure.
“I love how pink your cheeks are, darling,” I dare to tell her, knowing she will interpret my words not as admiration, but goading. “I love how that blush has spread down your throat all the way to your breasts. And what gorgeous breasts. You should have lived a century ago, when ladies rouged their nipples and proudly displayed them above the décolletage of their gowns.”