But she was no longer a decent woman, was she?
Tonight, she’d ceased being respectable wife, indigent widow, virtuous lady. Tonight, she’d become a madman’s harlot.
A madman’s harlot wouldn’t shrink from an act just because it struck her as strange and perverse. A madman’s harlot would embrace every indulgence her madman offered.
“You’re thinking about it. I can see it in your eyes.” He curled his fingers more firmly around her thighs and spread them wider. “I swore I’d stop if you asked. That hasn’t changed.”
“Don’t you want to take me?” she asked almost on a wail.
His long mouth quirked with wry humor. “More than I want to breathe. But this time, you’ll be with me all the way.”
“You promise you’ll stop if I say so?” she asked doubtfully, even while she lay down.
“I promise. Though never trust anything a man tells you when he’s got his head between your legs.”
Grace’s giggle ended on a strangled moan when with a ruthlessness she’d never have credited to him, he tilted her hips up and buried his mouth in her. He made a low, deep sound of enjoyment. She shivered as his tongue and lips and teeth worked her.
The sensation was odd. She wasn’t sure she did like it.
Until the first blast of pleasure scorched her.
She stiffened in astonished reaction and clenched her hands hard in the sheet. She swallowed a startled whimper.
Still, he must have heard her. He paused and stared up at her. “All right?”
Speaking was an effort. “No.”
“No?” he asked skeptically.
Curse him for not taking her word. The strange cramping of her interior muscles subsided, leaving her wanting more.
“No!” Then, when she looked deep into his golden eyes, “Yes.”
“Good,” he said shortly and started all over again. His tongue flickered over her then he drew hard on her center of pleasure.
Until tonight, she hadn’t even known she had a center of pleasure. She bucked under his mouth, not sure whether she wanted him to stop immediately or if she never wanted him to stop at all.
He placed one hand firmly on her churning stomach and increased the pressure on her sex. This time he didn’t pause until she writhed and cried out. Even then, he didn’t stop until the heat searing her turned into a ferocious disk of light that burned a path through her inhibitions then slung her into a sky of fire.
For a long shuddering interval, she remained suspended in that shining wilderness. Rivers of flame raced through her veins. She jerked and trembled under his mouth.
It was frightening. It was startling.
It was heavenly.
When the strange, dazzling experience subsided, sweat was cold on her naked skin. Her lungs heaved as she gasped for air. She felt wonderful. As though someone had combed every sinew in her body into smooth sleekness. She felt as if she could dance away the night. She felt more exhausted than she ever had in her life.
Grace opened her eyes to find Matthew braced over her with an arrested expression on his face. “What happened?” he asked in a shaken voice.
Talking was a strain. “I can’t describe it. How did you know to do that?”
“I guessed.” He placed tender kisses on each sloping breast.
“Can you do it again?”
“I don’t know,” he rasped. “Not immediately. Not if I’m to retain what little sanity I still have.”
He’d shown her bliss but was yet to achieve his own release. After what he’d just done for her, only a selfish lover would deny him.