“What is that?” she choked out.
“We wager and we play, and that’s fine,” he said. “But I only want to do this if you want me to.”
She blinked as she stared up at him. She had loved Erasmus Montgomery. She would have, before the lies upon lies came out, called him a good man. And yet he had never given her such quarter in their marriage. Once she took his name, he had made it very clear that she would do what he liked, when he liked it. Mostly that had been fine. When it hadn’t been, she had drifted away and thought of other things.
But this man, this man she bantered with and sparred with and occasionally despised, told her that what she wanted was what mattered. That he was at her service, not the other way around.
And it made her want him more than she had ever wanted any person in her life.
She drew in a long breath to calm her racing heart, and then she said, “Your Grace, if you renege on this bargain, I will call you out for pistols at dawn.”
His mouth twitched. “Are you a good shot?”
She leaned a little closer, almost touching her lips to his. “Excellent.”
“Better not risk it then,” he said. She waited for him to kiss her, but instead he dropped his mouth to her throat, nudging the side of it with his nose, licking and kissing a trail to the edge of her gown.
“May I take this off?” he asked. She glanced over the back of the settee toward the door. “It’s locked,” he reminded her. “It will be easier that way. And I admit, I very much want to see you without it.”
She let out a long breath. “No one has seen me…like that in a very long time.”
He nodded. “I can make it worth the wait.”
She squeezed her eyes shut. They would be married shortly and he would see her without her clothes then at any rate. And right now she so wanted what he had promised her. She so wanted what he’d already given in those stolen moments at the ball. She wanted pleasure. She wanted his focused attention on her. She wanted him.
She opened her eyes and found him watching her, silent and seemingly patient. “Yes.”
He smiled and tugged her into a seated position. Her gown’s buttons were along the back, and he wrapped his arms around her and began to unfasten them. She turned her cheek into his shoulder as he did so, drawing in a deep whiff of his scent, memorizing the feel of his linen shirt against her skin.
His breath hitched, his fingers fumbled for a moment, but he managed to unfasten and draw her dress down, away from her shoulders, down her arms. It bunched at her waist, and for a moment he leaned back to look at her in her chemise.
The intensity of his gaze heated her cheeks and she forced a nervous laugh. “Already disappointed?”
His brow wrinkled. “On the contrary. I’m just trying to pace myself so my eagerness doesn’t make me look like a green boy.”
“Are you so very eager, Your Grace?” she whispered.
He slipped a finger beneath one chemise strap and lowered it to her elbow. He followed the path of it with his lips. “So. Very. Eager.”
He repeated the action on the other side, and suddenly she was naked from the waist up. They leaned back together on the cushions again, and his mouth moved from her shoulder to her collarbone. He traced the line of it with his lips, then lower. When he nudged his cheek against her nipple, she gasped at the faint hint of stubble stroking against the ultrasensitive skin. With a chuckle, he turned his face and blew a gust of warm air there.
She arched, shamelessly seeking more sensation, and he didn’t deny her. He darted out his tongue and touched it to her nipple, the tiniest lick, then harder, harder. And then he sucked her and she shut her eyes. She dug her fingers into his hair, not caring if she mussed him as she held him to her breast and reveled in sensation. He was an expert at pleasure, teasing her with his tongue, with his teeth, sending a pulse of pleasure through her body to settle between her legs.
When she was shaking, when she was a puddle on the settee, only then did he move to her opposite breast, starting all over there as she writhed.
At last, he hooked his hands around her bunched dress and chemise and tugged them lower. She lifted her backside to free herself, and as he pulled the fabric over her hips, she kicked it away.
She was naked, spread out on her settee in front of a roaring fire that cast a glow over her skin. There was no hiding from him now, though she strangely didn’t feel a desire to do so. He looked at her, and it felt…right. Not uncomfortable. If anything, watching his pupils dilate made her arch her back a little further, give him a better view.
“Perfect,” he breathed as he shifted his position.
In the parlor at his home, the last time he’d touched her, he’d knelt on the floor before her, like he wanted to worship at her altar. He did the same now as he dragged his mouth down the slight swell of her belly, across the curve of her hip. The light touch of his lips was like lightning, and it ricocheted through her, sparking every nerve and fiber of her being. She felt like she was floating, like she was glowing.
And then he placed a hand on each thigh and urged her legs apart. Time stopped. She stared down at him, watching as he looked at her sex. He licked his lips and she almost came undone right then and there.
“To the victor go the spoils,” he murmured. “Though I think I might have actually won the prize.”
He lowered his mouth as he said it, and pressed it to her inner thigh. His rough cheek stroked again, this time between her legs, and she let out a sound from her throat that was like nothing she’d ever heard before from her own body. It was like someone had bottled her need and her loneliness and her desire and then uncorked it after all this time.
Nathan drank it like it was fine wine. He peeled her open, massaging gently as she lifted to him. She forced her eyes open and watched, breathless as he finally put his mouth against her sex. His tongue traced her slit, gently at the first swipe, harder with the second. She dug her hands into his hair again and ground against him helplessly as he chuckled against her flesh.
“Oh yes,” he murmured. “This is going to be fun.”
He didn’t speak again. He simply dove into pleasuring her with the enthusiasm of a man who truly loved what he was doing. Back and forth, he stroked his tongue across her length, swiping her clean of the evidence of her desire, renewing it with every touch. He held her hips steady as he began to focus more on her clitoris, sucking then retreating, sucking longer and then he was gone again.
She rolled her head against the settee cushion, fingers clenching and releasing against his scalp. He sucked in earnest now, rolling his tongue around her clitoris, every tiny groan vibrating through her and making her vision blur.
She felt the orgasm coming. She ground against him to find it faster, to make it harder. They had one shared goal now, her pleasure, and he seemed determined to take her there. The cliff edged neared and she reached for it, reached for it.
And then she fell. Waves of pleasure ripped through her, and her hips flailed out of control, even as he held her steady with one hand. With the other, he breached her with a finger, and she gripped it with every pulsating surge. He never stopped tormenting her, sucking and licking as tears streamed down her face and her body went limp, at last, against the settee.
He lifted his head, and for a moment all was still and quiet. She flopped a forearm over her face. She’d touched herself, of course. She knew how to give herself pleasure with her own hand, but she had forgotten how powerful it was to have another person do it. To have someone want to make her shake, to make her cry out. And certainly her husband had never done it so well as Nathan just had.