She shifted down, onto her knees, and looked up at him.
“Right.”
Then she fisted him in her palm and licked him.
Normally Nathan could find a response to any situation. He prided himself on being quick on his feet. But having Abigail drop to her knees and take his cock into her mouth erased any reasonable response he might have had. She’d said he was right, but he couldn’t fathom what she meant because she sucked him and stars exploded before his eyes.
He gripped the desk edge with both hands, surrendering to what she was doing because he had no other choice. She had conquered him, and he was hers to do with as she wished. And oh, what she did. She rubbed her tongue hard against the underside of his cock as she took him deeper and deeper into her throat. When she reached her limit, she reversed the slide. She steadied herself with a hand on his thigh, while with the other she pumped the root of his cock, lubricating it with her spit.
Pleasure so sharp it bordered right on the edge of pain ripped through him. He had held back with Abigail for weeks, taking pleasure only in her pleasure and using his hand to relieve himself of the tension later. But now this was all about him, and it buckled his knees.
She swirled her tongue around him in a slow circle as she pumped, and he found himself tilting his hips on every thrust. Taking a little more of her mouth. She didn’t retreat. She took him, every inch.
He forced his eyes open to look down at her and found her gazing up at him as she worked him. Their eyes met, and she smiled around his cock.
He nearly came undone right then and there. She was reveling in this. In unmanning him, in putting him on the edge, in giving him pleasure. Reveling in their connection just as he did when he made her quake.
She took him deeper again, right to the edge of what he had to believe was her limit, and let out the tiniest groan. It vibrated through his cock, and he grunted her name, pushing his fingers into her hair. Her strokes became faster, her tongue more active against him, and the pleasure notched up accordingly. He was racing at lightning speed toward release, his heated blood pounding in his ears as his legs began to shake.
“Abigail,” he grunted. “Abigail, I’m going to spend. You can…please just…”
She held his gaze. He knew she understood him, but she kept him in her mouth, driving him, pushing him, stealing his control with every suck and thrust and swirl. He could take it no longer, and with a guttural cry, he came.
She took it. All of it, sucking him until he had nothing left to give and it was only then that she released him from her mouth with a pop and looked up at him with a smile. Her mouth was pink, her lips slick with his essence, and she looked entirely proud of herself. Not that she shouldn’t.
“Well,” he said when he could find the wherewithal to speak. “That was remarkable.”
She laughed as she pushed back to her feet. “Yes,” she agreed. “Very much so.”
She leaned in and kissed him. He tasted the faint hint of himself on her lips and caught her arms to kiss her harder. They were both panting when they parted, his desire mirrored perfectly in her dark eyes.
But she didn’t ask for anything. She didn’t demand pleasure returned. She simply backed away and smoothed her skirts and hair. “You must be very proud. You finally won one of our wagers.”
He was trying to get his mind to work as he tucked his cock back into his trousers and refastened himself. “Yes, you said I was right just before you…you…”
“Made your eyes cross with pleasure?” she said sweetly. Too sweetly.
He chuckled. “Yes. That. Does that mean there was a blind item about us in a gossip rag as we expected there would be?”
“In the Scandal Sheet this morning,” she said. “You might want to ask your butler where he hid it. I intend to ask Paisley the same thing. Apparently I might very well be with child.”
He shook his head. “A miracle.”
“Indeed.” Her smile faded a fraction. “But on the whole, our ruse seems to have worked. The hostility about the scandal seems to have been at least partly replaced with some acceptance of our impending union. So we won’t hurt Ophelia’s chances, it seems. We might have even raised Pippa and Rhys’s standing a bit.”
He nodded. “At the very least we’ve distracted the worst of the gossips.”
She shifted a little, as if she were uncomfortable. “Well, I’ve dispatched with your prize, so I suppose it’s time for me to go.”
She pivoted as if she would lead the way out of the room, but he caught her arm and held her steady. “Wait, Abigail.”
She stared up at him, her bottom lip trembling just the slightest bit. He felt her tension, her worry, her uncertainty in a way he’d never felt it before. And he wanted, so desperately, to fix it.
“Let’s talk about the future,” he said softly. “We’ve avoided that topic, perhaps because we were both shocked by the way we were pushed down this hill by scandal. But we need to face it, don’t we?”
“So say all our friends,” she said. “But I hardly know where to begin.”
He drew in a long breath. “You were trapped once in a marriage that turned unhappy. I don’t want that to be your life with me. What do you want the future to look like?”
Her eyes widened a bit, as if shocked that he would care about her needs. He supposed she must be. Not only had few people in her life given her that consideration, but the two of them had been enemies of a sort for a long time. She could lean into him all she liked, but that didn’t mean she fully trusted him. Would she ever?
She sighed and pulled away from him. “You are not as horrible as I once believed you to be,” she began.
He smiled. “Thank you. I think.”
“You ought to thank me—it’s quite a capitulation on my part to admit it,” she teased, though her face retained some of its concern, its fear. “Do you know why I stopped loving Erasmus Montgomery?”
He blinked. “Because he turned out to be a bigamist with two other wives, faked his own death and then tried to frame you for it? Also, he held you hostage briefly before he was shot and actually died.”
She winced at the quick recitation of everything she’d endured a year ago. “That wasn’t it. The marriage failed a long time before all of that. Erasmus lied. Little lies, bigger ones. Things meant to embarrass me. Sometimes they weren’t about me at all, but it was like he had a compulsion to tell untruths. That’s what broke our trust and our love and our bond. By the time we got to the end, to all the biggest lies, I was already numb to it.”
She looked small standing there by the window, the moonlight from outside framing her. She looked pained, not just on the surface as she sometimes allowed him to see, but deep down to her bones. For the first time, he truly understood how she had been worn down by years as Montgomery’s bride. How deeply each moment had hurt and changed her.
He understood why trust did not come easy. Why she had so many walls up. And he also saw that it wouldn’t be easy, perhaps it would even be impossible, to dismantle those walls.
“You and I are not in love,” she continued. “No matter what Society believes. So you can’t break my heart like he once did. But if I were to look into the future and see exactly what I’d wish, I would ask that you not lie to me.”