She exited the foyer, though she slowed her steps so they could go up the staircase together.
“Go over some affairs,” Dash repeated under his breath.
She giggled softly. “It isn’t untrue, is it? I have one particular affair I’d like to go over at length.”
“As do I,” he agreed.
They hurried to her chamber and inside the receiving room. He locked the door to grant them privacy and she moved to him in one long step. Into his arms and right back to heated kisses like the ones they’d shared in the carriage. He felt her soften against him, lean into him, surrender all that control she normally had to keep over herself.
He backed her up toward the bedroom, only this time he didn’t take her to bed as he had the night before. There was a settee before the fire, and he eased her onto it and took a seat beside her. He cupped her face, slowing his kisses, lingering on every touch so he could savor them in a way he hadn’t been capable of the night before.
She moaned against his mouth, reaching for the buttons on his jacket. He pushed her hands away and she drew back, staring at him in concern and question.
“You…you don’t want me?” she whispered.
He shook his head. “I want you so much it physically hurts. But you spent the entire day having to serve everyone else around you. I think it’s time you relaxed now and let me take control.”
CHAPTER 8
Control. There was a loaded word for a woman who always had to maintain it. Sometimes it felt like a bit in her mouth and she had to drag everything in the world forward with it. But Dash was offering her release. Not just in orgasm, but to put down any burdens and just…feel.
“What should I do?” she whispered.
“Lean back on the settee,” he said softly. “And trust me.”
She slid her hands through his hair one more time, kissed him deeply, then did as he asked, leaning back and watching as he placed a hand on her knee through her gown. Fabric separated them and yet she arched a little at the simple touch.
“You’re going to make this too easy,” he said on a low chuckle that seem to wend its way through her entire body and settle between her legs.
“Am I?” she asked, continuing to stare as he began to bunch her skirt in his hand, raising it above her knee, up to her thigh. It was a slow, glorious torture and she loved every moment of it.
He nodded. “Yes. Because you respond so quickly to even the lightest of touches. So sensual.”
She turned her face. “I’ve never felt sensual enough when it came to this…to sex.”
His brow wrinkled. “Because of him?”
She let out a shuddering sigh. “Yes. Because of him.”
Neither of them had to name the him, especially after their conversation in the carriage.
“So he was as remiss in his duties to your body as he was to your heart?” he asked.
She shrugged. “I never…hated it. He never hurt me. But he didn’t care if he pleased me. And then he just stopped touching me entirely once I had served the purpose of creating his children.” She looked at Dash’s hand, her skirt bunched in his fingers, his gaze focused entirely on her. “How you make me feel, Dash, is something I have craved a long time.”
Dash’s expression grew harder, not with desire this time, but with anger, likely long repressed during the years he had served her when her husband still lived.
“King or not, he did not deserve to shine your shoes, let alone touch you,” Dash said with a shake of his head. “But knowing that he was so careless with you and your pleasure makes me want to do what I want to do all the more.”
He returned his hand to her knee, but this time it was bare skin on bare skin. She made a garbled sound in her throat and twisted toward him, like she could force him to touch her more and more intimately if she just moved the right way.
He rewarded her by sliding his hand to her thigh, pushing her legs open a fraction.
“What do you want to do to me?” she gasped.
“I know what your mouth tastes like,” he explained. “And your skin. But I want to know what your desire tastes like, Gia. I want to know what it tastes like when you jolt against me, crying out my name while you come against my tongue.”
Her mouth dropped open. Dash was always proper when he spoke to her. She had come to expect it. But now he stared down at her, hands creeping farther beneath her skirt, and he said something so wonderfully wicked that she got wetter just hearing it.
“I want you to taste me,” she managed to gasp out. “Please.”
She didn’t have to ask twice. Not that she ever did with this man. He slid to his knees before her and pushed her legs even wider with his shoulders. She wasn’t wearing drawers, just the chemise that he’d been pushing up along with her skirt, so she was bared to him when he opened her wider. She blushed. He’d seen her like this, of course, last night, but now his face was so close to her most intimate of areas.
It was so very wicked.
He leaned in and his beard brushed the inside of her thigh. She lifted against him with a gasp at the rush of sensation. God’s teeth, but the man made her wild. He made her feel young and beautiful and erotic. He made her forget everything but the feel of him as he brushed a finger along the length of her sex and smiled up at her when he found her wet.
He didn’t say anything, though. He just leaned in and pressed his mouth to her body. It was a gentle kiss at first, closed-mouthed, almost chivalrous except that it was in such an outrageous place. He slid his fingers across her outer lips, massaging the sensitive flesh there as he opened his mouth, and she felt his tongue sweep along her entrance.
“Dash,” she cried out in a garbled rush of pleasure and surprise.
He smiled against her as he peeled her open, rubbing even as he licked her with more purpose and pressure. He went on like that, stroking her with his tongue, creating molten heat between her legs and then licking it clean like it was a feast he craved.
She writhed beneath him, stripped of the control he had asked her to surrender as her body rolled with sensation and rapidly building pleasure. His fingers pressed into her thighs and she gasped, his beard abraded her flesh and she lifted against him for more, and his tongue, great God his tongue, did things to her that she had never imagined were possible.
She almost felt she could take no more—he had dragged her to an edge that was on the borderline of pleasure and pain and he held her there with wicked intent, never quite letting her find the release she craved, yet never relinquishing the hold he had on her pleasure.
“Please,” she gasped at last. “Dash!”
He looked up at her and it was so very wicked to see him perched between her thighs, her dress bunched around her stomach, him fully clothed as her stockinged legs gripped around his shoulders. A great ripple of pleasure moved through her, and she cried out as her hands flexed against the edge of the settee.
His eyes grew wild, dark with desire and pleasure at her pleasure. He began to suck her clitoris, watching her intently the entire time, holding her captive with his gaze as much as the firm grip he kept on her jolting body.
The pleasure he’d been holding just out of her reach washed over her, rapidly pushing her to the highest heights and then…then the orgasm overcame her with more power than anything she’d ever felt before. She ground against his mouth helplessly, shaking out of control as sensation erased all her thoughts, all her concerns, everything but the man who had created them and was now dragging them out as long as he could.