She felt him bunching her skirt with one hand, his fingers catching and raising the fabric around her hips. She forced herself to look down, to watch him reveal her calves, her knees, her thighs and then the garters that held her stockings.
It had been a very long time since someone saw her like this. And Roarke’s expression was far more hungry, feral, than Stuart’s had ever been.
“You’re so pretty,” Roarke murmured as he eased himself off the settee, on his knees before her. He widened her legs a fraction—she didn’t resist when he did. “I would do such things to you.”
Her husband had never talked to her while he touched her. He was gentle, he tended to her needs, he never hurt her, but he had always seemed almost apologetic about his attentions. Like he was trying to work in haste so she wouldn’t be troubled too long.
But Roarke was very different. He looked quite wicked there on his knees, his pupils dilated with lust, his hands still gripping around the edge of her drawers, stroking the bare skin between her stocking top and the silky fabric.
He leaned in and his mouth traced the same patch of exposed skin. She bucked at the unexpected electric response of pleasure that his tongue created. Her skin felt alive when he touched it, it tingled in response to the sensation of his mouth on her.
She wanted more.
He fingered the soft fluttering edge of her drawers. “May I take these off?”
He would see her then, half-naked, splayed out like a wanton. She should have been embarrassed by that idea. Instead she was excited.
She nodded and he glided his hands beneath her bunched skirt to find the waistband of her drawers. He untied the little loop of fabric that held them in place and then tugged. She lifted her hips, almost hypnotized by him and his intense focus. He pulled the fabric down her hips, her thighs, and leaned back to pull it entirely away and set them on the floor in a pile.
He wedged himself back between her legs and shivered as he stared at her. Heat filled her cheeks, both the heat of desire and of embarrassment. He was seeing her in the most intimate way, his hands gripped against her thighs, her sex splayed open for his perusal.
“So, so pretty,” he whispered, his voice catching. He glanced up at her, examining her face as closely as he examined her most private areas. “I know it’s been a while since someone saw you like this. I hope I’m going to make it worth the wait. I want to lick you, Flora. I want to put my mouth here…” He trailed off and gently brushed the tip of his index finger across her entrance.
She lifted against him with a whimper. That little light touch was not enough and it set her on fire for more.
“I’m going to suck you and tease you and make you come.” He leaned up a little on his arms, making his face even with hers again. “But you can tell me no. Now or any time. You can always tell me no.”
Her breath caught as she stared into his green eyes. At first she had been afraid of her desire for this man. She’d been afraid of asking for what she wanted. But right now there was something else she feared as she stared into the depths of him and felt something in her…hitch.
What if she ended up more than liking him? What if she wanted more than his hands and mouth on her, then his body inside of hers? What if she lost herself entirely to this man?
Was she prepared for that? Was she guarded against it? Would she know when it was safe to welcome it? And would he ever feel the same if she were so foolish as to fall?
She shook those thoughts off. They were questions for another day. Instead, she cupped his cheek, letting her fingers play along the harsh line of his jaw, and then she tugged him a little closer and kissed him.
He made a muffled sound into her lips but then broke away, and now his gaze was fire. Dangerous and feral. She shivered as he shifted to go back between her legs. He pushed her wider, opening her up in what felt an almost lewd display. And yet she couldn’t stop staring as he dropped his head and rubbed his cheek against her inner thigh.
The rasp of the hint of whiskers against her sensitive flesh stole her breath and she gripped the edge of the settee with both hands like she could somehow find purchase there against the rising tide of desire. He smiled up at her and then lifted his mouth to her sex.
It was a closed-mouth kiss at first, gentle, almost gentlemanly if he hadn’t been burrowed between her legs in such a shocking way. But all that quickly changed when he made a low grumble against her and his tongue darted out to trace her. She gasped, lifting slightly to meet him, the powerful sensations ripping through her in ways she’d never experienced before.
He glided his hands up her thighs, then used his thumbs to spread her outer lips, massaging until she trembled with pleasure. His tongue went back to tormenting, he circled it around her clitoris slowly, taunting and tasting. She wanted more, she wanted something she couldn’t even name when her mind was addled with this intimate exploration.
“Please,” she murmured.
He glanced up at her, eyes fire and heat and promises she longed for him to keep. “Yes,” he murmured, the reverberation of his words like electric sensation across her sensitive body.
He went back to work at her, but something had shifted. He didn’t tease anymore, no, he was focused. He took long, slow licks across her entire entrance, then sucked her clitoris, back and forth for what felt like forever, but could have only been a heated moment or two. He continued to massage her outer lips, perfect pressure that made the heat in her body rise, that made the tingles between her legs shift to more and more intense pleasure.
So when he moved all his attention to the hard nub of her clitoris, stoking and sucking, creating a rhythm that he never altered from, she moved from edgy to on the edge with a terrifying speed. She ground her hips upward, meeting him on every stroke, biting her lip so she wouldn’t call down the house with her rising pleasure.
His fingers dug into the flesh of her hips, holding her steady, and he watched her, pupils dilated to almost entirely black as he waited, worked, brought her to the edge of madness and then, with a swirl of his talented tongue, threw her over it.
She let out one soft cry before she clapped her hand over her mouth, muffling the sounds of her pleasure. And oh, there was pleasure. Long, slow waves of it, washing over her, drowning her, changing her forever. He never ceased his torment as she rode them all, just kept sucking and licking her until the pleasure ran right up to the edge of pain and she jerked uncontrollably with her release.
At last she went weak against the cushions, her breath short and hard. He pressed one last kiss to her slick body and then grabbed for the drawers he’d discarded on the floor what felt like a different lifetime ago. He gently helped her get them up her body, tied them beneath her skirt and then smoothed the layers of silk back down. So it looked like he’d never done this to her.
So she looked like she was still the same person, even though she felt very different now.
She swallowed hard. “I…that was remarkable.”
He chuckled, a low rough sound and pushed to his feet. “Remarkable is a fine compliment. I tend to agree, you are remarkable, Flora.”
She sat up a little straighter. “Aren’t you going to…that is, won’t you…don’t you want to…”
He arched a brow. “Take you?”
She nodded, heat flooding her cheeks. “Y-Yes. Take me.”