“Sera—” he gasped, not even able to get out her full name.
“I know,” she whispered. Her hand stopped but did not release him. He throbbed in her grip, his entire lower body rippling at the sudden loss of that exquisite motion. Perhaps she had come to her senses, since he had proven himself incapable of it.
But no, she wriggled lower, moving down his chest, letting her breasts rub down his stomach and over his cock until her mouth was poised above his thighs and her lips were—fuck.
Her tongue swirled, laving his cock from underside to tip. Thunder exploded behind them and her hand found the place behind his bollocks that made him mad and stroked there with a kind of upward pressure, igniting a flood of feeling so intense that he was going to—no, he was coming.
He shouted and spilled into her velvet blessed mouth.
“Fuck, I’m sorry,” he moaned, as she released him.
“No, darling, don’t apologize,” she said, leaning in to wipe her lips against the fabric of his shirtsleeve. “I told you I was wicked.”
Chapter Eleven
God, she’d needed that.
Sex always made Sera feel more like herself.
Even in her earliest days, meeting a boy on a bridge, she’d been seduced by the way touch could make you mighty. Short of opium, she could not think of a headier intoxicant than watching a man slap his fist against the ground, panting and cursing at the spell she’d cast over his whole being.
She’d enjoyed watching Adam tremble.
It was only when he straightened up into a sitting position, his gaze fixed on her face, that the thrill began to fade.
The whites of his eyes glinted in the moonlight, and some turbulent emotion glimmered in them. She suspected she knew what came next.
She had been with enough serious, responsible types—solicitors, reformers, preachers—to know that the more conscience your lover professed to have in advance of fornication, the less he tended to be able to look you in the eyes after he came.
“Come here,” he said, in that twirling burr. He opened his arms. He wanted her to sit against him, between his thighs.
Cautiously, she did as he asked, though she wished for tenderness as avidly as she wished for recriminations. When she did not immediately relax, he drew her in by the waist, pulling her closer, and his chin came to rest near her shoulder. His hands found hers and played with them, rubbing back and forth along her knuckles.
“Thank you,” he said quietly.
There it was. She said nothing, waiting for the inevitable pivot: thank you, but.
“Calling you Miss Arden just now seems inappropriate,” he said. “May I call you Seraphina?”
“Sera.”
“Sera,” he repeated. His breath fell in a steady rhythm on her neck. “Gorgeous Sera.”
She froze. Who?
“I woke up to a dream of you this morning. You were bathing in the sea. In a white dress that I could see through. Your hair flying all around you, wild.”
His fingers came up and softly combed through her hair, teasing out the knots that had formed between the wind and rain and all their squirming on the floor. It felt heavenly, but she was not yet sure where this was going, so she fought the urge to close her eyes and enjoy it.
“What were you doing in the dream?” she asked.
His chest rumbled with laughter beneath her shoulder blades.
He moved his hands up, over her breasts. “This.”
He had large hands, and she had small breasts. The effect of this disproportion was that he could . . . yes. She closed her eyes as his thumbs and fingers roamed over her nipples, toying with them until they were so hard they hurt in a way that was indistinguishable from pleasure.
His mouth came down on her neck, and he placed a soft, hot kiss where it met her shoulder.
She leaned into the warm and nervy tingling as his lips climbed to the hollow beneath her ear. She gasped.
“Oh, Sera,” he whispered. “May I touch you?”
She nodded. Touching was fine. The problem was going to be if he stopped.
His hands, working in parallel, slid firmly down her sternum and over her waist. He spread his long fingers out over the swell of her hips, tracing her contours. “I love how you’re shaped. Someday, if you’d let me, I’d love to draw you.”
She did not love this mawkish sentiment but his hands felt so good that she kept silent. His cock had begun to stir again and its throbbing at the base of her buttocks, where she sat against him, added to the pleasures of his hands on her belly, his mouth working its slow way over every last inch of her neck.
He found the hem of her dress and slowly pulled it up over her thighs. He arranged it around her waist and kept one hand pinned there, above her belly, as his other hand moved to her mons.
His fingers grazed her at the slit, finding the wetness that had pooled there as she pleasured him. He knew what he was doing and the surprise of that was a pleasure of its own. She gasped, and his cock responded with a jerk that she could feel. She opened her thighs wider, inviting him to take whatever liberties he wished.
His fingers found the small, tight bundle of nerves at her center. She said a silent prayer of thanks for men who did not need to be instructed.
He’d said his marriage had been pleasant. She nearly believed this pleasure had been mutual.
“Yes.”
He had her. She sank back against his chest and floated on the pleasure, her mind emptying like water sluicing down a drain.
She cried out softly, trembling.
Then they were both still.
In the minutes that had passed, the rain had grown less violent, and the wind no longer howled.
She closed her eyes and sat there, conscious of allowing him to hold her for longer than she had permitted anyone in some time. At the height of her arousal it had felt utterly erotic but now that she was spent—and also increasingly conscious of being soaked through and cold and somewhat sore from being pinned inside the door—it felt rather uncomfortable.
She wriggled away from him and struggled to her feet. “We should dry off or we’ll be ill. Come, I’ll see you to my bedchamber so you may neaten yourself.”
He rose to his feet as well. But as she was opening the door to the stairwell he said, “Sera.”
She turned back. “Yes?”
“Thank you. I haven’t been with a woman since—” He paused. “In quite some time. I hope—”
She had been wrong about him. He was not the kind of man who became ashamed after sex. He was the kind who became moved.
Much, much worse.
She shook her head and put a single finger over his very fine lips. “No need for speeches, Adam.”
His eyes widened. “Speeches?”
She sighed, because he was a nice person and her neighbor, and she would likely be of a mood to do this again some other time, so it would not do to injure his feelings if she could help it.
“Adam, I enjoyed that. But I ask nothing personal of my lovers, so you need not worry about assuaging my emotions with some kind of declaration.”
His eyes flashed. “I was not intending to assuage your emotions, only to express my appreciation for what we just shared. Which I found quite personal.”
His tone rebuked her.
“Of course,” she allowed. “Literally speaking, it was personal. What I mean is, we are neighbors. We won’t become more. You need not worry, or form expectations, on that account.”