She stopped to kiss his clavicles and run her cheek along the fine fleece of his chest hair.
Breath sawed in and out of his massive chest as though he’d run a league. He said nothing. Made no move to encourage or deny her.
His rough hand stroked her hair with absent fascination.
Ramsay reminded her of both predator and prey. A hare frozen in the presence of a red fox, too stunned with uncertainty to leap away. A lion hunkering in the bushes, shoulders tense and ready to strike.
Cecelia proceeded with her marvelous discovery of his body as she sank to her knees. She counted his ribs on the way down, dragging curious fingers over the corrugated ripples of his abdomen.
Ramsay caught at her arm, his eyes burning down at her with a blue fire.
Blue flames burned the brightest, the hottest.
“My protection doesna come at a price,” he hissed out. The skin of his features stretched taut over his raw bones.
Cecelia settled into the wide cloud her skirts made around her knees and stared up at him with all the anticipatory resolution she felt. “I want this. I want you.”
Her fingers fell to the placket of his trousers, trembling but sure. A light-headed anticipation swamped her as she undid each button, brushing at the swollen length concealed beneath.
She reached inside, her cool fingers unable to completely encircle the scorching circumference of him.
Ramsay gasped. His hand hit the door and he leaned on it heavily, as though it were the only thing keeping him from buckling.
Cecelia paid him no mind, mesmerized by this part of him. Drawing the engorged member out of the vee of his trousers, she weighed the heft and length of him in her hand. He was thick. Large. The thin skin of the shaft—darker than the rest of him—pulsed with veins, and the hardness beneath was astonishing. Unyielding and inflexible as bone or steel.
She made a husky sound in her throat as her mouth watered, and he stopped breathing entirely. His free hand wound into her hair once again and this time his fingers curled into a fist, tugging the strands to the edge of pain and forcing her to look up at him.
His shirt gaped open, trapped at his elbows, revealing the stone-smooth pallor of his Scottish complexion.
She gazed up over the cords of his stomach and the mounds of his chest into gilded lightning glinting down at her from eyes that no longer held a hint of winter. His skin was flushed with arousal. His lids at half-mast.
He bared his teeth in a show of dominance, though his hand was gentle as it urged her mouth toward the column of his sex.
He thought he was still in control.
How adorable.
Cecelia tentatively wrapped lips moistened by his kisses around the rimmed crest of his cock.
His hips jerked forward, doing mesmerizing things to the hard ridges of muscle and sinew leading down to his shaft.
A very feminine triumph welled within her at the illicit nature of the act she now performed upon the so-called Vicar of Vice.
He tasted of salt and sin.
She felt no shame, but a hesitant pang thrilled through her that caused her eyelids to fall. She couldn’t watch any longer. She couldn’t see his eyes, or she might faint from the heady giddiness of power and lust.
Her own loins throbbed with the preponderance of her blood, as she was sure none reached her extremities any longer.
No, she could not watch. She simply needed to feel and taste. To experience this dance of desire and gorge like a glutton on his sex.
His fingers flexed in her hair, guiding her down further, thrusting the head of his cock past her teeth, seeking her tongue.
Yes, she thought. Show me what you want. Tell me what to do.
She explored him with her tongue, licking at the rim before finding a vulnerable vein on the underside of his shaft. Following a rhythmic, throbbing instinct, her hand stroked the length of him that wouldn’t fit past her lips, gliding up and down in moist parody of lovemaking.
She experimented with pressure and speed, allowing the hitches of his breath and the hand on the back of her head to guide her.
She rested her other hand on his thigh. His legs, long and thick and corded with strength, had always enticed her, and she loved the feel of them twitching and straining beneath her palm.
His intrusion into her mouth caused it to ceaselessly water as she feasted on his hard flesh. Sensuous liquid sounds permeated the night as she tended to him. They each fought to stay as silent as they could, aware that others slept in different parts of the house.
Cecelia found a curious saline drop of slippery liquid at his tip. She laved at the slit, seeking more.
A raw groan escaped him.
Her answering sigh of appreciation vibrated against his cock, causing him to buck and swell inside her mouth.
Gasping, he curled his hips back, seeking to withdraw. But Cecelia didn’t let him. She, too, could be relentless, and was determined to see this through to the end.
She employed the strength of her jaw, sucking him in, taking him as deep against her throat as she could. Her tongue flattened to make room for him, rubbing at the underside of his rod as she pumped faster.
“Nay,” he gritted out. “Ye canna.”
Yes, she thought. I can. You’re mine. This is mine. This wicked intimacy they would always share regardless of the outcome of their current nightmare. At least she’d owned him with her mouth. And he was the man whose lips she would never forget.
A sound the cross between a snarl and a whimper forced its way out of him as he swelled inside her lips impossibly larger, releasing a slippery warm pulse of moisture. The illicit substance tasted both musky and sweet as it slid down her throat.
Cecelia finally opened her eyes, glorying in the sight of him locked within his own skin and strength. Helpless and vulnerable inside her mouth. Arching with a pleasure that looked very much like pain.
This was the beast. This untethered, unselfconscious thing.
This beast was hers. This beast wanted to lay claim to her, as well.
No matter what the man might have to say about it.
* * *
Ramsay was lost. Lost in her generous mouth. In the miasma of pleasure she liberally gave.
His humanity retreated behind this creature of carnality she’d tempted out of his past, and all sense of civility was locked away behind throbbing muscles and veins pulsing with explosive delight.
Never had he experienced such bliss. Never had he hungered so drastically that he feared it would take a lifetime to sate him.
The bone-shattering pulses of his climax finally dimmed enough to lend him back his reflexes. He’d thought he’d be drained. Exhausted by the sheer unparalleled heights he’d experienced in the depths of her mouth.
However, his body recovered splendidly, the animal lust still rippled beneath his flesh, a hunger of his own clawing through him.
She wasn’t the only one who needed a taste. There was so much left to do. To discover.
And the night was young.
A growl of delight rumbled through him as he bent to drag her to her feet.
She gasped, “Wha—?”
His mouth hungrily captured hers, cutting off her protest. Plunging his tongue within her mouth, his essence mingled with her singular flavor tasted of ambrosia.
Of course it did. She was a goddess, after all.
He lifted her from her feet without breaking the contact of their lips and again split her legs to encircle his hips. The delicious weight of her was a delight. Her ass in his hands, her thighs soft and strong around him.