His hands held her legs. Her wrists were pinned above her head. Her body jerked against the restraints, and each time, the resistance of his lean strength and the taut ribbon heightened her arousal.
“God, you taste good.” His voice was guttural, almost unintelligible. He licked up into her, held her thighs down with his hands, and then returned to her clitoris to stroke and suck in a fluttering rhythm.
She was past sight or hearing then. She could only feel and feel. His mouth. Her heels digging into the bed. The cool linens against her burning skin and her muscles drawing tight and then tighter. The room trembled around her—no,shewas trembling—and on a wordless cry, her climax tore through her.
When she managed to open her eyes, Christian was still between her thighs. He was watching her, looking—
Well, looking awfully pleased with himself. Matilda felt delight splinter through her, almost painful. Never—never had she seen him smile so freely.
Someday,he’d said. He meant to do this again.
“I want you to untie me,” she said, and almost before the words were out of her mouth, he was there, loosening the ribbon and soothing her wrists with his fingers. He brought one of her hands to his mouth and kissed the base of her palm, his lips tracing the place where her pulse beat.
“And,” she added, feeling her lips curl up, “I want you to undress. I want to see the stars on your arse.”
Christian let out a startled laugh, and Matilda memorized the sound. She could have lived on it: his rush of laughter and the thrilled satisfaction that bloomed inside her as she listened.
He kissed her wrist again and then stripped off his clothes. She watched, captivated, as he did, revealing a long pale body, taut all over. And yes, there on his left buttock was a sprinkle of tattooed stars in the pattern of Ursa Major. She had looked it up.
He arranged himself on the bed beside her and caught her about the waist, pulling her closer. She put her palm on his arm, glorying in the feel of all that bared skin, relishing the flex and loosening of musculature beneath.
“Why on earth do you have a constellation on your backside?”
He was touching her too, his leg slipping between hers. The crisp hairs on his calf and thigh were strange and somehow arousing as they rubbed against the bare curve of her legs.
She touched him there, a slow exploration. His thigh was hard, his skin hotter than her own.
“Because I was an idiot,” he said. His voice was gruff, but she could hear the echo of laughter still threaded through his words. “There were a handful of us who got them our last year at Eton. All different constellations.”
Her fingers had journeyed up his thigh to his hip. They were closer now, their bodies not quite touching. She stroked higher, curving around the bones of his pelvis and back down to where the stars must be.
“Thought we were clever,” he said. His voice sounded choked. “Fancied ourselves—”
He broke off. Her hand had dipped down between his legs.
“Oh Jesus,” he said. “Come here.”
And then his hands tightened on her back and dragged her up against him. Her breasts were crushed against his chest, her nipples tightening into hard buds. She felt his erection between them—sohot—and she heard herself gasp.
His heart pounded against her chest. The playfulness about his mouth had vanished. “I want you,” he said. “I want you so much I could die. But we need not go further. Only if—”
She pressed herself harder against his chest, her mouth crashing into his, and he rolled to his back and brought her with him.
She felt almost weightless. He brought her legs to straddle his waist, his mouth locked to hers. His hands were everywhere—her calves, her thighs, her buttocks. He groaned into her mouth and deepened the kiss.
Matilda started to lose track of her surroundings. Her lashes fluttered closed. She did not need to see. Only feel: Christian’s big hands on her body, his heated, demanding mouth. Though she’d reached her climax shortly before, she felt arousal build in her again. She was dimly aware that her sex was wet, that she was grinding the evidence of her desire against his hard abdomen, and that his hips jerked up as she did so in quick, uneven pulses.
“Next time,” he ground out, “I want you on my face. But I need—oh God, Matilda, I need—”
She stretched her body out above his, feeling his hot skin beneath hers, his legs slipping between her own, andyes,his arousal, impossibly hard.
“Don’t move,” he growled, and he set his hands to her hips. Slowly, slowly, he arranged her against his lean frame, spreading her thighs on either side of his hips. “Don’t sit up. I want to feel every inch of you. I’ve been half out of my mind, wanting this—wanting you—ohChrist—”
He’d brought her down far enough that his thick length had come into contact with her sex. Helplessly, Matilda squirmed in his grasp, wanting more. Wanting to sink down on him and take him inside her.
He gave a quick stinging swat to her buttocks, then cupped her there, kneading his fingers into her skin. “I said,don’t move.”
She gasped and pressed her face into his chest. Her sex was swollen and sensitive, and she shivered as he soothed the hot skin he’d spanked. It felt like another kind of release: the small bite of pain, then the firm stroke of his hand afterward. Pleasure spilled into her, and a blind, mindless arousal.
