His voice came from beneath the low roar of her breath, a sound somehow everywhere and nowhere and far from her. His relentless, brilliant fingers sent bolt after bolt of breath-shredding pleasure raying through her until all at once what felt like a coat of feather-soft cinders rushed over her skin.
And just like that, an unimaginable bliss broke over her. It whipped her body upward and she screamed, soundlessly. Shattered her into fragments of pleasure, like the winking crystals in the chandelier. She was stardust.
Wave after wave of bliss shook her.
“Dear God... oh, my dear God... what was...” Her imagination was limber enough but never would she ever have imagined such a thing.
He flashed a piratical grin. “Not God. That was all me. And all you.”
He was already deftly arranging her body for more sensual plunder. He’d risen up over her and tucked her legs on either side of his torso.
“Hold on to me, Delilah,” he whispered.
She wouldn’tthinkof disobeying, given how she’d essentially just been launched from her body into the stratosphere by unforeseen pleasure. Perhaps more of that was in store now.
And then he thrust into her. She locked him in with her legs round his back and her arms around his shoulders, took him as deeply as she could.
He moved slowly, at first. Sank into her slowly, withdrew, sighing, swearing softly his own pleasure and wonder. His face was shadowy. She kept her eyes fixed on it anyway.
His hips moved, postponing the pleasure for himself.
“I fear I must... this will be quick... I need you, Delilah...”
She laid her hands against the scoops made by muscle in his buttocks and arched up against him, absolving him of the need for control. “I want what you want.”
Which was all the permission their bodies needed to collide and part amid a conversation composed of hoarse, ragged breathing: the odd “oh God, so good” and soft whimpering moans. The velvet settee rocked and thumped like a goat in a stall. And as his hips drummed ever more swiftly, driving himself into her again and again, the beginnings of that glorious thing once more began to build in her, as if inside her was a normally placid sea that could be boiled and churned by this storm and rush its banks. Until she was nearly sobbing with pleasure, clawing his shoulders, bowing to meet him. She buried her exultant cry in his shoulder.
And then he went still, with a stifled roar, and swiftly rolled away from her. She knew why when his release felt sticky on her thigh. And she clung to him as his body shook hard, at the mercy of his release.
And they shifted so that they lay facing the ceiling, sweatily entwined. Her head rested on his chest.
“Was I wrong?” he whispered finally.
“No. Of course not. When are you ever wrong?”
He gave a short breathless laugh. He was breathing as if he’d swum across the Thames to get to the settee and exuding satisfaction.
“It was indeed very good. But was it wicked? Ifeltwicked.”
There was a little silence. “You felt sublime.” He said it softly. The word landed like poetry and made her feel shy.
“Something tells me you don’t use that word very often, Captain.”
He didn’t reply. His chest rose and fell beneath her head.
Sometimes she thought that was entirely his strategy: every word acquired profundity when he issued fewer of them. Like a shot of whiskey, they were more potent for being distilled.
Instead he drew his thumb along her lower lip. Softly, back and forth. Like a mapmaker planning territory to conquer.
“I should have liked you to be more naked,” she murmured.
She could feel his mouth curve against her shoulder. “Next time I shall be the nakedest man that ever was born.”
“There cannot be a next time.”
She hadn’t realized she’d said that aloud until his chest stopped moving.
She realized she’d stopped breathing, as well, waiting to hear what he’d say.