“Do not lie, please,” she said, pleasure coming through her soft voice as he began massaging her foot. “I believe we are past that now.”
Cedric turned his head toward her, and his arousal intensified as he watched her try to fight the pleasure she was obviously feeling from the massage. Even if she was able to fight the expression of enjoyment on her face, he did not miss the way her body sank further into the sofa. Still, he tried to focus on her request and not give in fully to his baser desires.
He swallowed and continued to massage her.
“My sister was everything I told Adeline,” He murmured. “She could have been more. If I could have stopped our father. Maybe if I had, she would not have stopped speaking to me when she had left. I regret it every day. Not being enough for her. I was her big brother. I was supposed to protect her. And I failed.”
He winced at the painful reminder, and without realizing, his grip on Deborah’s foot tightened.
Her hiss of pain alerted him to what he was doing at once, and he immediately loosened his grip and began to nurture that ache he’d just created.
“I am sorry,” he whispered, taking extra care to soothe the hurt.
“It is alright,” Deborah soothed, settling down into the sofa again, “I know you did not mean to.”
Cedric’s lips twitched toward a smile, but it was false.
“I know how it feels to fail a sibling,” Deborah went on as he moved to her other foot, “It is a sting that can never quite be soothed. You always wonder what more you could have done to help them. To save them. To…prevent losing them.”
Cedric’s heart threatened to crack as he heard the longing in her voice and saw the raw pain in her eyes.
She had been so close to getting her revenge on Sylvester last night, and though his actions seemed logical in the moment, he now wondered if he had deprived her of the very same punishment he would have bestowed upon his father if he were still alive.
Enough,a voice in his head growled. He pressed his eyes shut, feeling the burdensome heaviness of such raw emotions he usually kept in check, and shook his head. He needed a distraction. They both did. The moment was getting far too heavy.
Cedric massaged his hand into Deborah’s foot, then smoothed his hand up her stockinged calf. Heat pulsed into his veins as she let out a soft sigh and let her head fall back into the cushions.
“Enough of this sobering discussion,” he urged, letting his touch travel farther up her leg. “There are certainly much better things to do than ruminate on what we have lost.”
Deborah’s lashes fluttered open, and when she lifted her head to look at him, her expression was scolding, but her eyes were hooded and hazy.
“Not talking about something does not make the problem go away, Cedric,” she replied. Yet even so, he caught the breathiness in her tone, as if she was trying to reach for reason over the physical pleasure he was bringing her.
“Maybe not,” he agreed, his fingers slowly closing over the hem of her stocking. Carefully, he dragged the silken fabric down from her knee, over her calf, and finally down her foot before tossing it away. He waited for her to say stop. He would if she told him to. Yet the demand never came, and as his smoothed his palm up her bare, silky smooth skin calf of her calf, she let out another soft sigh.
“We have had a couple of long, tense days, Deborah,” he rasped, reaching higher under her skirts to massage her thigh, “Why not give ourselves one relaxing night?”
Deborah whimpered, her head lulling back again as he used both hands to massage the warm, supple flesh of her thigh. He kneaded the muscle softly, relishing in the way her tendons began to tremble beneath his coaxing touch.
“So very tense,” he rasped, feeling his desire mount higher; he moved to repeat the same process with her other leg and thigh. “Do you not just want to relax with me, sweetheart?”
“Yes,” she breathed, her body melting into the sofa.
“Oh,” Cedric groaned, pressing her closest thigh tight against his already pulsing manhood and letting the other drape over his knees.
“There’s my good girl,” he praised, reveling in the way Deborah’s cheeks flushed a bright pink at his words.
He kept his one hand pressed tight against her thigh that was pressed tight against his erection, and with the other, he began to trail his fingertips higher up her inner thigh. Lust pulsed in every cell of his body as he found the supple flesh near her apex slick and warm. The sensation urged him forward, and as he reached her mons, he unleashed a groan as he found her already gushing.
Desire flushed through his veins as he slid two fingers into Deborah’s tight, willing sheath, and he was immediately rewarded with the soft sounds of her heady moans and the delicious bucking of her hips. He stretched her sheath with his fingers, moving them as slowly as possible so as not to cause her discomfort, and when he drew them out to swirl over her clitoris, Deborah’s back arched away from the sofa and her hands dug into his forearm.
He relished the prick of her nails as they bit through his shirt and into his forearm, and repeated the motion. Thrust. Curl. Stroke.Thrust. Curl. Stroke.
“Cedric!” She moaned, her thighs already beginning to tremble.
“Shhh, I have you,” he huskily replied as his fingers continued their rhythmic ministrations, “Let me bring you pleasure. Let me help you forget. Even if just for a while.”
As he said the last part, he thrust his fingers inside her wet sheath harder, and Deborah’s body was rocked with delicious spasms as she began to make delightful keening sounds. He kept his thrusts hard and intense, feeling that coil of pleasure grow tighter in her lower belly until it nearly snapped- and then he would slow, keeping his thrusts shallow as he lifted the pad of his thumb to her clitoris and began drawing lazy circles over the sensitive bud of flesh.