Chapter 21

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

D ev lay on his back, watching night shadows dance across the ceiling, damnably awake.

Beside him, Beatrix snored softly.

He should have seen to her pleasure first.

He wasn’t some green youth.

He was Lord Devil, for heaven’s sake.

She had been the virgin.

And he’d left her unsatisfied.

The very idea gnawed at him.

Which it would surely do for the rest of his days.

And there she lay, sleeping peacefully because she didn’t know any better.

She didn’t know she should be hurling his reputation back into his face.

He groaned— again .

For the hundredth time tonight.

He shifted onto his side and let his gaze rest upon her nude form, porcelain skin illuminated by the soft light of the moon streaming through a high window.

He’d taken her for naught more than skin and bones during their first encounter.

She was thin, but lissome was the more accurate descriptor. There was no one perfect version of the female form—he’d dedicated much of his early twenties to discovering that for himself—but this woman was perfect unto herself.

As frustrated as he was about how tonight had proceeded—another groan escaped him—he couldn’t regret it.

Refusing her had never been an option.

But he wouldn’t hide behind that flimsy excuse.

The fact was he’d wanted her.

From their very first encounter, he’d been drawn to her, but now, he saw it for what it was.

Desire.

Desire to speak with her.

Desire to be in her presence.

Desire to touch some part of her.

Desire to please her…to spoil her.

Desire to kiss her— properly .

Desire…

To be something more with her.

So, he’d seen desire through to its natural resolution.

And botched it.

He flung the sheet away and swung his legs off the bed. He couldn’t lie still another second with this frustration steaming inside him.

At the washbasin, he dipped a cloth into cooling water scented with some herb or another and wiped his face.

He could sit at his draftsman’s table and work. A pencil put to paper always settled and focused his mind on straightforward problems and the clear solutions that followed.

However, as he squeezed the excess water from the cloth—he could use a quick wash while he was at it—he felt them.

Eyes upon him.

He glanced over his shoulder and found Beatrix curled onto her side, watching him, no mistaking the appreciation in her eyes.

“That was…” But she didn’t seem to have the words to finish the sentence.

He didn’t think he could bear to hear them, anyway. She might say something like wondrous , and he wasn’t in the mood for well-intentional lies.

It hadn’t been wondrous.

At least, not for her.

Truly, she didn’t sound as outraged as she should.

“Yeah,” was all he could say as he returned to the bed, cloth in hand, an idea forming. Before he could reconsider, he asked, “May I?” He was holding up the square of linen, his intention clear.

A complicated beat of time passed. Then she nodded, and relief washed through Dev.

A chance at redemption scented the air, and he wouldn’t bungle it this time.

He lowered onto the bed beside her, and she rolled onto her back. Her eyes never left him.

“It will be cool on your skin,” he said before smoothing the cloth along her arm, waking a trail of goose bumps. Her nipples tightened into hard buds, and it was all he could do not to lean down and take one into his mouth.

His cock came to life.

This cloth, meager as it was, was all that stood between his skin touching hers.

This cloth carried a heavy weight on its flimsy shoulders as, in truth, it was all that kept the moment from tipping over into a complete abandonment of reason.

The sigh issuing from her parted lips wasn’t helping matters.

Somehow, he moved lower, to her stomach, paying a moment’s attention to her navel and producing a breathy, feminine giggle that nearly undid him.

Nothing new in that.

Everything in relation to this woman seemed to undo him.

As the cloth reached the juncture of her thighs— her sex —she bit her bottom lip and squeezed her knees together and exhaled a soft sigh.

She had the heavy-lidded look of a woman aching with arousal.

Aching with arousal …

How he related to the feeling.

He brushed the washcloth along the curls of her cunny and applied light pressure in the name of cleaning her, but he knew what he was doing. Within those curls lay a firm, little nub that existed solely for her pleasure.

Gently, he pushed her thigh. Her knees parted slightly. She was granting him access—and permission.

He tossed the washcloth aside, nothing between him and her as his forefinger slipped into those curls. Not every woman could achieve release from a man’s cock.

Perhaps this was the way for her.

Hot…swollen with desire… Her sex was ready for him.

But not yet.

First, she would have her pleasure.

Her slickness invited him to apply a bit more pressure as he grazed the nub with intention. It was as if an electric current suddenly seized her body. One arm flung itself over her head and clenched the pillow above, and the other grabbed the bedsheet, as her back arched on a long moan.

Her nub slick and wet, he continued grazing his finger across it. Climax wouldn’t take long. She was absolutely primed for release.

Her nipples, so taut and pretty, begged for his attention, and he could no longer resist their call as he dipped his head and took one into his mouth and sucked. A cry scraped across her throat—one of pleasure and need and frustration and utter want.

He stroked her firmer… faster … Though she didn’t know it, climax was nearing.

Then her breath caught in her throat, and her body held in exquisite stasis, deliciously open with need. All that mattered in the world to her in this moment was what came next…

A duo of breathless seconds followed before she broke beneath a deeper thrust of his fingers, crying out, as her sex pulsed its release against him. He couldn’t take his eyes off her as she tipped into utter abandonment of the self.

Though his cock demanded he take her now, he remained exactly as he was, his fingers feathering lightly across porcelain skin misted with perspiration and let gratification replace the frustration that had been gnawing at him. Her eyes slitted open. “That was…”

“ Wondrous? ”

He was ready to hear it now, if she were so inclined.

A smile fluttered about her mouth. “I think the feeling would just about fit inside that word.”

A smile tipped about his mouth as he pushed to a seat and settled back against the headboard. He could almost ignore the raging cockstand that hadn’t abated one bit.

She flipped onto her stomach and gazed up at him, her cheeks flushed and eyes yet bright from climax. The view of her pert bottom down the length of her back wasn’t helping his unresolved cockstand situation.

Her gaze slid down him and widened ever so slightly.

She’d taken notice.

She reached for the still-damp washcloth. “Your turn.” With slow deliberation, her gaze traveled up and down the length of him. “You’re a full glory, Dev.”

She hadn’t called him Lord Devil or Deverill, but rather Dev.

He liked it.

Was this the first time?

“But you know that, don’t you?”

Dev’s yes remained unspoken, but there were certainties a man held about himself. He knew women saw him thusly.

She laughed. Not mocking or dry, but thoroughly, genuinely delighted.

That he could delight her in some way was an aphrodisiac in itself.

Never mind what she’d started doing with her hand…moving the washcloth along his thigh…inches from his cock.

Oh, lord.

And up it inched, as she eased closer, too, her smile of delight fallen away, replaced by one of wickedness.

He was fit to burst.

“I suppose you’ve been told the obvious,” she said.

“The obvious?”

“How very large you are.”

“How would a sweet virgin such as yourself know such a naughty thing?”

“My virginity has been consigned to the past tense,” she said, matter-of-fact.

The past tense in relation to her virginity was something he wouldn’t think about right now. “My question remains unanswered. How would you know?”

“I’ve seen a rendering of Michelangelo’s David , and you are noticeably larger than him. Proportionally speaking, of course.”

An ironic chuckle escaped Dev. “One can only be grateful for small blessings.”

A saucy glint in her eye, she tossed the cloth aside—it had been of little use, anyway—and feathered her fingertips up the length of him. He sucked in a sharp breath. “If you keep doing that…”

“What?” No mistaking the daring glittering off her. “You’ll ravish me?”

The temptation to do precisely that crooked its finger at him and beckoned. “You’re new to this,” he said. “Can you?—”

“Oh, I most certainly can.”

A moment’s hesitation, then his mind was made up. He reached out and wrapped his hand around her upper arm. She offered no resistance as he tugged.

“Shall I show you what more lovemaking can be?”

They shouldn’t have done it a first time.

But now they needed to do it a second time.

Her leg crossed over his thighs and she came to a straddle over him, hovering above, her long, sable hair forming a curtain around them, seduction in her eyes as she said, “You’re the expert, Dev.”

Though he’d had her not an hour ago, the anticipation of having her again was nearly enough to kill him. To have her pert bottom in his hands…her soft mouth on his…her sweet cunny wrapped around his cock… Her hands on his shoulders, she shifted onto her knees so he could take himself in hand, the crown of his cock grazing her deliciously wet slit.

With held breath, she slid down his shaft, taking him in, inch by inch, her mouth against his neck, impaling herself on him.

She felt so…damn…good .

He held tight onto her hips, keeping the rhythm steady and measured as they began to move together. He wanted to savor every second…every stroke.

Even as he felt the familiar tightening that preceded release.

No.

Slow…measured…

Sweat trickled down the hollow of his spine, down the center of her chest, as he sensed a release of tension within her—her body’s instinctual recognition that there would be no pain in this coupling, only pleasure.

Given that permission, he loosened his hold a degree and sank himself deeper into her.

She was ready.

She gasped. “Aren’t you full of surprises?”

Together, they established a rhythm of give and take as she moved on him, seeking and discovering the pleasures to be had from one another’s bodies.

Except this was something more than two bodies given over to lust and stealing pleasure and delight from one another.

Oh, there was pleasure and delight, but there was also intensity and intimacy of the sort that reached down into a soul.

A tup with this woman was more than a tup.

It was…

Something more.

The movements of her hips became more centered, focused…the sighs and moans and cries pouring from her mouth sharper. Urgency had begun pulling at her. There was yet more her body wanted from his.

And he would give it to her.

Here was a Beatrix he hadn’t yet known. Wild…untamed…free . No shadow or reserve about her as she rode him and took what she needed. Her head tossed back, she cried out, release taking her of a sudden, her sweet quim pulsing around him.

Then he, too, could take no more of this exquisite torture and followed her over the edge, only lifting her off his shaft as he began to spill, taking himself in hand, his gaze upon her as he stroked himself to completion on a guttural shout.

As he collapsed back against the headboard, he reached for her, pulling her into his side, her head nestled into the crook of his shoulder as they hung above the bounds of the physical for a span of time that couldn’t be accounted for.

He stroked her hair, and her fingertips lightly traced across his chest. “It was better the second time,” she said in that direct way of hers.

He experienced the great satisfaction of redemption. “It tends to get better and better as you learn what your body likes and the likes of your?—”

“ Lover? ”

He nodded.

This was no way to be talking. A future of them discovering the hidden pleasures of one another’s bodies wasn’t part of their arrangement. This night had been born of a specific madness that would dissipate with the morning light.

“Sleep,” he said—though he knew he wouldn’t.

His mind raced into the small hours of morning.

They’d become something more .

Something ill-defined.

Which didn’t sit well within him.

He didn’t like the ill-defined. He liked clearly delineated parameters. A man knew where he stood within such boundaries.

But this , the new territory he’d entered with Beatrix, it was uncharted. It turned the earth beneath his feet—earth that had been solid as granite his entire life—into shifting sand.

Something more.

He was left with a single certainty now—one that offered no reassurance.

That simple, ill-defined something more was far more powerful than it appeared on the surface.

It might even hold the power to turn his life entirely on its head.