Her sex. Pink, pretty flesh nestled between a light dusting of fair curls. His mouth watered. His blood roared. His cock pulsed behind his trousers in a rhythmic and uncontrolled clench and release of muscle.
Her curious fingers paused before dipping below the soft hair. When she encountered the feminine folds, she gasped.
Dorian stopped breathing.
She tested that place lightly, finding a place that quivered and pulsed at the apex of that pliable skin. Awe speared Dorian as her feminine muscles clenched in the exact rhythm his own loins did. He could see them working through the skin unique to her sex. Her hips rolled with instant little movements, her breath catching on sighs of appreciation.
If Dorian was a lesser man, unused to patience, torment, and agony, he would have released his seed then and there. But he grappled his orgasm back down, thinking of her hands on his repulsive flesh, letting the fear throw ice into the flames.
Then she parted the inner cleft, dipped inside, and let out a moan that could have aroused Eros, himself. Her finger came away glistening as she pulled it back toward the nub that seemed to demand more attention than anywhere else. When she swiped the moisture across it, her muscles all tensed, and she threw her head back onto the counterpane, letting loose a sound so visceral Dorian’s will snapped.
And he lunged.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
An animal sound warned Farah a moment before Blackwell seized her hands and pinned them both to the bed at her sides.
His face hovered above hers as he bent at the waist from where he stood in between her parted legs. He wore the savage look of a man about to lose his greatest battle, but unwilling to put down his weapon.
“I’m going to give you one chance,” he threatened. “Do you understand? One chance to deny me, to stop me. So consider this carefully, wife. Is this what you want?” He turned his blue eye to her, affording her a closer look at the angry scar.
If he had treated her thus at any moment before, she might have retreated. But now her body had been awakened to its most primitive desires. Need and heat seethed within her, and overcame the trepidation she should be feeling. Not many a man came this close to the Blackheart of Ben More and survived.
Would she?
Farah met his wounded gaze with absolute conviction. “I want you to … take me.”
“Then God help us both.”
His dark eye flashed the moment before his hard mouth bore down on hers. His kiss felt like a punishment, but for what she couldn’t be sure. Because he wanted her? Because she wanted him?
When the pressure became too much, Farah made a sound of distress, and he broke the kiss.
“Damn you,” he accused, then descended again.
This time, though, he was more careful. Not gentle, per se, but the press of his mouth became another pleasure she’d not previously experienced. He kissed every part of her lips, the corners, the rims, the pillowing fullness, devouring her with the efficiency of an experienced man. Instead of becoming more severe, his movements began to slow. He sampled her like a man sipping and measuring a fine scotch. What his mouth lacked in fullness, it made up for in innate skill. Eventually, those hard lips softened, opened over hers, and his tongue thrust past her closed lips, demanding entrance. His trembling began to subside, though the tension coiled in the muscles beneath the jacket of his fine suit intensified.
Farah opened for him on a sigh of acquiescence, her muscles pooling beneath his body in a puddle of anticipatory submission. If their consummation was anything like this wet, probing kiss, she looked forward to it.
His fingers relaxed their punishing grip on her wrists, the fine leather peeling off her skin, and he pulled away just far enough to look down at her.
In the midst of the frenzy of need building inside them, bloomed a quiet moment. One of stillness and acceptance. His disbelieving eyes searched her face and his lips parted as though a confession hovered on his tongue, but could not breach the hardness of his mouth.
“What is it, Dorian?”
“Don’t call me that,” he admonished gently. “Not here.”
“What shall I call you, then?” she asked, puzzled that the intimacy of his first name could be forbidden from the intimacy of their marriage bed.
“Husband.” The word caressed her cheek. “Call me husband.”
Farah felt a tender smile touch the corner of her lips. “What is it, then—husband?”
“Your mouth,” he confessed with all the reverence of a saint and the torment of a martyr. “I’ve dreamed of this mouth.” He lifted a hand to her face, his breath hitching as he traced her lower lip with his glove. “I’ve imagined that word on your lips more times than you realize.”
Touched, Farah pressed her lips together. Could it be that Dorian Blackwell didn’t just need her for his devious ends, but he desired a life with her, as well? She wanted him to take his gloves off, more than she wanted anything in the world, but knew better than to ask it of him. She desired his skin against her skin, the warmth she could feel radiating from him absorbed by her flesh. Maybe someday, she thought with a twinge of hope, but not tonight.
“Put your body against mine, husband,” she invited. “And kiss me again.”
His eyes pasted to her lips, he released her other hand. “Do not—reach for me,” he warned.
Farah nodded, once again knitting her fingers into the covers.
Placing both of his hands on the side of her head, he leaned on his uninjured hand to lower his body in measured increments. His eyes locked with hers, onyx and ice, reaching for her like a pious man would reach out for a relic, or a godless man would reach for salvation. Farah didn’t dare blink, for fear she’d lose him. That this moment would slip through her fingers, the first of its kind, where Dorian Blackwell lifted the shroud of mystery and didn’t use words to wield shadow and misdirection. Instead, he whispered truths against her skin.