Neither of them breathed as his long, heavy torso pressed against her. Even through the layers of his clothes and the bindings of her corset, she could feel his tempered strength. His solid, lean frame built by years of forced labor and honed by a decade of violent dominion.
She’d do well to remember that. To keep in mind what he was capable of.
They both gasped when his hips settled into the cradle of hers, forcing them wider. A thick ridge of steel pressed against her cleft, and even through his trousers she could feel the heat of it. It pulsed in rhythm with his heart, and the slight movements sent little shocks of pleasure through her already sensitized core.
Eyes peeling wide, she clenched the covers so tightly, her fingers ached.
“Are you frightened, Fair—Farah?”
“Are you?” she asked breathlessly. “Should I be?”
“Yes.”
She didn’t have time to contemplate which of her questions he answered as his head dipped to claim her mouth once more.
“I want to see all of you,” he demanded before plunging his tongue back inside her mouth, caressing her answering tongue with deep, delicious strokes. Without breaking the fusion of their mouths, he lifted his chest off her enough to jerk at the laces and stays imprisoning her rib cage. The movements created more friction where their sexes pressed against one another, and Farah could tell by the tightening of his features that he felt at least an echo of the pleasure the movement caused her.
When the pressure of her stays gave, Farah filled her lungs with a delicious inhale, as she always did, this one flavored with his masculine scent and warm with his breath.
Her throat clenched, trapping the breath inside as she remembered her treasure. “Wait,” she gasped against his mouth, wrenching her head to the side. “Wait!”
But she was too late. He’d already pulled back to inspect what he’d found corseted to her. He clutched it in his fist and stared at it with all the shock of a man struck by a deadly viper.
“I—I’m sorry,” Farah whispered.
“Why?” Dorian asked as he ran a black-clad thumb across the folded, faded strip of plaid with a very odd intensity. It didn’t seem to anger him, though neither did it seem to please him. Did he mean why did she still have it? Why was she sorry? Why didn’t she keep it hidden from him, this keepsake of another marriage? Of a much different wedding night, this one only sealed by a few chaste kisses and a vow of forever.
The opposite of this night.
They both stared at it, this memento of a boy long dead and love that could not be.
“I promised to never be without it,” Farah ventured. “Are you angry?”
Dorian glanced at her, then back at the plaid, schooling his features. “No,” he said, perhaps more fervently than even he meant to while carefully placing the folded plaid next to the lamp. “Perhaps—it can now symbolize both him and me. A reminder of what binds us.”
She stared at the plaid, feeling naked for the first time that night. “The law binds us.”
He settled back over her, a dark gleam in his one light eye. “We both know how much regard I hold for the law.”
Their next kiss they shared with the tilt of a smile, their teeth softly rasping against one another’s as he spread the corset beneath her and pinched the hem of her chemise. The arch of her back seemed to tantalize him as she undulated in order for him to peel the garment from her prone body, baring the last of her secrets for his hungry gaze.
The barrel of his erection ground at her from behind the seams of his suit, as his mouth returned to hers like it was her lips from which an oasis sprang, and not below.
“Your trousers!” she gasped when he followed some curiosity he found down the curve of her jaw. “They’re wet.” She could feel how drenched they’d become, absorbing the moisture of her desire, the friction creating a stronger, slicker surge followed by a shocking burst of pleasure as he ground them harder against her.
“I don’t care,” he growled, passing his thumbs over her pebbled nipples in tandem, claiming her mouth and swallowing her startled cry as he rocked his hips against her again, and yet another time.
Her thighs trembled, her stomach clenched, and a delight for which she had no name spread like a flood of fire through her limbs.
“This pleases you?” He did it again, his own groan rumbling against her lips.
Pleased her? More than strawberry tarts and decadent desserts. More than she’d pleased herself with him watching. More pleasure than she’d ever imagined her body capable of producing. But she could say none of those things, so she just hissed a “Yes!” as her muscles began some sort of ascension she didn’t yet understand.
With each of his movements, and every one of his kisses, the glorious sensation intensified, electrified, until, unable to help herself, her head dug into the bed and her hips peeled off it. Her body bowed with a jerking, pulsing ecstasy so acute, she felt as though she was lost in an apoplexy. Her heart raced, forcing her blood into each extremity, and then stalled, only to charge again.
She thought she heard her name. She knew she gasped illogical things. Maybe screamed words, but couldn’t hear them, or for the life of her, remember what they were. Perhaps the same incoherent tongues spoken by the evangelicals whilst taken in rapture, for surely that’s what this was. The pulses became so powerful that if she didn’t stop it, she’d see the face of God, because it would kill her.
Frantic, she clutched at him, clawed at him, struggled to find a voice lost in the agonizing bliss of her release.