Delilah Dawson - The Damsel and the Daggerman

“I’m not a city woman. Haven’t lived in a city since I left university.”

He undid another button, traced a fingertip down her throat. “What are you, then?”

“Nothing that has a name.” He flicked another button, this one just over her heart, and before she could elaborate, his mouth was on her, his tongue tasting her throat as his fingers continued downward, exposing the edge of her corset. She unclenched the bed frame, but he caught her hand and put it back firmly.

“I like you like this, spread out for me. If you let me enjoy myself, I promise you won’t regret it.” His lips nibbled her clavicles, his tongue tracing the fine lines of her bones. “I told you: I like to take my time.”

“I’ll do my best. But I’m not one for following orders.”

“Consider it a polite request, then.”

His tongue dipped into the valley between her breasts as he finished with the last button of her jacket, spreading the thick cloth from chin to waist and revealing an emerald-green corset that made her fair skin glow like porcelain held before the fire. She wanted so badly to touch him, to enjoy the softness of his dark hair and the breadth of his shoulders and the smart, enticing curve of his ass, but she was painfully aware of what had happened the last time she’d moved her hands from his chosen place before he was satisfied. The frustration heightened the touch of his fingertips, callused from flicking blades and perfectly nimble with softer flesh as he gently eased her breast from under her corset. Her nipple hardened and pearled as he pulled it into his mouth, licking and tasting it. His fingertips found her other nipple, rolling and rubbing it, making her squirm to be free of the confines of stays and thick satin. He teased from one to the other before pressing them both together and tonguing both of her nipples at once, a sensation she’d never experienced but that made her throw her head back with a strangled moan.

“You make that noise again, I’ll have to do something about it,” he murmured, his breath hot against her flesh.

“If you’re daring me to dare you, then I dare you.”

Before she’d finished speaking, his tongue was in her mouth, messy and wild and wet and all too brief, and then he was kneeling between her legs, his hands on her ankles under the hem of her skirts. His knees against her thighs made her squirm, as did the painful slowness with which he slid her skirts and petticoats up, revealing her legs inch by inch.

“Oh, this is pretty.” He ran a fingertip up and down the lone silk stocking she still wore.

“When I put them on this morning, I was thinking of you.”

“Holy mother, they go all the way up. Maybe the cities aren’t so bad.” Walking his fingers up her leg from ankle to thigh, he lifted just that side of her skirt to expose the dove-gray stocking. She closed her eyes and writhed, so impatient for him to reach the ribbon bows that connected the Franchian silk to her corset.

Reaching the curve of her hip, he paused.

“You weren’t lying.” His fingertip stroked the place on the crease of her thigh where an Almanican shaman had etched her skin with needle and ink in an elaborate ceremony. The stylized quill tattoo had been hard won, and she treasured it beyond words. After a short pause, he kissed it gently and said, “Beautiful,” and she exhaled in relief.

He leaned over, taking the black ribbon in his teeth and pulling so slowly that she could hear the bow spring free. It took everything she had not to let go of the iron bars and dig her nails into his back, not to beg him to give her something besides exquisite frustration.

“Mmm.” He rubbed his cheek against her hip, the rasp of his stubble delicious against her skin. “I like the stockings, but I like what’s underneath better.” He took the silk in his teeth and lightly dragged it down her thigh, his breath hot on the inside of her leg as he exposed her flesh to the cool air. When his nose grazed the tender curve of her ankle, she shivered, and he slipped the stocking free with his teeth and tossed it onto the floor.

Jacinda lifted her eyes, and he was staring straight at her, a look of such profound emotion on his face that she was momentarily bewildered. There was hunger and lust and darkness and a strange sort of sadness in him, and before she could ask him why he was so worked up over simple love play, he was nibbling up her ankle, his hand on her other leg matching pace and pulling up the other side of her skirt to expose her completely. His tongue and lips traveled up her calf, paused to dip into the tender spot behind her knee, and then began the ticklish, devilish, delicious trip up the inside curve of her thigh, closer and closer to the place where she’d been dreaming of his touch. He was drawing it out as long as possible, making her breath build to pants and causing her body to strain toward him.

“Damn, Marco, but you can work a woman up.”

“I’m very generous.”

“Generous with torture.”

“It’ll be worth it. You won’t believe the things I can do with my tongue.”

“I’m more interested in what you can do with other parts of your body.”

Marco’s lips froze with a quick intake of breath, almost as if she’d wounded him, even though there wasn’t anything she could have done, spread out as she was.

“I hope I live up to your expectations,” he murmured, licking gently up the inside of her thigh until he exhaled, slowly, at the core of her.

Jacinda held her breath, waiting. He was so close, his thumb nearly brushing her, just next to his mouth. Her entire world started and ended with the place where she waited for his touch, and she realized she hadn’t wanted anything this badly in a long, long time.

When his caress came, it nearly ended her. Just the tip of his tongue, wet and gentle, barely dipping to taste her as his thumb pressed, softly, just beside it. She was already wet, dripping with want, and she whimpered and went stiff, beyond desperate for more. Lick by lick, he teased her, tasted her, touched her, pressed in the tiniest bit, nowhere close to satisfying her, taking his time as he had promised. One finger slid into her with infinite patience, his tongue probing her most secret of places. Marco was just as frustrating in bed as he was on his feet, and she loved and hated it with equal measure.

Since Liam, all her lovers had been fast and brash and pounding and innocently selfish, easy to lose herself in for a night and just as easy to forget come morning. But Marco’s touch brought her back to herself, reminded her of what it was to yearn and want and need. She couldn’t escape it, couldn’t escape him, couldn’t escape the feeling writhing in her chest, the hunger, the needing.

“Please.”

One long, deep lick, tongue flat, enough to make her shudder. “Please what, sweetness?”

“Just . . . please.”

He put his lips against her and hummed, sending a thrum throughout every cell of her body. “Hmm. Please go more slowly?”

She groaned. “Curse you and your damn lips, Marco Taresque.”

He paused, set his forehead against her thigh. “Care to rephrase that?”

“Yes. No. Faster. More.” He licked her again, and she whimpered. “Please. More.”

He chuckled against her, slid a second finger in beside the first, and curled them as if he knew every inch of her body as well as he knew his knives. His tongue began to work her with purpose, pushing in and out in perfect time with his fingers, and she met his rhythm with every breath, with the little moans and whimpers that escaped her as her head thrashed back and forth. Her fingers were numb around the iron bars, her hands forgotten in the frenzy he’d built inside her.

“Better?” he asked.

“So close. Still not enough. All of you. Now.” After one last, forceful, hard push of his tongue, he withdrew, leaving an emptiness behind where his fingers had brought her to the edge of a release she felt sure he wasn’t ready yet to give her. The knowledge was thrilling, that he was so attuned to her body after so little time, that he was reading every signal she threw. She felt like an instrument in his hands, as if he knew how to coax songs from her that she didn’t yet know how to sing.