Bound to Be a Groom (11 page)

“You are very good.” He still waited for her nod of approval. When she finally gave it, he dove at her, licking and kissing and using his tongue to map every subtle curve and edge of her sex.

Her clit was already hard against his lips, and he loved the feel of her trembling thighs against his shoulders, the feel of silk and skin beneath his clenched fingers. She cried out quickly, with no attempt at muffling her voice, and he strained his eyes up to watch the glorious release pulse through her strong neck, the bite of her teeth into her lower lip. He loved the pull of her small fist in his hair.

He kept licking her slowly, long after the last ripples of pleasure were past. Loving the soft warmth of flesh and slick moisture, Sebastian let his tongue trail the length of her opening.

She pushed his mouth away impatiently but didn’t release her hold on his hair. “That’s enough,” she said in that throaty, commanding voice he adored.

“Yes, Anna.” He remained on his knees, holding the silk gown halfway up her body.

“Finish undressing me, Sebastian.” She let her fingers fall away from his hair; her arms hung idly at her sides. She looked toward the fire, almost ignoring him, as if he were nothing more than a servant come to help her with her toilette. He loved that, too.

Standing to his full height, he removed the light gown and put it neatly on the chair by the fire as she’d requested.

“Now give me the belt of your robe,” she directed.

He pulled the blue silk from the floor and handed it to her.

“Pull the covers from the bed and lie facedown on the bottom sheet, darling.”

He groaned and complied, removing the coverlet and then lying with his arms near his side and his legs together. His hard cock pressed into the mattress with poignant agony.

“Wide, Sebastian. As wide as you can go. I want to see you.”

And oh God, how he wanted to be seen by her. He spread his legs and arms. “Like this, Anna?”

“Yes, my sweet. Like that.” She dangled the silk belt over his back and thighs, letting it linger between the crack of his arse, then lower. He shivered in anticipation. She played with him like that, making his skin pucker and chill in anticipation, for what felt like an eternity. Finally, she drew his forearms together behind his back and tied them neatly with the blue silk.

“Very nice,” she muttered, seeming to admire her own handiwork as much as Sebastian himself. She tested the tension and, satisfied, stepped back off the bed.

He heard the
swish
of the crop as it whistled through the air, and he braced for contact. When it didn’t come, he relaxed, and Anna laughed right before she swatted the crop across his bare skin. The sound registered before the pain-pleasure did. Sebastian buried his face in the cool linen and felt every muscle in his body begin to melt into a warm, thick honey.

“Oh! Isn’t that something?” She touched the stinging spot created by the tip of the crop, tracing it lightly with her fingertip. Then, God save him, she leaned down and dragged the tip of her tongue along the hot mark on his arse.

“Anna . . .”

“Yes, darling? You like that, don’t you?” She tapped the crop a few times against her palm, testing its resistance.

“Yes,” he whispered.

“What a fine instrument you are.” He wasn’t sure if she was talking to the crop or to him.

Then she began.

Lightly at first, stinging his smooth flesh with more of those precise, brief swats.

She spoke to him softly, almost as if to herself. “So beautiful.”
Swat swat swat
. “Those delectable squares . . .” Six more swats in quick succession. “Look how your skin responds. You are quite incredible, darling.” Her breathy praise wove together with the neat rows of immaculate pain along his arse. The heat of her words mingled with the heat of his skin so she became a part of his body, a part of him.

He lifted his arse, begging silently for more attention. She dragged her fingernails across the neat pattern of pain. The lightning bolt of pleasure—the combination of her light scratch across all that seething skin—sent a shock to his core, and he nearly came right then against the mattress.

“Anna!” he begged.

“Don’t even consider it, darling,” she answered immediately, but with a slow patience that scrambled his brain. She gave him a little harmless spank with the flat of her palm that brought him back from the edge of his release. “I have so much to learn, you know that. I’ll make it wonderful for you, but you must be patient.”

As she found her rhythm and confidence, she became bolder. Even though his eyes were shut—his senses overloaded with the physical—he could feel her eyes on him, assessing him, and oh, how he wanted to please her.

He writhed in pleasure and near-terror when she lowered the crop closer to his balls, unsure if his fear or desire would prevail. Instead of smacking him there with the crop, though, she squeezed him gently with her free hand while she began leaving more marks along his upper thighs, making those muscles tense and desperate. Her tender fondling was a maddening counterpoint to the brisk whipping he was getting a few inches away.

But he never faltered. He moaned his pleasure but never cried out or begged for his release. She praised him again for his endurance, and he was rewarded when she straddled his back. When she adjusted her position to better reach his shoulders and upper arms, he felt the hot, wet evidence of her own pleasure against the sensitive skin of his lower back. Her pleasure was mounting at the same pace as his, and he had never felt more joyful.

Eventually, he was lost to time. Sebastian would never know how long Anna went on that night, both of them hot and slick with the exertion. The minutes expanded to years and the years contracted to seconds.

When she had tuned his body to a fever pitch and held it there for an eternity, she finally tossed the crop to the floor and ordered him to turn over. He did as she’d asked, his forearms still bound behind him, muscles straining and forcing his shoulders back and his chest forward. His backside and thighs, shoulder blades and hips, tingled with infernal awareness, burning into the linen sheets beneath him. But when he saw her, he barely noticed the searing heat of his own flesh.

Anna burned brighter than anything he felt against his tender skin. He was blinded by the power of her. She was breathing heavily, her cheeks blazing, her long blonde hair falling around her face, slick with sweat in some places and covering her breasts in others. She looked like a Greek goddess, hands on hips, conquering him.

“That is quite something!” she panted out the words between breaths.

Sebastian was too far gone to reply, but his drunken smile must have pleased her.

Her face softened as she crawled up the length of his body, until she was straddling his waist and he felt her hot core against his hard stomach. She nibbled at his ear and along his neck, then whispered, “I feel so alive.” The tips of her breasts grazed his chest, and he arched up even more to increase their contact. Her head leaned back as her chest thrust harder against him.

“Oh, yes,” she whispered. “So alive.”

She pressed her lips against his, kissing him hard and fast.

“Oh, Sebastian . . .” She enjoyed it for a moment, then pulled away. His hands were still bound behind his back, so he was helpless to stop her. She sat astride him for a few seconds, touching his nipples and letting her long hair hang down like a curtain around them. Then she leaned down and sucked and bit his nipple.

He arched up again.

She stopped and sat up. “So many sensitive places on this body of yours. It’s like a treasure trove.”

“I love when you touch me, Anna.” His eyes were closed.

“Turn on your side, sweetheart.” She moved so he could do as she asked, then she reached around and undid the belt at his wrists. She massaged the tingling skin, and he felt the release as the muscles in his shoulders and arms readjusted.

After she finished soothing him, she turned her body so her lips were kissing down along his hip, then her tongue was tracing the length of his hard shaft, and her wet sex was near his lips.

She took him fully into her mouth, and he watched the moisture begin to seep out of her swollen folds.

“Oh God, Anna.”

She sucked him hard, and he saw the answering flutter in her sex.

“Touch me, Sebastian,” she ordered between long hard pulls.

It was as though he’d forgotten he had hands. And a mouth. He gripped her hips and dipped his tongue into her, both of them coiling around one another on their sides, beginning and ending with the most intimate connection of giving and taking all the pleasure they could.

Sebastian’s world telescoped into a piercing tunnel of pure sensation: giving Anna her pleasure while she gave him his—demanded his—was the closest he had ever come to heaven.

Both of them exploded in a shared climax of lips and sweat and tongues and grasping desperate hands and guttural cries.

After, in the dim glow of the waning firelight, Sebastian felt Anna rearrange his almost-sleeping body so his head rested gently on a pillow. She got up at some point and returned to wipe off his sweat-soaked body, lovingly cleansing him and then herself with the flannel and water she had warmed in the basin.

He moaned once or twice, then turned on his side and curled into the pillow when she was finished. After returning the used cloth to the basin, he heard subtle shuffling noises, of her picking up his robe and belt and setting them neatly next to her gown on the chair, then the sound of Anna’s wardrobe opening and closing as she put the crop back in its case.

When the room had been returned to order, she slipped beneath the linen sheets and settled her front snugly against Sebastian’s back. As he drifted to sleep, he felt his heart swell when her small arm draped around his middle, and she kissed his tender back with a sleepy groan of satisfaction.

Three days later, in the inn at Burgos, Anna was nearly distraught with anticipation. Ever since they’d left Madrid, Sebastian had served as her maid. He loved tying her into her clothes and draping her in obscene jewels. She usually enjoyed the sensual routine and luxurious baubles, but at the moment she barely noticed the cascade of emeralds he placed around her delicate neck.

“Enough! I can’t bear another minute of preparation. How much longer until we meet with the abbess?”

Sebastian smiled down at her, adjusting the emeralds.

She reined in her temper. “Oh, my sweet man. Look at you.” She rubbed his lower lip the way he loved, then pressed the pad of her thumb into his bottom teeth and tugged open his gorgeous mouth. “I think you will have much pleasure when you finally see Pia and me joined together. Don’t you agree?”

He surrounded her thumb with his lips and sucked, humming his agreement. After she removed her thumb, he leaned down to cover her mouth with his. When they veered toward a more heated passion and his hand started to reach under her skirt, Anna pulled away. “No!” she protested, but she was smiling. “You shall not make me shiver again this morning.” She smoothed down the front of her silk gown. “The next time I come, I want Pia’s lips on me.”

Sebastian smiled. “As do I.”

She reached for him again, pulling his mouth to hers for another brief kiss. “I do not know how you came to be my husband, or how you find it in your heart to fulfill my strange desires, but I am grateful for you every day.” Her fingers rubbed his cheeks and his eyebrows, his jaw and his lips.

He shrugged, looking a bit embarrassed. “I cannot imagine another woman who would satisfy my own strange desires the way you do.”

She smiled at that, remembering the way he had arced like a bow last night, as she had whipped him again with the buttery-soft riding crop he had given her for a wedding present.
A very selfish gift
, she had chided. But he’d also given her a complete set of Shakespeare’s plays, and he had promised to take her and Pia to the Theatre Royal at Drury Lane once they arrived in London.

“Very well, very well. That’s quite enough mooning,” she said. “Now, I want you to meet my girl. I want you to love her as much as I do.”

“I know I shall.” Sebastian put on his gloves and held out his arm to escort her from their room. “Anyone or anything that makes you burst with as much joy as the mere mention of Pia Carvajal—if it is in my power to give, it shall be yours.”