Page 38 of To Love

“For as long as we can be together, I am yours, Alden.” Her proud chin rose. “Do with me as you would.”

“Elara,” he warned.

The rest of his words never came. Rather than waiting for him to do it, she reached down, grabbed fistfuls of her chemise, and tugged it upward.

Elara wore nothing underneath.

No garter. No undergarment.

Nothing.

Her body was so perfectly formed, Alden was certain the memory of it would stay with him for the rest of his days. He wanted to remain there, staring at her breasts, the curve of her waist, hips he could hold onto forever.

But he wanted to touch her more.

As promised, Alden scooped Elara up easily. She tossed her arms around his neck as he carried her into the bedchamber.

“You’re wet,” she teased.

“Why, I do wonder, is that?” he teased back.

Placing her onto the bed, he removed his own boots.

“You are perfect, Elara,” he said. “Do you know how beautiful you are?”

“I know you are fully clothed, and I am as exposed as I’ve ever been to a man’s eyes.”

Before joining her on the bed, Alden removed his linen shirt. “Better?” The appreciation in Elara’s eyes made him smile.

“Much.”

He joined her in the bed, not wasting a moment. Starting with her lips, Alden kissed her, becoming accustomed to the way their lips melded together perfectly. From there he moved toward her neck as his hand relished in the feel of her full breasts. One, and then the other. He caressed, kissed and worshipped her as he promised Elara he would do.

Her touch, though tentative at first, became bolder. When her hands moved over his stomach, and then lower, Elara’s fingers inching beneath his chausses and braies, his already hard cock grew harder still.

But there was naught to be done about that. So Alden took her hand and explained. “Though I would very much like for you to continue there, I made a promise and intend to keep it.”

Moving downward, Alden explored every curve, his lips learning which spots made Elara sigh and which made her squirm. Her body was magnificent, but her expressions, even more so.

He moved between her legs.

“That first lesson,” he said, watching Elara’s hooded eyes, both pleasure and curiosity in them. “Your beauty startled me, as it did all the men. Every one of them.”

Parting her legs, his hands not moving from Elara’s inner thighs, Alden moved into a more comfortable position.

“But when you began to speak, it was that moment that truly captivated me. I wondered then, and every day since . . .” He ran his hands upward then, parting her with his thumbs. “If that stern countenance, one you’d no doubt cultivated at court, would hold steady in the bedroom.”

Without warning, he leaned down to her, surprised that her hips bucked at his first taste. From Elara’s expression, she’d not seen or heard of this being done before, which made it even more remarkable, that she asked no questions nor stopped him in any way.

Just as he’d thought.

With every lick, with every flick of his tongue, she not only relaxed into it but grabbed the back of his head. Her fingers grasped Alden’s hair, encouraging him as much as the sounds she made.

His perfectly proper Strategies instructor writhed beneath him, and Alden loved it. He loved how she tasted, loved the way her hips met every movement. Loved the way she called his name.

He would not be waylaid.

His goal? Make this release so powerful that when he walked into lessons on the morrow, she would look at him and squirm with need. A need he would quench every single night, showing her how pleasure could be between a man and a woman who desired each other this way.