Lady Ines Scandalous Hobby-Chapter 51 - Fifty One

Ines’s face did not just blush. It exploded.

The color, a deep, furious, scalding red, flashed from her collarbones to her hairline. She was, in that single second, the color of a ripened, sun-hot tomato.

"Oh! Y... ye... yes," she stammered, her voice a high-pitched, breathless squeak. She could not look at him. She stared, wide-eyed, at the knot of his shirt. "I know. Y-you don’t have to... to remind me."

"Don’t I?" he murmured.

His hand, the one that had been on the back of her neck, moved. His fingers, calloused and warm, slid from her hair to her shoulder, his thumb still making a slow, agonizing, hypnotic circle just behind her ear.

He leaned in, his mission, his "lesson," clear.

His lips, which had been inches away, brushed the side of her neck.

Ines gasped, a sharp, silent intake of air. Her entire body went rigid. His lips were not chapped. They were not rough. They were soft, and firm, and impossibly, unbelievably hot.

"Your red lips," he whispered, his own lips moving against her skin, sending a jolt of lightning straight down her spine, "...tempt me."

He was not just teaching. He was... he was confessing.

His other hand, which had been at his side, came up. It did not touch her. It gripped the carved wooden armrest of her chair, his fingers digging into the wood, his knuckles turning white. He was, she realized, holding himself back. He was using all his strength to not do what he, apparently, wanted to do.

This was a man, a very strong man, fighting for control. And that, Ines’s writer-brain noted in a tiny, distant corner of her mind, was the most thrilling, most dangerous, and most exciting thing she had ever known.

She was beginning to love seeing him fight for control, it some added to the thrill.

She bent her head, a small, involuntary, surrendering movement, giving him more access.

A low, pained groan rumbled in his chest, a sound of both pleasure and agony. He took her offering.

"Your soft skin," he murmured, his mouth trailing a line of hot, open-mouthed kisses from behind her ear, down the sensitive, leaping pulse of her throat. "It feels like silk against my lips."

He reached the place where the velvet of her robe met, the V of her cleavage just visible. He didn’t kiss it. He licked it. A single, slow, deliberate, wet caress of his tongue against her skin, just at the hollow of her collarbone.

Ines let out a sound. Not a word nor a gasp but a low, long, satisfied moan, a sound of pure, helpless, animal pleasure that was torn from the very depths of her. She had written that sound. She had imagined that sound. She had never, ever, thought she would be the one to make it.

The sound seemed to shatter the last of his restraint.

"If I had known," he growled, his voice thick, his lips pressing, biting, gently, at the skin he had just tasted, "that your body was this... this sweet... I would have tasted it sooner."

At this point, he was a man, telling a woman, in the plainest, most explicit terms, that he wanted her.

"From the depths of my heart," he whispered, his voice a raw, dark, and utterly honest confession, "I think I might have wanted to covet you for a very, very long time."

The feelings, the ones she had felt in the library before, the ache, the tingling, the heat... it was all building again. It was a wave, gathering inside her, sharp, and hot, and demanding. She leaned into his touch, her eyes fluttering shut...

And then, he was gone.

He backed off.

It was not a slow retreat. It was an abrupt, harsh, violent severing of contact. He simply let go of her chair, let go of her neck, and stood up straight. He took two large, quick steps back.

Ines’s eyes flew open. The room, the library, which had been a pinprick of pure, golden sensation, rushed back in. The air, where his body had been, was suddenly, painfully, cold.

She was left, dazed, breathless, her skin on fire, her lips parted, her body aching, her center having that wet feeling ... her...

She blinked.

What... what just happened? her mind stuttered, trying to catch up.

He was standing by the desk again, his back to her. His hands were braced on the wood. He was breathing heavily. His shoulders were rigid.

He was, she realized, trying to regain his control.

And then, he turned.

His face was pale. His jaw was clenched. But his eyes... his eyes were dark, and hot, and he was, to her absolute confusion, looking at her as if... as if nothing had happened.

"This," he said, his voice clipped, formal, and perfectly steady, "is the kind of conversation that usually happens."

He had... he had... what?

Ines just stared at him, her mouth open.

"Ah," her mind finally, painfully, supplied. "So that... that was the answer. That was the answer to my question."

It wasn’t a confession. It wasn’t a seduction. Sadly, It was... it was a demonstration. It was Lesson Number One.

"I... I almost misunderstood," she thought, a wave of humiliation, so profound it was almost funny, washing over her. He had been acting. He had been performing the part of the "lover whispering sweet nothings."

And she... she had moaned. She had bent her head. She had, quite literally, melted for him.

She tucked a stray, trembling curl of her hair behind her ear, her hand shaking. She had to gain some semblance of control.

"I... I see," she said, her voice a small, tight, embarrassed croak.

She had to get back to the list. She bent her head, her face burning, and looked down at the papers in her lap. She was fumbling for the next question.

As she bent, her gaze, which was aimed at her own lap, slid... past it.

It slid to... him.

He was still standing by the desk. He was wearing dark, well-tailored trousers. Trousers that... Trousers that, in one, very specific, very central location, were no longer flat. There was a... a... a bulge. A distinct, prominent, and utterly undeniable ridge, pressing against the fine fabric.

Ines’s mind, which had just been recovering, went completely, totally, blank. Her writer’s-brain, however, did not.

"In novels," her thoughts ran, her voice suddenly, shockingly, erudite, "it said that when a man gets aroused... his ’member’... his ’part’... becomes much larger than usual."

She stared. Her gaze was locked. She was, quite literally, studying it.

"Is that... is that his member?"

She was transfixed. It was... it was...

"Intriguing," she thought, her curiosity completely, totally, and shamelessly overriding her embarrassment. "I... I didn’t expect it to look that... that big."

She was so lost in her silent, scientific, and deeply inappropriate observation that she did not, for a long, agonizing moment, realize that he had stopped breathing.

He had been watching her.

He had seen her, with her head bent, her face flushed... staring.

He had seen, with a dawning, terrible, and strangely, hysterically, amusing horror, exactly what she was staring at.

He was, he realized, aroused. He was aroused for her, and she, in turn, was looking at it. Like a child who had just found a new, very strange, and very large insect.

He was, he thought, going to die of mortification. He had to say something.

He cleared his throat.

Ines’s head snapped up, her eyes wide, her face a color he did not even know was possible. She had been caught.

Carcel did not smile. He did not laugh. He could not.

He simply looked at her. He looked at her, her face a picture of pure, guilty, fascination. And then, his gaze dropped, pointedly, to the stack of papers in her lap.

His voice, when he spoke, was dry. It was the driest, most exhausted, most resigned voice she had ever heard.

"So," he said, letting out a long, slow breath. "The next question is... ’What does a man’s part look like?’"