‘I cannot.’
‘You can.’ Zachary moved even lower, the width of his shoulders pushing her thighs further apart, and allowing the heat of his gaze to feast on the slickness of her folds. So deep and rosy coloured, the lips there already swollen, moist, with Georgianna’s own arousal. ‘You are so beautiful, Georgianna,’ he murmured as his thumbs moved to part those folds, revealing the moist and welcoming centre. ‘Like a flower unfurling petals touched by the morning dew.’
Georgianna was not sure which mortified her the most, the suddenness of this intimacy, or her unmistakable arousal. Certainly she could not deny she was aroused, but at the same time she felt embarrassed by that response. At having a man, any man, look at and touch her so intimately. To have Zachary look and touch where she had never even looked or touched herself.
‘I had not taken you for a poet, Hawksmere.’
‘You and this lush bounty make me one,’ he assured gruffly as his fingers lightly caressed the delicacy of her skin.
‘I...’
Georgianna’s protest died in her throat, her back arching off the bed at the first pleasurable sweep of the heat of Zachary’s moist tongue against that very private place, before he commenced a slow and sensuous licking of those sensitive folds. He greedily lapped up the moisture now flowing between her thighs.
‘I do not...’ Georgianna halted with a gasp as the pleasure became so intense it threatened to totally overwhelm her.
Zachary felt the deepening of Georgianna’s response as his tongue now probed beneath the hood above her folds, seeking out that erect nubbin, lathing and then sucking it fully into his mouth as he felt it pulsing against his tongue as evidence of her rapidly approaching climax.
His senses were filled with the taste and smell of her, like the sweetest of nectars, and just as addictive. ‘Yes, Georgianna,’ he encouraged hotly as she now arched up into the stroking of his tongue. ‘Find your rhythm, love. Move with me. Into me. Yes,’ he muttered fiercely as she found that rhythm with the undulating arching of her hips.
He slipped a finger between the slickness of her folds, stroking the edge, before sliding slowly inside, groaning low in his throat as he added a second finger and felt her muscles tighten about him. Imagining, craving, those same muscles tightening snugly about his erection in exactly the same way they gripped his fingers.
But first he intended to pleasure Georgianna, to obliterate from her memory any other lover she had ever known.
He continued that slow thrusting with his fingers even as he lowered his head and his tongue once again stroked the erect nubbin above, suckling it into his mouth before closing his teeth gently about it.
Georgianna gasped and then cried out as the pleasure rose up to an unbearable height before crashing, streaking through her in hot, burning flames, threatening to consume her with their intensity. Wave after wave of mindless, all-consuming pleasure, tossing her higher, and then higher still as Zachary continued to stroke and thrust her to a second, even more exquisitely powerful climax with the merciless strokes of his tongue. Her body contracting as he continued to thrust his fingers deep inside that flooding heat.
‘No more. Please, Zachary,’ she finally cried out weakly, so sensitive now that every touch, every stroke threatened to send her over the edge of falling into yet another exquisite climax.
‘Why not?’ Zachary’s eyes were dark as he raised his head to look up at her, his cheeks flushed.
Georgianna felt the heat burn her cheeks as she saw how glistening wet his lips were, and realised it had to be from the copious flowing of her juices. ‘I had not realised... I did not know. Do men enjoy doing that?’
‘I do,’ Zachary assured gruffly, pleased beyond measure that he was obviously the first man to have introduced Georgianna to this intimacy. ‘You taste divine, Georgianna,’ he added huskily as he licked the juices from his lips and had the pleasure of watching her cheeks blush an even deeper red.
‘And I—’ He broke off with a scowl as a knock sounded on the door of the bedchamber. ‘What is it?’ He turned to direct that scowl towards that closed door.
‘The Duke of Wolfingham is awaiting your presence down in the blue salon, your Grace,’ Hinds informed him stiffly through the closed door.
Damn it. Zachary had completely forgotten that Wolfingham was joining him here this morning.
Forgotten everything but his need to make love to Georgianna.
Georgianna washed, and dressed herself in the black gown, then arranged her hair neatly at her crown in record time after Zachary left her bedchamber. She was determined that when, and if, the duke should return, her appearance would at least be respectable.
The only thing she now considered ‘respectable’ about herself.
She had no idea what had happened with Hawksmere just now. One minute they had been talking, and the next...
Oh, dear lord, the next.
Just thinking about Zachary possessing her with his mouth was enough to make Georgianna quiver with embarrassment.
Or possibly remembered pleasure?
Unimagined, indescribable, out-of-this-world pleasure.
She had not known such intimacies, such pleasure, as that existed.
The attentions of Zachary’s mouth, tongue and fingers had been centred between her thighs, but the pleasure had been felt everywhere. Radiating out from between her and consuming her every sensation, as it coursed, burned through her torso and throat, and into all of her limbs to the very ends of her fingers and her toes. And not just once, but twice! That pleasure building again, carrying her along on a tide of sensation. By the time Hinds had knocked on the door of her bedchamber...
Hinds!
What must he think? What conclusion could the butler have come to, in respect of the time his employer had spent in Georgianna’s bedchamber this morning?
Considering the reason Zachary had informed his household staff for her being here at all, no doubt the butler had drawn the correct conclusion regarding their activities this morning.
Georgianna was genuinely shocked at her own behaviour. Mortified. She had no idea how she was going to face Zachary again when he had looked at her and touched her so intimately.
However, this personal mortification paled into insignificance in the face of Napoleon’s move from Elba.
If it was true, and if Napoleon should indeed return to the shores of France, then there was sure to be another war. England and her allies could not just sit back and allow the Corsican to retake the French crown for his own. And if, when, that happened, more Englishmen would die.
And to think, Georgianna might have prevented it if she had been more courageous. If she had not wasted so much time seeking safe and undetected passage for herself from France.
Zachary might be one of the ones to die.
Sooner rather than later if, as she suspected, he was leaving for France later today.
If Napoleon should make it back to France in the next few days, as he was bound to do, then the next few weeks, as he marched towards Paris, would be dangerous indeed. Having lived there for the past few months, Georgianna knew, perhaps better than most, that the people of France were not all enamoured of having their king returned