Pleasure, unlike anything Mariah had ever known, or imagined, now exploded between her thighs, her head thrashing from side to side on the pillows as that release coursed hotly, claiming the rest of her body in wave after wave of seemingly endless pleasure.

  She was still lost to the wonder, the euphoria of that pleasure, as Darian gazed down at her darkly before sliding down the length of her body until he knelt between her parted thighs. Mariah offered no resistance as he slowly pushed her gown up to her waist before moving aside to allow for the removal of her drawers and bared her to his heated gaze as he parted her legs so that he might once again kneel between them.

  ‘So pretty. Like a rose in bloom,’ he murmured appreciatively as his fingers moved to part her swollen folds, allowing him to gaze his fill of her before he lay down between her thighs, his tongue a hot and pleasurable rasp against her highly sensitised and aroused flesh.

  ‘Darian?’ Mariah felt she should protest at such intimacy, but in truth she felt so satiated still, so lost in wonder as she felt the stirring of her arousal for a second time in as many minutes, that she could barely speak, let alone offer words of protest.

  ‘Let me.’ The coolness of his breath was sweet torture against her hot and aching flesh. ‘You are so beautiful here, Mariah,’ he groaned as he touched her gently. ‘So beautiful!’

  His lips and tongue caressed her at the same time as his hands moved up to cup her breasts. Mariah gazed down in wonder as those long fingers and thumbs tweaked and pinched her swollen nipples, at the same time as Darian’s head was buried between her thighs, the sight of such intimacy enough to cause her to gasp anew.

  ‘Again, Mariah,’ he encouraged roughly. ‘I want you to come for me again.’

  Mariah felt captured, swept along in a relentless tide as a second wave of pleasure built higher deep inside her and then higher still. Higher and higher—

  ‘Darian!’ Her back arched to push her breasts into Darian’s hands, encouraging, welcoming the pleasure-pain as he now squeezed and pinched her nipples to the same rhythm as her thighs moved into the stroking of his lips and tongue.

  She gave a gasp, eyes wide with shock as pleasure even more intense than the first suddenly ripped through her.

  This was what all the poets wrote about so ardently. What singers crooned about so achingly. What lovers so hungered for they were willing to throw away all caution and reputation in order to achieve it.

  Mariah had never known, never guessed, that lovemaking, this wonderful feeling of completion, would be so all-consuming. So much so that nothing else mattered, the outside world, and everyone in it, ceasing to exist. Only Darian and Mariah remained at that moment.

  ‘Oh, goodness.’ She groaned weakly as she remembered that the two of them were not all that existed in the world, that they had a listening audience.

  Darian raised his head to look at her, his face flushed, lips moist and slightly swollen from ministering to Mariah’s pleasure. ‘He or she left some time ago,’ he assured gruffly, pulling her gown slightly down over her legs before he moved up the bed to lie down beside her.

  Mariah looked at him anxiously. ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I heard the click of the door shutting as they left. I did not spend all my afternoon in my bedchamber, but explored those peepholes and passages’ he explained as her eyes widened. ‘I would never allow anyone to see or hear your pleasure but me, Mariah,’ he assured softly as he lifted a hand to smooth back the hair at her temple.

  Mariah felt grateful for Darian’s reassurances, even as she trembled at the full realisation of what had just happened between the two of them. What she had all but begged to happen, as she arched and thrust against the caress of Darian’s mouth and hands.

  She should feel mortification just thinking of those intimacies. Should feel embarrassment, if not horror, at her own wanton response and encouragement of those intimacies. Her complete lack of inhibition.

  Mariah could feel none of those things.

  Instead, for the first time in her life, Mariah felt totally fulfilled as a desirable woman. A desired and now totally satiated woman.

  It was exhilarating.

  Liberating, in a way Mariah had never imagined.

  So much so that there was no room inside her for embarrassment or self-consciousness.

  Darian Hunter, the austere and exacting Duke of Wolfingham, had just made thorough love to her. Had touched and caressed her more intimately than any other man had ever done. Than any other man had ever wanted to do. And he had not found her wanting.

  Wolfingham had not found her wanting.

  For so many years Mariah had wondered if it was because she was so undesirable that Martin had never wanted a normal marriage with her. Not that she had ever wanted a normal marriage with the man she had considered as being her rapist, but Martin’s complete lack of interest in her physically, and for so many years, had certainly caused her to question her own desirability.

  Oh, she had played her part well these past seven years, had flirted and teased whichever gentlemen had needed to be flirted with and teased, in order for her to extract the information from them that she needed. But she had never felt like this with any of those other men, never wanted as she had wanted with Darian. Never felt even tempted with those other men, had known that she would just be another conquest to them.

  In contrast, Darian had made love to her like a thirsty man in a desert, praising her all the while, telling her time and time again how beautiful she was to him. How much he desired her. How much he wanted and appreciated her body.

  Gifting Mariah with that freedom, that liberation in her own sexuality that she had long believed dead inside her.

  And in doing so Darian had given her pleasure unlike anything Mariah had ever known before.

  A pleasure she now fully intended to gift back to him.

  A seductive smile curved her lips as she recalled that look of bliss on the male statue’s face as Aphrodite took his full and burgeoning length into her mouth.

  Chapter Twelve

  Darian did not believe he had ever seen anything as beautiful as Mariah looked at this moment; her loosened hair was a golden halo about her flushed face, her eyes soft and languid, her cheeks creamy smooth, her lips slightly swollen from their earlier kisses, her breasts still bared to the heat of his gaze. Perfectly rounded and pert breasts, tipped with ruby berries still puckered and reddened from his ministrations.

  And beneath all that visual beauty was the smell of her pleasure and that tantalising and erotic perfume that Darian associated only with her.

  The hardness of his shaft shifted, surged, as he continued to breathe in that perfume and gaze down at those perfect and desirable globes, as a painful reminder that his own arousal still needed to be dealt with. And sooner rather than later.

  ‘You are very sure our eavesdropper has left?’ Mariah murmured as she obviously felt that impatient movement of his arousal against her thigh. She sat up beside him to gaze down at that telling bulge in his pantaloons, her breasts still fully exposed to Darian’s heated gaze, resulting in another fierce pulsing of his aching arousal.

  Darian had been fully aware of Mariah’s initial resistance to give in to the pleasure he offered, when she believed they had a listening audience. ‘Very sure,’ he confirmed gruffly.

  ‘Then I believe it is now my turn to pleasure you.’ Her fingers moved to unfasten the buttons of his pantaloons, the bared fullness of her breasts jiggling tantalisingly at the movement. ‘I would not wish for anyone but me to see or hear your own pleasure, either...’ she added softly.

  ‘Mariah?’ Darian placed one of his hands over both of hers as he looked up at her searchingly, wondering if she really meant what he thought she did.

  He had bedded his first woman at the age of sixteen and there had been too many more women since then for him to remember all their faces, let alone their names. Several ladies of the demi-monde had also chosen to take him into their mouth and give him pleasure that way. Could Mariah really be suggesting she might do the same?

  Just the idea of having Mariah placing those delectable and pouting lips about his shaft, of having her suck him into her mouth and all the way to the back of her throat, excited Darian to such a pitch he could barely contain it.

  Mariah could see that she had momentarily surprised Darian with her intentions. Because, despite the licentiousness she had witnessed during this, and other weekend parties, most of the ladies of the ton were believed to be too delicate, too prim and proper, to be exposed to such acts as she had witnessed earlier today between those statues in Aphrodite’s Temple?

  Mariah’s newly found pleasure and sexual liberation, her curiosity, was now such that she must know all. Whether or not she would be any good at this was another matter, but she fully intended to make up with enthusiasm what she lacked in experience.

  Mariah looked down searchingly into Darian’s face, noting the glitter to those dark green eyes as he looked back at her, the flush to his cheeks.

  And knowing that her own eyes were probably just as fevered, her cheeks as flushed. In anticipation of freeing, of seeing, that enormous bulge inside Darian’s pantaloons...

  She had never seen that part of a man in the flesh, so to speak.

  She had not seen Darian naked as yet, but even so a glance down at that telling bulge in his pantaloons told her he was so much bigger than Martin had been.

  ‘Do not think of it, Mariah,’ Darian rasped abruptly, his hand gentle on her cheek as he turned her averted face back towards him. ‘The past has no place here between the two of us, Mariah,’ he assured softly.

  Mariah continued to look at him blankly for several long seconds, held captive by those memories, those awful, painful, disturbing memories.

  ‘You shall be in charge here and now between the two of us, Mariah,’ Darian assured her huskily. ‘Or not. It is your choice to make. I assure you no one shall make you do anything you do not wish to do,’ he promised gruffly as his hands dropped down to his sides. ‘I am yours to do with exactly as you wish, Mariah. Or not,’ he repeated gruffly.

  ‘But—you have not found your own pleasure yet.’ She frowned. ‘Once aroused, I believed men to need that release more than a woman?’

  Darian had to once again fight down his murderous feelings towards Martin Beecham. Because Mariah required his gentleness now, rather than a show of the anger he felt towards her dead husband. For having inflicted, over so many years of his indifference, such an uncertainty of her own sexuality, her desirability. A cruelty indeed to such a beautiful and courageous lady as he now knew Mariah to be.

  Darian sat up slightly to run the soft pad of his thumb over the fullness of her bottom lip to take any sting from his next words. ‘You do not have to do anything else, Mariah. I can return to my bedchamber and deal with my arousal myself,’ he assured gently.

  Her eyes widened. ‘You are talking of— You would—’

  ‘Yes.’ He smiled at her reassuringly.

  ‘You have done that before?’

  ‘Many times. All young boys do it,’ he dismissed without embarrassment as her eyes widened. ‘Indeed, I believe it becomes their favourite pastime during adolescence.’

  ‘But it has been many years since you were that age.’

  Darian shrugged. ‘A man’s member tends to wake up before him each morning. And without a wife to ease that arousal, it often becomes necessary for a man to take himself in hand.’

  ‘I see,’ she said slowly. ‘And which would you prefer now, to feel your own hand or mine?’

  Darian drew his breath in sharply at the candour of her question. ‘Neither. I would prefer to have your mouth on me, Mariah,’ he explained as she looked at him questioningly.

  Delicate colour bloomed in her cheeks. ‘As would I.’

  Darian groaned low in his throat as he watched Mariah moisten her lips, as if in anticipation of the act. ‘May I watch? It would enhance my own pleasure to do so, Mariah,’ he explained as she gave him another of those curious glances.

  Curious and slightly shy glances, which to Darian’s mind did not sit well with the reputation of her being the scandalous and adulterous Countess of Carlisle.

  The gossip of Mariah’s adultery Darian could now understand, when her husband had been such an out-and-out and indifferent bastard to the needs of his own wife. That curiosity and shyness needed explaining—

  All thoughts fled Darian’s mind as Mariah moved up on her knees beside him so that she might place several pillows behind his head, her bared breasts jutting forward pertly as she moved, allowing her nipples to dangle, so swollen and tempting, just inches away from his rapidly moistening mouth.

  ‘Give me just a taste of you first, Mariah!’ he groaned achingly.

  Mariah tilted her head as she looked down at Darian, easily noting that his fevered gaze was now transfixed on her bared breasts. She leant forward slightly in order to allow one of her nipples to touch his moist and parted lips, gasping slightly as he instantly suckled that fullness into his mouth, eyes closing, lashes resting darkly against his flushed cheeks, as his hand cupped beneath that breast as he drew hungrily on the nipple.

  And allowing Mariah to learn another sexual revelation...

  That a man could be just as vulnerable during lovemaking as a woman.

  Perhaps more so, she realised, as she turned her head so that she might guide one of her hands to untie the ribbon on Darian’s drawers, before turning back the folds of those drawers and finally exposing that impressive bulge.

  Darian’s shaft was incredibly long and thick as it jutted up from its nest of dark curls.

  Mariah licked her lips. What would he taste like? Salty or sweet? And would—

  ‘Darian!’ She gave a sudden gasp as she felt a now familiar burn of pleasure growing, swelling, between her own thighs, Darian’s mouth almost painful on her nipple as he suckled deeply, hungrily, teeth biting as his other hand alternately stroked and then squeezed its twin. ‘Darian, I believe I am going to—’

  ‘Come for me, Mariah!’ he urged fiercely, both hands cupping her breasts now, squeezing and pinching her nipples as he gazed up into her flushed face.

  ‘I—’ She cried out her pleasure as another climax suddenly ripped through her body, the longest and strongest yet, as her empty sheath contracted and pulsed hungrily, again and again, the swollen nubbin above throbbing. ‘I had no idea I could— That it could happen so—so spontaneously.’ She rested her head weakly on Darian’s shoulder.

  It had never happened for Darian with any other woman before now. But as he now knew only too well, Mariah was indeed a woman unlike any other. And the fact that he had been able to give her such pleasure, just by touching her breasts, gave him more satisfaction than he could describe.

  Not that he had time to dwell too long on those feelings of wonderment as Mariah now moved sinuously down the length of his body, her bared breasts briefly resting either side of his fiercely jutting erection before she moved to lie between his parted thighs and take him in hand.

  ‘You are so wondrously big,’ she murmured admiringly as she stroked the length of him. ‘Your skin so velvety soft,’ she added huskily before wrapping the fingers of both hands about the thickness of his engorged and throbbing length. ‘And so wet.’ The soft pad of her thumbs stroked over the tip of his shaft.

  Darian felt his groin tighten as her fingers continued to caress him sensually. ‘Mariah!’ he groaned harshly, tensing, as he watched her little pink tongue flick out to taste the tip.

  ‘Would you like me to stop?’ Her glance up at him, from beneath her long lashes, was wickedly teasing.

  ‘No!’ Darian protested, groaning as he saw her smile widen, his head falling back on the pillows as he watched her continue to lick him, her tongue a sensuous rasp across his highly sensitised skin, her long golden hair cascading forward to drape sensuously across his thighs.

  ‘You taste delicious,’ she murmured appreciatively, her breath hot against his dampness.

  ‘As do you,’ he assured gruffly.

  ‘Really? Let me see!’ She moved quickly up the bed to lick her own juices from his parted lips. ‘Mmm.’ She nodded, her smile sensuous as she moved back down the bed to kneel between his thighs, before once again taking him in hand and holding him up as she parted her lips and took him into her mouth, her lips tight just beneath the tip and stretched tautly about his thickness.

  Darian groaned, hips bucking, the second he was engulfed by the heat of Mariah’s mouth, totally unable to stop himself from thrusting up rhythmically into that wet heat. His hands clenched into the bedclothes at his sides as he fought to hold off, to prolong the moment of his release.

  An almost impossible task as he watched Mariah’s head bob up and then down. Up and then down. Each time taking him deeper and then deeper still, her tongue swirling, dipping, as she rose up, before plunging him deeper on the downward stroke. Little by tortuous little, until he finally hit the back of her throat and she began to suck in earnest.

  Finally, when Darian thought he might go insane from the pleasure, she released him on the next upward stroke, eyes dark as she looked up at him at the same time as she moved one of her hands lower, caressing him tenderly. ‘Come for me now, Darian,’ she invited as her gaze held his at the same time as she parted her lips and slowly took him to the back of her throat.

  Darian felt the tingling at the base of his spine, the painful tightening through his groin, and knew his climax was imminent. ‘You must release me now, Mariah—’

  Her own second and throaty ‘Now!’ vibrated down the length of him, sending Darian spiralling over the edge, totally unable to stop from coming as he became lost in the fiercest, most prolonged orgasm he had ever experienced in his life.

  Mariah continued to suck on him greedily, cheeks hollowed, and she refused to release him until she had swallowed down all of Darian’s salty-sweet release. Even then she could not resist licking the last few drops from the tip before sitting back on her heels to look up at him.

  His dark hair was dishevelled, the dark curls lying damply tousled on his brow. Eyes glittered the colour of emeralds between sleepy half-closed lids, his cheeks were flushed, his lips parted. His body was completely relaxed and exposed to her as his erection lay half-hard still against the tautness of his stomach.