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.