by Sofia Daniel
“Right.” I rolled my eyes.
“I want to tell you how sorry I am for my role in that horrible injustice.”
I leaned forward and nodded. “Go on, then.”
He frowned as though not understanding my words.
“You said you wanted to apologize. Now’s your chance.” I picked up my knife and fork and cut myself a healthy slice of pheasant.
Kendrick sucked in a deep breath, his shoulders rising to his ears. “Lilah Hancock, I apologize wholeheartedly and unreservedly for the pain and suffering I caused you in your first term. I placed my faith in the wrong person and ended up hurting an innocent girl. If there is anything I can offer in penance, name it.”
My tongue darted out to lick my lips. As far as apologies went, this one was more formal and direct than his brothers. It even came with an offer of servitude. I pressed my legs together at the thought of having Kendrick at my command.
“You want to make it up to me?” I asked.
He nodded, his eyes bright.
I leaned back and smirked. “That thing we did this morning.”
Kendrick’s lips parted to exhale an excited breath. “Yes?”
“I want you to return the favor.”
He inclined his head and offered me the tiniest of smiles. “I may be amenable to your suggestion.”
Chapter Sixteen
We skipped dessert and booked a room upstairs, filled with the scent of burning pine from a crackling fireplace. A mahogany, four-poster bed took up pride of place on the left wall, adorned with a purple comforter and royal blue cushions. At the base of the bed, a pair of elegant armchairs separated by a low table faced the fireplace on the right side of the room, and a balcony window took up half the back wall consisting of a balcony window that overlooked the lamp-lit gardens.
My breath caught in the back of my throat. “This is—”
“Exquisite?” Kendrick stared down at me, his eyes ablaze, making me think he wasn’t talking about the room.
“Yeah,” I said, my voice breathy. “But I was going to say romantic.”
He turned to the fireplace and frowned. Without telling me, I could guess what was on his mind. A guy like Kendrick, who tolerated years of Elizabeth and valued chastity wouldn’t want to have his first time in a hotel with a girl he barely knew. Kendrick seemed the type who wanted to court a woman for months or at least years before receiving a crumb of affection.
“Don’t worry.” I rocked forward on my tiptoes and pressed a kiss on his lips. “Your virginity is safe with me.”
As I drew back, he wrapped his arm around my waist and pulled me into his hard body. “You are the most peculiar girl I’ve ever met.”
“Is that a compliment?” I ran my hands over his chest, aching to pull off all those layers.
“That has yet to be decided.”
I swatted him on the chest. “You’re such a dick.”
He smirked. “Are you going to stand here insulting me all night or do you want me to begin my penance?”
“Alright, then.” I stepped back and leaned against the wall. “What are the ground rules?”
He frowned. “What on earth are you talking about?”
“You’re the one with a broom up your ass. Tell me what you will and won’t do.”
Kendrick sniffed and walked to the other side of the room, where there a tall, mahogany cabinet concealed the most elaborate minibars in the history of luxury hotels. One door consisted of shelves containing cups and tumblers and champagne flutes while the other held an array of snacks, such as the type of Belgian cookies they served on the train.
A waist-high counter took up the middle of the bar, holding a coffee machine, kettle, teabags and coffee sachets. Kendrick reached for a pair of tumblers, opened the refrigerator at the bottom and extracted a can of lemonade, poured it into both glasses and returned with a frown.
I bit down on my lip. Did I go too far? This was my first time with a virgin. Max disguised as Kendrick didn’t count because that version of Kendrick was still eager for sex instead of the prickly version offering me a drink.
“Thanks?” I took the glass and sipped at the sparkling liquid.
“Very well,” he said as he brought his glass to his lips. “I will permit manual stimulation.”
“A hand job?”
He narrowed his eyes. “Could you refrain from being crude?”
“Right.” I pressed my lips together to suppress a smile. “Can I stick my finger up your ass, then?”
Kendrick choked on his drink, his face purple. “Absolutely not!”
I raised a hand and giggled. “It was a joke.”
He snatched the glass from my hand, stormed across the room, and slammed it on the table. When he returned, his eyes were so dark with rage and fire and lust that I thought he might rupture something.
Kendrick bared his teeth. “If you mean to mock—”
I wrapped my arms around his shoulders and silenced him with a kiss. For the next few heartbeats, he became as rigid as the stick up his ass. Then his lips moved against mine, and he backed me toward the door.
Part of me wondered if this was the prelude to being kicked out and made to sleep in the hallway for my insolence, but instead, he pinned me against the wall and plundered my mouth.
Kendrick’s kisses were forceful, his tongue exploring, probing, claiming. I melted against his hard body and moaned. All thoughts of Kendrick being a skittish virgin disappeared into the ether. He kissed like he knew exactly what he wanted and how to get it. He kissed like a man in charge.
He drew back and raised his brows. “Any further comments you’d like to get out of your system before my penance starts?”
I stared up at him through hazy eyes. “Just one,” I murmured through panting breaths. “Please do that again.”
Kendrick hooked his forearms under my legs and hoisted me up to his waist. I wrapped my legs around his hips, so my slit was flush with the bulge in his pants. Anticipation skittered up my spine. In all the years I’d been with Sammy, he’d never fucked me against the wall. Kendrick ground his clothed erection against my pulsing clit, sending sparks of pleasure down my spine and into my core.
His strokes were slow, sensual, spine-tingling, making my core clamp with the need to be filled. I couldn’t remember the last time I rubbed against a bloke like this, but it was both the most frustrating and erotic experience I’d had in years. As I was clinging onto him like a koala in heat, all I could do was take the pleasure and hope he’d escalate.
For what felt like forever, we humped against the wall kissing, groaning, moaning, panting until my head spun and every muscle in my body trembled. Molten heat flooded my folds, and ecstasy built up behind my clit like lava about to erupt. But there was too much fabric between us, and not enough friction. I needed fingers or a dick or a tongue.
“Please,” I whispered.
“What do you want?” he snarled in my ear.
“I need more.” My fingers curled around the collar of his herringbone jacket. “Fingers, tongue… anything.”
Kendrick drew back, making me moan from the loss of contact. He wrapped an arm around my waist and carried me across the room, depositing me on the four-poster bed.
My gaze dropped to the huge erection tenting his pants, making my mouth flood with saliva. If I could get to see that glorious organ once more before I came, this trip to London might become worthwhile.
I stretched out both arms, beckoning him close. Kendrick straddled me on the bed and continued those heart-stopping kisses. They travelled down my jaw and neck and collarbone, and my nipples tightened with the need to be touched.
When he sucked on a spot beneath my collarbone, my eyes rolled to the back of my head and I shuddered. For someone so virginal and uptight, he was surprisingly good at pleasuring a girl without laying a finger on an erogenous zone.
As he ground against my clit and held me in place by the waist, questions floated into my mind. How did he get so good at thi
s? Was this the extent to what Elizabeth allowed him to do? I shoved those thoughts aside and focused on the glorious sensations. Today was too good an opportunity to waste thinking about that lying, little twat.
I pulled at his jacket. “Take it off.”
“Make me,” he snarled.
Challenge accepted. Slipping my hands down his broad back, I bucked against him, increasing the friction until I grabbed both cheeks of his muscular ass. This was better, but still not enough. Kendrick threw his head back and moaned. I clamped my lips around his neck and sucked, making his entire body stiffen.
“Do you know how much better this feels without clothes?” I murmured.
“Lilah,” he growled.
“I want you to kiss me everywhere. You can stop me if we go too far.”
He pulled back his upper body and glowered down at me with narrowed eyes. “You are temptation incarnate.”
I stared up at him, my lips swollen and hungry. “I hope that’s a good thing.”
“For a man who wants to save himself until marriage, it is not.”
His words were a splash of cold water. Even if I had said earlier that I wouldn’t take his virginity, all my actions so far probably indicated that I might. I scooted out from under him and rested my back against the pillows propped up against the mahogany headboard.
Leaning forward, I cupped his cheek and turned his gaze toward mine. Kendrick’s pupils had expanded so much that his irises consisted of only the barest ring of gray. A deep flush covered his cheeks and stained his lips a tantalizing red. At this moment, he looked different from Maxwell, seething with a raw passion I yearned to unleash. It took every ounce of self-restraint not to pounce.
“If you only want to go this far, that’s fine with me,” I said in my gentlest voice. “I would never entice you to have sex before you were ready.”
“You have my brother for that.” He lowered his lashes.
“Does that bother you?” I asked.
He shook his head. “It’s actually a relief.”
I trailed my hand down the muscled column of his neck, over his collarbone and rested it on his chest. “Do you want us to stop?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Alright, then.” I exhaled a breath. “The best way to stay under control in a situation like this is to climax. I can help you with that.”
“How?” he rasped, his legs still straddling mine.
Licking my lips, I dropped my gaze to the bulge in his crotch. “I could suck you off.”
Kendrick’s lips parted, and his breath came in heavy pants. “You would do this?”
“Only if you returned the favor.”
As if jolted by electricity, Kendrick shouldered off his jacket and tossed it off the side of the bed. It fell onto the floor with a soft thud. I leaned forward, slipped off my jacket and placed it on the bedside rug.
“Allow me.” Kendrick slipped his fingers beneath my sweater and pulled it over my shoulders, making sure not to jostle the bandages around my arms. He placed the garment on a side table and stared at my breasts.
I glanced down, sending Gideon a silent word of thanks for the Victoria’s secret balconette bra with Chantilly lace cups.
“You are perfection.” He leaned down and kissed the tops of my breasts, sending tiny jolts of pleasure into my nipples. His lips grazed the bra’s lace edges, and his fingers fumbled with the straps.
I reached beneath his sweater and pulled the tails of his shirt from out of his pants. “Take it off.”
“Eager?” He pulled off his sweater and unbuttoned his shirt.
I placed my hands on my hips and smirked. “So what if I am?”
His lips spread into a grin that made him look like Maxwell. “Then I had better give the lady what she wants.”
We undressed each other in a rush of groaning bedsprings, creaking bed frames and hands fumbling over clasps and buckles and buttons until we were both pawing at each other’s naked bodies.
Kendrick kissed me with a hunger that made my blood roar. All the moisture left my throat and rushed between my folds. My body ached, throbbed, yearned for that glorious organ to plunder my insides, but I wouldn’t be the girl who pushed a virgin beyond their limits.
“Show me what you like,” he whispered into my ear.
I reached down and wrapped my fingers around his long, thick dick.
He grabbed my wrist. “Ladies first.”
My heart skittered. The only time a guy ever offered me pleasure and wanted nothing in return was that time after cooking club, when Orlando went down on me, wanting to make a point.
“Alright then.” I settled myself on the nest of pillows. “Do you want to learn how to make a girl climax?”
His gaze lingered on the patch of curls between my legs. “Very much.”
I parted my thighs, making his mouth go slack. “Lucky for you, I’m feeling very generous. Now you’ll get a lesson and penance.”
Chapter Seventeen
Kendrick rested his hands on my parted knees, his thumbs caressing my inner thighs. Heavy breaths gusted in and out of his flared nostrils, and he met my eyes with a raised brow and pursed lips. “Are you sure about this?”
“Sure about wanting to be pleasured?” I wiggled my hips and grinned.
His tongue darted out to lick his lips, and he swept his gaze down from my face, over my body and to the juncture of my thighs. Swallowing hard enough to bob his Adam’s apple up and down, he exhaled a ragged breath.
I rose from the nest of pillows and furrowed my brows. Why the delay? His dick was as hard as it could get, glistening with unshed precum, and quivering on the verge of erupting. After what he said earlier about wanting to learn, I thought he’d be all over me by now.
The fireplace cracked and popped, and realization swirled around my thick head in the warm breeze. I’d bet Elizabeth never allowed him to go this far. No, she reserved activities like this for Myra Highmore.
“Why don’t you start by kissing the inside of my thigh,” I said.
“Alright,” he said with a soft nod.
Kendrick wrapped a large hand around my right thigh, lowered his head to my knee and pressed a soft kiss on my flesh.
I let my eyes flutter shut as he ran the fingertips of one hand up and down my right thigh. This was going to be nice and slow, not the frenzied slobbering my friends described from the times they’d been with virgins.
With each of Kendrick’s kisses up my inner thigh, he parted my legs further to allow more space for his head and then his broad shoulders. My pulse pounded with anticipation, and my chest rose and fell with rapid breaths. Every press of his lips, every caress of those fingers drove me into a frenzy until I clamped my teeth together to stop myself from screaming at him to hurry.
I’d never fully understood what romance novels meant by sex being sweet agony until this moment. Every nerve ending in my body seemed to converge into my clit and ache for his tongue.
Kendrick’s mouth reached the outer lips of my pussy, and his hot breath fanned across my folds.
With a fevered moan, I arched my back.
The pad of his thumbs splayed me open, laying me bare. I shuddered with anticipation.
And then…
Nothing.
I cracked open an eye.
Kendrick sat on his heels, peering between my legs with the kind of frown a person made in Maths class when asked to solve a convoluted equation with a calculator that’s run out of batteries.
Inhaling a deep breath, I raised myself up to my elbows. “What are you doing?”
“Looking.” His haughty tone implied that the answer to my question was obvious.
“You’re not supposed to stare at it.” I pushed my thighs together, but the huge hands on my inner thighs kept me spread open.
“Shy?” he asked with a smirk.
An exasperated huff escaped my throat. “This isn’t a biology lesson. Get to work.”
He finally met my eyes. “You said you would teach
me.”
“Alright then,” I pointed a finger at the swollen, red bundle of nerves. “That is a clitoris.”
“I know that,” he drawled.
“You’re going to run your tongue over it until I climax.”
He nodded. “How?”
“What?” I snarled.
“Up and down, side to side, or round and round in circles?”
“How about you surprise me,” I replied through clenched teeth. “If I sound like I’m enjoying it, keep going until I cum.”
“How will I know if—”
“Kendrick!” I hissed.
“Very well,” he said with a huff. “Don’t say I didn’t ask for more guidance.”
I flopped down on the pillows, all traces of relaxed anticipation replaced by prickling annoyance. How could someone endowed with Maxwell’s physical beauty end up so uptight? How could he have not picked up something from his bloody twin and best friend? Or from watching porn?
A ghost of a concussion pulsed behind my left ear, and I squeezed my eyes shut. He probably just had a funny way of expressing his nervousness.
The tip of his tongue grazed my clit, and I exhaled a relieved breath. Finally!
Kendrick pulled back, his warm breath making my core muscles pulse, and then he made a slow trail back from the tip of my clit to its base. A lightning bolt of pleasure skittered through my insides, making my breath catch.
“How was that?” he whispered.
“Perfect. Keep going.”
He paused for several heartbeats, perhaps studying my reaction. I didn’t dare open my eyes in case that triggered another round of annoying comments or questioning.
After what felt like a full minute, the tip of Kendrick’s tongue swirled around my clit. This time, a tiny cyclone of ecstasy spiraled through my core, making me gasp. Then he paused again. I clenched my teeth and forced myself not to meet his eyes.
I counted five heartbeats before Kendrick swept his tongue from side to side, which only gave me a slight tingle. Before I could see if it would build up to a frenzy, he stopped again.
He drew back, withdrawing his warmth. “Based on physical reaction, the circular movement seemed to have the greatest effect, yet you were more vocal when I swept my tongue up and down. What is your conclusion?”