Free Morgan and Archer: A Novella by Grace Burrowes Page B

Archer sat on the bed in only his breeches, she knelt between his legs. “Not yet.”
    While he tried to muster some restraint, she undid his falls and rearranged his clothing until she could draw his cock into her hands. He gritted his teeth and endured her generosity, though it tested him sorely. She was good with her hands, knowing to linger on that spot under the tip, but not too long. She caressed his stones with just the right pressure, and she leaned close enough that Archer could feel her breath on his thighs.
    He envisioned her having to learn this skill to preserve herself from intimacies of a more forced nature, and the thought brought a lurching pause to his arousal. “You should not be giving me these attentions if they’re something the footmen required of you.”
    She paused, her mouth about two inches from his cock, Archer’s sanity about two inches from expiring. “Nobody required anything of me. It’s something I’m learning with you, Archer. I’ve a mind to learn a few more things, too.”
    She dipped her head and licked him, a long, wet swipe of her tongue up his shaft and then—God in heaven—a flourish around the tip.
    “Let me get out of my breeches.” He was half-strangled with equal parts anticipation and self-restraint, but he managed to peel himself out of the last of his clothing and drag her over him onto the bed. “I must kiss you.”
    Some desperate part of his brain tried to argue that what he must do was talk to her, explain to her that their clandestine trysting, and even their public waltzes, were going to have to stop for a time.
    Only for a time.
    She kissed him, kissed him as if in the next hour they were going away to separate wars. Without letting their mouths part, Archer got her nightgown off and anchored both hands on her hips.
    Morgan straddled him, which was a fine, fine inspiration, but when her hand glided down between their bodies, Archer realized her intent. He caught her fingers before she could bring his engorged arousal into her body.
    “Morgan, wait.”
    “I have been waiting. I have waited night after night. I don’t want to wait.” She sounded not determined so much as… upset.
    She’d used the vinegar and sponges, he was almost confident of that. He and she were going to have to separate for a time—he knew that too. With equal certainty, he knew he was naked in bed with the woman he intended to marry.
    The woman he loved. The knowledge landed in the dark expanse of his thoughts like a sunbeam, gentle, inexorable, and sweet.
    “Slowly, then. As slowly as we can.” He shifted his grip to stroke his fingers over her breasts. “I want to savor this, to wallow in the beauty of it. I want it to echo in my memory… forever.”
    She closed her eyes, taking from him the only hints he could gather as to the desperation driving her, but she did not take him in her hand again.
    “Morgan, shall I?” He flexed his hips, brushing his cock over her sex to complete the question. She nodded once and curled forward to brace herself over his chest on her hands.
    “Kiss me, Morgan.”
    Archer had always thought lust should be a merry thing, mostly pleasure and affection, generously shared and happily recalled. With Morgan, joining his body to hers became a reverent undertaking, the tenderness of it nearly eclipsing the arousal.
    He leaned up to capture her mouth in a soft kiss, even as he used his hand to stroke the head of his cock along the damp crease of her sex. “Kiss me, Morgan James, and let me kiss you and love you in return.”
    She touched her lips to his, her mouth open, and Archer began a gentle invasion of her every sense. Morgan smiled while he traced her lips with his tongue and her sex with his cock. By languorous degrees, he effected penetration above, then began to advance toward the same goal below.
    Morgan lifted her mouth from his and went still, as if listening with her very body. Archer stopped teasing them both, stopped flirting with