The Governess Was Wanton by Julia Kelly Page B

were plain cotton rather than silk, but as soon as his fingers reached the simple scalloped edging of her garters, she found she didn’t care any longer. Her head fell back as his touch played up the inside of her thighs, tempting her. She whimpered and tried to scoot closer to the edge of the bench.
    The earl chuckled. “Eager?”
    â€œYes,” she managed to say. The desire he stoked in her burned so hot she could barely utter one word, let alone an entire sentence.
    He rucked up her skirts so they bunched around her waist and drew down her drawers. Then he spread her legs wide. “So am I.”
    Mary’s head fell back as the earl’s tongue touched her there. Her hips would’ve bucked except that his arm lay firmly across her waist, holding her down so that he had full access to her. He ran his tongue along her, outlining her lips only to come back to the sensitive bud and flick his tongue across it. Then he sucked and didn’t stop.
    Her breath came in fast, shallow pants now. She could hardly think except to focus on the extreme pleasure of whatever it was the earl was doing to her. With every stroke of his tongue, every murmur of pleasure from the back of his throat, he pushed her higher, higher into the moon-drenched clouds.
    She almost couldn’t stand it and yet she wanted more. She wanted to yank him up and wrap her legs around his waist, inviting him into her with such wanton fervor that even she would never have imagined she had in her. Every fiber of her being screamed that there could be more—she could have more pleasure than this.
    As though reading her mind, Lord Asten lifted his arm from her waist and slowly, tantalizingly, slid one finger inside her. Her hips rose, her head shot up, and she clenched the edge of the bench. Looking down her body, a disarray of exposed skin and crumpled silk, she watched as he moved with her, his tongue flicking at her in the same rhythm as his finger slid in and out of her body. Then, when she almost couldn’t stand it any longer, he cast a devilish gaze up at her, and Mary shattered like a bulb of glass blown too thin.
    A strangled cry rose up from her throat and she shamelessly moved against the earl’s mouth, wordlessly begging him never to stop.
    But as her body came down from the impossible heights he’d pushed her to, she became aware of what this all must look like. There she was, a masked woman laid out on a bench in the middle of a stranger’s garden, her skirts around her waist and her bodice half down her chest.
    She unlocked her stiff fingers from around the edge of the bench. A lady would cover herself and run, fleeing from her ruination. But Mary couldn’t seem to muster the energy to care. She’d felt real pleasure for the first time in her life, and now that she had a taste for it, she didn’t know how she’d ever go back.
    It was Lord Asten who finally began to set her to rights again. He drew her drawers back up her legs and smoothed down the tapes and wires of her crinoline, laying her beautiful, borrowed dress down over it. He slipped her corset back up and pulled her sleeves into place. Then, slowly, he pushed up on his knees until he could kiss her again.
    It was a sweet kiss this time, but it smoldered deep inside her nonetheless.
    â€œThank you,” he murmured against her lips.
    â€œI didn’t do anything,” she said with a little laugh.
    â€œYou did more than enough.” His arms went around her waist and she scooted to the side so that her hip pressed up against his stomach and she could lay her head on his shoulder. He kissed her hair just above where her mask was still snug in place.
    He tucked a finger under her chin and tilted her face up. “I want to see you again,” he said, his low voice reverberating through his chest.
    But before she could answer, a distant bell began to toll. Midnight. She had to leave or risk being locked out of the house. Then