Sense and Sensibility (The Wild and Wanton Edition) Read Online Free Page B

Elinor brushed one finger across her fine hairs, shivering from the tickle her touch caused. Then, as Fanny loudly and unabashedly directed her husband from a few rooms away, Elinor grew bolder.
    She pressed deeper and found that she was wet, wet with a moisture that allowed her fingers to glide up and down easily. As Fanny called out, “Higher!” Elinor focused her touch on the highest point between her legs, at the tiny spot where all her desire was collecting. She rubbed herself there experimentally and found that the more she touched herself, the more she wished it was Edward there in bed with her, that it was
his
hands moving across her wetness.
    “Faster, John!” Fanny cried, and Elinor responded in kind, moving her fingertips more rapidly across herself. She closed her eyes and arched her back, her fingers working madly. Edward’s face appeared in her mind, his eyes burning with the very need she felt within herself.
    “Yes, John! Right there, do not stop!”
    This time Elinor didn’t need Fanny’s help. She already knew she was not going to stop. “Edward,” she whispered, her breath short and raspy, her voice revealing the unbearable need within her.
    Yes, Elinor
, Edward said in her vision.
I’m here
.
    His voice was so real, the heat from his lips and the sweat on his brow so lifelike, that Elinor almost believed he was really there with her, touching her, making her feel this pleasure. That she wasn’t doing it herself.
    Her fingers slid back and forth, her legs spread wide, and suddenly she couldn’t hold back any longer — her entire body exploded in a rainstorm of heat and passion and bliss. “Oh, Edward!” she cried out as her body rocked with delectable tremors.
    When the sensation subsided, Elinor lay spent, panting, staring into the darkness in wonder. Was
this
what Fanny and John experienced every single day? Was
this
what it was like to bed your husband?
    If this was what it was like every time, Elinor knew that she could not wait to be married. She needed Edward like she needed air. And she vowed to have him.
    • • •
    Edward yearned for Elinor, yearned to cover her body with his own and feel her quiver with ecstasy around him. He had never experienced such a reaction to a woman before, and he scarcely knew what to do with himself. She was a lady — a beautiful, lovely lady — and she did not deserve to be thought of in such a way by anyone except her husband. She should not be kissed, touched, even looked at with impure thoughts, until she was married to a man who loved and respected her and who could give her the world. Edward wished he could be that man, but his mother and sister had made it perfectly clear that he was not, and could never be, the type of man he knew Elinor deserved.
    But still his desire for her burned on, though he did everything he could to keep it at bay. His sister’s nightly exploits with Mr. Dashwood did nothing to keep his thoughts clean, however, and he found himself relieving the exquisite pain that his attraction to Elinor caused the only way he knew how — in private moments alone in his bedchamber.
    If Elinor knew he thought of her while doing such acts — if she even knew he did such acts at all — he was certain that she would never look at him again. So he did his best to keep a calm, unaffected demeanour whilst in her presence. He read aloud without inflection and he pretended to be ambivalent during discussions about music — anything to keep from exposing the true passion that simmered just beneath his skin whenever Elinor was near.
    Edward had been staying several weeks in the house before he engaged much of Mrs. Dashwood’s attention; for she was, at that time, in such affliction as rendered her careless of surrounding objects. She saw only that he was quiet and unobtrusive, and she liked him for it. He did not disturb the wretchedness of her mind by ill-timed conversation. She was first called to observe and approve him farther, by a