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She shook her head. “No, and it’s not because I’m addled upstairs, either. You are not to think I’m mad, Dain, because I’m not. I know it looks that way, but there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation. The intellect, as you of all men ought to know, is no match for the intensity of the animal drive. I’ve been in lust with you from the moment I met you.”
His knees grew wobbly. He crouched down in front of her and took a firm grip of the edge of the mattress. He cleared his throat. “Lust.” He managed to keep the one syllable low and steady. He decided not to try any more syllables of anything.
She was searching his eyes again. “You didn’t know, did you?”
Dissembling was utterly beyond his powers. He shook his head.
She brought her hands up to cup his face. “You must be blind. And deaf. Or terribly confused. Everyone in Paris knew. You poor man. I don’t want to begin to imagine what’s been going through your mind.”
He managed to laugh. “I thought it was me they knew about. That I was…besotted. I was. I told you so.”
“But, darling, you lust after every female you see,” she said ever so patiently. “Why should Paris work itself into a frenzy about that? It was because of my behavior, don’t you understand? They saw I was too infatuated to keep away, as a sensible, strong-moraled lady should. That’s what made the business interesting to them.”
Darling. The room was whirling merrily about him.
“I wanted to be sensible,” she went on. “I didn’t want to bother you. I knew it would lead to trouble. But I couldn’t help it. You are so…virile. You are so thoroughly a male. You’re big and strong and you can pick me up with one hand. I cannot describe what an extraordinary sensation that is.”
Virile he understood. He was that. He also understood there was no accounting for tastes. Until she’d come along, he’d always been attracted to largish women. Very well, then. Her tastes inclined to big, strong men. He was certainly that, too.
“I’d heard all about you,” she said. “I thought I was prepared. But no one had described you properly. I was expecting a gorilla.” She drew her index finger down his nose. “You were not supposed to have the face of a dé Medici prince. You were not supposed to have the physique of a Roman god. I wasn’t prepared for that. I had no defenses ready.” With a small sigh, she brought her hands to his shoulders. “I still haven’t. Physically, I cannot resist you at all.”
He tried to find a place in his dictionary under “Dain” for dé Medici princes and Roman gods, but the phrases fit nowhere, and merely contemplating them made him want to howl with laughter. Or weep. He couldn’t decide which. He decided he was becoming hysterical. He wasn’t surprised. She had a knack for doing that to him.
He stood up. “No need to worry, Jess. Lust is no problem. Lust I can deal with very well, thank you.”
“I know.” She eyed him up and down. “You deal with it to perfection.”
“In fact, I’m prepared to deal with it this very minute.” He began heaping pillows against the headboard.
“That is most…understanding of you,” she said, her glance darting from the pillows to him.
He patted the heap. “I want you to lie here.”
“Naked?”
He nodded.
Without the smallest hesitation, she stood up and undid the sash of her dressing gown. He watched the robe fall open. She gave a lazy shrug.
Femme fatale, he thought as, entranced, he watched the heavy black silk slither down past her slim shoulders, over the creamy skin and achingly feminine curves, and fall with a sensuous hiss at her feet.
He watched the graceful movement of her slight body as she climbed onto the bed and settled back against the pillows, unashamed, uninhibited, unafraid.
“I almost wish I could be naked all the time,” she said softly. “I love the way you look at me.”
“You mean the panting and salivating?” He untied his own sash.
“I mean that sleepy, sulky look you get.” She laid her hand upon her belly. “It makes my insides hot and muddled.”
He flung off his dressing gown.
She inhaled sharply.
His swelling shaft sprang up, just as though she’d called to it. Dain looked down and laughed. “You want virile. Virile you get.”
“And big and strong.” Her voice was husky. Her softened grey gaze traveled up and down his frame. “And beautiful. How the devil was I to resist you? How could you think I could?”
“I didn’t realize you were so shallow.” He climbed onto the bed and straddled her legs.
“I suppose it’s just as well,” she said. “Otherwise…” She slid her hand up his thigh. “Oh, Dain, if you had guessed what was going through my mind when I met you…”
Gently but firmly he removed her hand and set it upon the mattress. “Tell me.”
“In my mind, I took off all your clothes. I couldn’t help it. It was a dreadful few moments. I was terrified my reason would snap, and I’d actually do it. There, in the shop. In front of Champtois. In front of Bertie.”
“You took off my clothes,” he said. “In your mind.”
“Yes. Ripped them off, actually. As I did a short while ago.”
He bent over her. “Do you want to know what went through my mind, cara?”
“Something equally depraved, I hope.” She stroked his chest. Again he took her hand away.
“I wanted…to…lick you,” he said slowly. “From the top of your head…to the tips of your toes
.”
She shut her eyes. “Depraved, yes.”
“I wanted to lick you and kiss you and touch you…everywhere.” He kissed her forehead. “Everywhere it’s white. Everywhere it’s pink. Everywhere else.”
He trailed his tongue over one sleek eyebrow. “That’s what I’m going to do now. And you must lie there. And take it.”
“Yes.” One sibilant sound of acquiescence and a shiver—of pleasure, apparently, because her soft, ripe mouth curled upward.
He brushed his lips over that small, cat-in-the-cream-pot smile, and said no more, but gave himself up to realizing his fantasy.
The reality, he found, was sweeter, and the taste and scent of her more intoxicating by far, than the dream.
He kissed her nose and savored the satin of her cheek. He inhaled her and tasted her and discovered her all at once, all over again: the perfect oval of her face, the slant of her cheekbones, the skin so fine and flawless that he’d wanted to weep when first he beheld her.
Perfection, he’d thought then, and it had nearly broken his heart, because he couldn’t have her.
But he could, for now at least. He could touch his lips to that perfection…the heartbreaking face…the tantalizingly dainty ear…the smooth column of her neck.
He remembered how he’d stood in the shadows and hungered for the white skin exposed in the lamplight. He trailed his parted lips down over the snowy shoulder he’d gazed at from his hiding place, and down her right arm to her fingertips and back up again. He made the same lingeringly possessive path up and down her left arm. Her fingers curled and her breath came in sweet little sighs that murmured in his veins and made his heart thrum like a violincello.
He lavished kisses over her firm, round breasts, rising and falling with her quickened breathing. He trailed his tongue over the taut, blushing nipples and savored her tiny moans briefly, then made himself move on, because there was more, and he would take nothing for granted. He’d experience it all, because the world could end tomorrow, for all he knew, and Hell open up and swallow him.
He continued downward, washing kisses over her smooth belly and the luscious curve of her hips…down the outside of her slender, shapely leg, to the slim ankle and on to the tips of her toes, as he’d promised. Then slowly he worked his way up again to her satiny inner thigh.
