He’d not lit a lantern inside the coach, and it was black as pitch. She could make out his faint outline but couldn’t see his features, couldn’t discern his expression, or guess at what he might be thinking.
“Because of your mother? Because of what happened to her?”
“I don’t wish to talk about it.”
His voice was rough and raw, as though he was battling an unseen force, but shimmering beneath it was an undercurrent of something more powerful, something that had broken loose when they’d been alone in that room in the brothel. Something they hadn’t completely left behind, something they hadn’t tamed, something that still prowled.
“What is it that you wish?” she dared to whisper.
The silence between them grew thick and heavy, as words were weighed, actions considered, strategy determined. Finally, she heard a low long sigh of surrender, and then his deep voice filled the confines. “This.”
Suddenly he was sitting beside her, drawing her near, his mouth moving deliberately and with purpose over hers. And she knew,knew, when they arrived at his residence, they were going to journey up those stairs together to his bedchamber. They would sit on that settee where he had played cards with other women, but they would play a very different game. Eventually they would make their way to his bed, and that pillow that always looked untouched would soon bear the indentation of her head.
It was what she wanted.This.Such a small word for something so large, so all-encompassing. Something with the power to shape, mold, redefine a person, asensation, a belief. She was going to have her dalliance, not at a club, but in his residence, between his sheets, pressed against his body. And she knew that she would never again be the same.
Because even now it felt as though every aspect of her had come apart, and his hands moving so slowly and with purpose over her back, her hips, and her sides were creating a very different contour, putting everything where it should have been all along. Open, honest, revealed.
With his mouth devouring hers, no secrets existed between them. His growls, her moans were more honest than their words. They couldn’t be contained. They couldn’t omit bits that were too frightening to share. There was a truth to their murmuring, an authenticity that stripped away all deceit.
After loosening the buttons on her frock—not with the nervous fingers of a youth so one went flying but with the experienced fingers of a man, who, though eager, was not anxious—and parting the material, he dragged his mouth along her throat and lower, to her breasts, lifted by her corset for his enjoyment and hers. His mouth was moist and hot as it journeyed over the swells, slowly and provocatively.
After unbuttoning first his waistcoat and then his shirt, she slipped her hand inside, relishing the feel of his warm skin, daring to touch what she’d once caught only a scandalous peek at. When her fingers circled his nipple, one she’d blushed at glimpsing, he groaned low before dipping his tongue into the hollow between her breasts.
“This isn’t enough for me,” he ground out. “Stop me when it becomes too much for you.”
How could it ever become too much? How could she ever utter stop?
She wanted this, wanted him. Not as early on as he’d claimed he had wanted her, not that first night. Perhaps when she’d prepared him tea. Or maybe it had been sooner, but her inexperience had caused her not to recognize yearning when it engulfed her. However, she would certainly recognize it in the future, because it swamped her now.
His mouth came back to hers with surety and purpose. No man had ever kissed her as though his life depended upon doing so, as though she was sustenance to his hunger, predator to his prey, shelter from his storm. She was relatively certain a tempest of memories raged inside of him, ones he didn’t want to discuss because they made him vulnerable. How could a man be victorious if he wasn’t always strong?
He brought his sturdy hand to her hip, squeezed, and moved it lower still, until he was able to guide her legs up so they draped over his lap, while she remained sitting up but bent back as he continued to devour. Then that hand, that wicked hand, slid beneath the hem of her skirt and grazed her calf.
Was this thetoo muchhe feared she’d object to? Because it wasn’t nearly enough.
Gently, slowly, he kneaded his way up her leg, past her knee, along the inside of her thigh. Had she ever noticed how sensitive the skin there was, how it seemed to have the ability to beg, to demand more?
Her backside squirmed against his thigh while his fingers tenderly stroked up, down, and around.
He broke away from the kiss, his breath wafting over her cheek just before his tongue outlined theswirls of her ear. Delicious. How was it that so many parts of her felt as though they’d been awakened from a long sleep?
“Do you want more?” he asked.
She nodded.
“I want to hear you say it.”
“I want more.”
“Do you want it all?”
She wasn’t quite certain what theallentailed, but in his capable hands, she knew it would be glorious. “I want it all.”
The fingers at her thigh moved up and brushed lightly over her mound, and she unexpectedly found herself lifting her hips toward that touch. He chuckled low, darkly into her ear. “You do want it.”
Desperately. But she didn’t have the courage to admit that when she didn’t know how to precisely make him crave her in the same manner. Oh, she knew what she wanted to do to him, what she wanted to stroke, explore, and come to know. But she didn’t know if they had time for it all because they were nearing his residence surely. Patience was a virtue, although her thoughts were not virtuous. Thus, she would wait until they were alone in his bedchamber, and then she would ask all the questions of him that he’d asked of her. She would make him beg.
Like those of a clever thief, his fingers snuck through the slit in her drawers to delicately stroke the opening in her body, and in so doing, he stole her breath. She trembled and moaned, her head dropping back. One of her hands slid up to cup the side of his neck while the other clutched his strong, powerfulshoulder. His fingers danced over her quivering flesh, parted the folds, and circled the sensitive area.
