He brightened. “This is my favorite lesson.”
“And if I steal it from you”—she kissed the tip of his nose, then revealed that the guinea was out of his palm and into her own—“I may remove an item ofyourclothing.”
“This is a very unfair game,” he scolded her. “I accept the terms.”
She unbuttoned his tailcoat and tossed it aside. His sleeves billowed out into a delicious state of undress. “Your turn.”
He placed the coin in the center of his palm and pressed it in deep. When he turned his hand upside down, the guinea remained hidden for the space of a breath, then tumbled to the floor.
“I’ll allow it,” she said magnanimously. “Just this once.”
“Shift,” he said without hesitation.
She smacked his chest. “I can’t take off my shift without first removing my gown and my stays.”
“Your rules,” he replied innocently. “I’m just playing by them.”
She had invented this game, and she would show him just how well she played it. Rather than remove her own clothing, she arched her brow. His cravat fell to the carpet.
His mouth dropped. “When did you remove— How could—”
“Pick again.” She ran a finger down the front of his waistcoat and slipped the guinea inside the pocket. When she splayed her fingers across the muscled planes of his chest, she could feel his heart pounding beneath her palm.
“Gown,” he said, his voice a velvet purr. “Definitely gown.”
She turned around and let him untie the laces until the thin sarcenet slid from her shoulders and down to her ankles. Gooseflesh tickled lightly up her arms. He pressed light kisses to her nape, from the top of her spine down her bare skin, until he was stopped by the collar of her shift. Her breasts tightened, and her head lolled to one side in pleasure. Only when he lifted his lips did she step out of the pool of periwinkle twill.
“My turn.” She beckoned him closer to the canopy bed.
“It’s not your turn,” he protested. “I have the guinea. You put it in my pocket.”
“Did I?” She held up the gold coin. “Boots, please.”
He yanked off his Hessian boots at speed, then snatched the guinea from her hands. “My turn.”
As before, he placed the coin in the center of his palm with almost comical concentration, then gently, ever so carefully, turned his hand upside down.
The guinea clattered to the floor.
“Boots,” he commanded.
Before she could chide him for failing to properly conceal the coin—or bend over to remove her boots herself—Lawrence was on his knees between her legs, untying the laces himself.
Ostensiblyuntying the laces.
While his hands were making slow work of untying her half boots, his mouth pressed lazy, suggestive kisses through the thin linen of her shift to her bare hips and thighs beneath. Her pulse leapt as if to meet him there, at the place where his sinful mouth met her heated flesh. She gripped one of the canopy posts for balance. His onslaught of decadent kisses caused her eyes to flutter closed.
When at last he rose to his feet with his hand at chest level, she was too dazed with pleasure to understand the strange gesture he was making.
“Stays,” he said, his voice husky.
It was then that she realized he’d fumbled the guinea on purpose so that he would be the one to pick it up and have the advantage of two turns in a row.
“Very good,” she said in appreciation, and turned her derrière toward his groin. The hard length of him pressed against her, potent and promising. She could not wait to feel him between her legs, without any layers to separate them.
As he loosened her stays and slid them over her hips, he peppered slow kisses from beneath her ear, down the curve of her neck, to her shoulder. She slipped the coin from him without him noticing, and almost lost control of it herself when his open mouth brushed the side of her breast, so close to her peaked nipples.
She kicked the whalebone stays aside with her stockinged toes and held up the guinea, her words almost too breathy to be understood. “Waistcoat.”
