The shift wavered just at her ribs. She’d give him no more than a saucy eyebrow and heavenly lower half.
He’d die for the rest.
But all he really had to do was give everything to her.
The remaining buttons of his fall slipped out of their holes, and he shoved his trousers down and stepping out of them. Next the smalls.
He was stripped before her. Remington Ives the Rake was discarded somewhere on the ground with the cravat and waistcoat, wrinkled, unnecessary. He’d shown this woman more of himself than he’d ever shown anyone, dug out his heart and held it up for her approval.
And she was smiling at him with heat in her eyes, her teeth teasing her bottom lip, and every breath lifting those perfect breasts beneath the cursed shift, as if ininvitation.
“Tell me what you want,” he rasped, each word dripping with his desire.
She wet her lips and gave him a gentle grin as she threw off her shift.
He’d been right, a truth he acknowledged with a humiliating and all-too pitiful whimper. Perfect breasts. Full and lush and rosy-tipped, the nipples hard, and God, he ached to taste them.
“Tell me what you want,” he repeated, the rasp transmuted into a wolfish growl.
She extended a hand toward him, palm up, a little heaven waiting in that small, soft space. “You.”
He loved her. Was in love with her. As soon as he’d said it, she’d been able to step away from the painting, from that detail made foreign by her closeness. She could see the full picture now, see what she wanted. Not just to be free, to choose right, but to be loved and to love freely.
What to do with it? What to say? With her heart so very big in her chest, she almost couldn’t breathe. But he didn’t seem to need her to say anything. He’d given her love without expectation of receiving anything in return.
How terribly unfair. When he took her offered hand and kissed her palm, she tugged. When he climbed atop the bed and straddled her waiting body, she cupped the back of his neck. And when he dipped to kiss her, she stopped him with a word.
“First…”
He raised a brow.
“First, what do you like? When you are with an… actress. What do you like her to do?”
“That doesn’t matter, Tessa.”
“It does to me. I do not want to be a disappointment.”
“You never could be.”
“I could. Tell me. Please, Remmy.”
He twisted his head and kissed the inside of her elbow. “I just want you to touch me, Tessa. Anywhere, everywhere. Your curiosity is my pleasure. Your delight my delight.”
She placed her fingers at the hollow of his throat. “Here?”
“Yes.”
“And here?” She pressed a palm against the indentation between the slabs of muscle that made up his chest.
“Yes.”
She trailed her fingers down his rigid abdomen until her skin brushed against crisp hairs. “And here?” Her voice a whisper.
“Absolutely there.”
She studied the hard lines of his form as he was poised above her. Muscles taut, limbs long and lean, dark hair ranging across his forearms and lower belly, lower, to where his… manhood jutted up between them. There were only a few candles in sconces on the wall to light the room, and the air was too hot for a fire. A dim bolt of new moonlight fell through the window, silvering his skin, glinting off his earring. His face was hard and soft at the same time, a riot of light and shadow, chiaroscuro.
“Remmy…” She swallowed. “You’re beautiful.”
