“If I had my way I’d keep you wearing nothing more than this chemise,” he said, tickling his finger under the hem of it. “Or better yet, naked. But I promise I’ll buy you a new gown. A silk one.”
“Maybe I want another one exactly like it,” she growled.
He laughed. “I’m only going to tear it off you again.” And then his eyes smoldered. “Although, I think you’re not protesting nearly enough. Did you like that, Edie?”
“You are an utter Neanderthal.”
“I am a desperate man, driven to the edge by his beloved.” Bending low, he kissed her again, and despite her anger, she arched into the caress, nipping at his lower lip.
He laughed again.
“Marry me,” he whispered, kissing his way down her throat.
Oh gods, it was all happening at once. She felt overwhelmed; both with sensation and with the bombardment of his words. Her wrists were bound to the bed. She was utterly at his mercy.
“Did I not say yes?”
“I just want to make sure.” His clever fingers found the buttons on her chemise, and he kissed his way down her chest as he parted them. “Because if you marry me, then I will have license to burn everything in your wardrobe and replace them with all the pretty pink silk I can find. If you marry me, then we can spend the next sixty years arguing in the library. If you marry me, then I can bend you over my desk and make you beg for sweet, sweet mercy. I will drink enough tea to sink a ship. I will be your partner, your lover, your anchor, your shield.”
“If you think for one second,” she gasped, “that I will allow you to make away with my wardrobe, then you have another think coming. I am not wearing pink.”
“Perhaps we can negotiate on that matter.” His tongue circled her nipple. “What would you consider appropriate?”
It was becoming difficult to breathe. Harder still to think. And the devil knew it. Edwina shifted restlessly, but there was a muscled thigh between hers. She forced herself to say the first thing that popped into her head. “Blue,” she breathed. “The same color as your eyes.”
He smiled at her. “Blue it is, then.”
Blunt fingers found her, teasing her between the slit in her drawers. Brushing back and forth, back and forth. Tantalizing circles that never quite found the right spot.
“Sterling!”
“Yes.” There was wickedness in his voice.
She wanted to scream. “Oh. Gods.”
“What’s wrong, Edwina?” His fingers vanished. And then they hooked in the edge of her drawers. “Do you want these off?”
She shouldn’t.
She absolutely should not.
No man had ever looked at her there.
But as she gasped for breath, a shiver of need working through her as her body screamed for more of his touch, she found herself nodding. “Yes.”
“So. Responsive,” he purred, tugging them down her legs. Tossing them aside, he let himself survey his new trophy. The look in his eyes reminded her of a starving man staring at a banquet. “God, you’re so pretty.”
She wanted to close her thighs. Look away.
But she was helpless to resist as he knelt over her, and trailed those teasing fingers up her thigh. “Open,” he whispered, looking up the length of her body and staring into her eyes. “Show me how much you want me. Show me how wet you are, Edie.”
It took everything she had to let her thighs splay wide.
He rewarded her with a dangerous smile and a gentle touch, stirring his deft fingers through her slickness.
A shock of lightning lanced through her. Exquisite torture.
“Oh gods,” she gasped, arching her spine.
