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The patronizing answer nearly drove her to violence. “A nice woman? Because I kissed you? Because I let you touch me? Are you mad? No woman is that nice and certainly not I.”
He simply looked at her. “Then why?”
“Because.” She took his face in her palms, the left side of his face bumpy and ragged under her hand, the right side smooth and warm. “I do care. And so do you.”
And she set her lips against his. Deliberately. Softly. Putting all her longing, all her loneliness into the gesture. She started the kiss lightly, but he tilted his head beneath hers, angling and opening his mouth, and somehow she found herself on his lap with his tongue in her mouth.
Not that she protested. She’d been waiting for this for days now, and the reality set her limbs to trembling. She’d been a mistress, a bought woman, for all of her adult life, but this was something beyond her experience. A sharing, an exploring. She was an equal in this place with this man, and somehow the knowledge that she was as accountable as he, as involved as he, made her all the more aroused. Her fingers actually shook against the wool fabric of his coat as he explored her mouth with his tongue. Sweetly, darkly, erotically. Until she feared that she might meet her culmination simply from his lips.
She drew her head back, gasping. “I—”
“Don’t stop me,” he murmured. His hands were on the laces of her bodice, rapidly pulling them free. “Let me see you. Let me touch you.”
She nodded and watched him. Stopping was the very last thing on her mind. His face was intent, his one eye entirely focused on the task of opening her bodice. She could feel a blush start at her throat. It’d been years since Lister had bedded her, and even then she didn’t remember this intensity, this single-minded purpose. What if she disappointed him? What if she was unable to please him?
Her bodice parted, and he drew it off her, laying it absently on the table along with her fichu. His gaze never left her bosom. He began working on her stays.
She cleared her throat. “Can I—”
“Let me.” His eye flicked up to hers. “Do you mind?”
She shook her head, biting her lip. She held very still as her stays drew apart. His fingers brushed her bare skin, but he didn’t pause. She was conscious of each breath she drew into her lungs, of his own even breathing, of his unwavering gaze. Then her stays were off, and he drew her shift down her shoulders until she was bared to the waist.
He simply stared.
She raised her hand without thought, instinctively moving to cover herself.
He caught her wrist and drew it to her lap. “Don’t,” he whispered. “Let me look at you.”
She closed her eyes then, because she could no longer bear the sight of his gaze taking her in.
“You’re beautiful,” he murmured. “Beautiful enough to drive a man insane.”
He traced the forefinger of his left hand from the rapid pulse at her throat, down, down to the swell of one breast. She waited, her breath nearly stopped. He drew his finger slowly to her nipple and circled it, making it pucker.
She swallowed.
“I want this,” he said.
She opened her eyes to see him staring at her intently, his mouth hardened into an arrogant, flat line.
His gaze flicked up to capture her own. “I want all of you.”
Her mouth went dry. “Then take me.”
He reached behind her and shoved aside the mess on his desk. She heard pencils skitter and drop to the floor and the thump of a book. Then he grasped her about her waist, lifting to set her on the heavy table.
“Take off your skirts.” He rose suddenly from his chair and strode to the tower door, locking it.
When he returned to her, she was still fumbling at the ribbons at her waist. He pushed her hands aside and began working at them himself. She felt a wild spurt of joyous laughter start in her mouth, but she tamped it down ruthlessly. Instead, she reached up and around his head and drew the tie from his hair. The heavy dark locks fell forward against his lean cheeks, wild and untamed, and she threaded her fingers through them, reveling in the intimacy.
He didn’t even seem to notice her gesture, so intent was he on removing her remaining clothing. A moment later, he flung aside her skirts. She was left in just her stockings and shoes and would’ve felt more than a little silly if he wasn’t so grave as he drew them off. Then she was naked, sitting with her bare bottom on his wooden table, and he was looking at her as if she were Aphrodite come to life. It was a heady feeling, being regarded thus. Heady and frightening at the same time, for she was no Aphrodite. She was simply a woman past her third decade. A woman who’d had only one other lover in all her life.
“Alistair,” she whispered.
He shrugged out of his coat. “Aye?”
She didn’t know how to put her concern into words. “I don’t… that is, I’m not very experienced with… with…”
