He let go of her to turn the key in the lock, then leaned back against the door. “Are you sure about this? Only if you—” It was her turn to close the distance between them.
“Just shut up and kiss me.”
And he did, only this time and to her hungry body’s complete delight, he held nothing back. It was a deep, decadent, and thoroughly carnal kiss that seemed to involve every bit of him because she experienced it from her lips to her toes. Her breasts were flattened against the solid wall of his chest while his erection pressed insistently into her lower body. So hard and ready that she could feel it through all her layers of petticoats and heavy brocade. He filled his hands with the cheeks of her bottom and dragged her hips still closer.
Needing the heat of his bare skin against hers, Portia pushed his coat from his shoulders and he briefly let go of her backside so he could wrestle his arms from the sleeves while she set about the buttons on his waistcoat. No sooner had that hit the floor than he yanked off his cravat and stripped out of his shirt in one impressively fluid movement.
His chest was a thing of beauty, firm and smooth and dusted with dark golden hair that narrowed and arrowed through his navel on its seductive route below the waistband of his trousers. Portia traced it all with flattened hands while he watched her progress with stormy, desire-filled eyes. She trailed one finger down the middle of his abdomen to the bulge that called to her and screamed for her to be brazen.
She pressed her palm against it and he moaned, his eyes scrunching shut as she explored the tantalizing shape of him over his clothes. When that wasn’t enough and curiosity got the better of her, she slipped her hand beneath the waistband and reveled in his involuntary shudder when her fingertips found the silken skin stretched so taut over his rigid manhood.
He sucked in an erratic breath and his eyelids fluttered open as she gently caressed the whole length of him. “Do you like that?” She wasn’t entirely sure what she was doing but she wanted to do it right. One of the benefits of having Kitty as a friend is that Kitty had always managed to find the sort of books that contained a great many lurid details about what went on between a man and a woman in the bedchamber. All of those books had stated that men enjoyed very much being touched here. It surprised her how much she enjoyed it too. His shape, his hardness, the heat that his aroused body created.
The way she undid him.
“What do you think?” A nerve in his tight jaw ticked as he choked out every word. One of his hands covered hers over the fabric as the other fumbled with the buttons of his falls. “Hold me.”
“Like this?” Her hand slipped lower to cup his testicles and he groaned. “Or like this?” She wrapped her fingers around his shaft and adored watching his eyes slam closed again as his erection jerked within the confines of her closed hand and she tentatively stroked it.
“Either or.” He kissed her hard until he could endure it no longer and wrenched his mouth away. “I need you out of that dress now.” Leo had never looked quite so ferocious or so desperate and that thrilled her.
“Then relieve me of it.”
She turned, presenting him with the laces that held her gown together, expecting him to go straight to them as they both wanted, but instead his fingers went to her hair and he tormented them both by gently removing every hairpin. When her still-damp hair hung heavily down her back, he brushed it all to one side, then with her back to him, he slipped his arms around her waist and kissed her neck and shoulders. “Do you like this, Portia?”
“Yes.”
“And what about this?” One of his big hands cupped her womanhood over her skirts.
A stupid question when she instantly arched her hips against it. “Yes.”
“Would you like me to touch you like you just touched me?”
Suddenly, it felt as though she might explode if he didn’t. “Yes please.”
While his teeth teased her earlobe, he took his time hoisting her heavy skirt up as if he knew that every single second of delay made the wanton nerves between her legs throb more and more with anticipation.
The cool night air whispered over her bare skin, torturing her still more, but Leo refused to touch her until she was completely exposed below the waist. His hand cupped her again possessively. “You have no idea how many times I have yearned to do this.” He sounded as undone as she felt as he dipped his finger between her shamelessly slick folds and immediately found a spot that made her knees weak as he caressed it. “You’re so wet.”
“Is that a bad thing?”
He choked out a sound, part chuckle, part groan. “It is the best thing.” And to prove that, he used just the pad of his talented, wicked index finger and her moisture to create unspeakable amounts of pleasure. Then, each time that she thought that it could not possibly feel any more wonderful, he gently increased the pressure and the tempo until she was writhing and bucking against his hand.
A curious soul could not read one of Kitty’s scandalous books and not touch herself, so Portia knew where this was going, but it had never felt this intense or so utterly sublime before. Whatever peak Leo was taking her to was one that she knew she hadn’t yet visited, and all at once she was in a hurry to get there. As if he sensed that, he twisted them both so that she faced the long mirror in the corner where he watched her intently as she began to come apart. Oddly, even though she had never bared herself like this in front of a man and would usually balk at the idea of being so vulnerable before one, she wanted his eyes on her. Wanted him to witness what he did to her. What he was doing to her.
Why was that?
“Oh my god, Leo…” She was so close. So dangerously close.
And then it hit her.
Wave after wave of sensations that pulsed from her core and radiated ruthlessly down every single nerve ending. A cascade of ecstasy that left her tumbling back against him, witless, as she cried his name like a benediction.
When she finally floated back to earth, his reflection in the mirror was awed but smug. And so hungry for her that it took her breath away all over again. “I am going to explode unless you are naked and on your back right this minute.” Oddly after what had just happened to her, so was Portia.
“Then get me out of this stupid dress.”
He set to work on her laces with gloriously clumsy fingers that made Portia feel powerful. As his frustration built, so did hers, and she tried to help him but the fastenings appeared to have fused themselves closed thanks to all the water he had doused them in.
