Page 41 of After the Spy Seduces

“Christopher.” As the long-sleeping feminine need awoke inside her, her arms wrapped around his neck, and she kissed him back, matching his hunger with her own.

The kiss grew even more heated and greedy, until he cupped her face with his hand and held her head still while he plunged his tongue between her lips in relentless but sensuous strokes. He tasted of man and whisky, with a hint of wildness that was simply heady, and she shamelessly drank him in.

His hand slid slowly down the side of her body, and she instinctively arched into the caress, like a cat being petted. Fitting, because when he brushed over her bottom, she was certain she purred.

By the time he finished ravishing her mouth and moved his lips away from hers to place hot, open-mouthed kisses down her neck, she’d given over to the joy of being in his arms and had melted against him, her soft front pressing against his hard chest. Her fingers played in the silky hair curling at his collar as his hands journeyed over her, as if he were trying to feel every inch of her.

“Why,” she asked breathlessly, then gasped when his hands brushed the sides of her breasts, “do you…keep doing…this to me?”

He laughed as he nuzzled his face against her hair, and the deep sound rumbled into her. “Kissing you?”

“Yes.” The single word emerged not as an answer but as a moan of permission. One he accepted by placing a kiss to the swells of her breasts topping her bodice.

“Because I want to.” Another kiss to her breasts, this one lingering long enough for the tip of his tongue to dip into the valley between them. “Why do you keep letting me?”

“I’m not.”

In pantomime, he feigned mock confusion as he straightened just enough to cast sideways glances at her arms as they continued to enwrap his shoulders. Just to make his point, he squeezed her bottom, then grinned in victory when a moan fell from her lips.

She slapped at his shoulder, feigning irritation when what she truly wanted was for him to do that again. “I meantwhy do you keep attempting to seduce me?”

“A beautiful and soft woman in the warm, afternoon sunlight—what kind of rakehell would I be if I didn’t try?”

“But it’s not true, is it? You’re not at all a rake—”

“Shh. Don’t tell.” He slid his hands up to cup her breasts from beneath. “After all, I have a reputation to uphold.”

“Christopher.” But the scolding on her tongue turned into a low moan when he began to massage her fullness against his palms.

She melted into him. Such a wonderful sensation, warming her all the way down to her toes, including that aching spot at her core. His fingers teased at her nipples through her clothing, and she arched herself into him to beg him with her body to increase the pleasure he was giving.

Accepting her unspoken invitation, he slipped his hand inside her bodice, to free a single breast from her corset and chemise. The cool air inside the dovecot caressed her, and her nipple drew up into a hard nub, aching for him to place his hot mouth on it.

“I’m kissing you, Diana,” he murmured distractedly, his attention focused on her nipple as he slowly circled it with his fingertip, “because I very much want to. And no other reason.” He looked down into her eyes as he repeated, “Why are you letting me?”

“Because I very much want you to,” she answered, the raw truth tearing breathlessly from her.

With a wicked grin, he dipped his head to her breast, to trace the tip of his tongue teasingly around her nipple the way he’d just done with his finger.

She shivered at the torturous caress, so close to giving her the pleasure she craved yet still impossibly far away. She dug her fingers into his hair to pull his head tighter to her breast.

With a groan, he closed his lips over her, laving her with his tongue and sucking softly. Oh, the sensation was divine! His mouth on her breast twisted all the tiny muscles in her lower belly into an achingly tight knot.

As if worshipping her, he suckled at her, slowly but intensely, drawing her breast deep into his mouth as his hands caressed over her hips. She couldn’t fight back the moan of pleasure rising from her lips. It had been such a long time since a man had kissed her like this, had made all those wantonly delicious sensations spiral inside her. So very long…

“Seduction,” he rasped huskily, naming the wicked thing he was doing to her with his mouth. “What do you know of it, a sweet angel like you?”

More than you know.But she could never tell him. Certainly not now, when his hands at her hips were guiding her backward to a rough worktable placed against the wall, even as his mouth never left her breast. Not when he sent such pleasures rippling through her that she could do little more than cling to him, yet welcome every touch and kiss he gave her.

“Don’t call me that,” she panted out.

Leaning into her, he shifted her onto the table, until half of her bottom rested on the edge. Her hip was propped at such an angle that one leg lifted scandalously off the ground.

“But you are an angel,” he murmured, trailing kisses along her jaw. “Absolutely beautiful and lovely…heavenly.”

He had her off-balance now, both physically and emotionally. She clutched at his shoulders to keep from falling away as his hand strayed down her leg to her ankle and calf, exposed by the skirt hitched up beneath her. As if he simply couldn’t resist touching her. But then, she understood his desire, because she couldn’t resist the pleasure of his touch.

His hand brushed up her leg and pushed her hem up to her knee. “You have no idea, do you, the effect you have on men? How much every man who sees you longs to have your attention, your touch, even your sharp wit, focused only on him?”