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Henry released her from the binds, tossing the bodice across the room as she wrapped one arm over the mark.Who hurt you? How? When?He bit back the questions and the insistence that she give him a name. He did not need to ask to know that she would not like it.
And he wanted her to like it.
He wanted her to likehim.
The shock of the thought had him looking at her again, capturing those eyes that saw everything—that followed every path, calculated every risk. He knew enough of Adelaide Frampton to know that she spent her days facing risk. And he did not want to be risk. He wanted to be all reward.
He met her eyes. “Adelaide?”
“Yes.” An answer to a question he had not yet asked.
“Take down your hair.”
She did not hesitate, reaching up to pull pins from their tight moorings. There were a dozen of them,maybe more, and it was not a quick process. But Henry reveled in every slow, lingering second of it, loving the way errant curls began to tumble down over her shoulders, teasing her curves, wrapping themselves around her breasts, and then . . .
There was so much of it, wild and free like a cloud of fire. He cursed, low and wicked, reaching for it, sliding his fingers through it, reveling in its soft, silky texture.
“This,” he growled. “Christ, Adelaide, this hair was nearly the death of me today... and I think it might be again.”
He picked up a long, red lock and used it to paint circles around her nipple, his cock hard as steel as she writhed against him, giving herself over to him. When he couldn’t keep his mouth from her any longer, he leaned forward to scrape his teeth across the straining pink peak before soothing it with the flat of his tongue. She cried out, and he released her, backing away again.
“I like that,” she said. “All of it.”
“I know.”
She gave a little laugh and reached for him—her touch a gift—leaning down to kiss him, her glorious hair falling around them like a curtain. “You are exceedingly arrogant.”
She made him so. Made him want to crow to the wide world. “You say that as though I don’t have cause to be.”
A pretty red brow arched high in challenge. “You’re also exceedingly certain of yourself.”
In answer, he moved, lifting her, turning her, reversing their positions and setting her to the chair as he fell to his knees in front of her. A tiny sound of delight came from her as he leaned in and kissed her. Her fingers tangled in his hair as she met him. Matched him.
He tugged at her hips, pulling her down the chair, to the edge of it, as she stroked over his chest and torso to the edge of his trousers, where it was her turn to grasp fabric. To tug closer.
She opened her thighs and Henry thought he might lose himself then, at the look of her, bare to the waist, gazing up at him with delight and desire and that bold, beautiful assessment that made him want to show her all the best parts of him.
“Shall I tell you what I would like?” he asked.
“Please.”
That word again. It would be his undoing. “I would like you naked.”
Her eyes widened in surprise. “I—you would?”
“Very much,” he said, his hands falling to the fastening of her trousers. “And in this particular case, the trousers are not helping.”
She gave a little giggle, but the sound seemed to startle her, and one hand flew to her mouth as though she wished to keep it in.
He hated that, that she kept her pleasure bottled, and vowed that he would do all he could to show her the kind of pleasure that would not be contained as he worked at the buttons, loosening the green silk. “Someday, I would like to spend an hour or two watching you in these. But tonight—” Finished with the buttons, he tugged at the waist, loving the way she lifted her hips and let him strip her bare.
He sucked in a breath at her laid out before him, the firelight casting shadows over her naked body, over the swell of her breasts, the muscles of her torso, the scar at her rib, the angles at her hips, and the thatch of auburn curls between her long thighs, muscled and strong from a lifetime of work.
She was like nothing he’d ever seen before.
A gift from the damn gods.
He sat back on his heels and rubbed a hand over his mouth, distracted by the sight of her, long and beautiful.
