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“Gina, what are you going to do tomorrow?” he asked as he slipped his cravat around his neck and fiddled with the ends, not tying it, but not leaving it undone either.
“I want to meet again tonight,” she said instead of replying to his question. Because these rubies… She didn’t know what they meant. Was he still expecting her to break off their engagement? Was she going to?
His gaze flickered over her face, looking for something.
“Meet me in the library tonight.” It wasn’t quite a command, or a plea.
“I don’t know that this is a good idea, Gina. In fact, I suspect it is a very bad idea.”
“But…” She needed more of him.
He sighed deeply. “But I can deny you nothing.”
He’d waitall night for her, he realized as the clock struck midnight. It was still early, really, but the household had gone to bed an hour before. He didn’t dare hope.
He thought she’d lose her nerve.
Understandable, after all. It was one thing to demand a man ruin her, it was quite another to go through with it. The book he’d been trying to read lay discarded on a table and he stared at the fire. He’d moved the chaise to in front of the fire again but he sat in the same wingback chair that had brought her to him last night. Superstitious.
There was too much uncertainty about their future, and a nagging thought wouldn’t leave him alone. He’d braced himself for this Christmas to either be rejected, or finally win her. It hadn’t occurred to him before now that he might have both, and that might be worst of all.
He’d have her for one night, and afterward lose her entirely.
Then the door to the library pivoted silently open and every thought and fear flew from his head. She was here. Nothing else mattered.
She wore the same wrap as last night, but her hair was down rather than in a plait, and as she closed the door and approached him, she smiled, eyes lighting with anticipation.
“Thief,” he murmured as she stepped between his feet, looking down at him. “Cruel, lovely thief.” She’d stolen his heart and she stole his breath. One tug and she was in his lap, her mouth on his. A quick study, his Gina. A week of kisses and she knew what she wanted and took it. Her body was strong and curved under his hands, and he explored with slow, deliberate movements, listening to her, sensitive to her every tremor. But she didn’t flinch or withdraw, no she found the fastenings of his clothes and worked them loose. Her response at each drag of fabric away from her skin and stroke of his palms over her waist, back or thighs, was to lean into his touch and find his skin to return the caress.
Like a magic mirror, each time he revealed a part of her, by pushing off her wrap or undoing the neck of her nightgown, she found the reciprocal. She pushed off his coat and undid his shirt, smirking as she did so, remembering her violence last night.
When her nightgown finally came off, her breasts were too temptingly at the level of his mouth, and he laved her nipples, making her arch and grasp at him. She was so sensitive to his every touch and it made him harder than he’d thought possible. Her hands were busy at his waist, but he had more to do before she released him and he sank into her. So he pulled her close, lifted and put her back down into the chair where he’d been sitting and kneeling at her feet. Her eyes went wide when he dragged her knee to the side, revealing her.
“Emmett, what are you doing? You promised…” she tailed off.
“We will. But your pleasure first.”
“I don’t understand—” she protested, but cut off as his lips touched her sex.
She found her pleasure more easily this time, the path more familiar. And perhaps he was better at it too, without brandy blunting his reactions, and remembering what she had enjoyed last night. If it was this good, this easy, between them after one night, what would a lifetime be like? When he knew her body as well as he knew his own it would be the work of a moment to whisper the words that would make her needy and find the intensity to make her shake and pulse around his fingers as she did now. He slowed the thrusts of his fingers into her and shifted his kisses to less sensitive places.
“Do you always do that first?” She sounded drugged.
“Sometimes I do it last as well.” He leaned over the chair and as he picked her up, her eyes flew open and she grabbed his shoulders.
“I still want the rest,” she said mulishly as he laid her onto the chaise and stretched out beside her. “You can’t con me with half measures. My friend told me about…”
He chuckled. “But she didn’t tell you any words for it?”
“Making stitch, she calls it,” Gina giggled, smoothing a hand down his back. “Take off your clothes.”
“Before your violent tendencies come out again,” he teased as he eased his breeches and stockings off, so he was naked with her, the rub of her skin like silk on him. She tugged at his shoulder and he obeyed—he would always obey—and moved over her into the space between her legs. Their bodies fit together like two halves of a whole.
She was spread under him on the chaise lounge, like all his wildest fantasies.
The reflected light from the window, the moon and the snow making the pale light brighter than it ought to have been, illuminated her like magic. Like she was a fairy queen come to steal whatever she wanted, and drag his heart away behind her.
“Are you sure?” he asked, even as he willed her to say yes. He could stop, of course he could stop. He wasn’t an animal. But he was a man with a man’s desires.
