She was not Grace. And he was not the same selfish naive man he had been. He knew her: her tender heart, that throat-aching courage. He had been blind. He had been so stubbornly convinced that love—thathappiness—was too great a risk. He had tried before—had tried, and gone wrong, and hurt the people he loved. But this was Matilda—sweeping into his life and transforming everything he’d thought he could expect.
Could he do as she said?
He thought perhaps he could, if he tried. He could take all these last years—the impenetrable shell of self-protection, all the things he had refused to let himself wish for—crumple them up like newspaper and set them alight.
And when the fire burned out, he would still be standing right here, face-to-face with Matilda Halifax.
He brushed her hair back from her face, and then he bent his head and kissed her brow, her temple, the curve of her cheek. “I want you to stay,” he murmured, “all night.”
It was the most he could say, just then. He hoped she understood.
She turned her face up to his, their lips not quite touching. “Yes.”
“Remember.” His mouth moved against hers, their breath mingling. “Say stop.”
“I remember,” she said and came up on her toes to kiss him.
Everything was different. Matilda could taste it in his kiss, feel it in the long firm sweep of Christian’s elegant fingers up her sides.
Stay,he’d said.
And he had not said,I love you.He had not said,Forever.But there was something slow and patient and steady in the way he touched her now. As if he had all night. As if he could savor each brush of his lips on her skin, each luminous discovery of sigh and gasp, because there would be a thousand more nights—ten thousand more nights—like this one.
He kissed the freckle-dotted place beneath her ear. He took her earlobe between his teeth and bit down, a quick light spark, kindling warmth between her thighs.
She swept her hands up the expanse of his back and tangled her fingers in his hair. “Will you undress? I want to touch you.”
He kissed along the edge of her chemise and then eased up the hem, his hands finding the bare skin of her thighs, cupping the curves of her backside. He groaned a little into her skin, his beard tickling the tops of her breasts.
“That was not an answer.” Her voice had grown a little dazed, desire-drunk, as he kissed and stroked. His hands were big and warm and solid on her hips, on the cleft of her buttocks.
“You first,” he said. “God, I have dreamed of seeing you again.”
Pleasure rushed in with his words, the tingling delight of knowing herself wanted. Of knowing that her need and hunger were matched by his.
He dropped her hem and brought his hands to the ribbon that held her chemise closed. His pale eyes were focused on his task, and his mouth—
Matilda’s heart gave a short, sharp bound.
Beneath the neatly trimmed black beard and the scar that marked his cheek, Christian wassmiling.
He slipped the ribbon loose from its bow and began to tug on one end, sliding it slowly free of the pleated ruffles at the front of the thin cotton shift. “You cannot possibly imagine,” he said, “how often I’ve pictured you here.”
While he pulled the ribbon loose with one hand, his other hand slid slowly from the neckline of her chemise downward, his palm warm even through the fabric. He traced the curve of her breast, found her nipple with his thumb and forefinger and toyed with it. A low sound escaped him as she shuddered, her nipple tightening beneath her shift.
“I want to unwrap you,” he said as the ribbon slipped free, “like a gift.” He lowered his mouth to her breast and sucked her nipple through the fabric, letting her feel his teeth. “I want you naked in front of me again. And tonight, Matilda, I’m going to take my time. I’m going to taste every inch of you. I’m going to make you come with my mouth and my fingers and my cock until you’re boneless and pleading for mercy.”
She heard herself make a soft sound in her throat. She was halfway to pleading already. Her skin felt wildly sensitive, the cotton fabric rough where it touched her, cold where his mouth had moistened it.
He drew the neckline of her chemise wide and then let it slip down her body. She was naked beneath it, and he took in the sight of her slowly.
She shivered beneath his gaze. Not from cold.
“I have pictured this a thousand times. A thousand different ways.” He caught her waist and nudged her back to the bed. Her bare backside hit the counterpane, and she sat down hard. “But God, it’s so much better to see you. So much better than I imagined.”
He brought his hands down to her knees and nudged her legs apart, coming to stand between them. He was still dressed, and she did not know why it aroused her to feel the brush of his trousers on her sensitive inner thighs, but it did. Desire licked its way along her skin, tightening the muscles of her lower belly, and she squirmed a little, her thighs closing on Christian’s as he stood at the edge of the bed.
His smile was dark now, a wicked, piratical smile. “So greedy,” he said, running his hands up from her knees to her lower belly, then slipping into the curls that covered her mound. She gasped, and her hips twitched in his grasp.
