“Thank God,” he said darkly. “Go on ahead. Before I lose the last tenuous grip on my self-control.”
Chapter 10
Spencer tried not to touch her on the way back to Number Twelve.
Dinner had been—well, not easy, but not impossible. He kept seeing her, though. Even when he was not looking at her, he saw glimpses at the corner of his eye, her cheeks pink, her eyes alight.
It was as if he could see her in image and afterimage: Winnie neat and proper at the dinner table, and Winnie on the floor, in his lap, coming apart beneath his mouth.
At dinner he could not touch her. They were surrounded by people—his friends, his political allies—and she was as far out of his reach as a fantasy.
But when they reached the carriage, he handed her up with his fingers beneath her elbow and felt the warmth of her through his gloves. He sat across from her and knew that if he moved—if he leaned into her—she would come with him. He could pull her into his lap. He could splay her legs across his thighs and bury his hands under her skirts the way he’d been wanting for—he couldn’t remember how long he’d been wanting that for.
He couldn’t remember ever wanting anything else.
But he knew if he touched her in the coach he’d be greedy for more, more than he felt he could do in a moving vehicle. He wanted to please her. He wanted to do thisright—wanted privacy and space and time and time and time.
So he did not touch her. But he looked. He looked his fill. Alone in the carriage, he made no secret of the fact that he could not keep his eyes from roaming her face, her neck, the long slender column of her body in her flower-strewn dress. He remembered the feel of the stitching, the puckers and knots beneath his fingers as he’d touched her.
He remembered how she’d felt. He thought of it as he gazed at her: the quick frantic pulses of her breath, the tipped-back desperation of her throat.
A flush slowly worked its way up her neck. He watched, and she watched him back, her pale green eyes heavy-lidded.
He was so aroused by the time they returned to Number Twelve—just fromlookingat her—that he was almost afraid of what would happen when he had her alone in the bedroom.
But Winnie didn’t seem afraid. She flashed a wide sweet smile to Fairhope and then took to the stairs, her skirts caught in her gloved fingers.
She led him up the stairs and paused, hesitating, at the door to his bedchamber. “Here?”
“God,” he said. “Yes. Here.”
And then he reached round her body, pushed open the door, and pulled them both into the room. He shut the door behind them, grabbed her by the waist, and pressed her up against the smooth wood. Her legs parted—he moved between them—and then there was no space left, nothing but the sweet accommodation of her body and his mouth on hers.
She kissed like a dream. Her mouth was hot, responsive, open. He licked her, licked into her mouth, and she shuddered. Her fingers wound their way into his hair, and the feeling of it was heaven, was wanting-more, was letting-go. He took her heavy bottom lip between his teeth—God, he loved that lip, loved the way it looked, loved the feel of it in his mouth—and sucked, flicking his tongue, until she gasped.
He kissed her and she kissed him back—slow and patient until she wasn’t. Her hands twisted in his hair, tightening, and he relished the sensation of her growing need. Her hips rocked against him, andChristthe sweet little jerk was so good against his cock.
His mind felt—not altogether there, as though everything had been stripped away except Win, lemon-sweet Win, here under his mouth.
His hands were still at her waist, but his thumbs had started tracing circles on her abdomen, and she squirmed in his grasp. She pulled back, just a little, and so he moved his mouth to her neck, licking. Pressed wet sucking kisses right there, where her skin was thin. He was going to leave marks,wantedto leave marks, and the part of him that knew he ought not feel that way was barely a whisper in his head.
“Touch me,” she murmured. “Spencer. I want you to touch me.”
Hewastouching her, wasn’t he? With his mouth and his tongue, his hands on her waist, his erection pressing against her through the layers of their clothes, and—
His mind cleared, just a bit. He realized he still had her pushed up to the door, and all their clothes were on, and he needed to get her naked or else he was going to die.
“Happily,” he said, and then he picked her up, his hands fitted precisely to the curves of her arse. She locked her legs around him as he carried her to his bed.
God, it was almost painful to release her. He wanted to keep her just like this—as close as it was possible to be to her. Closer. The soft friction of her body pressed to his sent a shudder of need through him. He wanted all her skin sliding against all of his, an endless turning of pleasure upon pleasure.
But not just yet. He had intentions for her.
He dropped her on the edge of the bed and knelt at her feet.
“Oh,” she said. She looked over the edge down at him. “You—er—have you lost something?”
He muffled his laugh in her skirts and then nudged them up to her knees. He reached for her foot and divested her of one battered satin slipper. He pressed his lips to her ankle. His tongue came out and traced the lacy pattern of her stockings.
