She liked all of it.
He could tell by her quickened breathing, by the pink flush that suffused her skin.
Which was still something of a revelation to him. He’d been raised to treat women with the greatest deference and courtesy, a practice he’d naturally carried into his intimate encounters. Throughout their courtship, Claire’s delightfully forward ways had sometimes clashed with his decorum. But he’d never acted on his raw impulses. He’d always hidden the true breadth of his desire. He’d feared offending her sensibilities.
Until last night. In the library he’d learned, beyond a doubt, that Claire wasn’t like other ladies—or else that ladies were by no means as timid and fragile as he’d been led to believe.
It had been a thrilling evening. He felt like the luckiest man alive.
Yet just now he took pleasure in treating her as the most cherished of creatures, to be touched with naught but the most tender care. He trailed soft kisses from her lips down her neck, across her collarbone, down and then back up each arm. He took his time, lingering wherever he thought she was extra sensitive: the little hollow at the base of her throat, the delicate skin on the underside of her wrists. Everywhere he ventured was deliciously smooth and warm, fresh and sweet and spicy.
“You’ve changed your perfume,” he remarked. “I like it.”
“It’s a Christmas scent. Cinnamon and pine.”
“Mmm,” he hummed, as his lips strayed down toward her cleavage. “If only Christmas lasted all year...”
Thus far he’d been studiously avoiding her breasts, except for letting the backs of his fingers or the ends of his hair just graze them as he passed by. Now, when he covered them with his palms, her breath caught and she arched, pressing herself into his hands, straining for more…more…still more.
Removing a hand, he teased one with a puff of cool air from his lips. She shivered.
“Are you sure you’re not cold?”
Her answer was a little shake of her head and a whimper of need. He traced the peak with his tongue, and when at last he took it into his mouth, she moaned deep in her throat.
Lord, how he loved making her squirm, hearing her cries, seeing her lovely face flushed with passion. He could feel her heart pounding beneath his palm. But he wasn’t tempted to pick up the pace, for he was enjoying himself far too much to rush any part of this experience.
After paying thorough attention to both breasts, he ventured down to feather kisses over her soft belly. Meanwhile his hands explored her lush rounded hips and the perfect curves of her bottom. Moving farther down, he skimmed the backs of her knees and parted her legs to tease the soft flesh of her inner thighs.
And then he stopped.
He heard her breath catch and then hold. She waited. A sound of frustration escaped her lips. She lifted her head. He caught her gaze…
And held it as he blew cool air toward the place where her thighs came together.
Her whole body shuddered.
“Still not cold?” he asked.
“N-no,” she stammered, raising herself on her elbows. “But—you’re not going to?—?”
“Not if you don’t want me to.”
Her eyes glittered with shock and scandal, just as he’d expected. She had a wild streak, to be sure; he’d never met another lady apt to bunch up her skirts and climb terraces, or drag him into alcoves and steal kisses, much less surrender her virtue on a sofa in a castle library.
But when it came to certain acts which respectable people considered outrageous—or so they loudly claimed, at any rate—would her audacity extend so far?
He searched her arresting amethyst eyes. “Do you want me to?”
She nodded.
He positioned her legs and settled himself between them, filling his hands with her luscious backside. His heart was racing, and all the while he could feel her eyes fixed on him, hear her shallow breathing. But when the tip of his tongue touched her, she seemed to stop breathing altogether.
He glanced up to make certain she was all right—and encountered a look of such blazing lust that he couldn’t doubt it.
A smile curving his lips, he resumed at a pace even slower and more tender than his previous ministrations. He had to, for whenever he ventured to increase the speed or pressure, she seemed in danger of immediately falling to pieces.
She was impossibly soft and slick and hot, and he was assailed by thoughts of sliding himself along the path his tongue was now following. Of feeling all that delicious, satiny heat down his length. Of slipping himself inside to feel the snuggest?—
