For now, there was this. He lowered his head, his mouth finding hers in the darkness. He kissed her as he walked until his knees pressed against the mahogany side rails of his bed. Kissed her still as he lowered her gently to the mattress. Tore his mouth from hers to light the lamp on his bedside table.
A soft glow brought the chamber alive, and suddenly he was blinking owlishly, his eyes adjusting to the change in brightness. Slowly, slowly, his gaze settled back upon the woman lying in his bed. His heart thudded.
Without a hideous cap to rob him of the sight of her hair, those glorious, silken skeins swirled over his bed in a riot of red. Her cheeks were charmingly flushed, her lips swollen from his kisses and the hue of a freshly ripened berry, her breasts straining against the slim constraint of her nightrail and robe. The nightrail itself was already undone halfway to her navel, and the dressing gown parted so that a mouthwatering sliver of her skin was bare for him: the valley between her breasts, the smooth sweep of her chest to her perfectly lush belly.
His mouth went dry. He had never seen a more beautiful sight than Jacinda Turnbow on his bed, heated from his kisses and touch, blinking with an adorable frown into the illuminated chamber. She was even more beautiful bereft of her cap, lace, and abominable gowns.
“This is your last chance to change your mind,” he warned, throat thick. Desire pulsed through him. His fingers went to the fastening at the waistband of his drawers, hesitating.
Her cheeks darkened to a deeper shade of red. “I am certain.”
Thank Christ.
He thumbed open his drawers and dropped them to the floor, aware of her rapt gaze upon his straining arousal. Eyes on her, he stroked himself, watching her reaction. Her lips parted. His cock grew harder, a drop of seed weeping from the crown. He slicked it over the engorged head. Her tongue flicked over her lower lip, and she swallowed.
Yes, he was heartily glad she was no virgin. Because the way her eyes devoured him, the intense pressure in his ballocks, and the painful state of his cock could not be rectified with a slow, gentle introduction to lovemaking. He joined her on the bed, hands going to the knot on the belt of her dressing gown and making short work of the knot. Gently, he helped her to shrug the unnecessary barrier away.
When it was gone, he caught the hem of her modest nightrail, dragging it over her knees to reveal her trim calves, and then higher still, to the lush curves of her hips.
She stayed him, catching his hands in hers. “Do we need the light?”
“Yes.” He released her hem reluctantly, and traveled back down her delicious body to her tapered ankles. He was a man who dwelled in the darkness, but for this, his first time seeing Jacinda, his first time sinking home inside her, making her come, he wanted light.Nay, he required light. The sight of her, the sounds of her, the smell of her. He did not want to miss a single, blessed moment. Not a hitch in her breath or her lashes fluttering against her cheeks. Not the arch of her back or the moan from her lips.
Gently, he caressed an ankle, raised it to his lips so he could press a kiss to the protrusion of her bone. Even this was somehow glorious. Forbidden. He licked her because he could, because tomorrow morning as they broke their fasts, her ankles would be hidden from him behind a drab gown and stockings. Because he would not be free to touch her or kiss her. Because tomorrow, they would go back to being Miss Governess and the Duke of Whitley.
Unless he could convince her otherwise.
Hehadto convince her otherwise.
Crispin brought her other ankle to his lips. Another kiss. She made a delicious hum in her throat. Emboldened, he slid his hands higher. Over her calves, his fingers tracing every inch of her smooth skin, following it to the twin dips behind her knees. He kissed each kneecap, guiding her legs open.
“Your Grace,” she protested as he bunched her nightrail higher still, so that it rested around the perfect swell of her hips, just barely shielding her mound from his hungry gaze.
No, he would not allow a return to formality, though her embarrassment was delicious. She was a delectable dichotomy, hot then cold, in his arms and yet about to flee, passionate but hiding herself behind drab weeds and silly caps. What had happened to Miss Jacinda Turnbow to fashion her into the woman she had become?
He could not help but wonder as he kissed the hollow on the inside of first her right knee and then her left, allowing his tongue to flick against her skin for another taste. Here, she mirrored her personality, a perfect blend of salty and sweet. His effort wrung another sound of satisfaction from her, and so he licked the hollow of her other knee as well before raising her hem and kissing her inner thigh.
“Say my name,” he ordered, his fingers tightening on her hips, guiding them farther apart.
His mouth found a smattering of freckles on her inner thigh in the shape of the constellation Cassiopeia. Unlike the queen that was the namesake of that cluster of stars, however, Jacinda was anything but conceited. Quite the opposite, as she did not seem to be aware of her own beauty. Her hesitance and shyness were lovely, a welcome and marked difference from the endless string of women he’d bedded since his return.
He worshiped those freckles with his mouth and tongue, traced her curves with his hands as he coaxed her legs wider. The air was redolent with the musk of her arousal, humming with her soft sigh of surrender. Everything in him screamed to flip her nightrail up the rest of the way and taste her. But he did not want to rush this or her, and now that he had her where he wanted her, he wanted to prolong their joining so it would last on the nights when he no longer held her in his arms.
She said it at last. “Crispin.” A whisper he scarcely heard above the din of his pounding heart. Then louder, a moan that vibrated in his ballocks, hardened his cock. “Crispin, please.”
He smiled against her silken flesh and raised her hem another inch. Glancing up from his quest, he caught her gaze and fresh bolt of lust hit him with lightning intensity. This was how he wanted to see her forever, her glorious blazing locks on his pillow, her lips dark and swollen from his kisses, her gaze tender, her pupils dilated, a rosy flush on her neck and high cheekbones.
The need to tell her, to fill the heavy silence between them with something meaningful, was new. He had no whisky to cloud his thinking tonight, and his mind was free, unencumbered. There was a lightness he could not ever recall experiencing in his chest.
“You are the most beautiful sight I have ever beheld, Jacinda,” he rasped. And she was, for no woman had ever been lovelier. No woman had stirred him as she did, and whether that was a blessing or a curse, he could not say in the moment.
All he knew was he needed her. She filled the cold, broken places inside him with sunshine and warmth, and he had not realized how damned tired he was of living in the darkness until her.
“No,” she denied softly. “I cannot be.”
“Indeed.” He lowered his head, kissed one inner thigh and then the other. “You are.”
Her hem bunched up higher still. One more tug, and he could devour her.
