“I do not think I require time to adjust.”
“Damnation, woman. I am not certain if you are a gift or a curse.” His mouth crushed hers in the next second.
His lips worked over hers with voracious precision yet reverent tenderness. That tenderness told her he believed the former rather than the latter. His fingers swept over her, her remaining undergarments falling away until she was clad in nothing but her stockings.
Without ending their kiss, he moved them, backing her across the cavernous chamber. It had not failed to escape her notice that Decker’s home was immense and sprawling by London standards, and that the private rooms were every bit as lushly furnished and ornate as the public. He was a gentleman of obscene wealth, as evidenced by their marriage contract.
It felt as if they traveled forever, and yet it must have only been moments. The room was large but not endless. Finally, the massive, carved oak bed she had spied upon their initial entrance loomed behind her. Her bare bottom connected with cool linens, a firm mattress, reminding her she was almost entirely nude. Already, he had made her forget. Of course he had. He was the sun, brightening her world, bringing with him all the light, giving her life. How could she think of anything but him when his lips were upon her?
Strangely, she was not ashamed. Nor was she nervous. Jo knew not a modicum of hesitation. There was only a natural, abiding sense of rightness about the man, the moment, the act they were about to share.
His hands clamped on her waist, lifting her. He deposited her in the center of the bed as if she were something rare and precious he had only just discovered. When he straightened, their mouths parted, and she mourned the end to their kiss. But her breathlessness only increased when he stood to his full height and, keeping his stare pinned upon hers, began opening the fall of his trousers. She felt like a watch spring, tightly wound as she waited and watched.
Down his hips those trousers went, and with them, his smalls. Although the bed obscured him from mid-thigh down, it could not hide his manhood, thick and long, jutting from his impressively honed body. The lifeless marble of Adonis in the gardens had ill-prepared her for the sight of Decker, inflagrante delicto.
“Stunning,” she whispered, then flushed furiously at her gauche antics.
What must he think of her? He had known many lovers before her, and surely none of them had ogled him with such naïve astonishment.
“I would have said the same of you, but the word would have never held,” he said, his voice husky. “Glorious. Lovely. Breathtaking. Utterly ravishing. All of them pale in comparison to the sight of you, naked.”
She pressed her thighs together, feeling at once brazen and…hungry. Yes, that was the word. Starved.
Forhim. For what he would do to her. For what he would show her.
“I am wearing my stockings,” she murmured foolishly, her mouth going dry.
“Leave them,” he ordered softly as he joined her on the bed, trailing his hand up her calf, past her knee. Beneath the barrier of the fine silk, gooseflesh pebbled her skin. “I like the way you look in nothing but these innocent wisps of silk.” He lowered his mouth to her knee, thigh, kissing the bare skin above her garter, where her stockings ended. “I like the way you look in my bed.”
“I like the way I feel in your bed,” she blurted, continuing her campaign of making herself feel dreadfully inexperienced and the opposite of every woman he must have known before her.
“Good.” He gave her a devilish smile as he kissed higher, to her hip bone. “I dreamt of this, too, you know.”
“You did?” she breathed as his mouth left a trail of decadence to her breasts.
“More times than I can count.” He caressed her breast, cupping it in his palm, flicking his thumb over the peak. “And I thought about this, as well.”
Warmth washed over her. She had touched her own breasts before, in the privacy of the bath or late at night, beneath the counterpane when everyone else was abed. She knew how pleasant the sensation was. However, Decker’s large hand upon her was nothing at all like touching herself. It was electric. It was… Description failed her. Her nipples were hard, her breasts aching, and the place between her clamped thighs was damp and pulsing.
“Oh,” was all she could manage, her hands settling upon him at last. He was within reach, and how could she deny herself the luxury?
“Do you want to know what else I thought about?” he whispered, pressing a kiss to the curve of her breast. “I thought about what color your nipples would be and whether or not your breasts would fill my palms.”
She did not have a particularly large bosom. Every part of her was small, and she knew it, from her tiny feet to everywhere else. Whilst some ladies whirled around the ballroom with generous décolletages on full display, hers had been disappointingly as diminutive as the rest of her.
“They hardly fill your palms,” she said, feeling once more like the wallflower she was.
“They are perfection,” he told her, a reverence in his tone that made her believe him. “And they are the color of summer roses in full bloom.” He kissed her other breast, leveraging himself on his elbows as he cupped her in his hands. “And I thought about doing this.”
He took a nipple into his mouth and sucked. And she felt that wet suction, the heat of his mouth, followed by the lash of his tongue over the taut bud, everywhere. Once more, he chased the fears. The stagnant voice which had always told her she was not enough—that she would never be enough—vanished.
She arched into his knowing mouth, and his fingers skimmed back down her body, finding the apex of her thighs. Fingers coasted over her mound in a featherlight caress, coaxing her to relax. He made her feel beautiful. Her body was awash in senses: his scent, his touch, his tongue, his mouth, his touch. The heat of him at her side.
He skimmed over her seam, a long finger parting her, finding her throbbing center, the place where all her desire dwelled. The place only she had ever touched before. Decker stroked firmly, with quick pulses that had her gasping with pleasure and made her hips rise from the bed to meet him.
He released her nipple, ran his tongue over the tight bud, and then gave her a sultry look from beneath the sooty fringe of his lowered lashes. “You like this, darling?”
Cruel man. Of course she liked it, as he must know. She loved it, in fact. Everything. All of it.Him.Yes, she thought she may love him, too. But she did not dare say that now, and furthermore, she was also not entirely certain her mind and tongue were jointly capable of forming words.Problem solved.
