As if he had heard her thoughts, Huntingdon broke the drugging kiss, lifting his head to gaze down at her. “Off.”
She blinked at him, trying to understand his one-word command. “Pardon?”
It amazed her that she was capable of speech. Of coherent thought.
He tugged at her night rail, his eyes searing her. There was a new light within the blue depths, a hunger she had never seen. She shivered beneath the force of that stark desire. Not because she feared it, but because she wanted it to consume her.
She released him with great reluctance and obliged, taking the soft cotton in her hands and pulling it over her head in one swift motion. Cool night air bathed her skin. She was naked, from head to toe, nothing to hide her from him.
Though a wave of shyness hit, she refused to give in as Huntingdon’s gaze traveled over her. This was her husband, the man she loved. The man she had loved from a long-ago moment when he had visited their country house as Shelbourne’s school chum. He was hers to keep now, but he was also hers to lose.
And lose him she must not.
Therefore, she dared.
Calling upon some of what she had read in Shelbourne’s pilfered books, she reached for her husband’s dressing robe. If she was nude, it was only fair that he must be as well. The tantalizing swath of his muscled chest, finely stippled with dark hair, was not enough. Her fingers found the belt, undid the knot. Beneath it, he was naked.
“Helena,” he protested, his hand catching hers to stay her progress.
But she was having none of it.
“Let me, my lord,” she said, part demand, part plea.
She wanted so badly to touch him, the need an ache in her fingertips. Helena pushed the robe from his shoulders, gliding her hands along his firm, warm flesh as she did so. The garment fell to the floor. She continued her exploration. He was so male. So beautiful, all angles and cords and sinews. His hardness different from her softness, the blunt, angular lines of him nothing at all like her curves.
He stood still under her ministrations, allowing her to touch him as she liked.
Helena grew bolder. She pressed a kiss to his chest, directly above his wildly beating heart. Her hands drifted lower, seeking the part of him she had not dared to directly behold. She glanced over his firm, thick hardness.
On a growl, he caught her wrists. “Damn you, hellion, not yet.”
There it was again, the reminder of the night before. She wondered just how much he remembered. But in the next instant, his hands were on her, his arms around her. She was suddenly floating above the floor as he carried her the rest of the way to her bed before laying her gently upon it.
He joined her, his body settling between her legs, his hands coasting over her skin and sending sparks shooting through her like stars. “You are every bit as ravishing as I imagined.”
His low words dashed away any lingering timidity. He had imagined her without clothing before? She would have demanded to know when and how often, but his head dipped, and those sinful lips of his latched on her nipple. An exquisite rush of sensation sent her reeling as he sucked.
Her back arched from the bed, her hands settling on his shoulders. She had read about such matters, but reading them and experiencing them herself, Huntingdon’s mouth hot and wet upon her…there was no comparison. Nothing could have prepared her for the sleek suction.
Nor the next sensation he unleashed when those long, elegant fingers of his slipped between her already parted thighs and he teased her pearl with slow, tantalizing circles. Her hips bucked, seeking more. And he gave her more, releasing her nipple to flick his tongue over the distended bud while he rubbed her sensitive flesh harder below.
“Oh,” was all she could manage to say when he moved to her other breast, torturing that nipple as surely as he had the first.
A sea of pleasure was running through her.
Delicious, overwhelming pleasure.
And she wanted to drown in it.
“So wet,” he murmured against the curve of her breast, his voice dark with seduction and a note of approval. “Will you welcome me, Helena?”
Did he need to ask?
Could not the man see she was out of her mind for him, that she had been all along?
She was about to tell him so when his fingers left her pearl and traveled down her seam, finding her core. He slicked her moisture as he went, painting her with her own dew. How strange and feverish she felt, almost overwhelmed by need, wanting him there. Inside her. Any part of him, all of him.
“Helena,” he said again, his gaze finding and holding hers through the low light of the lone gas lamp she had kept lit. “I must be mad to be here with you, to be touching you like this. I promised myself I would not.”
