“Yes.”
One word. And from her lips, it was everything.
He laced his fingers through hers. “Come.”
Sidney led her from the library, fully prepared to glare at any gaping servants. There were none under foot. Which was just as well. They ascended the stairs together, holding hands. By the time they reached his chamber, he was desperate for her. But she was every bit as eager.
They crossed the threshold as one, slamming the door in haste behind them, hands on each other. Making short work of garments. Kissing. Touching. His lips found hers as he plucked open the line of buttons on her gown, sliding each one from its moorings with dedicated precision. She pushed his jacket off his shoulders.
They toed off their shoes while sucking each other’s tongues. Her gown was a silken pool on the Axminster as he kissed his way down her throat.Fuck, her skin was smooth and creamy. Her scent was exotic and intoxicating. The scent that had kept him awake on so many nights when he had lain alone in the darkness, and even when he had not been alone but had been wishing the woman in the bed beside him had been her instead.
He nibbled on the cord of her neck, pleased when he wrung a moan from her. She tore at the buttons on his waistcoat, and he helped her to undo them. To shrug it away. Her dainty fingers found the knot of his necktie next, plucking, pulling. And he paid similar court, untying the knot of her petticoat and tournure, sending them to the floor. Finding the knot on the laces of her corset.
There was something delicious about divesting Julianna of her layers, removing all the boundaries between them. He wanted her naked and wanton and wicked. He wanted her desperate and voracious and his to do whatever he wanted with. He sucked on her throat, hard, knowing he would likely leave a mark.
She would see it in the morning and remember this delicious frenzy. Recall the man she had married. And he would see it too, scarcely covered up with pearl powder at the breakfast table, and remember in vivid detail everything that was about to pass between them.
He untied the knot. Her corset loosened. He undid the hooks. The last one came undone and her corset slipped to the floor, joining the pile of their other discarded clothes. His necktie was gone. Her fingers were on the buttons of his shirt next. Plucking them away, one by one as he cupped her delicious breasts through the thin linen of her chemise. There was scarcely anything separating them now. Her nipples were eager buds, prodding his palms.
Paradise.
That was what this was. He forgot all the reasons why he should maintain a necessary distance between them. Why he should not simply give in to the desire threatening to consume him. She was all he had ever wanted, and she was his wife.
His shirt disappeared. He dipped his head and sucked a nipple through her undergarment, drawing on it until she moaned. Her fingers were on the fall of his trousers now, plucking, opening. His cock was rigid, springing forth. When she took him in hand and stroked from root to tip, he groaned, pushing into her touch, needing more.
He kissed his way back up her neck, to her ear. “I want you.”
“Sidney.” She moaned when he bit her earlobe, and her head fell back, reminding him he had to get rid of all those bloody hairpins keeping the fiery beauty of her hair hidden. “I cannot think when you are touching me.”
That makes two of us.
A tempest. That was what she was in his life: a storm, a whirlwind. Uproar and tumult.
Danger.
But danger had never felt so good. She ran her clasped hand up and down his shaft, her thumb finding the mettle seeping from his tip and swirling it over the head. His hips pumped. He found her mouth. Kissed her as her hand continued to work its wicked magic. Until his ballocks tightened, the ache growing.
Only then did he tear his lips from hers. “Bed. Now.”
Sentences were beyond him. It hardly mattered. His terse words had their intended effect. Her eyes went wide, those endless blue pools he had dreamt about so many times stormy and deep. Dark with desire.
Their past was tangled and complicated and painful as hell, but none of that mattered when they were in the bedchamber. He shucked his trousers. She whisked her chemise over her head. Her drawers were the last to go, until she was in nothing but her stockings. When she would have removed them, he stopped her.
“Leave them.”
There was something unspeakably erotic about the sight of her legs encased in ivory silk.Damnation, there were embroidered peacocks on her ankles. She still loved birds.
And he still loved her. The realization slammed into him, hitting him in the chest, constricting his heart like a fist. He tamped down the feelings and moved them to his bed. Later, there would be time to unpack that unwanted valise.
She fell to the bed on her back, thighs open in welcome. He took a moment to admire the sight of her—all lush curves, peaches and cream, stocking-clad legs gorgeously spread, the copper curls on her mound, the pink glistening flesh of her cunny.Hell.He was a starving man. She was the feast.
Sidney was upon her in the next breath. Between her legs, poised to enter, pressed against her center. He ran his cock along her slit, coating himself in her wetness, groaning at the sensation. His body roared with the need to be inside her, but the rest of him wanted to prolong this exquisite torture. To make it last.
She was whispering his name. Writhing beneath him, bucking her hips. So responsive. As desperate for him as he was for her. It had never been like this for him with another, and he knew now that it never could be. He did not want anyone else. All he wanted was her.
All he had ever wanted was Julianna.
“Tell me what you need,” he said, rubbing the head of his cock over her swollen pearl.
