She had been longing for experience and freedom. That was what she had been meant to seize on the Continent in her trip with Auntie Louise. What was the harm in seizing it now, with this man who delighted her so? No one would ever be the wiser. She could satisfy her curiosity and quell the ache he had started within her.
He withdrew his fingers from her sex and used them instead to pull the remainder of her buttons from their moorings. She tried to ignore the glistening wetness on them, a clear sign of the pleasure he had just been bestowing upon her. But she could not. Nor could she seem to gain control over her wayward body. She was yearning for him. Desperate for him.
Pulsing and throbbing and wet.
So wet.
Her last button had come undone, and she was not far behind it in her own unraveling. She pulled her arms from the sleeves. She was naked. Nary a stitch nor a scrap of fabric shielding her from his feverish, green gaze.
“You are nude,” Neville rasped.
“Yes,” she said.
He was not, and that omission suddenly seemed terribly unfair. She wanted to see him, too.
“You should be as well,” she added.
“Yes,” he agreed, before slowly shaking his head as if he were in a daze. “That is to say, no. I should not. This is terribly rash and wholly unlike me.”
She was growing impatient. “Let it be unlike you then. An aberration.”
“We should end this,” he said, even as he aided her traveling hands in pulling the coat he wore down his shoulders and arms.
The sight of Viscount Wilton’s arms in shirtsleeves was truly admirable.
Her eyes greedily drank in every detail.
He still wore his country tweed and his shoes. She found herself suddenly curious about everything to do with the process of lovemaking. Would he remove his shoes, his trousers? What of his waistcoat and shirt? She wanted him to be as free of fabric and barriers as she was. Wanted to know and experience it all. This adventure would have to last.
“Cease grumbling and kiss me,” she ordered him.
“We cannot—”
His protest died as Charity caught a handful of his shirt and tugged him toward her. From his rather enthusiastic response, she did not suppose he minded the manner in which she had interrupted him. They kissed as her fingers found the buttons of his waistcoat before moving on to his shirt.
And his hands, meanwhile, were busy caressing her everywhere and setting her further aflame. His tongue sank inside her mouth as he traced a line of fire down her waist, over the curve of her hip, and then found the apex of her thighs once more. Those wicked fingers traced along her seam, returning to the sensitive bud hidden within her folds.
Their tongues mated and he groaned into the kiss.
The low sound was all for her, and Charity could not suppress a rush of pride. She had done this to him. Her proper, staid, killjoy viscount had become a wild man for her. Undone by lust. Ought she to be ashamed?
Why, when the result was so exquisite? He rubbed her pearl with just enough tender pressure to take her the rest of the way. Over the ledge she flew, splintering into the welcoming oblivion of release. A rush of potent pleasure slammed into her, beginning in her core and spiraling outward in what seemed like hundreds of tiny ripples.
Charity found herself clinging to Neville in such a tight grip that one of his buttons had popped free. Her breathing was ragged, heart pounding, and the most delicious tingling remained between her thighs.
Neville tore his lips from hers and braced himself on one elbow, hovering over her, his lips dark from kissing, his eyes glazed with passion. “We must stop.”
But he did not make any move to leave her bed.
She framed his handsome face in her hands, reveling in his warmth, the slash of his jaw. “Who says we must?”
“Charity.” Her name was another groan seemingly torn from him as he pressed his forehead to hers. “This is madness.”
Yes, it was.
“Good madness,” she countered.
They had come this far.
