He swallowed hard, a rush of tenderness rising up within him at her calm acceptance. “I’ll remove them.”
Although he had cleaned them after his return from Tierney’s, they weren’t unsoiled. He wouldn’t drag the street muck into her bed.
“Let me help you,” she said, surprising him with the offer.
The very notion of Pamela on her knees before him, helping him to remove his boots, brought a multitude of wicked thoughts to his depraved mind.
“You needn’t,” he rasped, not certain he would be able to control himself.
“I want to.” Smiling shyly, she took his hand in hers, linking their fingers before guiding him to an overstuffed chair by the hearth. She placed her hands on his shoulders, urging him downward. “Sit.”
There was nothing to do but obey. Theo sank into the chair, mesmerized as she smoothed back a lock of hair which had fallen across his forehead. She kissed his cheek, his jaw. The corner of his lips.
He gripped the arms of the chair and made a frustrated sound low in his throat, sounding more beast than man and feeling the same. “You shouldn’t—”
Two slim, elegant fingers pressed to his lips, silencing his protest. “Hush. Let me tend to you.”
No one had tended to him in years. And even when they had, women had fawned over him because he was the prince. Servants had attended him because they had been paid to do so. But here was a woman who wanted to show him care simply because she could. A woman who knew nothing of him, nothing of his past.
To her, he was a mercenary, a man for hire.
He kissed her fingertips, then caught her in a gentle grasp and turned her palm over so that he could set his lips to the silken skin of her inner wrist. “Thank you.”
She withdrew from him and sank to her knees on the Axminster. Grasping his right boot in her hands, she gave a firm, swift tug that bespoke experience with such a task. He wondered briefly if this was a chore she had undertaken for her husband and then tamped down the question and accompanying surge of jealousy as unworthy.
The worn leather boots that had stood him in good stead for years now were no match for her surprising strength. The first boot was off, neatly laid aside. Next came the second, which was also pulled away and placed by its twin.
He sat before her in his stockinged feet, watching the play of the firelight in her tresses. Her hands settled on his knees lightly, bearing no more weight than butterflies, before sweeping higher.
Sweet Deus. His cock twitched.
She wasn’t going to…
She was.
Her fingers moved to the fall of his trousers, finding the round discs of his buttons. He was gripping the arms of the chair so hard that he wouldn’t be surprised by the sound of splintering, snapping wood as he tore the piece of furniture apart. She hesitated, her hair falling like a veil over part of her face as she glanced up at him, as if asking permission.
She needn’t have, not with that part of him, which was pulsing and stiff, jutting against his trousers in crude invitation. His ballocks were heavy and drawn tight, his entire body on the razor’s edge of sheer erotic splendor.
“Pamela,” he said on a groan as another button slid free of its moorings.
Deus, her name felt good on his lips. Just as her hands felt good on his body. But he suspected they could feel even better without barriers between them. Just his cock, nothing more. He could allow that much, if only so that he could relive the pleasure of this night long after it was over and he was gone from her life forever.
“Just the fall of your trousers,” she said softly. “Enough to free you.”
It was as if she understood his misgiving without him needing to explain. Gratitude and lust slammed into him with equal force.
“Yes,” he hissed out as her fingers grazed lightly over his cockstand. “Though nothing more.”
Her expression didn’t change, though he knew she must wonder at the cause for his refusal to disrobe. If she did, she didn’t give voice to the question, and he was damned thankful for that as well.
But then, he forgot to be thankful. Forgot everything, including his own name. Because she undid the last of his buttons and with a bit of encouragement from her, his cock sprang free of his trousers and drawers both. He no longer had to wonder about how good her hand would feel on him without cloth separating them. Her fingers wrapped around his length, stroking him from base to tip.
A breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding escaped in a hiss. She swirled her thumb over his cock head. He was already leaking, and she slicked the pearly drops over him before taking him into her mouth.
His hips bucked, his white-knuckled grip on the chair going tighter still. Wet heat bathed his shaft as she drew him deeper and sucked. And then her tongue. Dear, sweet Deus, her tongue. It whorled over him, traveling the same path as her thumb had, before running along the underside, finding a place where he was particularly sensitive. All the while, she held him in a relentlessly firm grip, stroking and sucking, stroking and sucking. Her other hand had moved to his thigh, then higher, to his hip, caressing him as she took him down her throat.
He couldn’t resist another second. He had to touch her. His fingers slipped into the softness of that blonde cloud falling around her face and down her back. He sifted it through his fingers, and it was like spun gold, and everything was too much. Her beautiful mouth wrapped around his cock, the sweet suction as she threatened to drain him dry. The breathy little moans she made as she spoiled him beyond any bliss he had known with another lover.
