“Very well,” he said agreeably, following the modest line of her decolletage until he reached the place where her heart thumped frantically beneath his touch. “Then tell me you don’t feel it. Tell me I’m alone in this raging desire. Tell me I’m the only one who burns with need.”
Her lips parted, a soundless sigh falling from them, the warm rush of air hitting his lips in a phantom kiss. “You ask too much. More than I’m willing to give.”
He would change her mind.
“The words should be easy enough to speak if it’s how you feel,” he pointed out, already knowing her answer.
She felt it too. He sensed it in the way she responded to him. Her body melted beneath his touch, regardless of how much her mind did not wish it to be so.
“I…” she began, only to falter.
“Say it,” he commanded, so close to kissing her again.
“Please.” Her eyes pleaded with him as surely as she did.
But he was unrelenting. Merciless for her in this alone, because he wanted her more than he had known it was possible to want another. A mere handful of days with her, and she was like the breath in his lungs. He needed her.
“Why is it so difficult, spitfire?” he taunted softly, pushing her as he knew she needed to be pushed. “If you don’t want me, then tell me.”
She stared at him for what felt like an eternity but must have only been a scant few seconds before she capitulated.
“I feel it too,” she conceded at last, so quietly that he had difficulty hearing her.
He finally kissed her then, unable to exist a moment more without his mouth on hers. The sound she made, low in her throat, a feminine hum of surrender, spurred him on. All the ravenous desire for her that he had been restraining rushed forth.
She was his. She knew it. Her kisses, her words, her actions told him she did.
And he was going to have her.
His hands moved of their own accord, finding their way beneath her gown and petticoats, past her chemise and up her stocking-clad legs, beyond soft garters with neat bows. To bare skin.
He gave her his tongue as he reverently skimmed his hands over her inner thighs. She was clutching him to her as if she feared he would leave, clinging to his shoulder with a tight grip, her other hand sliding into his hair to cup the base of his skull, her fingers threading through his hair. And she was kissing him back, feasting on his lips and tongue. The proper, infallible lady-in-waiting had come undone.
What a treasure she was.
Maxim deepened the kiss, gliding his left hand over her skin to settle at her hip while he slid his right to her sex. He cupped her there, gently, possessively, offering her a slight bit of pressure when her hips jerked instinctively into his touch.
He wanted to remind her that she was his, that he was claiming her now. That this night, her coming to him, herconcession, changed everything. But words were lost in a tangle of kisses. Everyone beyond the four protective walls enshrouding them ceased to exist. There was only the warmth of the fire, the heady floral scent of her in his lungs, the taste of her on his lips and the wet heat of her cunny searing his palm.
He moved his hand slowly, torturing himself as much as her, withdrawing to trace her cleft with his middle finger before finding her plump little bud and teasing her with light, feathery strokes.
She gasped, hips undulating.
So responsive, his spitfire.
He had known she would be.
She felt so good that his cock began to leak. From nothing more than touching her cunny. Maxim was lost. It didn’t matter. She was his salvation. He was sure of it. His gray-eyed Tansy with a will of pure iron.
He traced her seam, needing more. Needing to be inside her. If not with his cock, then with his finger. And she moved, accommodating him, rising on her knees to grant him a better angle. His fingertip found her entry, slick and beckoning, and he rubbed over it in slow, lazy circles until she was panting into his mouth.
Until she ended the kiss, breathless, her eyes glazed with passion. “Maxim.”
“I want to feel you,” he told her fervently. “I want inside you.”
Her eyes widened. He pressed slightly and yet did not advance. He would await her permission, even if it killed him.
“I…oh…we shouldn’t.”
