Blessed angels.
“Then do it.”
He strung a line of ravenous kisses along her jaw. “Patience, sweetheart.”
“We haven’t time for patience. Someone could find us here alone together.”
He lifted his head, his blue gaze searing into hers. “I don’t give a damn about anyone else right now. All I care about is you.”
Pretty words. The practiced promise of a rake. Eleanora knew that. Or, at least, her rational mind did. The rest of her, however—her wanton, aflame body—wasn’t interested in examining his motives.
All I care about is you.
No man in all her life had ever truly cared about her. They had wanted her for their various reasons, but none of them had harbored a single concern about her. And foolish though she was, she believed Nando when he said those words.
His hands were traveling over her, following the curves of her body that she took great care to hide in her shapeless, unbecoming gowns. And then tapes were coming undone, and her gown was loosening, the bodice gaping, the entire dressfalling to the floor. She stood before him in her chemise, stays, and petticoat, toeing out of her slippers.
The heaviness of desire mingled with the weight of the moment. She was going to give herself to this man. To this sinful prince who had been waging a campaign of seduction against her from the moment they had met.
For the first time since she had started her new life as Eleanora Brett, she was seizing what she wanted. Making a choice that was for herself alone. She wanted the pleasure he promised. Wantedhim.
She reached for the buttons on his shirt, wondering at how he had managed to get the garment over his head, given his injury.
“It required rather a lot of patience that I no longer have,” he said, as if he had read her mind.
No doubt, he had seen the question on her face.
It hardly mattered, because in the next instant, he grabbed hold of his shirt with one hand and rent it entirely in two. She stared at the ripped halves, drinking in the sight of the golden, muscled skin beneath. He was lean and powerful and deliciously male, his chest lightly dusted with a smattering of hair that caught the light, making it glint. Her fingers itched to touch him.
He tugged the ruined shirt from his upper body using his good arm, and she spied the bandage. The reminder of the would-be assassin’s bullet was sobering, stealing some of the fire from the moment.
“Your injury—” she began, only to be cut off by him.
“Can go to the devil. I’d take you if I were on my deathbed, which I am, quite thankfully, not.”
She might have laughed were the circumstances not so dire and had her heart not been thudding so violently and had her entire body not been on fire. He was grinning, and he looked so deliriously appealing that all she could do was give in to the need to touch him. Her hand on his bare skin. He was hot, so hot, hisskin surprisingly sleek and smooth, the crisp hairs a delightful abrasion to her wandering hand.
Oh.
She liked the way he felt. Liked the way the scent of soap clung to his skin. He must have recently bathed. Perhaps even that morning. Unbidden, an image of him fully naked at his bath flooded her mind, making her knees go weak. Before Eleanora could think further, she stepped into him, closing the distance between them, her other hand tracing lightly over the chiseled wall of his abdomen.
“Yes,” he said, his voice a low growl. “I love your hands on me.”
She loved her hands on him, too. And her mouth. Before she knew what she was about, she pressed her lips to his chest, just over his thudding heart, then over the prominent ridge of his clavicle. Up his neck as he had done to her, the corded muscles tensed as she boldly opened her mouth, tasting the salt of his skin.
“Eleanora, you undo me.” He wrapped his uninjured arm around her waist and guided her to the bed at the opposite end of the chamber.
The rest of her garments came off in a haze of lust, his mouth traveling reverently over every new patch of skin he revealed. Until finally, there was not so much as a stitch left to cover her, and he positioned her on his bed in a sideways fashion. She found it most peculiar until he sank to his knees before her, nudging her legs apart.
She stiffened instantly, her thighs tensing, keeping herself shielded.
But then he gazed up at her, such raw, naked longing on his handsome face, his eyes hooded and his gaze darkened. “Trust me, Eleanora.”
She shouldn’t, and she knew it.
But somehow, she did.
He kissed each of her knees, and she softened, her body relaxing, her thighs parting. And then he dragged his mouth higher, all the way to her center. He kissed her.
