They were silent for a moment, her body humming, his shoulder hard and warm beneath his coat where it brushed up against hers.
“I’d very much like to kiss you again,” he said. “If I may.”
“Oh, Jack. Don’t make it absurd!”
He laughed, but there was nothing to laugh at in the way he turned to look at her, his hand brushing up under the curls at the nape of her neck. He was entirely serious now, an intensity in his look that made her breath catch.
“Jack…” she breathed, needing to say something, do anything, to break the tension of the moment because the anticipation was unbearable. He smiled softly, with his eyes, and his hand slidfrom her nape to her cheek, his thumb brushing the corner of her mouth.
“Here,” he murmured, eyes on that point where the pad of his thumb had made her lips tingle. He pressed a featherlight kiss there, and, “Here,” he murmured again as his mouth moved to the centre of hers.
Every light touch left a tingling trail, made her breath catch and a coiling heat swoop right down through her centre.
He kissed her fully, as he’d done in the library, his hand sliding once more to the nape of her neck, finding pins and freeing them while his lips slid, seeking, across hers. His tongue touched her lower lip, and she gasped. Then he stroked inside her mouth, tilting her head back as he groaned. Lucy moaned too, the kiss no longer in her control. It was a breathless, intoxicating thing, a surrender to a part of her that was new and yet not new, a creature spreading wings—wings she’d often felt the touch of, waiting.
“Let me look at you,” Jack said huskily, pulling back as the curls he’d freed fell all around her shoulders. “You beautiful thing, you,” he murmured, already kissing her again, the pressure of it coaxing her to lie down. Jack moved with her, mouth on hers. His hand moved down her throat to her chest—to her breast. The sensation of his palm, the pressure of his caress, and the low noise he made, sent a new wave of heat thudding through her.
“Jack…”
“You’re right, I’m sorry. We should stop.”
He sat up, his breathing ragged, his cheeks flushed. He flexed the fingers of his hand as he gave her a dark-eyed, laughing look. “I should probably go. Or at least sit on the other side of the room.”
“No.”
“No?”
She sat up too. “I don’t want you to go.”
Then, not exactlyshy, but still tentative because it was all so new, she touched his cheek, the faint roughness of his jaw. “You will marry me? Soon?”
“As soon as I can.”
“Then I don’t want you to go.”
He went very still.
“I want you to stay, Jack.” She looked at her hand on his jaw, noting every minute rasp of stubble against the whorls of her fingertips. It was a strange dichotomy, this acute awareness of the smallest thing while her heart pounded and her whole self felt caught up in a storm wave. “I want you to stay,” she said again. “I want… I want it all, Jack—with you. I’m not even embarrassed. It doesn’t feel wrong, does it? Not us, not being this close.”
He still said nothing, though his hand came up to cover hers and press it more firmly against him. The rest of him was motionless, as though caught on a precarious tipping point.
“Am I terrible for speaking so?” she said. “But I have wanted you, and wanted you, and now, like this, you in my bed… It feels like a dream, but it also feels like coming home… Won’t you say something? Am I…am I too shocking? But I always say too much to you…”
“You say what I don’t have words to. I love you. God, I adore you. Iwantyou, so very, very much. But—”
He stopped talking because she leaned forward and kissed him. His eyes sank shut, and he let out a long, painful breath, his every muscle rigid as she sat back and observed her handiwork. For a moment, his eyes stayed closed, then they snapped open, a hot gleam in them. Good. It seemed she was doing things correctly.
She wiped the gleam from his face as she reached behind her back and began to unhook her dress.
Jack was frozen, stunned,speechlessfor once, as she continued, heart racing, another echoing throb coming from much lower down. She wouldn’t have had the courage with anyone else. But it was Jack, only Jack… He’d known her forever, and now he would see this part of her too. Clothes didn’t seem so very important when you already knew someone’s soul. When you’d given them yours. In fact, clothes seemed very irritating and in the way when everything inside you was crying out to get closer, closer still, infinitely, irresistibly close…
He watched her chest as the loosened dress began to fall away from her body, and she knew a moment of smugness. This was a power she held over him. Here, now,shewould lead, and he would follow, helpless, wanting…
She pushed the cap sleeves from her shoulders and set to work on her stays. Jack said her name, but she ignored him, pulling the loosened stays away and tossing them to the floor. She must continue while her courage held. With a firm movement, she pushed down her chemise. Bared her breasts fully. Her dress puddled around her waist. As she lifted her hips to remove it, she said, “You know, Jack, you did promise me last night that you would get undressed, if I wanted you to.”
“For art,” he whispered, eyes still on her chest, as though she really had cast a spell on him.
Slowly, dazedly, he stood and pulled off his cravat. Coat, waistcoat, and jacket followed as Lucy wriggled her way free of the rest of her clothes. She sat entirely naked upon the bed, watching Jack undress. His eyes never left her body, and she laughed when he tripped in his haste to remove his trousers.
