He dipped a finger in the glass and traced her lips. Brandy magic teased her nose, and when she licked, it tantalized her tongue. He drank, then kissed her, sharing brandy heat.
Then he lowered the sheet and dribbled brandy just above her right garter, and licked it up.
“I wish my stockings were gossamer fine,” she breathed, “clocked with flowers, and held up by lacy garters.”
“They will be,” he murmured there. “You’ll takeoff silk stockings for me. You’ll swim naked with me in a warm Grecian bath.”
He poured a tiny amount of brandy into her navel and tongued it “We’ll lick cream and honey off each other as we lick brandy now.”
He collapsed onto his back beside her and upturned the glass to empty over his chest. She laughed for the madness of it and set to lick him clean.
“We’ll have long nights of love in a bed,” he said, hand playing in her hair and down her back. Playing, as a musician plays an instrument. “And we’ll slip away from entertainments to enjoy quick, silent passion in an alcove within hearing of the throng….”
Arousal rippled through her body at that thought.
“All in one night?” she asked unsteadily.
“Probably not.”
She stilled, scarce daring to breathe. Her swimming mind couldn’t quite comprehend what he was saying, but surely he’d just sketched out a life. A life together.
“We’ll spend quiet times talking,” he went on as his fingers slid between her thighs, opening them as if he’d touched a spring. The spring of her need. “In bed and out.”
He found the place that made her arch, his touch teasing, tantalizing. “I talk with you as I never have with a woman, Genova Smith, and that is precious beyond rubies.”
Wasn’t there something about a good wife being more valuable than rubies?
“Be my sanity, Genni, please.”
Delirious with happiness, Genova cradled his head in her hands and blended their brandied mouths. “Yes, of course, Ash. I will be yours, forever.”
He rolled her under him—hers, miraculously hers!—and slid his hand between her thighs. Her body responded immediately. As he built her desire, she touched, tasted, stroked, bedazzled that he was hers forever.
Love and passion wound tight in her, and she wanted him in her again. She cried out, “Now!”
“Yes, now,” he commanded, stroking harder, sucking harder. Tension shattered into pleasure that rolled on and on.
“And again,” he said, thrusting into her still-shimmering body, and indeed, it happened again.
Perhaps she fainted. It seemed that she returned to reality from a great distance, from a dark, burning, airless, wonderful place.
But this was wonderful, too.
She stroked his hot, sweaty skin all the long length of his powerful body, from shoulder, down back, to thigh. No wonder empires had fallen for this.
And this, and he, was hers, till death did them part.
Fitz was strolling along a corridor toward bed when he heard, “Fitz! Oh, Fitz!”
He turned to see Ash’s dotty Great-aunt Thalia trotting after him, quite out of breath.
“What is it, Lady Thalia? Is something the matter?”
“The matter? No, dear boy. But I do so want you to partner me at whist.”
She hooked an arm around his, giving him no choice other than to turn with her and go back toward the festivities.
“It must be an age since we’ve been partners, dear boy. Come along. The night is young!”
