She turned as she did so. When he looked up, the shadow of her cunny behind her damp shift was right before his eyes.
He jumped to his feet. “Stand before the stove. Get warm.” He strode to his bedroom and ripped the blanket from his bed. Temptation had never dug its claws so deeply into him before. His desires had always taken their proper place, aligning with the proper women for the occasion. It seemed cruel that his body now wanted something, someone, who could never fit into his life.
He stamped back to the main room, and froze. Cassie stood before the fire, bare as the day she was born. Her breasts hung full and heavy. Her nipples were peaked into hard points. Shadows from the stove’s grate flicked across her smooth belly, and lower.
His mouth went dry. “What are you doing?”
She raised one shoulder, the movement causing her breast to jiggle. “My shift was wet, too.”
“Don’t play games, Cassie.” God help him, he liked her games. But he was relegated to playing quadrille while she was a game of whist. They might be in the same general category, but they had two distinct sets of rules.
She clasped her hands together. “You haven’t touched me since that night.” She swallowed. “Why?”
“I just carried you through the streets of London. That’s touching.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Don’t play games, Charles,” she said, throwing his own words back at him.
They stared at each other across the room. The storm raged outside, rain lashing against his window, but they were in their own cocoon. Their own box. One made just for the two of them.
Charles groaned. All of his carefully made resolutions crumbled. His reasonable arguments for why the two of them didn’t work were cast aside. It took only three strides to stand in front of her. She tilted her head to look up at him, her eyes full of hope, desire, and some other emotion he didn’t want to name.
He drew the blanket about her shoulders, used it as a rope to reel her into his body. “What am I going to do with you?” he whispered. He knew what he wanted to do. He wanted to fuck her. Hard. Bend her over, leave his mark on her arse, make her know who she belonged to before sliding between her thighs and taking her again long and slow.
But for a woman like her and a man like him, that was a dream. Wasn’t it?
She shivered, the tips of her breasts scraping across his waistcoat. “You’re still wet.”
Men woke up from dreams. That was inherent in their nature. But until this one ended, he was going to make the most of it. He’d let himself believe that maybe two different shaped boxes could be squeezed, contorted, until they fit together.
He twisted his grip on the blanket, pulling Cassie up to her toes, her body flush to his. He was still wet. Dripping, in fact. He grinned. “What are you going to do about it?”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Do about it? Oh, Cassie had so many ideas. The first of which was to get him as bare as she. His wet clothes felt like ice against her skin. She couldn’t tell if the shivers that raced down her spine were from the cold generally, or from the delicious sort of pleasure that came from the cold pressing against her most sensitive bits.
Her breasts felt heavy, achy, as they scraped down the wool of his clothes when she set her heels back on the floor. She attacked his neckcloth as he herded them into his bedroom. The faintest of light came through the window, and everything was dark lines and shifting shadows.
But she didn’t need to see him. Feeling him worked just fine. She pushed his waistcoat off his shoulders and yanked up on his shirt. She was just starting to work on his falls when he tumbled them both to his bed. An urgency she didn’t recognize coursed through her veins.
This was all going to disappear soon. Charles’s hand roaming up her thigh. His mouth on her collarbone. The way every caress made her feel like she was a marvel to him. Something precious.
She’d never been anyone’s precious. When she found Lydia’s killer, followed through on her plans, she never would be again.
She dug her nails into his shoulders, blinking back tears. This was not the time for second thoughts. And when Charles slid down her body, pushed her thighs wide, it was easy to let her mind go blank.
Using his thumbs, he peeled her lower lips open, just like he’d peeled back her walls. She’d never felt so exposed. Laid bare. It was like her body was a direct extension of her soul. And Charles was invading both of them fully.
At the first swipe of his tongue, she threw her arms over her head and pressed her palms into his headboard. She needed something firm, something solid to hold onto or else she was in very real danger of drifting away into a puddle of nothingness.
He lapped at her opening, made long, leisurely thrusts into her core, before licking his way up to flick his tongue at her little bundle of nerves.
She squeezed her eyes tight. “Oh God.”
He chuckled, his breath ghosting across her sensitive nub. “I don’t mind the comparison, sweetheart, but I prefer it when you call out my name.”
And so she did. Over and over. His name became an incantation. A prayer. She said it when he brought her to her peak with his fingers, his tongue. Moaned it as he crawled back up her body and entered her slowly.
Her body clutched at his hard length, trying to draw him deeper.
