He groaned. “Wear them the day we wed.”
She snorted. “Yes, your lordship.”
“Just Giles.” His hands traveled down her leg. “With you, only Giles.”
He shifted, lifted her foot, and kissed her arch. She sucked in her breath through her teeth, but made no sound. Yearning fluttered out from her very essence. His lips moved, slow and deliberate, up her leg. Her pleasure intensified. When he paused to explore the tender place behind her knee, she became liquid fire.
He continued exploring her inner thigh. He draped her leg over his shoulder so that it dangled down his back. She looked down at his hair in hazy disbelief. He intended…oh, goodness…
Her body did not mind. She was wet. Embarrassingly so.
He blew softly against her sex. Sweet, sweet torture—far beyond anything she’d dreamed possible. A moan escaped as craving ate away at her reserve.
He laughed, low and breathy, and then he pressed his mouth against her folds, sending sparks of pleasure through every limb. Her leg slid off his shoulder. He didn’t lift his face. His tongue circled her in gentle, rapid pulses until her breath matched his frantic rhythm.
She hissed through her teeth.
She would do anything—anything—he asked, so long as he kept going. She wanted to sigh. She wanted to pull him closer. She wanted to wail his name from the deepest, wildest part of her heart. Yearning swelled—blinding, breathless—then, she burst, spinning through pleasure, all that she’d kept locked, tumbling out in disarray.
Bromton dug his fingers into her thighs, pulling her back to the present, back to him. He cradled himself between her thighs, pressing his head into her belly.
Oh. My.
She blinked up, the light dancing on the ceiling nothing more than a blurred haze. What had just happened felt like an answer to a question she’d been asking in vain for years. Wonderful, yes, but leaving her exposed and vulnerable.
Vulnerable to a brute. A thief who had stolen her heart.
She lifted herself onto her elbow so that she could see him. His hair fell in raffish locks around his face. Sin coated his lips, curving upward in a smile of pure bliss.
What they’d just done was nothing like the hasty coupling she’d experienced with Septimus. She and Giles hadn’t evencoupled, and she was infinitely more satisfied.
Bromton smoothed her curls away from her face and kissed her hair. His fingers moved like silk along her brow. Tendrils of tenderness grew from her heart, reaching out.
She couldn’t lie anymore. She was in love. Hopelessly.Desperatelyin love.
“Thank you, Giles,” she said. “I feel—” Her words tripped over a blockage in her throat. “I feel happy,” she finished.
He snuggled his face into her neck. “You are mine to pleasure.”
“Not yet,” she whispered, “not really.”
He drew back andtsked. “If you think I’d let you go, you are very much mistaken.” He winced as he settled onto the mattress at her side. “Now, I must think of something dreadfully mundane.”
She turned toward him and spidered her fingers across his chest. “Must you?”
He opened one eye. “I must.”
“I think not,” she said, mimicking him.
The things she imagined—well, no decent lady would even dream them, let alone be eager to try. But hadn’t Giles said there was no shame in desiring the person you loved?
“I could,” she lowered her voice to a wicked purr, “touch you,” her hand skimmed his manhood, “the way you touched me.”
His fingers circled her wrist. “I will not allow…”
“Allow?” She pressed her breasts into his side, feeling friction against her nipples through the thin fabric of her shift.
“Katherine…” His voice was delightfully hoarse and pleading.
