No.He hadn’t thought either of those things, really.He just wanted to see her.To hold Fiona against him and feel life, her indomitable spirit cursing through her body.
He’d waited in her darkened room, a thief in the shadows when she had come up with Eve and disappeared into her dressing room.Watching silently as they spoke in whispers.Waiting to speak until he knew for sure she was alone.
But then she had brushed her hair before the mirror, those caressing strokes through her long dark tresses mesmerizing him, holding him to silence.He imagined taking the brush from her, performing the task himself.Running those silken locks through his fingers and around his body as he drew her into his arms.
So entangled in the fantasy he had been, she’d already begun to disrobe before he came to his senses.Like some bloody voyeur, he watched, unable to move or make a sound as she shrugged her dressing gown from her shoulders.Sensual arousal had burst into blood-boiling lust then as her wrapper slid down her body, revealing her undergarments inch by inch.Undergarments that he never would have thought a virginal young woman like Fiona would possess.
But then, he shouldn’t have been surprised.Everything he had imagined might lie beneath her simple gowns was true and then some.
No chaste white cotton for his bold lass, no.Her breasts thrust upward and held, cupped erotically by nothing less than a black satin corset tied with white strings.The contrast highlighted her narrow waist; the white lace that trimmed the edges was innocence in conjunction with eroticism.Each petticoat that fell was a revelation.The outer, matching the day dress she had on earlier, silk trimmed in a wide, gathered flounce with piped scrolling.Simple, like the military styling of her outer garments.The next was white, diaphanous cotton gauze, ruffled and trimmed with purple and black satin ribbon.The next gossamer batiste, so delicate it was nearly transparent.
When the last petticoat fell, he was treated to the full display.The long black corset silhouetted the outrageous curve from breast to waist and over the rounded curve of her hips.Below, her short knickers of layered batiste dripped sensually with black lace to mid-thigh.Her black stockings molded to her firmly muscled thighs and calves.The decadent white and violet scrolls of the clocking wrapped about her ankles and disappeared into the black and violet delicately heeled slippers she still wore.
She was sin and innocence combined, just as she was all spit and fire on the outside and vulnerable underneath.Aylesbury’s blood pounded in his veins at the sight of her poised in the dim light of the single lamp.But when she leaned over to untie her garters, hair cascading over her shoulders, giving him a perfect view of her cleavage swelling over the edge of her corset as she bent, the moan of pure animal desire that escaped him was beyond containment.
Freezing at the sound, Fiona looked straight at him, though he didn’t think she could see him in the darkness.He also couldn’t bear to have her performance come to an end.
“I beg of you,” he rasped out.“Please, don’t stop.”
“Harry?”
He stepped from the shadows.“Were you expecting someone else?”
“I-I thought you went home.”
“I could not.”
* * *
She’d never been sosurprised in her entire life as she was when Harry emerged from the darkened corner of her room.Her first impulse was to snatch up her petticoats and cover herself, but she resisted the urge.She had done that once before, and she wouldn’t do it now.This was her room, after all.Instead, she laid her hands on her hips and squared her shoulders as if she hadn’t a care.
But she couldn’t stop the questions that raced through her mind.
How had he gotten there?When?What was he doing there?But then she saw the look on his face, the raw hunger more voracious than it had been in the alley that afternoon.It held the answer to one question, at least.She voiced it, anyway, wanting to hear the answer for herself.
“What do you want, Harry?”
Her voice was breathless, unwittingly provocative.He smiled wolfishly, raking his eyes down her half-clad body.Her flesh burned under his gaze but oddly rippled with gooseflesh in its wake.As he drew closer, every nerve in her body tensed.
Fiona knew she could deny many things, but not this.Never this.
When he was but a hair’s breadth away, he reached for her, running a palm over her corseted ribs.She drew in a deep, fortifying breath and heard his catch as well as his eyes returned to the swell of her breasts against her corset.
“You are every man’s fantasy,” Aylesbury whispered huskily.“Where did you get this?”
She licked her lips.“Paris.”
“Vive la France.”
He lifted her hair from her shoulder, letting the length through his fingers before running them up her bare arm and over her shoulder to tease the sensitive flesh behind her ear.He leaned closer to her, his roughened cheek brushing hers as he bent his head and inhaled deeply.
Her heart began beating like the big drum from Mr.Sousa’s brass band.Pounding so hard that her head swam dizzily.She swayed toward him but steadied herself.
“Wha–what are you doing in my room, Harry?”
He chuckled softly, his breath tickling at her neck.“Nothing nefarious, I promise you.I merely wanted to assure myself that you were well.I never imagined...”His fingers continued upward, burying themselves in her hair.“You are magnificent, my love.I had imagined what you might be hiding beneath those proper gowns, sure it would be something sensual.If I had known just how erotic, I never would have been able to stop myself from having you the other night, Pembrooke or no.”
He cupped her breasts in his palms, his fingers caressing the bare flesh swelling above the satin edge and lifting even as his mouth descended.His lips brushed, teased along the border until she raked her fingers through his hair, urging him closer.His tongue dipped into the crease of her cleavage as he fondled her breasts, then squeezed...no, the top hook of her corset came undone, then another.His tongue grazed through the widening chasm again, and she shuddered with pleasure.
