His hand stilled, just for a moment, before tracing a path up along her side. “You can prevail upon me to forget, love,” he murmured. “And I shall endeavour to do other things entirely.” He flashed her a wicked smile and leant forward to press his mouth against her breast. His tongue, absurdly hot against her skin, flicked out across her nipple.
So many things one could do with a mouth. Her legs brushed against his buckskins and she realised she had only half completed her task.
“Wait,” she said as he kissed his way to her other breast. “I was not done.”
He spared her a guarded glance. “In what manner?”
She pushed at his shoulders and, reluctantly, he obeyed, sprawling back against the couch and giving her access to his chest and stomach once more. Straddled like this, her knees on either side of his waist and her core pressed against him, she felt a surge of power. Control. She closed her eyes, savouring the moment, needing to press it into her memory like a flower between the pages of a book.
When she opened her eyes, he filled her vision. Opaque eyes, unreadable expression, looking for all the world like a fallen angel. His chest rose and fell.
When this was over, she would leave and never return.
A log slumped in the hearth, scattering sparks, and agony squeezed her chest. A similar emotion split the opaqueness in his eyes—a response to her pain, perhaps, or a similar reckoning of his own.
His hand came up to touch her face with such tenderness, she thought her heart would break. “Annabelle.”
She laid her palms against his chest, feeling the pounding of his heart. Then she slid down, down. Past the rigid muscles of his stomach, which tensed under her touch. Down to the buttons on his buckskins, and the hardness that lay underneath.
“Show me how to touch you,” she said.
Briefly, he closed his eyes, his breath harsh. Then he took her hand and placed it against his erection. She shifted back to give herself room, and let herself feel.
He was hot, even through the material. When she experimented, stroking her hand up and down, he made a noise in the back of his throat almost as though she had hurt him. There was no more of that lazy amusement in his eyes now; they were intent, hot, fixed on her with an intensity that brought an ache to the place between her legs.
“What now?” she asked, her fingers stilling.
“When you’re comfortable, we can remove these.” He tapped at his buckskins.
“I’m comfortable now. I want to remove them.”
He twitched under her hand and she shifted back again, this time sinking onto the floor in front of him as he stood and rid himself of his trousers.
She gazed hungrily at his body. Yards of bare skin. Bronzed where the sun had kissed him, paler across his chest, his legs. His muscles tensed as her gaze moved across them, as though she were trailing her hands not her eyes over him, and she pressed her legs together, need burning inside her. A torch, flaring bright, compelling in the darkness.
He bent and drew her up so she was standing too, their bodies flush, the warmth of the sunlight gilding them. “We don’t have to do everything,” he said, brushing his mouth against the line of her jaw. The places their bodies touched blazed with awareness. “We can do as we did before.”
Before, he had focused his attention purely on her.
Today, she wanted more.
“I want to please you,” she said.
“Have you not been listening?” He looked at her with pleasure-drunk eyes. “You already do.”
“I want to please you the way you pleased me.”
His eyes were the dark sea and she drowned in them. Slowly, he sank back down onto the couch, guiding her to kneel before him. The carpet was soft against her knees.
“Your hand,” he said gruffly, holding out his palm. She put her fingers in it, and he guided her to his length. His skin was velvet smooth as she wrapped her hand around it. He stifled a groan.
“Like this?” she asked.
“Yes. Just like that, sweetheart.” His eyes fluttered shut and his mouth fell half open. The sight of it—her hand working him, his short sharp breaths and the slack, helpless pleasure on his face—was the single most erotic thing she had ever seen. His hips rocked into her hand, and every part of him was drawn tight, pleasure coiling and uncoiling. She had a sense of how it felt, because it had been how he had made her feel.
Only this time,shewas in control. It was a wild, heady feeling, to have this much power over another person; to know that he was compelled by the single, simple movement of her hand.
Remembering what he had done with his mouth, she bent. He smelt salty, musky, but not unpleasant. It was all unequivocally male, and the ache between her thighs only intensified.
