Now that he was near to her, she detected a hint of spirits on his breath. Was that the reason for his delay? Had he lingered for so many hours because he held her in such disregard? Perhaps bedding her was a chore.
“Thank you,” she said. “You are most generous.”
“No, I’m not.”
She frowned up at him.
“I’m selfish.” He reached for her, cupping her face, the pad of his thumb skimming tentatively over her jaw. “And you are beautiful. Far too beautiful.”
These were words she had hungered for, along with his admiration. Heavens, his attention, his presence. It was all she had dreamed of over the first few terrible weeks after their wedding. But instead, he had left her alone. She didn’t know what to make of them now. How to feel.
“I’m hardly that,” she said, knowing she shouldn’t like the sweep of his touch nearly so much.
Unable to keep the desire from sparking to life.
“You know you are,” he countered, his caress trailing lower, along her throat where her pulse pounded hard and fast.
She didn’t know it. What she did know was that she was not beautiful in the traditional sense. But she’d had the interest of gentlemen. She simply hadn’t wanted it until Everett.
Her nipples tightened into hard buds against the bodice of her night rail. It was too much.Hewas too much. She wasn’t prepared to lower her portcullis for him after his shabby treatment of her on their wedding day. And yet, the way he had come to her defense and to her mother’s rescue had changed everything.
“Shall I disrobe?” she asked quickly, seeking to snuff the burgeoning flame of longing that had already been lit deep within her.
“No.” With slow deliberation, he glided his hand from her neck to her nape. Long fingers cupped the base of her skull, kneading the tension from her scalp. Making her head fall back into his ministrations before she could think twice. “Let me do it.”
She was about to protest, but his mouth settled over hers, stealing her ability to speak and erasing any words she may have said with the persuasion of his lips and tongue. Her hands flitted to his shoulders, fingertips delving into the muscled cords for purchase.
He tasted like whisky and dark desire, like passion and anger and mystery and everything she shouldn’t want but somehow did. Sybil opened for him on a moan, sucking on his tongue as he kissed her deeply, tenderly. Kissed her in a way he hadn’t yet. Not before their marriage and most certainly not since.
Heat built low in her belly and licked outward, taking her over. She became aware of his tall, lean form pressing into hers, of his length springing hard and demanding and thick against her. Of his warm strength. Everything shifted and changed. This was what she had promised him, yes, but it was also somehow different.
There was no obligation in the way he kissed her. There was only the reckless need of a man who was helplessly drawn to her. And she kissed him in the same fashion, a woman who didn’t want to desire the husband who had abandoned her and yet who seemed incapable of resisting.
He broke the kiss and raised his head, glancing down at her, his pale eyes fiery in their intensity, his mouth darkened and red. “Will you allow me?”
His hoarse question took her by surprise. He had simply claimed her before. Had taken what he wanted as if she were a debt owed him. And she had given herself because she had been unable to resist him. Because she still had feelings for him, even though she knew all too well that she should not.
Because part of her still longed for this man, the man she had once believed could love her. The man she had allowed herself to love, before everything had changed.
“Yes,” she said, telling herself her acquiescence was because of her bargain with him and not because she was softening toward the husband who had abandoned her.
He kissed her again, his fingers settling on the buttons of her dressing gown. She felt them come undone as she opened for him again, her eyes falling closed. Sybil surrendered herself to sensation. To the night. There was nothing but the skilled movement of his lips, the hot glide of his tongue as he licked into the recesses of her mouth. She tasted whisky and sin and Everett. Her husband. The man she shouldn’t want and couldn’tkeep herself from desiring. The man who was a mystery she couldn’t seem to understand.
Her dressing gown slid to the floor, and then she was only in her night rail. Although they had done this once before, the dance between them was still unfamiliar and unnerving. His caresses glided over her, molding her to him. Her waist, her bottom. His big hands grasped her there, gently holding her.
Their bodies were flush, the only barrier separating them a thin veneer of civility: his jacquard silk and her modest lawn. She felt him through the thin cloth, his form hard and strong where hers was pliant and soft. Felt any resistance to him yielding, a heaviness settling between her thighs accompanied by an ache that increased with the pressure of his mouth on hers.
How easy it was to forget the hurt when she was in his arms. Perhaps that was the allure of the rake; he knew her body better than she did. Could make her yearn and burn for him, even as her heart lay in ash from the destruction he had wreaked upon it.
His mouth left hers to trail a tantalizing path of kisses down her neck, lingering on a particularly sensitive place before he murmured against her skin, “This half heart haunts me in my sleep.”
She didn’t know what he meant for a moment. Her brain was muddled by his nearness and his scent, her heart thumping fast, mind unable to concentrate on anything other than pleasure.
His fingers found the small row of buttons at the base of her throat, freeing them from their moorings and delivering more of her bare skin to his lips for sensual torment. He feathered kisses over her as if she were a marvel to be worshipped, and she rubbed her cheek along the silkiness of his dark hair, reveling in the softness, the connection.
His hand moved from her bottom, traveling along her side and up, over her rib cage to cup her breast. The slow stroke of his thumb over her nipple set forth a ripple of pleasure. Slowly,he savored her, teased her. As if it were not desperately late. As if they were not at daggers drawn.
She was moved to react in kind, kissing his sharply angled cheekbone, his temple. Breathing him in, holding him to her. Believing, however foolishly, that there was something more tender between them than base desire.
