“Good or bad?” Was that insecurity in his eyes?
“Oh, heavens, you’re lovely.” That made him laugh. A rough bark of a sound, loud in this enclosed place.
“Can I…” She lifted a hand.
“Go on.”
Heat simmered off him, palpable before their skin even met.
First, she touched the hair she’d seen from afar, sprinkled across his skin in a pattern whose perfection was no doubt dictated by God. She brushed over it lightly, expecting it to be coarse.
“Soft,” she murmured before bending forward and setting the side of her forehead against the center of his chest. His heartbeat thumped against her temple, connecting them somehow even deeper.
He let out a strangled noise but made no move to touch her, which was both a frustration and a relief.
Slow as syrup, she nudged him with her nose, drew him in—here, where his smell was potent and addictive—and let her lips rest on skin that was burning up. His heartbeat turned frantic, the rise and fall of his lungs fast, his breath shaky.
“Is this good?”
“Yes,” he breathed.
Abby pulled away, eyeing his tiny, brown nipples.
“What do I do next?”
“You tell me.”
“I want to do the bottom, too.”
Standing, he helped her pull down his trousers, baring long, muscular legs, with a sprinkling of black hair that she wanted to feel…against her face, if he’d let her. Lord, Isaiah was right. She was utterly licentious.
That made her smile, the guilt softened by the firelight and the affection in this man’s eyes.
Shifting back gave her the chance to take him all in, everything from the broad expanse of his shoulders, down over arms sculpted out of something harder than flesh and blood, to those hands, every inch of him taut and full of energy. But oh, those hands. What could they make her feel? She imagined how it would have been if she’d been given to this man in marriage instead of Hamish. Would she have felt differently, then? Would climbing into bed at night have been a pleasure rather than a chore?
“It’s too dark in here,” she said.
“For what?”
“I can’t…see you properly.”
With a half-strangled chuckle, he went over to turn on the lamp, casting more light on his body, along with a good dose of hesitation.
“What am I supposed to do next?”
“You’re asking me, Abby?”
“I don’t understand how this works,” she said, frustrated.
“What?”
“There’s this impulse in me, like an itch I need to scratch. What do I do with it?”
Now she was the one pleading.
Dropping his chin, he seemed to gather himself, the muscles along his shoulders such a solid frame for his indecision. But when he looked back at her, something in him had changed. His eyes were bright, his jaw tight, his next words a bright, red flag in the air.
He sat back down beside her. “Use me.” His voice was low and eager. “Use me to figure it out.”
