He unfastened the buttons one by one. Two dozen of them at least, each small and silk-covered, and he took his time with every last one. His knuckles grazed her spine as the fabric loosened and parted. The scent of her rose through the widening gap — rosewater and warm skin and something deeper, something that was simply Nell — and it made his head swim the same way it had the first time she’d stood close enough for him to breathe her in, back in her shop when he’d reached past her for a tart he didn’t want.
The gown slipped from her shoulders. He eased it past her hips until it pooled at her feet. She reached for the laces of her stays, but he covered her hands with his.
“Let me.” He turned her to face him. Her eyes were dark, her lips parted, the rise and fall of her breathing quickening beneath the boned fabric. He worked the laces free with steady hands — steadier than he felt — and loosened the stays until they gaped and he could lift them over her head. The chemise beneath was thin, near sheer, and the candlelight turned it golden against the swell of her breasts and the soft curve of her belly.
She didn’t cross her arms. She used to — every time, that instinctive folding inward, the shielding, the making herself smaller. In the maze she’d tried to keep her bodice pulled upeven as his mouth worked between her legs. When she’d ridden him she’d kept her chemise on, gathered at her waist, as though she couldn’t bear to be fully bare in front of him even while she took him apart.
Not tonight. She stood still and let him look.
He lifted the chemise over her head. The linen caught on her hips and he eased it free, and then she was standing before him in nothing but candlelight and the gold ring he’d placed on her finger that morning.
He’d seen her body before, in pieces — the maze had been dark, the night in his bedchamber lit by a single guttering candle while his injuries kept him pinned to the mattress. He had never seen her like this. Fully bare, fully lit, fully his.
Full breasts that rose and fell with each unsteady breath, the nipples drawn tight in the warm air. A waist that gave way to generous hips, wide and strong. The soft belly marked with silver where her skin had stretched to carry the children who were now sleeping down the hall in their new bedrooms in his house. Thighs that were thick and warm, the same thighs that had gripped his hips hard enough to bruise when she’d ridden him, and he’d loved every second of it.
“You are staring.” Her lips curved, but her chin lifted — that stubborn tilt he knew so well.
“I am.” He pulled his shirt over his head and let it drop. “I intend to stare a great deal more before the night is done.”
She watched him strip with open appreciation, her gaze travelling down his chest.
He crossed to her and ran his hands down her sides — over the swell of her breasts, the dip of her waist, the generous flare of her hips. She leaned into his touch, her breath catching, her palms flat against his bare chest.
“Every time before,” he said against her temple, his fingers pressing into the soft flesh of her hips, “there was something in the way. The dark. Your chemise. My injury. Not tonight.”
“Not tonight.” She tipped her face up to his.
He kissed her. Not the careful kisses he’d given her at the altar, but a deep, thorough taking that tasted of champagne and the sugared almonds Lily had been sneaking to everyone at the reception. Nell’s hands slid up his chest and into his hair, gripping hard, and the sound she made against his mouth — low, wanting, impatient — sent his blood south so fast his head spun.
He walked her backward until her thighs hit the bed. She sat, and he followed her down onto the sheets, bracing himself above her. For a moment he simply looked. The candlelight played across her skin, catching the flush that spread from her cheeks down her throat to the tops of her breasts. Rose petals clung to her hair, her shoulders, the curve of her hip.
“I want to taste you.” He kissed the hollow of her throat, then lower, his mouth dragging between her breasts. “Properly this time. Not in a bloody maze with one ear listening for footsteps.”
She laughed — a real, startled laugh — and her fingers tightened in his hair. “That was your idea, if I recall.”
“Best idea I ever had.” He kissed her nipple, then drew it into his mouth, and the laugh dissolved into a sharp, hitching gasp. He took his time with her breasts, cupping their weight in his hands, running his thumbs across the peaked flesh until she was arching into him, her nails raking down his shoulders.
He kissed lower. Down the soft swell of her belly, his lips tracing the silver marks there, each one a testament to the life her body had carried. Lower still, along the crease of her hip, to the sensitive skin of her inner thigh. She spread for him without hesitation — not the nervous, uncertain parting of the maze, but a confident opening, her thighs falling wide as her fingersthreaded through his hair and guided him where she wanted him.
“You are not shy tonight.” He pressed a kiss to her inner thigh, close enough that his breath ghosted across the heat of her.
“I am your wife.” She tugged his hair, pulling him closer. “I am done being shy.”
Something primal and possessive roared through his chest. He lowered his mouth to her and gave her everything he’d been too rushed, too reckless, too desperate to give her properly in that maze. He was slow. He was thorough. He catalogued every response — the gasp when he used the flat of his tongue in long, dragging strokes; the bitten-off cry when he circled the place where she was most sensitive; the way her thighs clamped against his ears when he pressed two fingers inside her and curled them forward.
“Dominic—” Her hips lifted off the mattress, and he pinned them down with his forearm across her belly, holding her there, keeping her still while he worked her with his mouth. She cursed — something filthy and entirely un-ladylike that made him groan against her — and gripped his hair so hard his scalp burned.
He didn’t stop. He pressed closer, firmer, finding the rhythm that made her breathing fracture, and held it there until her whole body went rigid. She came with a sound that was half his name and half a sob, her spine bowing off the bed, her thighs shaking against his shoulders, and he worked her through it, gentling his mouth, easing her down with slow, unhurried strokes until she went boneless against the sheets.
He kissed the inside of her thigh, then her hip, then the soft slope of her belly. When he looked up, her eyes were glassy, her chest heaving, her lips bitten red.
“Come here.” She reached for him, her hands fumbling, her coordination wrecked. “I need you. Now.”
He shed his trousers and settled between her legs. She wrapped her thighs around his hips — those strong, generous thighs — and pulled him against her. The contact drew a groan from deep in his chest.
“I love you.” He braced himself on one arm and cupped her face with his free hand, his thumb stroking her flushed cheek. “I love you, Lady Westmore.”
“Then show me.” She rolled her hips against him, and his vision went dark at the edges.
