“Does it hurt?” she whispered.
“Nothing hurts right now,” he murmured.
She let her gaze flit lower to his broad chest, peppered with hair and a stomach that should not have had so many hard crests of muscle. It was as if he had been built out of her every secret fantasy and then dropped into her bedchamber.
He was…beautiful.
“No wonder they call you Handsome,” she said, almost against her will. “No wonder love games are your bread and butter on the street.”
“Were. And this isn’t a love game,” he assured her, his voice rough. “Because you are playing me as much as I’m playing you. Don’t forget that, Juliana. You’ve broken my control, forced me to come to your bed, against all the very good arguments I’ve made to myself not to do it. I’m here and you are in control of me as much as I am of you. If you say no, I stop. If you say more…”
He trailed off and her eyes went wide as he winked at her.
“If I say more?” she whimpered.
He reached out and caught her nightgown strap between his fingers. He rolled the silk gently before he said, “Then I will give you all you can take.”
With that, he flicked the strap down and tugged her nightgown to bunch at her waist. He’d seen her like this before, of course. Not that many nights ago at the Donville Masquerade he had stripped her entirely naked and licked her until the explosion of pleasure was undeniable. She wanted that again. She wanted so much more.
Was he telling the truth when he promised her the rest? It was time to find out. She shook her hips and slid the nightgown the rest of the way down.
He smiled at her, chuckling softly. “Always your own way, Juliana. Always in your own time.”
“Not always,” she corrected.
“Tonight, then,” he promised. Then he pulled her against him again.
Her naked chest brushed his equally bare one, and she cried out at the sensation of flesh on flesh. That was a new one, and she liked the roughness of his hair against her sensitive skin. He closed his hands around her bare bottom and cupped her closer, his mouth finding hers as he ground her against him.
She lifted her mouth to his, drowning in him. For a moment, that was all the sensation her mind could process, but then her body began to awaken to other feelings. His fingers digging into her skin. The heat of his chest, the rasp of his whiskers as his chin abraded her own.
And the hard thrust of him bumping her stomach even through his trousers. It felt very strong, very big, and she shivered at the idea that she would soon see that thing she’d only ever imagined from crudely drawn pictures in a book. That it would enter her as she had dreamed of for months.
If he sensed her drive to rush, he ignored it. His kiss gentled, if anything. His fingers slid up her bare back, into her hair. He tilted her head back, he kissed her more deeply. She was lost in him and she never wanted it to end.
He slid a hand beneath her knees, and suddenly she was off her feet. She gasped against his mouth but never broke contact as he carried her to her bed and laid her against the pillows. Only then did he step away.
“Oh no, please don’t,” she protested, reaching out for him when she believed he would walk away from her again.
He shook his head. “Not even if I wanted to, angel. I’m here until the end.”
She relaxed a fraction at that declaration and settled back, watching as he reached for his trousers. This was the moment. One she had feared and longed for and believed might never happen.
He unfastened the fall front of his trousers and let it drop away. She gasped, for his member—a cock, the book had called it—bobbed free. It was hard, curling toward his stomach at attention.
She leaned closer, trying to get a better look. He laughed and stepped in so that he was within arm’s reach. And reach she did, brushing her fingers along the shaft and letting them trail over the mushroom head.
“The skin is very soft,” she declared, mesmerized by this part that was so different from her own body. “Will it truly fit?”
He nodded. “Like a dream. Like I was made for you.”
She wrapped her hand around him and stroked. To her surprise, he let out a garbled moan that sounded very much like her own gasp of pleasure when he touched her.
“You like that?” she asked, lifting her brows as his face contorted with pleasure. She stroked again and he cried out her name in the quiet room. She smiled, power filling her. “Shh now, Mr. Maitland. What was it you said about bringing the house down on us and we wouldn’t get to…talk?”
“I very much want totalk,” he gasped. “But if you keep doing that, the conversation will be over too quickly.”
“Hmmm,” she murmured, and stroked him one last time, eliciting a curse so salty that her ears burned. Then she let him go and settled back on the pillows. She opened her legs, thinking of the illustrations in the book, and sighed. “Come and show me then.”
