He pulled back a fraction, their lips still almost touching, and looked at her through a hooded gaze. “You know what you’re asking.”
“Yes,” she whispered. “Better than anyone. But what is there to save myself for, Sebastian? The kind of man who would, as you said, abandon me to be attacked while he flirted with someone else? For the wall of every ballroom until I’m too old for invitations unless I’m serving as the chaperone for a niece? In this, I thinkyouare the innocent, for you have no idea what it is like to be so certain that your future will be empty. At least let me have this.”
He dropped his forehead to her shoulder with a shaky breath even as his hands continued to stroke the length of her body. Then he lifted his head and slid a hand into her hair to tilt her face up toward him.
“If you change your mind, you only have to say no,” he said softly before his mouth returned to hers with more heat, more power and more purpose than before. And as she swirled into the dark heat of his desire, she knew that everything in her life was about to change and she couldn’t wait.
CHAPTER 15
Sebastian had always considered himself a man in control. He made wise choices when it came to his sexual quarry and he never put himself in a position where he couldn’t escape. But tonight, as he backed Marianne across the antechamber and into her bedroom on trembling legs, he couldn’t say no. Even though he should. Even though he would ruin her, ruin himself by what he was about to do.
He needed her more than breath right now. When he thought of some brute towering over her, fist raised in violence, he needed to ease the horror of that image by making her lift in pleasure, not duck in fear.
He pushed all those thoughts aside and gently parted his mouth from hers. He turned her back to him and began to unfasten the long line of buttons along the back of her pretty gown. She shivered as his fingers stroked the soft skin he revealed and blushed as he parted the dress wide before he let her face him again.
“Do you know how much I wanted to see you that night in the orangery?” he asked as he slipped a finger beneath the edge of her gown and began to tug, drawing the satin fabric over her shoulder, down her upper arm, repeating the action on the other side before he let the dress fold forward and reveal the pretty chemise beneath.
“You did?” she murmured, her voice shaking like her body shook. Fear and anticipation in one. He wanted to make it only pleasure that made her tremble.
He nodded. “All I could think about was you, touching you, seeing you, tasting you. Tonight I want to do all those things.”
Perhaps if he did, it would burn this need for her away, lost in the fire he was stoking in them both. It had to, didn’t it? Make this drive stop? At least he had to try.
She stared at him a long moment, long enough that he feared she might have become overwhelmed and want to say that one little word that would bring this to an end. Even though that would be better for them both, he found himself praying to every deity he’d ever heard of that she wouldn’t.
But at last she pressed her palms against her hips and tugged her gown down to drop around her feet.
“Yes,” she whispered.
He caught his breath at the sight of her in only her chemise and stockings, standing in firelight, so beautiful he could hardly stand it. Why had he not realized how beautiful she was before? Why had no other man every written soliloquies about her exquisiteness? Plucked her like some rare rose to decorate hallowed halls? They were all fools, him included.
“Am I a disappointment?” she asked, her hands coming forward to clench against her stomach.
He shook his head. “Far from it. I am drinking you in, savoring every moment of the gift of seeing you like this.”
“You’re the only man who ever has,” she said. “I know you know that, but I admit it makes me nervous.”
“Excited?” he asked as he moved forward and slipped a finger beneath the thin chemise strap, lowering it gently.
She nodded again and then inhaled sharply when he drew her hand through the chemise strap and revealed one gorgeous breast. He cupped her, measuring her weight, stroking a thumb over her distended nipple as she dipped her head back and let out a shaky sigh of pleasure.
He couldn’t resist the sleek expanse of her throat and brought his lips there, nibbling and kissing the column until her hands came up into his hair and she leaned into him for support.
“Tell me what it will be like,” she whispered.
He lifted his head from her neck and met her gaze, holding there as he removed the other strap of her chemise and tugged it away so she was naked for him. He drank in the curves of her, the softness, the undeniable draw.
“I’ll put you on the bed,” he said, hearing how breathless he sounded. “And I’m going to make you ready for me. I’m going to explore every inch of your body until you are writhing, clamping a hand over your mouth so no one in this house hears you moaning my name.”
She swallowed hard and her pupils dilated. He smiled at the reaction, at how responsive she was.
“Eventually I won’t be able to hold back anymore. And I’ll need to be inside of you. I’ll start with my fingers. I’ll feel how slick you are with desire as I ready you. It will drive me mad, it will make me ache to feel you pulse around me.”
“Sebastian,” she whimpered.
He chuckled as he backed her toward the bed. “I’ll undress?—”
“Will I get to touch you then?” she asked.
