Flabbergasted and hot, the clutched butterflies that had been trapped in her stomach since she met him, the ones that had returned fuller and brighter after being scattered to pieces last night, beat more furiously against their binds.
“That was a quick taste, though. Furious. Should we slow it down and try again? I wouldn’t want to disappoint.”
“No, you wouldn’t,” she said faintly. She was trying to read his eyes, which always told the truth, but they were hazy behind the film in front of her own. She blinked to clear them, and though his words were the practiced ones of an extraordinary rake, his eyes were hot. The cynicism in them tempered by real passion.
She wasn’t ashamed to admit that his practiced words would have done the trick alone. It was hard to believe that even the most stalwart of women wouldn’t want to believe herself special enough to cause that type of attention, false as it would likely prove, from this type of man. But the look in his eyes made his words pale in comparison. Her chest, her throat, her cheeks were on fire. Scorching heat that seemed to jump right from his green eyes into her skin.
“Good.” He unbuttoned her dress, unlatched it and let the top pieces hang as he laid her back on the table, her dress spreading out on the surface with her lying in the center.
He touched the exposed skin as he circled the table. He leaned over the side and licked a stripe over the material covering her right breast.
“I haven’t had dinner yet. This looks like the most marvelous feast I’ve ever seen.”
The rational part of her mind said she was far too bony and gangly to be particularly attractive. The rest of her took a blacksmith’s hammer and beat that part of her mind into submission as his warm breath coasted over her skin.
“I don’t know where to start. Everything looks so delicious.”
He drew a finger down her breast. She followed his finger’s path, the rise and fall of her chest in continuous motion. “Your dress, your stays, your chemise. The layers of cloth rubbing together. Does the silk rub your skin? Does the linen perk your nipples? Do they become taut and peaked and grasping for touch?”
So sensitive. And on fire. The poor butterflies had been burned to cinders, now kindling in her flames. Her body arched up unconsciously, following his fingers as he stroked from the outside of her breast to the peak through the remaining cloth.
“What do you wish, Marietta? For me to remove your stays? Your chemise?” he whispered in her ear. His fingers moved to her other breast. “To take your nipples, one by one, between my lips and feast?”
Whatever had happened to her before was coming back. She was hot, her body languid and sleek.
“If I—”
Her hands moved of their own volition, touching his cheeks, framing his face, interrupting him. “Yes, Gabriel. Anything.”
Her hands lovingly smoothed the skin of his cheeks, the feel of silk with just a hint of bite.
She arched into him and it took her a moment to realize he was standing stock still against her. His fingers frozen in place. His eyes shuttered. The look on his face foreign and strange.
“Gabriel?”
He recalled a rakish smile, but it didn’t reach his eyes, which were glued to hers.
“I—”
His eyes shut. Pinched together.
“I—”
His eyes opened and darkened to jade. Leashed control. As if he had lost it for just a moment and harnessed it back with all his might.
“I will make you beg for the want of it.”
His fingers drew circles on her stomach, then moved down her skirt and underneath. Intent and purposeful. Seeking and demanding. He gave a little hum of pleasure and his eyes darkened further.
His fingers curled into her warmth, into the place where everything coalesced.
“It’s like pure liquid gold.”
Before last night she would have wondered if such a thing were possible. She crushed a paper in her hand. It obviously was. His thumb grazedthatspot and her hips jolted up. She couldn’t stop a moan.
“That’s right, Marietta. Show me what makes you moan.”
She was a marionette on a set of strings, and he was pulling every one. She didn’t even need to vocalize her begging, as her body’s language was simple to understand, her noises uncontrollable. And though it might make her nervous later, right now she couldn’t dredge up the outrage.
