“The thought of tossing your skirts up consumed me all the way home. Today has dealt quite the emotional upheaval. I discovered some interesting information. Do you want me to tell you about it?”
“Yes.” My brain started to right itself.
“How should I deliver it? Information between kisses?” He sucked my bottom lip between his and his hands moved to cup my rear against the table. “The most pertinent items as I’m filling you?”
Scrambled thoughts crossed as he pulled me against him, the aching parts of me he had just devoured pressed tightly to his thickened trousers.
“Or is it morbid to talk about these types of things while making love? Most likely.” He was the seducer once more. A man in control. Whatever had ailed him had been suppressed by the shadows lurking behind bright green eyes glinting with promises of pleasure. “But we are closer now, Marietta. Soon we’ll have everyone cleared and there will be no more family worries.”
A strange comment. Phrased oddly.
“What did you just do to me?” My breath came fast. Of all the things demanding answer,thatwas the question I asked? But, spirits, the rush ofmagic.
“I tasted you. I’m not displeased to say that you taste exactly as promised. Strong and sweet.”
Flabbergasted and hot, the clutched butterflies that had been born the night I met him—the ones that had returned fuller andbrighter after being scattered to pieces last night—beat more furiously against cracking binds.
“That was a quick taste, though. Furious. Should we slow it down and try again? I wouldn’t want to disappoint.”
“You couldn’t,” I said faintly. I was trying to read his eyes, which always told the truth, through the haze clouding mine. His words were the practiced ones of an extraordinary rake, but his eyes were hot. The cynicism in them tempered by real passion.
I wasn’t ashamed to admit that his practiced words would have been enough alone. False as his words might prove, it was hard to believe that even the most stalwart of women wouldn’t succumb—wishing to be special enough to gain such attention from such a man. But the look in his eyes made his words pale in comparison. My chest, my throat, my cheeks were on fire. Scorching heat that leaped right from his green eyes into my skin.
My wrist pulsed.
“Good.” He unbuttoned my dress and let the pieces hang as he laid me back on the table, spreading me across the surface. The silk ties on my stays were next. “I could use a magic unbinding charm on these, the one taught to maids from infancy. Or make you do it. Did you try one this morning to lace them up? With the magic you were unable to access before. Do you want to free yourself from these binds with the magic I can feel unlocking from its own? Or should I simply do it by hand, one string at a time?” One pulled cord, slithering across my skin and through a bolt, then the next.
He touched my exposed skin as he circled the table, fleeting touches that left lingering lines of magic. He kissed a stripe up my chemise and the material dissolved beneath whatever magic he was using, splitting to give him full access. “I’ll buy you more.” His fingers gripped my hair at the nape, arching one breast into his mouth. Thrill and heat.
“I haven’t had dinner yet. This looks like the most marvelous feast I’ve ever seen.” The rational part of my mind said I was far too bony and gangly to be attractive. The rest of me took a blacksmith’s hammer and beat that part of my mind into submission as his warm breath ghosted over my skin. “I don’t know where to start. Everything looks so delicious.”
He drew a finger over my breast. I followed his path, the rise and fall of my chest in continuous motion. “Your dress, your stays, your chemise. All removed. Should I have kept them on? Let the layers of cloth rub together? Let the silk rub your skin? Let the linen perk your nipples? Have them become taut and peaked and grasping for my touch?”
My chest heaved. My body arched, following his fingers as he stroked from the outside of my breast to the tip.
“What do you wish, Marietta?” he whispered against my skin. “For me to take your nipples, one by one, between my lips and feast?”
Whatever had happened to my body before was returning. I was hot, my body languid and sleek. The poor butterflies kindled in the flames.
“For me to—”
My hands moved, touching his cheeks, framing his face, interrupting him. “Yes, Gabriel. Anything.” I smoothed the skin of his cheeks, the feel of silk with just a hint of bite.
I arched into him and it took me a moment to realize he had gone still. His fingers frozen in place. The look on his face foreign and strange.
“Gabriel?”
He summoned a rakish smile, but it didn’t reach his eyes, which were fixed on mine.
“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 reined it back with all his might. “I will make you beg for the want of it.”
He hiked my bunched skirts to pool around my waist, intent and demanding. His fingers, seeking and purposeful, curled into my warmth, into the place where everything coalesced.
“Pure liquid gold.” He gave a little hum of pleasure and his eyes darkened further. Magic vibrated through his questing fingers as they dipped inside. “I want to coat myself in it.”
Before last night I would have wondered if such pleasure was possible. I crushed a paper in my hand. His thumb grazed exactly where I wanted it to and my hips jolted up. I couldn’t stop a moan.
