That widened his grin nicely and deepened the anticipation in her chest that felt like dread.
“I thought you’d never ask.”
She was amazed at how quickly he set up the next act of this little play. Stepping into Georgie’s room, he smiled at Minta and suggested she look for Braxton in the servants’ hall. Then, after Minta had received Georgie’s permission by way of a mute nod and retreated toward the servants’ stairs, he guided Georgie into his room. Well, Rob Glenn’s room, which was decorated in an aggressively masculine theme of oak paneling and dark blue walls filled with paintings of birds. Oddly enough, it seemed that the birds were watching them and weren’t happy about the intrusion. Georgie looked around and shook her head. This was going to be stressful enough.
“Why don’t we move on to my room instead?” she asked.
Grey gave one last distracted look around and reclaimed her hand. “Unless it’s all pink ruffles, it has to be better than this.”
It was better. In fact, it was very nicely decorated in soft spring greens, blues, and rose. It soothed rather than challenged. Georgie led Grey inside and let him close the door.
“Much better,” he pronounced with a decisive nod. “Now I can focus on more important things than whether that heron back there will poke me in the back with his beak.”
Georgie’s giggle was a bit breathy. She still had hold of Grey’s hand and suddenly didn’t know what to do with it. With him. With herself. Her grandmother had assured her she would know what to do. Her grandmother had been wrong.
It was up to Grey to set the tone. He wasted no time doing so. “Would you like the room light or dark?” he asked, lifting his free hand to cup her face.
She swallowed. “I don’t know.”
He leaned down and gently met her lips with his own. “Personally, I would love to enjoy the sight of your loveliness. But as you have said, I’m not brand new to this.”
Another swallow. An instinctive stretching of her neck to welcome his gentle touch. “It feels a perilous decision to make. Can we just move forward and see how we do?”
He dropped another kiss, this longer, more thorough, his hand cupping the back of her head to him as he explored her mouth. “I knew I could count on you for common sense. Do you think we’re wearing too much clothing?”
“I think you could certainly dispense with that tight jacket…maybe your neckcloth?”
Another kiss, this one nudging her lips open a bit to feel his tongue stroking the seam. She was truly having trouble breathing now. And oh, how her breasts ached. Could she ask him to touch them? To hold them so they didn’t feel so suddenly heavy?
“And you won’t mind my loosening the ties at the back of your dress?”
She shook her head. He smiled and she wanted to lick his lips in return. Instead, she watched him shed that sleek blue jacket and toss it onto a chair before the fireplace. He held out the edge of his neckcloth that trailed out of his arrangement. “Would you like the honor?”
She caught her breath. She had undressed her little brothers. She had never come so close to a grown man. Certainly not one who looked intent on swallowing her whole. Even though her hand trembled, she reached up and took the end from him, and then took the other end, and began to unravel the knot. As she did that, he reached around her to find her ties. Too easily, she thought in distraction. Too cleverly. He had indeed done this before.
And then she couldn’t think at all, because she pulled off the line of linen from around his neck to open a V in his shirt. And there she came across his throat, that same little dip he had sipped from on her. And below it, curls of dark hair, and oh, she wanted to touch them, winnow her fingers through them to learn their texture. She wanted to yank that shirt over his head and find out what the rest of his chest looked like. Was it as muscular as it seemed? Was his belly flat in a way that invited her to explore?
“You can, you know,” he said with that same smile of invitation.
She startled and looked up at eyes that suddenly seemed black and languorous, hot. Mesmerizing.
“Can what?”
“Pull off my shirt. It will have to happen sooner or later. After all, I have your dress and your stays unfastened.”
Could he look any more devilish in that moment when she realized that her dress, her lovely cream silk dress, was saggingat her shoulders? Cool air snaked in around her waist and set up fresh chills. She wanted to wrap her arms around herself. She wanted to close her eyes and pretend she was somewhere else. Back in her room. Back at the castle, where this kind of thing was no more than fantasy.
But oh, her body would never forgive her.
He was still smiling. And she had never considered herself a coward.
“All right,” she said and reached for his shirt. And yanked it up right over his head to find that every one of her wishes had come true. His chest was magnificent—sleek, broad, decorated in that lovely curling hair that narrowed at his torso and arrowed right down like an invitation to explore. To explore…oh, dear. She had brothers. She had a mother who had made sure her daughters would never be ignorant enough to put themselves in danger. So she knew that the rather impressive bulge in Grey’s trousers meant that he was excited as well. Anticipating. Readying.
She quickly looked up to see his expression gentling. “Yes, my dear,” he said, once again running a soft finger along her throat. “That is what you do to me.”
“You won’t….”
His smile broadened. “I won’t.”
