His hand on her back was firm.His words more so.“You will not offer yourself to some strange man in the village or elsewhere.”
She lifted her chin.“I’ll do as I please.Isn’t that what you want me to do?What.Pleases.Me.”Each word a hot breath between them.
Each breath an eternity in which she waited to hear his voice.Then, finally…
What a wonderfully wicked smile he possessed, and it curled upward like a slivered moon, making her feel so very needy.
“That’s the Sybil I admire,” he said.“The one who does exactly what she wants, not a thought for propriety or rules or appearances.”He dropped his forehead against hers, his breathing ragged.“That’s the Sybil I can’t fucking get out of my head.”
“You can’t… get me out of your head?”
“You’ve walked right into my brain and refuse to leave.Leave, damn you.”
She wrapped her hands around his neck, and her thumbs, moving as if they knew exactly what to do, stroked the strained tendons there.He closed his eyes with a groan and twisted into her embrace.
Placing her lips just at his ear, she whispered, “No.”She would have smiled after that.
But she couldn’t.
She was too busy being kissed.
It felt as if she’d been dark, and every candle and every fairy orb within her flared to life at the same time.The touch of his lips alone enough to… to…
OhHestia, not enough at all.
So she dug her hands into his hair and dragged him closer, squeezed his hips tight with her thighs, and clung like one metal binding to another.
He parted her lips and their tongues tangled.The moan between them could have belonged to either one.
Touch me, touch me, touch me.Too busy with her mouth to say it.
But somehow he knew, and his hands were hot on her shoulders, pushing down the bodice of her gown.Circle cut and low, fashionable and—damn—ripped now.Bowing his head, he found her nipple, began what he’d started in her bedroom until thought dissolved, and she arched into him, scrambled to be closer.
Hot kisses down her neck, teeth nipping at her ear.
Her fingernails down his spine and back up, her tongue tasting the texture of the scruff along his jaw.
A clash of teeth, a symphony of heavy breaths.His hand a brand on her breast.The clothes between them too damn much.She wanted to touch his skin, and he wore no cravat.Lucky her.But the V that opened his chest to her gaze was too small.She ripped at the shirt in his waistband, tugged it up, up, until it snagged on his waistcoat.Gone.Quickly, down his arms and to the floor.
Forgotten.
The shirt too because nothing now kept her from whipping it off him, and then…
She’d not been able to stare her fill when she’d found him in the boiling bathtub.
She licked her lips, placed a kiss on the flat expanse of muscle that covered his heart.His skin was golden everywhere as if the sun had kissed him at birth.His chest was smooth, free from hair, and the muscles of his stomach bunched and coiled at her every touch.
He never stopped kissing her, even as she pulled back a bit, tempering her passion to devour him with her eyes.Sweet Hestia, he was a beautiful man.She’d known that intellectually.But it was different when such beauty was focused on you, when it had poured itself around you and seemed set on using itself up to give you passion.His beauty at a distance was something to appreciate.She’d even found it, at times, mildly annoying.
But close and focused entirely on her—it was transformative.Of him, of her.Neither would escape this fire without changing.
He dropped to his knees.
No.No, no.He could not leave her.Not this time.She grasped for him, already missing his warmth.But something about the way he peered up at her made her stop.There was a promise in his eyes, and she needed to know what it was.He seemed a man engaged in the seriousness of life and death, not to be disturbed.The hem of her gown he contemplated like the greatest of puzzles.Smooth as silk, he lifted that hem and wrapped his hands around her shins, stroked upward, dragging her skirts along with him until he could push them above her knees, abandon them at her waist.
He undid one ribbon of her stocking.
With his teeth.
