She raised a brow and said much more calmly than she felt, “Let me touch your arse, Sir Nicholas.” Oh God, howhumiliating. She’d hoped it would sound more seductive, but she sounded like a schoolteacher asking to see a student’s work.
His inhale was swift and loud, his lips still very near her ear, the intake of his breath a sensation across her skin. “I’m not going to stop you.”
She took the swiftest path down his back. All the way down. Fingernails tracing. The pads of her fingertips learning. The flat of her palm caressing. Hesitating at the waistband of his trousers.
“Go on.” His voice rough, demanding.
On she went. She’d never thought to touch either backside—that belonging to the intruder or that belonging to Sir Nicholas. But she was awfully glad she had. God, it was firm beneath the wool of his trousers, the muscle thick and tight.
“It’s marvelous,” she breathed. “It is the first thing I ever saw of you.” Not true. It was the first thing she saw of the intruder.
But Sir Nicholas… her first sight of him had been in the full sunshine of early autumn. She’d noticed his hair first. Who wouldn’t? But then she’d seen his smile—wide and jolly and filled with everything the children needed. Everything sheneeded. Next, she’d seen his blue eyes, crinkly and wrinkled at the corners in a way only constant joviality could cause. She had envied him. But then when he’d proved himself the type of man who shared his joy as easily as he shared the air around him for breathing, her envy had slipped away. To know that the jolly, red-haired man and the fabulous arse were two parts of the same person… her belly flipped, her hands tightened on his muscle, squeezed, and she used the grip to pull herself closer to the edge of the table, to press her needy center against him.
He rolled his hips, and she discovered another part of him. Long and hard and, if anatomy books could be trusted,ready. For her.
“Why did you do it?” she asked, her hands wandering up his ribs to tangle in the front of his shirt. “Last year?”
“Because everyone deserves joy. Everyone deserves magic.” Every word hot on her neck, her jaw, and punctuated with kisses. Conversation could not interrupt the magic happening between them. The revelation seemed a part of it, binding them.
She nodded, and when he nibbled down the length of her neck her head dropped to the side giving him greater access. And her mantle fell away, pushed down her arms by strong, smooth hands. Magic indeed. He attacked her buttons without her knowing, slipping them from the braided eyelets with ease, melting the little silver coins into nothing.
“How did you…”
“Alchemist.”
“But—”
“No setting bath. Whoever made the buttons on this dress clearly hoped to give a fellow alchemist ease with undoing them.”
She gasped, indignation temporarily dulling the thrill of the gown slipping away, leaving her open to him. He chuckled as he caressed with his knuckles the low bodice of her gown, whichdrooped off her shoulders, leaving so much skin open to his insistent perusal.
When he put inches between their bodies she strained against the loss, but he had control. She could not move him from his purpose, which seemed to be to brand her with his gaze. She’d often found him watching her over the last year, his blue eyes darkening over some injustice or glowing with some joke shared between them. It had felt like having a partner, someone to fight with. And while she had often allowed herself to trace the outline of his form, she’d never caught him doing the same for her.
Until now. His hands bracketed her waist, keeping her in place, and he bit his bottom lip as he studied the swell of her bosom pressing against her gown’s low bodice. His perusal made her squirm, her nipples harden, her breath tumble ragged from between her lips. And when he smoothed a hand up her ribs to cup her breast, the space between her legs came alive.
He made a low sound of appreciation, and a frisson of fear sped up her spine. Who was this man? She knew him, but she did not. Could she really use her body to get what she needed? Her little scheme required the Sir Nicholas she knew well to wake up from his metal frenzy and do the right thing by her, to do the gentlemanly thing.
“Don’t flinch away, brave beauty,” he said, his voice rough and unfamiliar. “I need this. I need you. It is only there is too much between us. Corset and gown and chemise. And velvet is a such a damn thick material. Then all these petticoats and skirts.” He smoothed his hand up her leg, pushing those skirts up and over her knee. Then grasping her calf, he hooked her leg around his waist, rocked against her. Her lips were sensitive, aching. He hadn’t touched them yet. Silently, the screamed for him. “What you don’t know, beauty, is that I am dangerous like this. I have a need. To move. To do. To work the magic out of my body.”
“A-alchemists don’t have magic.”
“That’s what they say.” A dark chuckle. “That we’re mere laborers cutting stone and shaping metal. That transcendent glamours are superior. They are wrong. What does transcendent magicdo, Jane? It hides the truth. Nothing more. It’s a trick.” He placed her hand against his heart. “If you want true magic, look here. It brews when I do my work, and any man who dedicates the sweat of his body to honing it can have it. No pure bloodline necessary. There’s a deeper sort of magic brewing here now, and unless you push me away with real authority, Jane—a solid kick and demanding, confident voice—I’m going to wrap you up in it.” His lips against her ear again. “And you’ll like it.”
She would. Oh, she would. No use denying. No use doubting. She could not stop him now if she wanted to. And she didn’t. “You’ll like it, too. And you won’t want to give me up. Sink into me”—she sank her fingernails into the muscle of his shoulders—“and you will be begging me to marry you.”
“This is just pleasure.”
“No. It’s forever.”
Another curse, then he kissed her, hard. Punishing. But it tasted like victory. He squeezed her breast, teased the low bodice of her gown, drawing red marks with his touch against her exposed bosom. And his other hand, beneath the secret, dark weight of her skirts, slipped toward the center of her body, scraping against the crease of her hip and dipping low between her legs.
He kissed her thoroughly, trailing the tip of his tongue across the seam of her lips, opening them, delving deeper, teaching her tongue how to taste him back.
She held his neck. His hair so soft. Digging her fingernails into his skin there. He hissed, and she relished it. And when he began to stroke his fingers through the curls between her legs her body tightened everywhere all at once. Melted, somehow,too, her brain capable of thinking only about how his fingers moved, sought,found. She gasped as he rubbed small circles into the pearl hidden there. She’d have known nothing about it if not for Mrs. Tottle. This would have shocked her if not for the frank-speaking woman who shared much—very much—about her husband’s manytalents.
Sir Nicholas, it seemed, was talented, too. He seared her everywhere he touched. Pulsing pleasure throbbed higher. Something. Something about to happen. Couldn’t tell. It rolled through her, out of reach, making her burn for more. More growling. Her this time, not him.
“Welcome it, Jane,” he said, pressing the heel of his hand against her pulsing pearl, grinding circles against it. “Let it happen.”
