In the Earl of Merevale’s secret little office, Isabella found courage.
The daring to see what he liked best.
And whatshewanted.
Rough kisses or soft. His bottom lip caught between her teeth or laved by her tongue. Casually dressed when she arrived, her hand trailed beneath his loose shirttail, fingertips skimming his back, nails biting. His body was a marvel beneath her curious touch—hard, broad, and hot.
He groaned softly through it all, mystifying and delighting her. The caresses, the nibbles, the erotic commands—so much variety, each designed to pull her under with him.
This was no simple kiss.
Tugging her skirt up in fistfuls until his broad palm flattened along the outside of her thigh, he whispered an aroused plea against her ear.Like this.Where they moved in a slow cadence against each other, against the tall door, a push-pull that spoke of sensual intimacies she’d read about in French novels but never practiced. Bright flashes burst behind her eyelids, the steady pulse between her legs sending reason up in smoke, as though he’d set a blazing ember to parchment.
“Do you understand?” he murmured against a sensitive spot beneath her jaw. When she didn’t answer at once, he nipped her skin, soothing the sting with his tongue. “The danger of placing yourself before me, insistent, where I cannothelp but take you? Where I’m too far gone to care? I amweak, sprite. And we do not require a bed, if you imagined that posed a challenge, though I have one in the next chamber, narrow and prone to creaking, yet serviceable. My desk would suffice, bending you over it and coming in behind. Or here, standing…”
He captured her lips again as images stormed her mind, tongue finding hers to parry and thrust, urging her into movement that synchronized the final dance.
Her ragged moan slipped free, an unguarded confession of how close she stood to a pleasure she had only ever known alone, in the darkness of her bedchamber, exploring the secret place between her thighs.
He paused, lifted his head, and saw everything.
“How far, Madam Mischief, do you wish to go with this?” he whispered, the hand on her thigh inching closer to disaster. “Lust took me in its teeth long minutes ago, so you’ve lost any chance I might deny you, God help us both. I should know better. Idoknow better. And yet here I am, my fingers trembling where they touch you, my body taut with need.”
Isabella licked her lips, and he leaned closer in answer, his hot breath brushing her cheek. His shaft pressed hard against her hip; there was no denying the evidence of it.
She rushed to speak before he claimed her mouth again. “Brick, and Lottie, my maid…”
Ever tunneled his hand into her hair and tilted her head back. A clip slipped free and struck the faded carpet at their feet, sending her hair cascading past her shoulders. His eyes glowed as he stared, emerald bright in the muted light. “He’ll keep her occupied. But you’ll have to be quiet. And I’ll have to be quick about it.”
“How long does—” She broke off. The wanting was clearer than the question.
“Talk me out of this, Isa.Now, tell me no.”
Cradling his jaw, she drew his head down and claimed a lingering kiss. Then she reached for his shirttail, uncertain in this fever, only knowing:him. Just him.
He trapped her roving hand in his. As he’d warned, tremors raced down his arm. “I’m not removing a single piece of clothing, Isa. Are you mad? If I meant to make love to you, I wouldn’t be bloody quick about it. Not when I’d sell my soul for the right to taste every inch of you, to tup you for two days without pause.”
Then he did something so endearing, so absurdly sweet, that she realized, suddenly—I’m falling in love with him.
He turned the key in the door’s lock, a tiny pleat forming between his brows. It was plain from his troubled expression that he’d never entertained anyone here, that he had no practiced plan for seduction.
In this, at least, she would be the first.
She flattened her palm over his chest. The beat beneath her hand matched her own, hard and unsteady. “I’m not asking you to lose control. I’m asking you to letmelose it.”
He made a sound under his breath—half curse, half surrender—and took her hand as if afraid she might vanish if he didn’t. His other hand remained tangled in her skirts, lifting them without thought, until his fingers slackened and the fabric slipped free, whispering back into place.
“I’ve never cared for unnecessary fastenings,” she said, almost casually, intent on driving him mad. “My underthings are the most straightforward there are.”
“Christ,” he muttered, and then he was moving her, turning them both, his mouth finding hers again mid-step, too hungry to wait. He kissed her as he guided her across the room, breath and intention tangling, his hand never leaving hers, committing them both to what she’d started.
The armchair struck the backs of her legs. Ever pushed her into it without ceremony and knelt before her. As if startled byhis own force, his breath came heavy as his feral-green gaze lifted to hers.
She didn’t give him time to deliberate. Catching his hand, she guided it beneath her skirts, leaving no room for confusion. “Show me.”
“Isa,” he whispered, her name stripped bare.
She shifted forward in the chair, silk whispering, close enough that her heat became impossible to ignore. Her fingers slid into his hair, not tugging, not urging—simply there, a claim he didn’t resist.Come to me.
