There was no winning, but at least one would grant Anna something she deserved: an education in ecstasy.
“Is that not what you said?” she challenged, her eyes flaring with the hurt he couldn’t bear to see. “That we should return to the way things were? I can keep to my side of the manor, you can keep to yours, and we never have to cross paths.”
His other hand came up to cradle her face, holding her there as anguish bristled through him.
“I missed ye,” he repeated thickly, as he closed that terrible distance between them and softly grazed his lips against hers. A tender kiss that he hadn’t known he would ever feel again.
Relief flooded over him as her lips pressed back to his, as tentative as the first time, as if nothing had ever happened between them.
“I can’t give ye everything ye want, lass, but Icangive ye this,” he murmured, as his hand traced a line down her neck and over her chest, skimming around the swell of her breast and the curve of her waist, sliding slowly around her.
A hard pull brought her flush against him, a gasp slipping from her lips, caught with a fervent kiss that he knew was going to throw him deeper into turmoil. But at that moment, as she kissed him back with that same, urgent hunger, he found he didn’t care.
Anna knew she should push Jeremy away and demand he leave her bedchamber, but the impulse faded with every touch of his mouth on hers and every quickening beat of her heart.
Should I not permit myself some joy on this unhappy day?she reasoned, as memories of his skillful touch stoked the embers of her desire for him. Didn’t she deserve a better wedding night than her first, to replace that awful occasion in her mind?
She ran her hands up the broad muscle of his chest, sliding her fingers beneath his velvet collar. Rising up on tiptoe, she tugged on his collar to bring him closer, kissing him with fervent abandon. She didn’t want to think of what a mistake this was. She just—as Beatrice had encouraged—wanted to enjoy the festivities, even if it was only for a short while.
He walked her backward until her shoulders bumped the windowpane, his hands curving beneath the swell of herbackside. As he hoisted her up into his arms, she was ready for it, her legs locking tight around his hips to balance herself.
All the while, his kiss never faltered, deep and urgent, his tongue flicking against hers: not too much, not too little, as if he already knew what she liked.
“Oh…” she gasped as he pressed her up against the glass, and she felt the swell of his desire between her thighs. A promise of a wedding night to remember.
I should not go so far,she told herself.I should not give myself tonight, in case he does not want me in the morning.
But that didn’t mean she couldn’t relish the hardness of him, and the knowledge that she was the one who had roused him. She might not have lain with a man before, with no experience of it, but she remembered well enough what her lady’s maid had told her before Robert summoned her to his chambers.
Anna had been terrified then, dreading the prospect, and confused by the visceral logistics. She wasn’t afraid now. There was, perhaps, a nervous anticipation, but that only served to bolster her desire to learn everything about pleasure from the man who had revealed its existence to her.
The pressure as he rocked his hips forward again made it clear that he wanted her to feel him… and she clung to him as that hard flesh rubbed against her swollen bud. A brush that sent a shower of sparks into her abdomen, where it lit the taper of her passions.
“Tell me what ye want,” Jeremy whispered in her ear, like he knew she was on a precipice of need.
“To… cry out your… name,” she panted as his mouth traced the column of her throat, his hand smoothing over the rise of her breast, while his other hand reached for the knot of her stays.
“I think I can manage that,” he purred, pulling aside the collar of her shift and the edge of her stays to expose her pert, pink nipple.
She swallowed thickly. “But… I cannot give myself to you.” Her hips bucked, her neck arching back as his mouth closed over her nipple and his tongue flicked against that sensitive peak. “Not… tonight. Not if… You cannot offer me more than… Oh, God… Oh…”
He sucked gently, and all coherent speech abandoned her. It seemed like some kind of wizardry, his mouth conjuring up a crackling thread inside her that each slow suck pulled tight. Her nerves vibrated with the power of it, sending a wave of feeling through her core, to the pulsing heat between her thighs. Her body, fully connected, unified by his touch.
Deftly, he unfastened the knot of her stays and tugged the laces free before tossing the undergarment over his shoulder. But when his hand reached for the hem of her shift, she realized the injustice of the situation.
Kissing him passionately on the mouth, she fumbled with the buttons of his tailcoat and pushed the garment off his shoulders.He forcefully wrenched the stubborn sleeves away from his arms and tossed the tailcoat onto the writing desk chair.
His waistcoat followed, but as she grasped his shirt and began to lift it over his head, she slowed. Bit by bit, she enjoyed the reveal of his exquisite physique: the toned stomach, the impressive muscle of his chest, the movement of muscle, sinew, and tendon that she had no names for, and his big, powerful arms.
More scars…She reached for the faint marks on his skin, small burns that were healed but would always be there as a reminder.
With a smile, she touched the deep line that ran down the center of his ridged abdomen, all the way to just above the waistline of his trousers. Perhaps, it went further still.
“I wondered how far down it went,” she murmured, more to herself than to him.
Biting her lip, she let her hand wander a little bit lower, smoothing over the bulging shape of his arousal. Her imagination didn’t have the means to fill in what she didn’t know, but it was satisfying to touch: hard and alive and fascinating, stirring up the curiosity that she was meant to be resisting.
“This is about ye, not me,” Jeremy said, his breath catching. “Me pleasure tonight is in hearing and seeing yers.”
