He was on the brink of asking her why not or what she’d prefer instead when she lifted her face to his, those big dark eyes gazing at him with hope and want, and he lost all powers of language entirely.
“Roland,” she said softly. “Take me to bed.”
CHAPTER 24
For the briefest moment, Mae thought he was going to refuse her.
She felt him tense against her body, saw a flicker of emotion move across his face. She half expected an appeal to her sense of reason or, perhaps worse, a gentle refusal, based on her state of mind.
Instead, he merely seemed to be taking a moment to hear what she’d said.
And then he kissed her.
He squeezed the hand he was already holding gently and pulled her to her feet, those remarkable turquoise eyes darting over her face as he captured her lips once, twice, and a third time in soft, lingering gulps of sensation.
The only reluctance he showed was turning his back to her out of necessity in order to lead her to his bedroom, their hands still entwined as he guided her down a narrow hall and to a door that stood a little ajar at the end, flooded with sunlight and dappled with the shape of hanging ivy that clung to the glass outside.
She had always imagined that this would happen in the dark. That it was a thing for the night, fumbling and instinctive and made of hands and breath rather than sight, but his chamber was awash with late-afternoon glow.
The breeze outside made the patterns of shadow dance across the plush quilted coverlet over his four-poster bed, and as much as the Mae of only a moment ago would have stopped and fallen into reverie absorbing every detail of this sacred, secret space, the Mae of just now wanted only Roland. Only him.
He turned back to her, his hands going to the bow he’d tied in her apron strings that morning and tugging them loose while his eyes held steady on hers. He watched her reach up to untie the strip of linen from her brow and unwind the barrier that held her hair in place while she worked.
She untied the top of her bodice, the very first knot, pulling the string gently and slowly as an invitation, should he wish to do the others, and smiled at the descent of his mouth on hers as his fingers came up to push hers away, tugging and pulling at the fabric, exposing her simple linen shift inch by inch while he tasted the silence on her tongue.
She reached up to dig her fingers into his hair, something she had dreamed of doing for years now and had never dared, even after they had begun to kiss one another. She sighed at the silky feel of it gliding over her knuckles as he tugged the yellow cotton down over her shoulders. She gave him one arm, and then the other, refusing to entirely give up her exploration of those softly curling pink-gold locks as he ran his hands down the curve of her waist to push the skirt to the floor past the barrier of her hips.
He pulled away from the kiss then for a moment, his chest heaving and his eyes wild, clearly desiring to look at her like this, half undone in her underthings.
She stood for him, shivering as she felt his eyes rake over her. He watched as she reached to unlace the front of her short stays, releasing her ribs, her spine, and her breasts from the confines of good posture and sensible restraint. She slid them over her shoulders and let them drop to the floor on top of the yellow remains of her dress, taking a deep, indulgent breath once she was free of them and reveling in the heat that immediately fired through her at the way his eyes fell directly to her breasts.
The gooseflesh that scattered over her hardened her nipples under the thin material, beckoning him back to her, a sound like hunger ripping from his throat. He caught her face in those freckled hands, cradling the bottom of her braided crown with his fingertips as he devoured her again, moaning into her kiss like a man finally satisfying a need so great that it had pained him.
He pressed his hips into hers, unabashed of the way his arousal strained against his trousers and toward the soft warmth of Mae’s own flesh.
She felt the heat climbing in her, over her shoulders and arms, into her throat, and inside her mouth. She clawed at his shirt, tugging it out from the waistband of those trousers, desperate to see his own skin again, to look at that expanse of brass-colored hair on his pale chest, at the perfect dip of his navel, at the shiny cautery scar she’d made with her own hands, and not have it stolen from her by the demands of propriety this time.
She circled him as he parted from her long enough to whip the shirt over his head and send it down into the pile where her dressand stays lived, backing herself toward the bed as he prowled after her, his fingers moving to the ties at his waistband.
She drew her bottom lip in between her teeth as he pulled the leather laces loose and began to push the skintight fabric down over the lean muscle of his hips, revealing more of himself to her than she ever dared to imagine.
The burn scar glinted on his ribs in the sunlight. The white remains of the suture scars glowed against his forearm.
He bent briefly at the knees to divest himself of the last scrap of fabric, his hair falling over his face as he stood back upright, as perfect a body as any diagram or idealized imagining in her studies. Far more beautiful. Far more vital.
Far more tempting.
The diagrams were almost never fully aroused. And even the ones that were did not look like this. They did not look like Roland Reed, coursing with hot blood and glowing with ethereal beauty, his very flesh thrumming with life and desire.
She was staring so avidly that somehow she didn’t realize he’d closed the distance between them until she felt his hands bunching into the skirt of her shift. She startled, which made him smirk at her, something predatory and hungry in his face.
“Show me your body,” he whispered. “Show me what I’ve been aching for.”
She lifted her arms, blinking at him until his smirk blossomed into a full-toothed grin and he finished rucking the fabric up fully, filling his fists with it and pulling it up over her head and sending it sailing back over his shoulder.
She took another deep breath, another deep inhale of free air, with nothing confining her or stopping her short of the sweet completion of indulging. She fell back onto the bed, her hands braced behind her, enjoying the way his breath caught at the jiggle of her breasts and the soft fold of her belly.
“God,” he muttered, his eyes drinking her in. “You are perfect.”
