“Miss Trelayne?” he prompted. “May I demonstrate?”
“Yes, Your Grace.” A whisper.
Ian cleared his throat. “Very good. Now. Do you see my chest, rising and falling?”
Miss Trelayne stared at his chest with intense focus, like someone trying to find the hidden imagery in a Renaissance painting.
He chuckled. “My breath is coming fast, is it not?”
She bit her lip and nodded slowly.
“Labored breath, some might call it?”
While she stared, he shrugged from his waistcoat and tossed it aside. He unbuttoned the top five buttons of his shirt, and it hung open to his bare chest. Now her gaze shifted from his clavicle to his pectorals. Her expression was mesmerized, hungry.
“Give me your hand,” he ordered.
Slowly, gingerly, she slid her hand from her hair and extended it to him. He took it and pressed it over his heart. Her touch was cool and soft and far less shy than her expression let on. Her fingertips dug firmly into his skin.
“Can you feel my heartbeat, Miss Trelayne?”
She nodded.
“How does it feel?”
“Quick,” she whispered.
“Very astute. Do you knowwhyit’s quick? Why my breathing is hard and my heartbeat fast?”
Miss Trelayne shook her head. Her hand remained on his chest, and the position tipped the two of them together; their faces only inches apart. Her knees touched his thigh. Her hair fell across his arm.
“My heart is racing, and I struggle to breathe,” he repeated, “because I amexcited.Youexcite me, Miss Trelayne, and I have no control over it. I lost control of my breathing and my heartbeat the moment I saw you perched in this window.”
This scared her a little, as he knew it might, and she went to snatch her hand away. He covered it with his own, gently holding her there.
“I’m going to kiss you,” he said, a statement.
She did not deny or invite, she simply stared, eyes wide, cheeks flushed, her hand on his heart. Very slowly—with a slowness he would classify, in fact, asexcruciating—he leaned in, giving her ample time to move away, or hide behind her hair, or shove him onto the floor.
Instead, she closed her eyes and craned to meet him.
Ian, in an unbelievable show of restraint, kissed her once very slowly, his closed lips fitted against hers. She sucked in a little intake of breath against his mouth. He remembered the sound from the gallery; helovedthat sound.
He allowed the kiss to settle and sink, nearly perishing with want. After a long moment, he pulled back just enough to check her expression. Her eyes remained closed, but now her face was turned up, her lips ever so slightlyparted. Her loose-fitting ivory shift drooped at the neck, revealing the swell of small pert breasts. The winter white of her skin had ripened to a sun-kissed pink.
Ian swore under his breath. He’d never seen anything so enticing—virginal redheads in thin, white shifts, who knew?—and kissed her again. The second kiss was chaste; but the third was not so chaste, and then he delved into an entirely brazen kiss, swiping her lip with his tongue before plunging into her mouth. After that, one kiss melded into the next. Words likeallureanddesirablewere weak and insufficient.
He slid his fingers into her hair, cupping her head to hold her in place. With the other hand, he encircled her wrist and pulled her palm from his heart, sliding it around his back. He kissed her until he couldn’t breathe; kissed her until she was draped over him in a wonderful, sort of full-body drape that was just a little bit taut, rigid with excitement.
Then he kissed her until her head fell back, andshefell back, and the two of them tipped and he was on top of her in the window seat. He found the hem of her shift and slid his hand up the glorious length of her leg, bunching the silk at her waist. Their legs entangled.
His boots were a constricting nuisance and he reared up, balancing on one knee to remove first one, and then the other.
When he looked down on her, he saw her in a pool of red curls on peacock-colored velvet; she was creamy skin tinted pink from his touch; a rumpled ivory shift barely clinging to her body. She stared up at him, her own eyes half-lidded—but not at his face. She perused his body like a jockey assessing a racehorse. When her gaze fell to the rise in his trousers, she treated Ian to an expression that he would remember the rest of his life; likely it would be his last thought before death.
“Do you know how else you might determine how much I want you, Miss Trelayne?” he asked. How could he not?
She stared up. She shook her head.
