Now her head and torso were draped across the bed, while her legs dangled over the side. Her hips rested on the edge of the mattress. He stood between her legs and leaned, resting his palm between her breasts and spreading his fingers. With her legs hanging and his body looming over her, his erection made contact with her body at a new angle. He pressed again, and the sensation was sharper, brighter, harder. She cried out, the sound a mix of pleasure and disbelief. He pressed again, and again, and again.
“What do you feel?” he demanded.
“Please,”she cried.
“What was it you told me? To stop thinking? To feel?”
“More,” she cried out, and her boldness was his undoing.
Breaking the kiss, he hitched his knee on the mattress, caught her up beneath her arms, and dragged her to the center of the bed. Her chemise had worked its way off her shoulders, but the slide across the sheets pulled it entirely off. She was bare to the waist. Her breasts were revealed to him. He stared down at her nakedness: small, pert breasts, flat stomach, tiny navel. The long, thick rope of her braid was coming undone, a splash of ebony on white sheets.
He released her—literally spilled her on the covers—and rose up so he could gape. Her eyes fluttered open and she looked down at her nakedness. If he thought she would use her arms to cover herself, he was wrong. If he thought she would hide her face, he was wrong. She bit her lower lip and looked him square in the face. Her eyes were half-lidded. She blinked. Ever so slightly, she arched her spine.
Damn her, he thought, grabbing the fabric of the chemise and tugging it down her legs in a frustrated yank. Danielle lifted and bent to allow it to slide free. It cleared her feet in a flutter. Blowing out a puff of air, he looked down at her glorious body, bared to him in the candlelight. She wore nothing but an expression of triumph and expectation. She waited, allowing him to live out his fantasy.
“Stop thinking,” she whispered.
He ignored her.I can look,he reasoned in his head. His hands trembled at his sides. He balled them into fists. He panted like he’d sprinted to this bed from Cornwall. He was as hard as iron.I can look.Wecan come back from a long, memorizing look.
Her body was a gift, and he could admire it without touching. He glanced up.Oh, but her face.Her face was an invitation.
“Bannock?” she teased, her voice a whisper.
He squeezed his eyes.
“Bannock?”
Pull yourself together, he warned. He’d kissed her before, he’d touched her. He was a grown man. He understood self-control.
He also understood what was at stake. Consummating this marriage would be a final act of selfishness.
He opened his eyes. He looked at her. She was propped on her elbows, breasts heavy but nipples pointed high. He let out a tortured moan at the sight. His erection throbbed. She watched him through lowered lashes. He’d been wrong about her expression. It was not an invitation, it was a challenge.
“If you must think,” she whispered, “will you tell me what you’re thinking?”
He shook his head. “No.”
“Of course not. Why am I not surprised?”
“No,” he repeated stupidly—the only useful word left in his mind.
Biting her lip again, she rose from her elbows to one palm, filling the space between them with her nakedness. Luke braced. With her free hand, she reached out and grabbed the waist of his breeches. She tugged. He dug his knees into the mattress, refusing to fall.
“You know everything about how this happens,” she informed him softly. She gave another tug, more strenuous this time. His erection strained toward her hand.
She continued. “What thinking is there left to do? What research? I’m the student here, not you.I’mlearning new things.Teach me.”
Possessiveness hit him like an anchor. He reminded himself not to be selfish. He should remember all the reasons not to consummate.
So she can marry again.
So she can live a full life.
With me...
“Bannock,” she repeated, more forceful this time. She yanked at his trousers hard enough to topple him. And he wanted to topple. He’d been poised, holding his breath, waiting for her to pull him onto her beautiful nakedness. And now she had done. And all of his many thoughts, contradictory and useless, toppled, too. She’d commanded it, and now they were dust.
He found her mouth and seized it.
