Cam bit out a groan and grasped the silk in his fist. He stripped the gown from her body with one tug, then drew her shift over her head and tossed them both to the floor.
Eleanor trembled, bare before him, and waited for him to say something. Anything. But he remained silent as he took in every inch of her, his gaze heating her skin everywhere it touched.
Dear God, why didn’t he speak? When she couldn’t take his silence any longer she began to rise, to reach for the coverlet.
“No.” Cam said, his voice a low rasp. He placed his palm between her breasts and eased her gently back down against the pillows. “No. Let me look at you. Ellie.” His voice trailed off, and his throat worked. “I knew you’d be . . . but I never imagined, could not have imagined you . . .”
Warmth swelled in her chest, pressed against her rib cage, and pooled in her belly. She’d been called lovely before, beautiful even. Her past suitors, smooth-tongued and glib, had written odes to her lips, expounded on the fineness of her skin and compared her hair to a gleaming waterfall.
But none of them had ever touched her heart. Cam, with his broken words, his awkward lapses into silence—he made her heart soar.
He made her want to give him everything.
She reached for him, let her hand rest against his cheek for a moment, and then traced a fingertip around his lips before skimming her palm over his neck and throat.
He closed his eyes as she pressed her hand over his heart. “Yes. Touch me.”
Eleanor lifted his hand to her lips and kissed it, her tongue lingering at the center of his palm as her gaze wandered over him, at his skin tinted gold from the firelight. She’d never dreamed a man’s body could be so beautiful.
She slid a hand over his shoulders, then trailed her fingers over his chest until they came to rest on his taut belly. “I was wrong. You don’t pad your coats, after all.”
He blinked, surprised. “No. Did you suppose I did?”
“I thought you must.” Her lips quirked. “The shoulders and the chest.” She rose up and pressed her lips to his chest, and he shuddered with pleasure when she dragged her fingernails gently over his nipples. “But this . . .” She bit her lip as her gaze roamed over his powerful shoulders and arms, his muscular thighs. “This is all you.” She slid her fingernails over his hard belly, relishing the feel of his flesh sliding under her palm. “And your skin is so smooth. Like warm silk.”
He groaned low in his throat, moving restlessly on the bed as she teased her hands over him. “Eleanor?”
She raised her gaze to his. His green eyes were darker than she’d ever seen them, his eyelids heavy. “Yes?”
He took her hand and dragged it across his belly until the tips of her fingers met the top of his breeches. “I don’t pad my breeches, either.” He moved her hand lower still, his breath leaving his lungs in a heated rush as her fingers curled instinctively around him. “This is all me, too.”
Her eyes never left his as she twisted open the buttons on his falls and slipped her hand inside to brush against the hard flesh there. “Oh,” she murmured, surprised. This part of him felt soalive. It twitched in her palm, as if it sought her touch. She held him, her hand still. Cam didn’t speak, but a strangled cry escaped him and he arched into her touch when she stroked her hand once over his hot skin.
Eleanor tightened her fingers around him then, thrilled at his low moan and the way his hard flesh throbbed against her hand. Dear God, she wanted touch him like this forever, to watch his face and listen to the low, broken sounds coming from deep in his chest as his powerful body shook. She wanted to see him lost in pleasure, helpless against it.
She watched, fascinated as his back arched and his hips moved in rhythm with each of her strokes, but after a moment he reached down and grabbed her hand to still it. “Enough.”
He pulled away from her and rolled off the bed, and Eleanor nearly leapt off after him. “Cam? Where are you—”
The words died in her throat. He stripped off his breeches and smalls with one deft tug. Eleanor swallowed, hardly knowing where to look first. He was magnificent—smooth bronze skin poured over muscle, his body lean, hard, graceful, every line in perfect symmetry, as if a sculptor had carved him.
He joined her on the bed again and she reached for his shaft where it jutted proudly from his hips, eager to resume her exploration, but Cam caught her hand with a strained laugh. “No.”
Eleanor made a half-hearted attempt to get free. “But I want—”
He moved to lay over her, the dark hair on his legs tickling her thighs. “You want to drive me mad.” He raised her arms over her head and this time he held them there with a hand around her wrists. “But it’s my turn now.” He nudged her legs apart with his knee and slipped his hand between her open thighs to cup her there.
Eleanor gasped at the intimacy of it. Heat rushed over her and she trembled at the caress. “Cam, I—”
“Shhhh.” His tongue brushed against her ear as his fingers danced over her, teasing at her damp flesh, stroking her between her legs. “I want to taste you.” His soft hair dragged across her heated skin as he moved lower to press open-mouthed kisses between her breasts, then lower still, his tongue licking a path down her stomach to her belly-button.
He released her wrists and his hands slid down her sides to her hips, then his palms were between her thighs, easing them open, wider, then wider still . . .
A strangled cry left Eleanor’s lips as his fingers moved delicately between her legs, his thumbs opening her gently. He lowered his head and . . .
Taste her?Surely he didn’t mean . . . surely he wouldn’t—
“Wanted you like this forever. Dreamed of tasting you,” he groaned, right before his hot tongue snaked out to touch her,there, where his fingers had been, and dear God, it felt like . . . oh, she didn’t know! She’d never felt anything like it before. She knew only it was wicked, what he was doing, wicked and exquisite, and she couldn’t make herself stop him, couldn’t think—
