“It doesn’t work like that, Iris. I do trust you, but I don’t permit my lovers to bind me.”
“Have you ever had a lover you trusted, or have they all been like Lady Beaumont? Mistresses, or courtesans?”
He didn’t reply, but his silence was her answer.
Iris placed her hand on his chest, over his heart. “Have you ever taken someone you love to your bed, Finn? Someone who…who loved you in return?”
He’d been staring at the ceiling, his lips tight, but now he turned to her, his eyes soft. “No.” His voice was choked. “I haven’t.”
She leaned down and pressed a tender kiss to his lips. “Until now.”
But Iris tossed the cravats aside. She didn’t want to push him on this. He knew he could come to her if he changed his mind, and for now, that was enough.
She lay down beside him with her head on his chest, and Finn wrapped his arm around her. After a while his breathing became slow and even, and Iris thought he’d fallen asleep, but then he stirred against her, and his low voice rumbled against her ear. “Lay the cravat over my eyes, but don’t tie it.”
She rose up next to him, startled. “We don’t have to, Finn—”
“I want to.”
The first fingers of dawn had crept through the window now, and she studied his expression in the dim light. His jaw was still tense, but there wasn’t a trace of doubt in his eyes.
Iris reached behind her and picked up a cravat. “Like this?” She laid the long strip of cloth over his eyes but left it loose, as he’d asked her to do.
“Yes. Now the other.” He raised his arms over his head and crossed them at the wrists. “Bind my wrists, but loosely, so I can pull free if I need to.”
Iris bit her lip as a wave of doubt assailed her. “Are you certain?”
“Yes. Bind my hands.”
Iris grabbed the remaining cravat and looped it around his wrists. “I’ve left the ends untied, so if you need to get loose, you can easily slide it off.”
“Well, then. I’m at your mercy.”
That was when the reality of the situation hit Iris. Hewasat her mercy, laid out in front of her with every beautiful inch of him on display. His lips, that bronze skin, his hard chest, and that distracting line of hair low on his belly that led straight down to his—
“What are you waiting for, sweet? I thought you wanted to touch me.”
“Oh, I do. I’m just, ah…well, I’m not sure where to begin.”
Finn let out a soft laugh, and moved his hips. “I have a suggestion, if you like.”
Iris glanced down the length of his body. The sheet still covered him from his waist down, but the thin white cloth was already rising over his hard length.
And all at once, Iris knew just what she wanted to do.
She pressed an open-mouthed kiss to the center of his chest. “That day, in Lady Fairchild’s garden.” She slid her hand from his chest over his stomach and felt his muscles tense under the caress. “I was peeking through the rose arbor at you and Lady Beaumont, and I saw something I didn’t quite understand at the time, but now…”
I still don’t quite understand.
But she did have a much clearer idea of the ultimate goal, and the rest of it, well…she’d work it out as she went along.
She stroked a finger over his nipple, surprised when he tensed, and the tiny nub hardened under her touch. “You like it when I touch you there, just as I do.” She stroked him again, then leaned over his chest to trace it with her tongue.
The muscles in his stomach jumped at the caress. “I do like it. Do it again.”
Iris smiled. He was terribly bossy for someone whose wrists were bound, but she had no intention of denying him. She nibbled at him and dragged her teeth over his nipple, then soothed the abrasion with gentle licks of her tongue.
He let out a strangled moan and threw his head back against the pillow. “Jesus, your tongue is so hot.”
