He didn’t answer, only gazed at her, his breath coming in ragged pants.
She bit her lip. “Should I not have… did I do something wrong?”
“No! God, no. I was, er…” How to put this? “On the verge of forgetting I’m a gentleman.” Even now he couldn’t quite makehis cock understand that he couldn’t tumble her backward onto his bed, and lose himself in her sweet, soft body.
“I don’t want you to be a gentleman. I may be innocent, James, but there can only be one reason for a lady to appear at a gentleman’s bedchamber door alone, at night.” For a moment, she looked uncertain. “You do know the reason, don’t you?”
He choked out a laugh. Dear God, she was irresistible. “I have some idea, yes.”
“Then you know that I…” She looked down at her hands, a blush tingeing her cheeks.
He drew closer, and caught her chin in his fingers, raising her face to his. “Do you want me, Euphemia?”
He expected more blushes, perhaps a bit of maidenly stammering, but she met his gaze and held it. “Yes.”
“Why…” He cleared his throat. “Why me? Because I taught you to waltz?”
Because that wasn’t enough, not nearly enough for him to have earned the gift of her.
“No.” She let out a long, slow breath. “Because youseeme, James, and no one… no one else ever has before.”
He stilled for an instant, but it was hopeless, trying to resist her. His heart wouldn’t allow him to send her away.
So, he gathered her into his arms, because there was nothing else hecoulddo, and because it was true, what she’d said.
Hedidsee her.
All her sweetness, all the love she held inside her, all the secrets she’d kept hidden for so many years… he saw all of it. All of her, everything she was, and to see her was to love her with everything inside of him, and everythinghewas.
Nothing could have torn him from her arms then, but he wouldn’t take her.
Not until she was his.
But he could give her pleasure, and then he could wrap her in his arms, and hold her until the sun rose. He gathered her close, and eased her back against the bed. “Lie down, sweetheart.”
She did so, settling back against the pillows, and gazing up at him with huge, trusting eyes. “Come here, James.”
She opened her arms to him, and something shifted inside his chest, then. Something small but vital that would never shift back again.
He’d never again be the man he once was, before her.
He held her for a long time, stroking her soft skin and whispering to her, trying to put into words how she’d changed him, made him a better man than he’d been, but he felt too much at once, and the words tangled in his mouth.
So, he kissed her with all the love he felt for her and prayed she understood what he didn’t know how to say. He kissed her and kissed her until the passion between them sparked into a conflagration.
She was panting, fistfuls of his shirt clutched in her hands. “James?”
He kissed her throat, the curve of her jaw, and the soft skin behind her ear. “Yes, love?”
She tugged at the linen. “Take this off.”
He dropped a hot, open-mouthed kiss between her breasts before he drew back, and tugged his shirt over his head.
“Oh my,” she breathed, reaching a hesitant hand out to trace the lines of his stomach, her eyes widening as his muscles shifted under her touch. “Is that alright?”
He let out a soft laugh as he stretched out beside her on the bed. “Yes.” He caught her hand, and pressed it against the center of his chest, over his heart. “I want your hands on me.”
She gave him a shy smile as she caressed her palm over his chest. He sucked in a breath when her fingertip grazed his nipple, and she froze. “Oh! I shouldn’t have?—”
