He pulled back. Not far, but enough to pull his shirt over his head. She saw him in the firelight. The body she had imagined. Broader than his clothes suggested. Hard muscle under scarred skin. A history written in flesh.
She ran her fingertips along a scar that curved from his shoulder to his collarbone, and he shivered. The Hound, the man who did not flinch, shivered under her touch.
“Does it hurt?” she asked.
“Nothing hurts when ye touch me.” His voice cracked on the last word, which undid her.
She pulled him down. Kissed his mouth. Tasted salt and warmth and roughness. She kissed the scar on his collarbone. The one on his ribs. She kissed every mark she could find because each one was a door that had stayed shut, and she was opening them one by one.
He made a sound against her hair. Low. Almost a word. She felt it vibrate through his chest and into hers. The intimacy of it, the shared breath, the shared warmth, the bodies pressed together in the firelight, was more devastating than anything he could have done with his hands.
But then he did something with his hands. His palm slowly slid down her belly, fingers spread, mapping the terrain of her body as though he intended to memorize it. She felt the calluses on his fingers against the soft skin below her navel. Rough against smooth.
The contrast made her shiver.
He looked at her. Slower this time than in the drawing room. Deliberate. His eyes roved over her in the firelight. Her breasts. The curve of her belly. Her pale skin.
He was looking at her the way a man looked at something he had been thinking about for days and had finally been permitted to see.
“You are staring,” she pointed out.
“Aye,” he said. “I am.”
He kissed her mouth. The hollow below her ear. She turned her head to bare her throat, and he took it, his lips pressing where her pulse hammered. His hand moved down her side, over her ribs, her hip, the inside of her thigh. His fingers traced the crease where her leg met her hip, and she stopped breathing.
“Edward,” she whispered.
“I got ye,” he murmured against her throat.
His fingers found her center. He touched her gently at first, remembering what made her breath catch and what made her hips move. He found the sensitive bundle of nerves and rubbed it slowly, steadily, and she let out a loud moan.
She closed her eyes. She could feel everywhere his body touched hers. His chest against her side. His breath on her neck. His fingers moving with almost unbearable patience, as though he had all the time in the world and intended to use every second.
The novels she had read in Gordon’s library, hidden behind the Bible, described passion in terms of fire and storms. This was no storm, no flame. This was precise. Deliberate. He was paying attention to her body the way he paid attention to everything, with the focused intensity of a man trained to notice details. And the details he was noticing were making her lose her mind.
“That is the sound I have been thinking about,” he murmured. “Every minute. Every mile between London and ye.”
His fingers slid lower, before one pressed inside her, slow and careful. The fullness made her gasp. He curled his finger against the spot that sent white heat through her, and she cried out.
A second finger. Slow. Stretching gently. His mouth trailed down her body, kissing her collarbone, the swell of her breasts. His tongue circled her nipple and then licked it, and the twin sensations met in the center of her body and twisted like a rope being pulled taut.
She was making sounds. She heard them as though from a distance, as though they belonged to someone else. Sounds that came from the base of her spine and rushed through her body and escaped through her lips without permission.
She had spent three years being silent. Careful. Measuring every breath, every step, and every word. This was the opposite of that. This was noise and heat and his mouth on her skin and his fingers inside her and the complete, terrifying absence of control.
She loved it. She loved every second of it.
The loss of control was not frightening. It was freedom. It was the opposite of everything that had ever been demanded from her. Silence and stillness and the careful, measured existence of a woman who was not allowed to take up space.
Edward was giving her back the space. With his hands and his mouth, and the way he looked at her, and the sounds he coaxed from her body that were loud and raw and hers.
His thumb found her pearl again, pressing and rubbing it while his fingers moved inside her. The rhythm was steady and relentless.
The wave gathered low in her belly.
“Look at me,” he said.
She opened her eyes. His face was above hers, green eyes dark and unguarded. Not only lust, but something that looked like reverence.
