Then his mouth touched hers.
This kiss was different. It was slow and deep and unforgivably tender.
Emmeline’s hands rose to his chest, and beneath her palms his heart beat hard. The discovery made her whimper softly against his mouth. Rowan answered with a low sound, one hand sliding to the back of her gown.
His fingers worked at the fastenings with unexpected patience, each loosened hook making the gown relax around her body. The blue silk slipped from one shoulder, then the other, pooling slowly downward until cool air touched the upper curve of her breasts above her stays.
Rowan looked at her and the silence of that look undid her.
“You are shaking,” he murmured.
“So are you.”
For the first time that night, something almost like a smile touched his mouth. “Yes.”
He bent and kissed her bare shoulder.
Emmeline’s eyes closed.
His mouth moved slowly along the exposed skin, each kiss deliberate, reverent, as though he meant to learn her by inches and punish himself with every discovery. His hands settled at her waist, not rough now, not demanding, but sure. He lowered the gown farther until it fell in a whisper around her feet, leaving her in her chemise, stays, stockings, and jewels.
His gaze felt too hot.
“Do you know,” he said, voice roughening as his fingers traced the edge of her stays, “how often I have imagined this?”
Her breath trembled. “No.”
“Too often.” His eyes lifted to hers. “Never properly enough.”
He loosened her stays slowly, refusing to hurry though she could see the strain in his jaw, the tension in his shoulders, the effort it cost him not to tear every ribbon apart. That restraint made the heat inside her worse. He was unwrapping her. Watching every breath, every swallow, every small betrayal of want.
When the stays opened, her chemise shifted, thin fabric clinging to her breasts.
His palm covered her breast through the chemise, and Emmeline gasped, arching into him before she could stop herself. His eyes flared. Slowly, he brushed his thumb over thetight peak beneath the linen. Pleasure sparked through her, bright and shocking.
“There,” he said softly. “That is it. Let me hear you.”
Her face burned, but when he touched her again, she could not silence the sound that left her.
“Beautiful,” he murmured. “God, Emmeline. Beautiful.”
He kissed her as he lifted her, carrying her the few steps to the bed. The mattress dipped beneath her when he laid her down, and for one panicked instant, shyness rushed in where desire had been. She was in his bed. Half-undressed. Hair loosened, skin hot, mouth swollen from his kisses.
Rowan saw the change at once.
He knelt on the edge of the mattress and cupped her jaw. “Look at me.”
She did.
“I am going to make you come apart for me,” he said, his thumb brushing her lower lip.
The words sent a shudder through her entire body.
His gaze dropped, and something dark and satisfied moved through his eyes. “I know you like hearing me say it.”
She bit her lip and nodded.
He kissed her once, briefly, almost sweetly. Then he moved lower.
