She looked at him standing in the doorway, in his shirtsleeves, getting the words out in the order he had chosen for them, his hands loose at his sides.
“It is my pleasure,” she said.
His chin lifted a fraction, and the register of his expression shifted — only slightly, only just enough — and the corner of his mouth moved.
“As it happens,” he said, “I have been giving some thought to your pleasure.”
Her pulse made a decision before she did. She kept her expression where it was. “Have you?”
“If you were open to a further discussion on the subject.”
She reached over and closed the inkwell.
“Come in,” she said, her heart in her throat. “And close the door.”
He crossed the room without hurrying and sat on the edge of the bed, and his hand came to her jaw and turned her face toward him.
She went without being asked. He kissed her the way he had in his study that first night, with full attention, and she put her hand flat on his chest and curled her fingers into the linen and felt his heartbeat.
He drew back far enough to look at her face.
“Lie back,” he said.
She did, and he worked the buttons of her nightgown at the throat with efficiency, which bared one shoulder.
“Ah, you entrance me,” he groaned. “Do you know,” he said, “what I have been looking at all evening?”
His mouth went to her throat, her shoulder, the line of her collarbone. His hands moved the nightgown from her other shoulder, and he drew back again.
“Your throat,” he said. “In the drawing room.” His mouth moved there. “And here.” His thumb traced the ridge of her collarbone, slow, and his lips followed the path it made. “I have been losing my mind over the line just here, all evening, in polite company.”
He drew back and looked at her in the low light. His hands moved to her waist, the curve of her hip.
“Every part of you,” he said quietly, and his mouth moved lower, “is going to get my full attention.” His lips found the swell ofher breast, warm and unhurried. “I have been waiting to do this since well before supper, and I intend to take my time.”
When he shifted down the bed, and his hands moved to the hem of her nightgown, her hand went to his hair on reflex. He paused.
“All right?” he said.
“Yes,” she said. The word came out low, eager even.
Emboldened, he set his mouth to the inside of her knee, and she let out a long breath through her nose and lay back, because she had learned once already what patience meant when Dominic applied himself to a thing, and there was no point in bracing for it.
“Dominic.” She complained, her breath expanding restlessly inside her.
“Mm.” He moaned in response, not a single smidge of remorse in the sound.
“You’re doing that on purpose.”
“Why, yes I am,” he said, against her skin. “That is quite the point of this whole affair, isn’t it?”
His teasing words shocked a laugh out of her. “Dominic!” She gasped, but she could barely get another word out after thefeeling of his tongue inching ever closer to her center. “Ah.” It came out as a small, private complaint.
He built it slowly, with the attention he gave anything he meant to do correctly — reading her by the change in her breathing, the shift in her hips, the exact pressure on his hair when her hand tightened.
When he found the right angle, her hips moved toward him, and she made a sound through her teeth, low and bitten off.
“Dominic—”
