“Delicate man,” she said, now making quick work of his waistcoat buttons.
Catching her hands in his once more, he held them still. “We stop the moment you wish it. At once. You need only say so.”
“I know,” she said. “But I do not wish to stop. Not yet.”
She leant in and kissed him again – deep and unhurried, full of tremulous promise of all she did not yet know but was determined to discover. Sliding her hands beneath the loosened waistcoat, she traced the line of his chest through fine linen. At his sudden wince, she halted at once.
He shook his head. “Continue.”
Obeying him, she let her hands explore once more. He raised his hand slowly as she kissed him, letting it trail along the curve of her waist, then higher, until his knuckles grazed just beneath the swell of her breast.
“I shall make a proper study of you,” he said. “Beginning with your shoulders… your collarbone… and then, here… ” Brushing his thumb lightly over the peak of her breast, he watched the shiver that rippled through her. “Until I know precisely how you like to be touched, and precisely how to draw from you every sigh I desire.”
“They do say reformed rakes make the best husbands.”
He placed soft, open-mouthed kisses upon the exposed skin just above her gown’s neckline, moving slowly from one shoulder to the other.
She shivered, and he smiled against her skin. “You are shaking.”
“I am not,” she lied.
He kissed her again, a little lower now, where the fabric grew sheerest. “You are. Delightfully so.”
Her hands gripped his shoulders as he tugged gently at the ties of her bodice. The gown slipped loose, the neckline yielding to his touch until the soft upper swell of her breast was laid bare to the firelight, and then his mouth was upon her.
She gasped, tightening her nails into his shoulders. “Theo – ”
“Hush,” he whispered against her skin.
He took her breast gently into his mouth at first, then with growing pressure, until her breath caught and her hips shifted forwards without thought or command. Only then did he draw back, his breath warm against her flushed skin, and murmured, “Does that please you?”
She could scarcely shape her reply. Her eyes fluttered open. “Yes.”
He smiled, slow and wickedly fond. “Then I shall be most obliged to continue, Miss Tolliver… for your instruction in pleasure, of course.”
And so he did –applying himself with unhurried purpose, savouring her gasp as circled the tender peak with his tongue. His other hand rose to cradle the weight of her remaining breast, tracing slow strokes with his thumb that matched the pull of his mouth.
She felt utterly undone. “Theo,” she breathed once more, though this time there was no hesitation in it, only need.
“Yes, my dearest?”
Dearest.It caught within her, a word too intimate to be accidental. It was not the language of convenience, nor of games. No – this was unnervingly sincere, and dangerously close to something with feeling. Reaching for him, she slid her fingers into his hair, drawing him closer. “Do not stop.”
With a low groan, his mouth sought hers anew. Into him she arched, wholly unguarded now, drunk on the heat of his mouth.
“You are exquisite,” he murmured, his voice thick.
She could form no reply. Her body was burning, every inch attuned to the press of his mouth and the path of his hands. He lavished her with affection, tracing slow kisses across her chest, her collarbone, the curve of her throat. When at last his hand drifted lower to rest at her waist, she froze.
He stilled at once. “May I?”
She nodded, and he raised her skirts inch by torturous inch. She gasped as he skimmed her bare thighs, ascending higher, then higher still, until he touched her. She buried her face in his neck as a strangled sound escaped her.
“Have you ever touched yourself here, my love?” he breathed.
She let out a scandalised squeak. “Theo!”
He gave a low laugh, his mouth grazing the curve of her ear. “That is not a denial. And this is hardly the moment to grow prudish.”
