Page 86 of A Match Made On Duchess Square

It was not long before she started struggling to remove her shift. “Dear heaven. Why is it suddenly so hot in here?”

He watched her, smiling at her urgency. “Need help?”

She laughed gently. “Yes, I do. This shift is only getting in the way, isn’t it?”

He kissed her. “I would have figured out a way to get at your body with or without clothing. Your skin is soft as silk.”

“Yours is muscled and hot.”

He wanted to take it slow. She wanted to catch up on all she had missed.

He obliged.

“James,” she cried, responding to the intimate touch of his mouth and the teasing flicks of his tongue on the most sensitive parts of her sweet body that soon had her writhing beneath him.

Her eyes had been closed, but she now opened them to reveal the wild swirls of desire in her magnificent aquamarine orbs as he took control of her body with savage precision, teased and aroused her, watched her come undone.

This was the beautiful thing about Gwendolyn, the honesty of her feelings.

Blessed saints.

She was so responsive to his touch. And she looked at him as though he had delivered magic.

But she was the magical being who had turned this disaster of a night into a thing of splendor.

“James. Ooh, James.” Her voice, lush and throaty, drifted on the light breeze and carried through their open windows.

She gripped the sheets as he had her soaring, her control ripped apart and left to float like starlight on a sea breeze, not once but twice in the span of their few hours until dawn.

He never imagined the night would turn to this.

He could hardly breathe for finding her so beautiful, her body flushed pink and hot, and her sweet lips numb and rosy. Her hair was in wild abandon.

She smiled at him.

“Gwen, love.” He kissed her with all the aching tenderness he felt for her.

But how would she feel about him come morning’s light?

Chapter Sixteen

James watched Gwendolyn as she slept in the circle of his arms.

He hadn’t closed his eyes at all, for there was little point to it now that the light of dawn was visible above the horizon. The first gleams of sunshine filtered in through their open windows.

She looked so lovely in repose, her face angelic, and her hair in a wild, dark cascade over his arm and across their pillows.

He wanted to make this permanent, wished to wake up to her beside him every morning ever after.

“Ah, Gwen,” he muttered, easing his arm out from under her. “What have we done?” He worried that she would regret what had happened between them last night.

Her shift was askew and hid little of her lithe body. He placed a tender kiss to the exposed swell of her breast before carefully nudging the fabric back in place to properly cover her exquisite bosom, which had filled the cups of his hands not so long ago. Then he tugged more of the fabric down to cover her shapely legs.

Her skin was warm and felt like silk to the touch.

He placed another soft kiss on her shoulder before rising to walk to the window and stare out onto the cove.

The fog was lifting, and a golden sheen of sunlight rippled across water that was varying shades of blue, lighter in the shallows and a dark azure in deeper waters.