“Which is?”
“Keep you safely at a distance from my overly dangerous and volatile life.”
“I am not scared. Not anymore. I’m trying my best to be the right kind of daring.”
“I am the one drenched in fear, Jane. But there’s something else now. Hope.”
Hope was a dangerous thing. But having none was worse.
He kissed her, hot and fierce, and full of everything he could not say with words. The kiss was better than a line from a Donne poem. Better than wine or… there was nothing better.
Except perhaps more Jane.
He dragged her into his arms and began to walk backwards across the room toward his bed.
She looked up at him. Stars in her eyes? He hoped so.
When his thighs hit the edge of the bed, he whirled them around and pressed his weight into her. She toppled backwards, and he toppled on top of her. She cried out, her arms opening wide and her eyes opening wider. When he landed atop her, he braced his weight on his arms on either side of her head and dipped down for a hot kiss.
She went from flailing to caressing in moments. Her arms wrapped around his torso, and her fingers did a little dance up his back before she pressed her palms flat against his shoulder blades. She kneaded his muscles as her lips met his with unpracticed heat.
“George,” she breathed. “I should leave.” Yet she kissed him still, her lips moving over his jaw and chin. Her fingertips clawed at the muscles in his back.
Sheshouldleave. The gentleman in him knew that. But the man who had claimed Jane as his own refused to believe her leaving was necessary.
“You do not really want this. Hope is good. But you are still wary. I see it in your eyes. If I stay, there will be no waiting to marry. Or… will you prevent conception again?”
“No.” He’d never come inside a woman, never risked the creation of a child. Jane was different. He wanted everything with her. And perhaps he could have it. “Stay,” he hissed into her ear. “Stay with me, Jane. I want this. I want you. Now. One month. We’ll marry as soon as the bans are read.”
Her arms tightened around him. “Yes.”
Joy surged through him, squeezing through the cracks that hope had knocked into his usual caution.
He cupped her breast, squeezing gently.
She moaned and her head fell back onto the bed. His body fell onto hers like a ball rolling down hill, pulled inexorably toward its final destination. His fingers traced the braided edge of her bodice, pulling, lowering.
She pulled at his cravat, undoing knots, unwinding it in a slow, hypnotic dance. She didn’t watch him. She watched the cloth unraveling, and then she watched his neck as the dance revealed it, her gaze shifting from the cloth to him in a pulse-pounding moment.
She pushed his jacket over his shoulders and it caught, damned thing. The garment grew tighter every second. He stood and slouched out of it, his eyes glued to her, refusing to release her gaze.
She sat up, biting her lower lip, then standing. That was all she had to do to be pressed against him. Her hands entered the hot space between them, and she tugged his shirt out of his trousers. Her fingers worked at his fall as George flicked open each of his waistcoat buttons and shrugged out of it. When his fall loosed, she dragged the shirt up his torso and over his head as he slipped out of his trousers and kicked them across the room.
George spun her around, his fingers trembling as they brushed the hooks marching down the back of her dress. The last time they’d lain together, he’d bunched her skirts around her waist, an informal pairing born of need and desperation.
This was his first time to undress her. A momentous occasion, but not the last. He’d go slowly, tease them both into a frenzy.
Ha. As if they already were not. Jane’s breath came in quick pants, a rhythm that matched the beating of his own heart.
He sketched a finger down her spine from neck to the slight swell of her ass and back up. Then he flicked a hook open, took a breath, and flicked another. He released her body from its confines hook by hook, breath by breath, placing a reverent kiss on each newly exposed inch of skin, until the practical, high-necked gown sagged down her shoulders. He pushed it all the way off one side and dropped a kiss to each shoulder.
She pulled her arm free of the long sleeve and wrapped it around his head, pulling his lips to her neck. He obliged her, knowing what she wished without words. With a shrug, she slipped the gown all the way off.
He loosened and divested her of her stays much more quickly, barely conscious of his fingers moving, laboring to give him what he needed—Jane, naked. When the stays dropped at her feet, he wrenched the shift from her body and whirled her around to face him.
She stood before him, chin raised, brave and bold.
“You are glorious, Jane. Do you dare try something different with me?”
