A dark chuckle that filled the candle-flickering darkness. “Very well.” The sounds of shuffling behind the screen, of linen hushing across skin.
“No!” She raced to reach him. “I want to?—”
He stood shirtless before her, the linen a puddle between them. He lifted a brow. “You want to…?”
Undress him. She wanted to strip him bare as he’d stripped her, to be the boldest she’d ever been. Only one, perhaps two, garments remained. Those werehers. Not daring to look him in the eye, she stepped forward, and her fingers found the buttons of his fall. When she slipped the first one free, he touched her, one hand cradling the back of her neck and the other cupping her breast. He scattered kisses along her temple, and her fingers shook. How gentle he could be, how delicate the kisses. Like wet paper, they might dissolve entirely.
She wanted something sturdier. And as she set the last button free, she found it. He wore no smalls. Shocking. Thrilling. Did he sometimes sit behind that big Manchester desk similarly ill-clothed? She shivered. That image would never leave her. With a light touch, she stroked the length of his shaft. She’d touched it before but only through the wool of his trousers.
“I wish to take our lessons further tonight.” She lifted her face to his and pressed her palm flat against his hard abdomen.
Sneaking his hand around to the small of her back, he pulled her body tight against his own and then crushed her mouth in a kiss.
They’d shared many lovely languid things, passionate bursts of excitement, all of them perfect for a single moment. This one tasted not of a breath, a single point in time, but of a promise of breaths to come. All of them together, heated and heavy.
Tonight, she would give herself to him in every way. And tonight, even if just for tonight, it seemed he would take everything she had to give.
Eighteen
Kisses like flickering candlelight grew hotter, became flames themselves as fingers branded skin. Amelia’s toes barely held her weight. She clung to Drew’s neck with hungry arms, and he pressed her tight to his body, molding her curved belly against his flat one with strength and determination. Neither of them would back down this night. Neither would turn away and let a sliver of glass as smooth and clear and hard as those in his spectacles come between them. No thin layer of cotton, like a glove hiding hands away.
She raked at his shoulders and parted his lips with her tongue, meeting, tangling in every way. His hand found her thigh, hauled her leg high, hooking it around his hip as he clutched her tighter, his hard shaft cutting into her belly. Then his other hand, strong and hot on her other thigh, dragged her off the floor and up his body. She wrapped her legs around his waist, supported by his hands as they squeezed her backside, holding her tight. The world moved around her as he took firm steps toward the bed, but still, they did not stop kissing. Still, they feasted, hearts frantic, fingers devouring, tongues tasting.
The bed appeared beneath her, taking the place of his hands, and she made a whining sound of loss. He chuckled, sinking tohis knees before her. She tugged his hair, trying to pull his body onto hers once more, trying to wrap her legs tight about him again so she could roll her hips, her center, against the rigid plane of his abdomen. But he pushed her legs apart, wide apart, settling himself between them.
“Don’t touch.” His voice dark as shadows.
Her fingers curled into her palms, obeying though she did not know how to obey. “What do you mean? Don’t touch what?”
“Me. Yourself, though…” He lifted a brow, a cocky challenge as he shrugged her arms away from his body.
She reached for him. “But Drew?—”
“No, A-mel-ia. Now do as I say.” He drew a line down her belly and parted her sex, slipped a finger inside her.
She threw her head back onto the bed, clutched her hands in the quilt, and when he placed a kiss low on her belly, just about her curls, her body trembled. When he smoothed those lips down her inner thigh and placed a kiss there, she moaned, and when he settled his mouth hot against her core, she bit her lip to silence a cry. Her body pulsed, a gentle throbbing as his tongue lapped at her, as his fingers traced tingles up and down her thighs, danced circles around the pearl-sized spot of pleasure he’d helped her discover.
He spoke against her, each breath a whisper of a kiss that rippled pleasure through her. “The most erotic thing I’ve ever done is draw the outline of your breast. A perfect plump little shadow, Amelia. Find out, will you? Trace your fingers down it.”
She did, her hand almost too heavy to lift, but needing more than anything to do as he said. The electricity of her own touch surprised her. And then his hand covered hers as his mouth kissed her core once more, and he helped her cup and knead her breast, guiding with gentle pressure her fingers to brush across her nipple, squeeze. She arched into the caress.
“Do you feel how beautiful you are?” he whispered against her skin, sensitive, so sensitive, beneath his ministrations. “How perfect?” She moaned. “Real words, Amelia. Tell me you know.”
“I… I know.” Her voice breathy and not like her own.
“Good.” Then his hand disappeared from hers to bracket around her hips. Both hands there, hard and demanding and pulling her toward the edge of the bed. Fingers delving into curls, finding that perfect spiraling spot of pleasure and massaging almost painful circles of delight there as his tongue worked pleasure at her core.
She panted and groaned, hands clutching for him. Brushing hard, warm shoulder, she found hints of silken hair, but needing more to cling to. Knotting the blankets so she could arch her hips upward, she needed something, someone, hard to roll against as the bed melted beneath her and the heat of her demanding body found release, throwing summer into cold autumn air around them. Heavy. She’d grown so heavy, like a branch laden with snow, bowing, bending beneath the weight of pleasure. She could have floated away into the darkness of sleep, but he was moving, changing position, crawling up her body one hot inch after another.
Daring to open her eyes, she found him with a smile curled around his skillful lips.
“Heavy eyelids, darling one,” he said, pressing his shaft against her belly. “But stay awake a while longer. I’m not done yet.”
No, they were not done. She needed more. Needed what they’d not yet done. She found the strength to lift her arms, to stroke fingernails down his solid back and over the muscled mounds of his rear. She stroked up and down that indented space where lean thigh met rounded arse, and she rolled her hips against him. “More.”
His eyes glinted. No glass before them necessary to make them spark. Nothing between them now. No gloves, no spectacles, no clothes, no secrets. He’d let her draw him, and she’d let him draw her, and in the shadows of one another, perhaps they’d found deep truths, too.
She kissed him, soft and longing, speaking of all the ways she wanted him. Then, against his lips, she said, “More, Andrew.”
