His eyes glittered. “If it’s pleasure you seek to give me, then spread your legs wide, love, and let me do this.” He cupped her calves and smoothed his hands up behind her knee, over the outside of her thighs, lifting the thin material of her shift, revealing her skin to the warming air between them. His hands swallowed her thighs, nudging them apart, and his head lowered, hiding his face. He kissed her navel and his hands moved, one to settle on her arse and the other dipping between her legs, playing with the curls there, seeking—she gasped—and finding.
“Atlas,” she breathed, threading her hands through his hair.
“Perfection.” His husky voice caressed her skin, sent shivers spiraling through her, but when he licked her, parting her sex—even better. The true meaning of that word leaping through her body. He raked his fingernails down the outside of her thighs—up and down from knee to hip over and over as his tongue parted her, explored, tasted.
The points of contact between their bodies so few, she craved more. Yet the few places where they did meet—hand and thigh and shoulder and the pulsing center of herself caressed by his clever tongue—felt so entirely alive, she dared not break the touch even to seek more of it. He wrapped his hands around her hips, squeezed, as almost delirious need shot through her, and he dragged her closer to the edge of the pianoforte, to the edge of pleasure. Those rough fingertips of his dug into the flesh just below her hipbone, and that thumb played with the curlsbetween her legs, and she was going to come undone entirely because how could she feel delicate beneath his touch yet… yet so damn strong at the exact same time?
How could he awaken the strength and power in her very bones when he melted her, made her too weak to stand?
“Come for me, Clara.” His words a growl. He tilted his face up to her, his hands fire irons on her skin, hot and hard. “That is what I need—your moan a song in the air, love.”
And that almost did it. Her head fell back, releasing that asked-for moan as if her body was his to command. Certainly felt like it. He dragged his fingernails down her thighs and up once more and this time, as he kissed her, licked her, his thumb flicked against her nub, applying more pressure than a tongue could.
“Oh, God, Atlas.” One of her hands shot to his head, fisted in his hair as she curled her body forward around him.
“My name. Just like that.” A brief hum of pleasure in his throat that vibrated against the sensitive skin of her inner thighs. “Always.”
“Atlas.” The lust in her voice laced with frustration. There would be no damnalwayswith this man. “Just give me right now.” She tugged his hair. “Stay here. With me. Rightnow.”
His hands became vises, keeping her together as he did his best to break her apart. With each swipe of his tongue and circle of his thumb, drove her higher, gathered her closer, carved her into perfection, and absolutely ruined her. Her hips bucked in time to her panting breath, and then, like a top spinning out of control, she toppled and fell, collapsing over him with shuddering breaths and a trembling body. Every muscle of her body languid. Every muscle of his taut as he rested his cheek against her belly above her curls, his caressing fingertips lazy now in their hip-to-knee journey.
Somehow, she straightened, and he looked up at her, moonlight turning his face into hard angles of shadow and light. She cupped his cheek, stroked his cheekbone. She slid to her feet and urged him upward, wrapped her arms around his waist and leaned into him. He leaned into her, too, their bodies the two legs of a compass, slanting outward from the same center. His arms locking around her, one hand at her nape and the other nestled at her lower back. Easy to stay locked in his arms, safe and cared for.
She broke the embrace, though, to weave her hand through his and tug him beyond the curtain, toward the bed. When he realized her destination, his feet took root into the floor. Still, she tugged. Pointless when a man was a mountain.
“Atlas, sleep in the bed tonight. Let me keep you company so you have no dreams but those I whisper in your ear.”
His gaze swung toward the window. “I don’t need?—”
“But you do need, and I won’t allow you to deny yourself.” She pressed her body against his, her breasts aching against his chest, her hips rolling against his shaft. His quite long and hard shaft. She pressed her palm against it, rubbed gently up and down. “Please, Atlas, come to bed.” Her hand in his again, tugging, and this time he let her uproot him, pull him with her onto the mattress as she crawled across it to the other side, shrugged out of her wrapper, and snuck beneath the blankets.
He seemed unsure what to do, sitting on the bed’s edge, body curled forward, forearms braced on his thighs, head hanging.
She knew no such hesitation. Her shift proved an easy thing to wiggle out of, and when she lay naked beneath the sheets, she drew her fingers down his spine. He shifted, peered at her over his shoulder. In the darkness, she could not see his expression, so she continued stroking that strong back, curling desire tight and high in her belly. But did she curl his?
“You’re still in need of distraction, Atlas.” She pushed the blankets down her body, past her breasts, her navel, lower, as low as her arm could reach. “Take what distraction you need from me.”
Even in the darkness, she could see the change in his eyes, how they raked across her body, lingering in all those places he seemed to enjoy touching most. Yet he did not move. Her desire waited, hanging on a shifting wind, terrified of the fall should he refuse her invitation.
She flattened her palm against his back, counting his long, labored breaths, feeling at the pad of her thumb a knotted scar raised over smooth skin. Just one of many.Take what you need.Not something Atlas did. She needed new words.
“I need more, Atlas. Please give me more.”
His hesitation crumbled, and he swept his shirt up and over his head as he rolled toward her in one fluid movement. His lips met hers in a frantic prayer, and that hard shaft she’d rubbed through wool thrust against her hip.
“I’ll give you everything you need,” he growled into the kiss. “You don’t have to ask.”
She knew. She knew. He’d give her the sun and stars, the rivers and roads and everything in between.
And if he let her, she would give him her heart.
Seventeen
If Atlas had seen hell in the Netherlands, he glimpsed heaven now. Its location England, Hampshire, Briarcliff, his bedchamber, the warm center of his very own bed. The luscious body of his very own wife. Who welcomed him to her side.
“I’ll give you everything you need,” he whispered, his lips against her neck. Cowardly words that hid the truth—he meant totake. Everything he could. While he still could. He dragged his lips down the length of her neck and nibbled along her collarbone. He nipped at the round of her shoulder, licked his way to that little crook in her elbow, bent because her hands were tangled in his hair, igniting his scalp with a field of sparks where skin caressed skin.
“I’m a greedy woman.” Sounded like a warning. “What if I need everything?”
