Hers.
Somehow that gentled him, slowed him. They exhaled as one, and the kiss softened. He smoothed his hands down her rounded shoulders, up again, all the way up her neck and into her hair. He groaned, pulled away slightly so the tips of their noses bumped.
With eyes shut, he asked, “Can I keep kissing you, countess?”
“Yes,” she breathed, flattening her palms against his chest. Did she like his newly hardened body? Did she appreciate the unfashionable muscles he’d honed in the month he’d worked harder than he ever had in his life? He did. If she or Alex ever needed his protection, he could give it.
He returned to kissing, exploring the soft curve of her jaw, her cheek, the feathery gold of her eyebrows. When he returned to her lips, she was hungry for him. She fisted her hands in the cotton of his shirt, tugging until she could slip her hands under and slide up his abdomen to his chest. Her eyes glazed over. Shedidlike his body.
His lust careened out of control. Hers did, too, and their teeth clashed. He laughed. Her kiss, though passionate, was unpracticed. The little innocent. She asked for more, but if he gave her the passion that made him heavy and hard, he might scare her.
He must move slowly. “Can I kiss you more?”
“Yes. You need not ask permission.”
“You may rescind that offer soon.” He lifted her off the ground.
With a gasp, she wrapped her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist as he carried her up the bank, turned, and sat on the rock, cradling her in his lap.
Such an intimate, wanton position—their chests pressed together, her legs spread wide to straddle his thighs and the hard bulge growing there. He ran his fingers up and down her neck, her back, ran them around the outside of her hips, then trailed them up and down her thighs. The skin of one thigh in particular. The slit in her gown gaped open, revealing the hem of the pantalets above her knee and her stocking below it. And that strip of visible skin between the two.
He fisted his hand in the crisp white cotton of her drawers. “Bloody hell, you siren. I’ve never seen any sight so entirelyseductive. I’m trying to reform, countess, and here you are dragging me sin-ward.”
“’Tis no sin for you. Only for me. But I do not care.”
“I adore sinning, always have.” But it didn’t feel like sinning with her. It felt like heaven had lowered its guard, felt like he’d snuck in somehow when they’d not been looking. “You make me feel less empty, less lost, less alone.” Hell, what an insipid thing to say.
Better to delve into her body, a rogue’s delight. Her thigh a heaven on earth. He rubbed his hand up and down it until she moaned his name.
“Are you aching, angel? Tell me where.”
“Here.” Her hand slid from his abdomen and crept between her legs.
“Do you want me there?”
“I want… yes, I want you. There and everywhere.”
“You’ll have it.” He dragged his lips along her jaw and kissed her neck, pushing her cloak away from her shoulders and running his fingertips along her collarbone. Beneath that, a bounty, a feast, the most magnificent pair of breasts he’d ever seen. Ever touched.
He dipped his thumb into her cleavage. So warm, so perfect.
She gasped, and he kissed the edge of her bodice. Soft muslin and softer skin, a heady combination. He hooked a finger beneath her bodice, tugged. Her breasts spilled out—berries and cream—and he gathered them up, pressed them together, her skin hot and rosy. He tasted it, the cream first, full and lovely with a hint of the salt of her sweat. He traced a path to her nipple with his tongue, circled, laving first before taking one fully into his mouth, sucking.
Her head fell back on her neck with a moan, her fingernails scraping against his skin beneath the warmth of his shirt.
“You like that.”
“Yes.” The word ragged and sharp. She clung to him, squeezed her legs more tightly around him and rocked her middle against his pulsing cock. “Yes. More.” She rocked again.
He slid his hand across the satin of her thick thigh to the crisp curls hiding her cunny. She inhaled, exhaled—shaky, broken, needing. Oh yes, her body told him everything. Not a single word needed. He found the slit in her pantalets and slipped through, grazing the part of her sex first, giving her a chance to push him away.
She did not. So he cupped her mound and rubbed, his thumb probing through her curls and finding?—
“Ah!” A sound half gasp, half cry broke from her lips.
“Do you know what that is?”
“Yes. I… I’m well educated in female anatomy.” She gripped his shoulders beneath his shirt, squeezed until her fingernails scored his skin. “And its possibilities.”
