“How can you know how well we fit?” She seemed to be pleading with him now. “There is still so much about one another we do not know.”
“The important bits are clear. You need someone to care for you, and I want to be that someone. I need someone to… tease me now and then, and unaccountably I”—he swallowed hard—“adore being teased by you. You are not scared to kiss a man like me—scarred and ill-tempered, a misanthrope with no friends but for a derisive secretary. I have rarely felt comfortable since the last time I stepped foot off a boat, but with you, I forget that I do not fit into the world. Because I fit with you. What are names or addresses when you make me smile? If you do not feel the same way, tell me now, and I’ll—”
“I do. You… unnerved me at first. There was so little I knew about you, but now I think I see you clearly. Now I know I’d like to see you better. I want to listen as you tell me everything.”
“Let me listen first. Rest your busy ears and put that lovely mouth to work.” He rubbed his thumb over her bottom lip. “I know there are worries you must lay to rest, but for tonight, let me do the listening. And most of all… let me kiss you.” He dropped his head so that his forehead almost touched hers. “Not a kiss to pretend. And not one to tease. No damning anger in it. I will listen to what you need and give it to you with every breath I take.”
A point of heat on his knuckle, blazing and lovely jerked his attention toward that appendage. She’d reached out, touched him, dragging the very tip of her finger down the outside of his.
She spoke, then, without looking up. “Yes.”
That was all he needed. Their mouths met, a wild tangle of tongue. His body taut, his control, too. So taut he might snap at any moment. But if he did, she’d snap with him. He’d kissed her only twice before, but already her taste was familiar to him. Tonight, she tasted of his wine, his food, and of herself. That almost undid him entirely. Because those things that were hers and those that were his should always be twined together. The kiss and taste of her tongue familiar but the rest of her unexplored. He would waste no time. His hand at her neck, over her shoulder, down the gentle swell of her bosom to pause at the fastening, puzzle them before undoing them.
She helped him shrug off her spencer, and then he paused to take in the creamy expanse of her bosom above the boundary of her bodice. The hardest thing he'd ever done was to not gobble them up with his gaze all night long. A husband wouldn't have to look in public because he'd have his fill in private. He wasn't truly her husband, and so ripping his gaze away from those creamy visions had been like hell.
He licked his lips as he touched them for the first time, sliding the pad of his thumb along the bodice where it met soft skin. Keeping his need in check, he pulled the shoulder of her gown down so the bodice sagged, slipped, revealed her stays, the thin, fine shift beneath. Too many layers, him too heated to deal with them gently. No matter. Muslin no true barrier. He dipped his hand in and, as if he was lifting the most fragile porcelain teacup, he lifted her breasts free.
The unveiling of her body slowed time to a trickle. Hours seemedto stretch out between the ticks of the clock in the hallway, and in each of those long hours, nothing but the rasping of their breaths.
“So beautiful.” Rosy and pert and peaked. He brushed his thumb over her nipple, and she shivered, a lovely pink blush painting across her skin everywhere the candlelight touched it. His hand seemed much too large on her, much too rough with the sprinkling of dark hair across his knuckles and the popping veins. Her veins ran blue across her pale skin, like God had painted her, the liquid of her life too beautiful to hide inside. He was rough-hewn and too big, and she was so very fine a woman, sculpted in marble by a master.
For years, he’d lived for Hestia.
Now he lived for Isabella.
He pinched her nipple between his thumb and forefinger, and her head fell back with a moan, her hands curling into fists where they had been resting against his shoulder and at his hip. He bent down and pulled the nipple into his mouth, circled it with his tongue. The little sounds she made—so perfect, so very Isabella.
Her hand on his shoulder journeyed down his arm to his hand nestled at her waist. She tugged, her pull insistent. Insistence in her lips, too, curving them in happy determination.Trust me, she seemed to be saying without words. He did, and he released control, let her guide his hand up to her other breast. He laughed, a gentle huff of breath between them because she’d proven herself quite trustworthy with that little gesture,trusting himwith her body. Hopefully more. Though what the hell he did with a heart, a soul… he’d have to figure it out.
She squeezed his hand, and together they squeezed her breast. “Rowan… Rowan, I want…”
“What do you want?” He parted her thighs with his knee, pressed his thigh against her sex.
“I want—” She whimpered, rolling her hips against his muscle, and then she laughed, a short little bark followed by a sigh. Her eyes cleared of confusion, gave way to the bright blue of confidence. “I am so glad you asked that, Rowan, because I have so many ideas. Quite a library of them. And I would very much like to tell them to you.”
Chapter Seventeen
Isabella was an unmarried lady, but she was also a Merriweather woman, and her mind had been filled for the last several years with any number of erotic images.
A sharp-toothed danger for a woman to take what men did so freely, but Rowan offered pleasure she’d only ever imagined, and she did know, thanks to her unusual education through her mother’s books, how to take precautions.
Perhaps society’s biggest secret was this—women could play with pleasure without actual ruination. As long as no one found out. But could she sink into a man’s arms without any other intention or expectation? She’d always wanted a fairy tale, had long despaired of ever finding one, no matter how many suitors her brother threw at her. Rowan was no golden prince. More the beast pacing the corridors.
But when Rowan spoke of claiming her, her heart took flight, and… Apparently, she did not need a crowned man.
She needed this one.
Rowan waited patiently, hungrily, for her to continue speaking, his feet glued to the floor, but action inherent, waiting, in the tense angles of his body.
She wanted to watch those muscles quiver. She wanted to make him lose control. “I want to discover pleasure in your arms.”
His eyes darkened.
“I want to touch you everywhere. Here.” Her hand lingered at his cravat. “And here.” Her hand passed over his shoulder and squeezed his biceps. “And here.” Her hand roamed over his chest and down his taut abdomen. She slipped around his side and flattened her palm against his backside. “Here, too.” She pulled in a ragged breath. How brazen of her to be saying all the things she’d thought since meeting him. She drew her hand back to his front, around the waistband of his trousers, and stopped it in the center just above his fall. “And other places.” Her boldness had a boundary it seemed. She closed her eyes, though, and pushed past it. “I would like to see you entirely without a stitch of clothing on. But first I would like you to kiss me.”
His kiss was like an attack, happening all at once and battering all her defenses. Ha. As if she'd had any to begin with. His tongue slipped into her mouth, consuming her, his hands teasing her body into a mass of raw, shivering nerves. He kissed her everywhere not covered by her gown, transforming her with each press of his lips against her skin so that she was no longer her own.
“More,” she breathed.