He walked her backward toward the windows. She leaned against the velvet-curtained glass as he kissed the column of her neck, the slope of both shoulders, lavishing attention on her breasts. She’d thought she’d felt need for him before, but she’d known nothing. Now, the velvet at her back and crushed in her fists, soft and thick and rubbing against her skin. His lips everywhere else, softer than velvet, the rub and press of them making her sensitive even where he didn’t touch her.
He dropped to his knees, his hands grasping her hips. She inhaled, sharp, almost a gasp, but he didn’t notice, fixated as he was on his task—lifting her skirts, lifting one of her legs, and hooking it over his shoulder. He pinned her skirts to her hip and kissed her knee, a line of fire up her thigh. His thumb inched under her skirts toward her throbbing center, and something very much like a growl tore from his lips.
Thank goodness one of his hands pressed her hip into the window because otherwise her weak knees would not have held her weight.
He rested his forehead against her belly, his breath warming the center of her body, teasing, tantalizing. Stopping? God, she hoped not.
She brushed her fingers through his hair. “I have it on good authority there's still at least one more place you can kiss.”
“Who's good authority? Your books?” His voice satin and knife sharp.
She smiled. “Older sisters, too.” She caressed the back of his neck. She should feel awkward or embarrassed or petrified with this man kneeling between her legs and with her request heavy in the air around him, but she didn't. It felt only right.
“Hmm. How very fortunate Mrs. Trent is a well-read woman. Because I’ve dreamt of kissing you here.” His thumb probed more deeply over her thighs, still draped by in skirts. “Alone in my bed, stroking my cock, thinking of tasting you.”
That image burned itself onto her brain. She’d never be free of it—his muscles bunching, his hand wrapped around himself. She’d seen illustrations, felt the tingle of curiosity… everywhere. But to see this man do that? A fire roaring across every inch of skin replaced those tingles.
Then hands crept toward her center, and his thumb brushed across her curls and in between her legs, and she knew why women ruined themselves. What a lovely thing to burn.
He parted her with his fingers and stroked, and she leaned against the window, trying to understand and feelentirelyevery sensation he played across her body like a harp. At her palms—soft velvet covering hard glass. On her thigh—his round, warm hands. At her hip—the tangled bunching of muslin. At her core—him.
Him inhaling, licking, kissing, sucking. Him whispering words she couldn’t quite hear into the hidden secret part of herself. His hands holding her waist tight, teasing the underside of her breast with little electric swipes, brushing closer and closer to her nipple until he conquered it, rolled it between two fingers, rolling shocking pleasure through her.
He slipped a finger into her, stroked it in and out as the warmth of his mouth lifted from her sex. “Have you touched yourself here?”
“No.” Imogen had said to, had promised it would be quite instructive to do so. She’d not wanted to. She’d wanted the man she loved, her prince, to touch her there first. How foolishly romantic. She did not love Rowan, but she would never regret letting him be the first to see her, to touch her, to make her ache, to drive that ache higher.
“You will now. After tonight, you will put your hand here”—he thrust a second finger inside her—“and think of me.”
“Yes,” she breathed. Acquiescence no difficulty. His demand already a foregone conclusion.
“Unless.” He settled his lips at her curls once more. “I am about. Then you come to me.” He nipped at the hidden bud beneath her curls, and it was like he’d touched her everywhere all at once.
She screamed.
He squeezed her breast. “Do you understand?”
“Mmm.” Other language, more comprehensible language, impossible. She tangled her hands in his hair—softer, silkier than the velvet at her back, better—and told him with her actions instead.
He had trapped her—against the glass and against him, both hard and cold and unforgiving but capable of heating up, transforming.
A caress here, a heated breath there, his thumb circling and pressing, his tongue licking and searching. Too much, too much to keep control when the entire world spiraled toward a moment, a feeling that promised to be better than breathing.
Out of reach.
Until it wasn’t.
“Rowan!” she cried, every muscle tightening, wavering like grass in a breeze. Lightning ripping through her body, not to kill but togive. How long she rippled beneath his touch she could not tell, but the breeze eventually dissipated, and she crumpled back to earth.
Not earth.
His arms.
His arms as he gathered her to him and stood and carried her to the dark coolness of his bedchamber, her head nestled on his shoulder. He laid her out on his bed and left her.
Nothing but liquid, she raised her arm—barely—to reach for him. “Rowan?”
Before her heavy limb could drop back to the bed, he was at her side, carrying a candle which he sat before a small looking glass hung above a simple chest of drawers. The mirror reflected the candle’s spartan flame, multiplying its reach across the room.
