But he did so ruthlessly and with quick, quiet efficiency. He knelt before her first, plucking off her boots and untying the ribbons holding up her stockings. Those he slid off in two quick swoops, a kiss to each calf before he stood once more.
Her gown—gone, pooled at her feet. Her stays—loosened and dropping with a thump to the floor. Her shift—whipped up and away from her body, leaving her bare and shivering. Not because it was cold. Then his hand settled on the slope of her shoulder, and he kissed her neck as his other hand delved into her simple chignon, found pins, pulled them. Each one dropped with a barely audible clip to the wood floor. And with each one, he kissed her neck, her shoulder, again and again and again, until her hair was loose and long, the tips brushing against the top of her backside.
He inhaled, long and deep, and then the world tilted as he swept her off her feet and carried her to the bed, laid her out there where he slept every night and stepped back, his gaze more animal than man as it roved the length of her body.
“I always knew you were otherworldly. When did you escape the fairy realm? When must you return? And bloody hell, will you please just take me with you?”
She felt like a queen with his green eyes roving over her as firmly as his touch, which she needed more than air.
But first…
“You must undress, too.” She wanted him long and hard and naked beside her, above her, in her. She would not allow him on this bed—her domain—until they were equal in every way, skin to skin and beating heart to beating heart.
He kicked off his boots and stockings first, as deliberate with his undressing as he’d been frantic with hers. The jacket and waistcoat came next with shoulders rolling back. He lifted the hem of his shirt, and she bolted forward, took the hem from his possession.
“Let me. I want to.”
He smoothed a hand down her hair and cupped the back of her head to bring her in for a searing kiss, and when he released her, she almost forgot her purpose.
The corner of his mouth ticked up.
“You smug rogue,” she said, lifting the shirt, revealing a tantalizing expanse of abdomen, flat and rigid.
Below, his fingers worked at the buttons of his fall.
She did away with his shirt, so she could watch the muscles of his arms work to free himself entirely from the confines of his clothes. Biceps bunching and abdomen flexing, the smooth planes of his chest rolling into rounded shoulders. A dark line of hair started at his navel and expanded lower as his pants fell.
She fell, too, backward onto the mattress to finally see him wholly—large and powerful, lean and masculine. So beautiful, so perfect. How could he think himself as anything less than that? Any less thanher?
“Now,” she said imperiously, scooting back toward the headboardand trying hard not to remember how very naked she was, “you may join me.”
He set a knee on the mattress at the very end of the bed, grabbing her ankle as he hefted himself up, kissing that knobby bit on the inside as he ran his thumb over her arch.
“This right here is damn delightful, Isabella.” He breathed the words into her calf as he ran his hand up her leg. He kissed her kneecap and her inner thigh. “This, somehow, even better.” He licked a line up to her sex, and her entire body clenched. She reached for him, for any bit of him she could touch, found the silk of his hair and held on tight as he licked higher up, the length of her slit, one hand tight on her hip, the other circling pleasure into her bud. Clitoris, she knew it was called. Such a sterile, medical type of word, so unlike what she felt beneath his touch.
What she felt—indescribable, no matter how many naughty pages attempted to do it justice. His other hand wandered away from her hip toward her breast. Not like that at all. More like a line of fire surged up her body, out of control, like a bolt of lightning shot through her breast where he pinched and rolled her pebbled nipple. She might shatter, burn up entirely, that mountain peak of pleasure he’d helped her to last night so very close.
But he left that aching space between her legs and dragged his lips up her belly, kissed her navel briefly, and growled low with a lingering kiss at her breasts. He never let her catch her breath, his fingertips skating across every inch of her skin, his breath warming her everywhere she might grow cold.
The cold never had a chance. Rowan banished the winter in her body. Likely forever.
He kissed the pulse at her neck, and then he consumed her mouth thoroughly and with great attention to detail.
Then he flipped her, trapping her arms beneath her body and between her breasts. She squealed, and he nipped at her earlobe before trailing kisses down her spine. Each kiss a shiver sending out tendrils of greedy sensation from where his lips touched her to every other place on her body.
So wonderful to lie here beneath his touch but frustrating, too. Shewanted to touch him, and with her arms pinned, there was no hope of that. She spun swiftly and scooted backward toward the headboard, sitting up and leaning against it.
He crawled toward her, a prowling tiger confident he’d secured his next meal. “You can’t escape,a chuisle.”
“I don’t want to. I want to explore and claim every part of you.”
He straddled her legs, as she had his the night before, so very at ease with his nakedness. “Do as you please with me.”
She touched his chest first, that hard plain of muscle just over his heart. First her fingertips, skating over warm skin, then her palm resting flat and proprietary. Her hand seemed so small there. Shewassmall, compared to this man, but somehow he made her feel larger than reality allowed for, large enough to stake a claim.
She curled her fingers on his chest. “This is Isabella’s.”
“Yes,” he said, the word a rasp against his throat.
