“I’m in a similar state, sweetheart.” He kissed her. He drew from her lips long and slow, taking with his leisurely taste an inhalation, too. Rain soaked, she smelled fresh and wild, like she’d arrived with the storm, dropped from the clouds right into his lap. She shivered.
He ripped away, and she gasped, wobbling a bit, eyes glassy. Anger built on her brow as her gaze cleared. “Do not stop now.”
“I’m not. Off with the gown, Beatrice.”
“Take it from me.”
Ah, the hellcat had returned. “Gladly. But… I would prefer that you surrender it. You can ask a man to ravish you, to be your lover, but you cannot undress before him? Hm.” He tipped her chin up. “Scared?”
Fire snapped her head back, ranging all over her body and coalescing in her eyes. “Scared? Me? Ha!” Her arms contorted, elbows flying out to the sides as her hands disappeared behind her back. She held his gaze, steadfast, not at all afraid. And when her arms dropped to the side, the neck of her gown loosened, slipped. There—her stays framing her breasts, her shift… soaked, the deep red roses of her areolas peeping through, her nipples pebbled.
Damn him. He shifted to keep the buttons on his fall from popping under the pressure of his arousal.
Her gown hit the floor with a soddenthunk, and she pulled at the little bow at the front of her shift, untied it, then twisted her arms behind her again. This time, her lips contorted, too, in concentration. She cursed under her breath, and her little wiggles as she tried to work her stays free drove him over a cliff. He spun her around and ripped the ribbons holding her together. Gone like his control. The stays and shift gone, too, leaving only her rosy skin made molten by the light of the leaping flames.
“Brave Beatrice,” he said, shrugging off his jacket and waistcoat, grunting out of his boots, and pulling his shirt off to soak the floor beneath their feet. He backed her toward the bed. Her arms covered her breasts, but she’d lifted her chin, unafraid. “Get on the bed.”
Eleven
Who was Beatrice to deny the man who looked at her like she was everything he’d ever dreamed of? She sat on the edge of the bed, and he immediately placed a knee beside her. She fell backward onto the mattress, and he blocked her in with palms on either side of her body. He was poised above her, all those muscles she’d admired earlier in the woodshop taut and ready.
To ravish her.
Finally. Thank God.
She scooted farther onto the bed, and he followed, eyes locked on her as his other knee made it onto the mattress. Such intent in his gaze. Such control in his body.
She’d thought his ministrations in the study had eked every bit of arousal out of her body, leaving her drained and sated.
She’d been wrong. Her body buzzed back to life, needy and focused entirely on him.
As he was on her.
She lifted her arms to trace the line of his collarbone, to stroke the muscled mound of his shoulder, to explore the valley at the bottom of his bicep. A short flight to his chest where she flattened her palm and felt his heart beating fast. So fast, like the patter of rain on the roof, one beat almost indistinguishable from another. She surged up to kiss the plane of muscle over that beating organ.
And then he growled and stole her lips, his body falling on top of her, rolling to the side and gathering her close as he kissed her thoroughly. Her heart like his now—patter, patter, patterpatterpatter.
Nothing to distinguish the beats from one another, his from hers.
His hand on her breast, kneading, his face between them, kissing the soft, sensitive flesh.
“These,” he murmured against her skin, “are astounding.”
“They are ordinary breasts.”
“You’re wrong.” He laved her nipple.
“Richard!”
He nipped her neck, sucked the little stinging bite.
She moaned his name this time.
“Keep saying it, sweetheart. I want to hear my name from your lips in every tone you possess. Angry, happy, amused, frustrated. Aroused. Needy. For me and only me.”
“Richard,” she sighed.
“Just. Like. That.”