Then Felix moved. He crawled across the world-filled distance and knelt before her, cupping her face in both hands. “Has there ever been a better woman than my wife?”
She was going to cry. Her lip trembled and she rolled her eyes toward the ceiling to keep the sudden tears from falling.
“I am not.” Not the best woman. Not the cleverest or most beautiful.
“Stop that. You are and you always have been. It’s why you’ve been such a danger to me. When I’ve known you all my life, how could any other woman compare?”
She did cry then, tears falling with a huff of a laugh.
He kissed her tears away, lips landing on her eyes, her cheeks, the tip of her chin.
She wound herself around him and found the courage to whisper in his ear, “You do not think it… foolish? Silly? Too radical…or… dangerous?”
“Foolish? God, no. As for danger… I’ve always liked a little danger.” Still holding her face, he pulled away so she could she the intensity of his eyes, green flickering like the candlelight. “It’s perfection.Youare perfection.”
She remembered now. Years of ire slipping away, years of self-doubt seeded by a single rejection. Before she’d decided to disdain Felix, before the footman debacle, she’d… she’d been a little bit in love with him.
Now—no little bit about it. Now, her heart burst open at the seams, too full of emotion to continue its humdrum daily life of beating gently second by second. She loved him quite fully. Quite foolishly and terribly.
He kissed each of her eyes. “Perfect Caro.” And he kissed the tip of her nose. “Perfect.” Each cheek. “Caro. Mine.” A hot whisper against her lips. “Perfect.”
She knew she was not, had always known it, but she found herself saying, “I believe you.”
He chuckled, laying her on the mattress and spreading her legs. He positioned his knees between them, and hands on her knees, he gazed down at her like a hungry wolf. “Trust your husband, Caro. In all things.”
She nodded, biting her bottom lip as the soft muslin of her shift slipped up her thighs to pool at her waist. She was open to him. Entirely. Pulsing and needy. She let her hand wander across her body, holding his gaze, rubbing against every part of her demanding attention.
He watched the path of her hand. “You’ve done this before.”
She nodded.
“With whom?”
“With myself.”
“You had a German suitor once. Grandfather thought you might marry.”
“I did not. He… bored me. I did this”—she slipped her hand between her leg—“better than he did.”
His eyes flashed with… jealousy?
She could soothe that. “I dare say you can do it better than I do.”
His hands skated down her thighs, fingernails digging into her flesh. “Damn right I can.” Then, with a wicked grin, he curled over her, dropping a kiss between her legs.
Tonight, Felix wouldworship his wife. He’d been courting danger all of his adult life, andthiswas the most dangerous thing he could do.
He placed a kiss against her inner thigh. “Brave goddess.” And another, lower. “Clever love.” And another, his cheek brushing against her sweet cunny. “Perfect Caro-mine.”
Mine for tonight. For as long as he was here. For… forever, just this way. Heat and curves and the body’s desires. Nothing else needed. Not dangerous at all.
Her hands slipped into his hair and his control slipped. Almost entirely. Those fingertips stroking against his skin, her strong fists pulling at his hair.
“Do you know this?” he asked, barely capable of speaking, needing moving him to action instead. But he held tight to the reins. For her. “What I’m about to do?” Had that bloody Scotsman done this to her?
“N-no.”
“No one has ever kissed you here?”
